The company’s vast network of services offers millions of people opportunities to make money with Amazon. Regardless of your skill and knowledge, there will be at least one way you can earn money from Amazon. A lot of the options once set up will generate a stream of passive income for years. While some options can be turned into a profitable full-time business others will create a decent additional income.
Currently, Amazon employs 1.3 million people all over the world, and there are millions more who make money with the company, self-employed, through one of their many services.
20 Ways To Make Money With Amazon
Amazon Explore
Amazon Explore is still in the beta phase but no doubt it will be a success as everything else this giant does. Inspired by the “new normal”, Amazon Explore is an interactive live streaming service for learning new things, exploring new places, and shopping for unique products found nowhere else, while drinking coffee at the kitchen table.
What this means is that Amazon is looking for:
- local guides to stream walk through their hometown, show landmarks, let people experience the culture, or take them on nature and wildlife walk;
- artisans, artists, stylists, teachers, experts, and chefs to host a personal tutoring session to teach people new skills and share their knowledge;
- small shop owners to give a virtual shopping experience and sell their unique products to customers all over the world;
- performers to give live virtual events like music evening, magician performance, or stand-up comedy show;
- and so much more. With Amazon Explore possibilities are endless. Something that is normal and everyday to you may be a novel and exotic experience to someone on the other side of the globe.
The application process is simple, you give information about yourself and your offer. Then wait for your application to be approved. Once you get approved you will receive training from Amazon, their coaches will help you every step of the way to be the best possible host before you can start hosting virtual experiences.
How much you can earn depends on the price of the session, you set the price and the number of people purchasing your offer. To make things even better, at the moment Amazon is not charging any fees to hosts because the program is still in the trial phase. And those that do join the program early on will always have more benefits as a reward for loyalty and trust.
If you can see yourself in one of these roles then apply now and be a pioneer in the new way of learning, experiencing, and shopping. Because Explore is in its beginning this is the best time to jump in and establish your name while the competition is still low.
How to make money with Amazon Explore:
- Decide what type of experience you want to offer.
- Make a plan of how you will deliver that experience.
- Apply to become a host on Amazon Explore.
- Once approved, go through the training.
- Create a listing for your offer.
- Get your first customers.
- Deliver an amazing experience.
- Ask your customers for a review.
- Receive a payment.
Merch by Amazon
One of the many services Amazon offers is also a print-on-demand service called Merch by Amazon. You can create a design and have it printed on t-shirts, sweaters, hoodies, pop sockets, phone cases, tote bags, and pillowcases. For your work, you earn royalties based on the price of a product. There are no up-front fees making the whole process completely free for you. Amazon will take care of production and distribution as well as deal with customers. You can earn even more if you join the Amazon Affiliate program and promote your own merch. Then you earn an additional 7% commission from the qualifying purchases.
This can be a source of additional passive income for artists or anyone who likes to play around with the design. But since there is a high demand for participation in the program Amazon evaluates every application. If you are interested in this, apply as soon as possible because it takes some time for an application to get approved.
How to make money with Merch by Amazon:
- Apply to become Merch by Amazon creator.
- Choose a product you want to have your artwork on.
- Create a design in dimensions specified for the chosen product.
- Upload your work on the platform.
- Choose the color of the product.
- Write a compelling description.
- Set a price for the product.
- OPTIONAL: become Amazon Affiliate to earn more.
- Promote your merch on social media (using affiliate link).
- Sit back and wait for the royalties.
Amazon Affiliate
Amazon Affiliate program is a referral program where associates earn a percentage of every sale they motivate a customer to make. Affiliates have special links they use to post on their blogs and websites and every time someone clicks on one of the links and makes a purchase, the affiliate receives a commission.
It’s worth mentioning that affiliate marketing is one of the leading sources of income for many bloggers. And the only limit to how much you can earn is your ability to persuade a lot of people to click on the link. After that, you earn a percentage from everything the user buys during the cookie window (which is 24 hours). You could create a website with shopping guides for every occasion or choose a niche where you write about all the different products and their uses.
Some of the most popular categories are pets, baby, tech, cosmetics, outdoor activities, stationery, seasonal (Christmas, Halloween, Valentines Day…). You can actually go through the list of categories and choose whichever interests you the most. Then write reviews, top 5 products, best sellers, must-have items, etc. Most dedicated affiliates, that publish consistently, earn $1000-$5000 a month, depending on the niche they are in and of course time of the year.
How to make money with Amazon Affiliate:
- Choose a niche.
- Create a website and publish few posts.
- Apply for the Amazon Affiliate program.
- Write more posts with your affiliate links.
- Promote your posts on social accounts and Pinterest.
- Sit back and wait for the commission from qualifying purchases.
Amazon Influencer
Amazon Influencer is an extension of the affiliate program. It’s designed for creators and other individuals with a large following on Instagram, Facebook, or YouTube. Amazon doesn’t specify the exact number you need to reach to be accepted in the program, because the number of followers is not the only relevant metric. An engaged audience is equally if not more important. In addition to special links they can post on their accounts, Influencers get a whole page on Amazon, called storefront, for them to showcase all the products they like and recommend. They can also create content where they share tips and recommend products. As an Amazon Influencer, you should curate a collection of beautiful, quality products that are aligned with your mission and style. Those should be products you have yourself or would like to have. This will give a genuine feel to your storefront and help you to make more sales and earn more money from Amazon.
How to make money with Amazon Influencer:
PREREQUISITE: Have a decent following on Instagram, Facebook, or YouTube.
- Apply to join the Amazon Influencer program.
- Start promoting products you endorse with your affiliate link.
- Create a store on Amazon with all the products you like.
- Add content to Amazon with tips and reviews of Amazon’s products you use.
- Sit back and wait for your commission.
Amazon Appstore
If you are an app developer you could expand your reach to Fire TV and tablet users by publishing your apps on Amazon Appstore. That is millions of people all around the world that are daily looking for apps to use on their devices. Amazon prides itself that app developers see similar or better revenue from their audience than any other. It doesn’t come as a surprise, that company knows how to sell. Every person that owns some Amazon-made device knows how easy it is to overspend on their products. As a developer, you will receive full support from their team to successfully publish your app along with a lot of detailed guides for free. Amazon devices run on android, so if you already have apps for android it’s only a matter of migrating them, and making a few changes if needed, to the Amazon Appstore.
How to make money selling apps on Amazon:
- Come up with the idea for an app.
- Do the market research and find out what’s missing.
- Create an app for Amazon (APK file).
- Upload your APK file and run a test.
- Review results and make changes if needed.
- Submit your app to Amazon Appstore.
- Use Amazon Moments, Amazon Device Messaging, and Merch by Amazon services to drive engagement and increase brand loyalty.
BONUS TIP:
Apps that have massive success on Amazon are those that solve some problem, help people save time, and are simple to use.
Kindle Direct Publishing
Kindle users are voracious readers. They love to read classic, contemporary, and indie literature equally. It has never been easier to become a successful self-published author and earn money from writing. With KDP anyone can publish a book. If you love writing, but don’t want to deal with publishers and all that drama, you can self-publish your work for free on Amazon.
You can write a book on whichever topic you want, fiction or nonfiction, whichever genre you want. Then you simply submit the book, write a captivating description, set your price, and in 24-48 hours it will be live on Amazon. Spend some time writing a description that provokes curiosity to generate more sales, and promote it on your social accounts for even more exposure.
The whole process is free and incredibly easy. And if at any moment you want to change something in your book, all you have to do is change it in your manuscript and upload it again. You have all the rights to your content, which you can also publish in other places as well, and you get up to 70% royalties. But if you choose to give Amazon exclusive rights then your book can be read for free by anyone with Kindle Unlimited. In this case, you get paid per page read which can lead to even greater earnings. What’s maybe more important is you get your book in front of a lot of eyes and you stand a chance of acquiring a lot of loyal readers that will excitedly wait for your next title.
How to make money with Kindle Direct Publishing:
- Write a book.
- Create a cover for the book.
- Sign in to KDP.
- Write a description and choose a category.
- Upload the book and cover.
- Submit the book.
- Once the book is live, promote it on your social accounts.
Self-publish Paperbacks
Similar to Kindle Direct Publishing, you can publish your books and have them printed in paperback by Amazon. You write a book, create a cover, set a price, write a description, and hit publish. Everything else is handled by Amazon, printing, packing, and shipping. Naturally, your earnings are not as great as from KDP because producing a physical book has its costs, but there are people who prefer paper books over e-books so this is your opportunity to have your book printed as well. But what really makes self-publishing paperbacks interesting is the possibility to create low-content books. Low-content books are books with very little content written and are intended to be written out by the reader/user. like planners, coloring books, journals, and such.
How to make money self-publishing paperbacks:
- Write a book OR create a low-content notebook.
- Create a cover for the book.
- Sign in to KDP.
- Write a description and choose a category.
- Upload the book and cover.
- Submit the book.
- Once the book is live promote it on your social accounts.
Virtual Customer Service
Virtual Customer Service Associates are Amazon employees that work from home with a flexible schedule. They are on the frontline, dealing with customers, finding solutions, and resolving problems that arise. If you like to communicate with people, offer support, solve problems by finding creative practical solutions then this might be the dream job for you. Amazon is looking for people from all over the world to join their team and help them deliver the best service to their customers. Those that get chosen to be full-time workers have all the health, financial, and many other benefits. You can read more about the work and see all job offers here.
Prime Video Direct
Video content creators have the possibility to distribute their content to millions of viewers from all over the world through Prime Video Direct and earn from Amazon for their work. In 2020 Prime Video had the highest growth in new subscriptions than any other streaming service. This opens doors for independent filmmakers to a massive audience. Indie fiction filmmakers can submit their movies and earn 50% of the purchase price from sales and renting, and royalties for subscription access. Although in the past Amazon allowed non-fiction as well, currently only fiction is accepted. You can find out more about Prime Video Direct here.
Game streaming on Twitch
Twitch averages 30 million daily users either playing games or watching others play games. And as always where is a lot of attention, there are also a lot of ways to earn. There are several ways players can make money on the platform, and since Twitch is owned by Amazon, that makes it qualified to be on the list of ways to make money from Amazon.
The way it all works is you stream yourself playing on a regular basis and amass following. From the first day, you can earn from donations. Once you broadcast few hundred minutes and have at least 50 followers you can join the Twitch Affiliate program where you make money from subscriptions, virtual cheers, and in-game purchases. After some time of continuous work on your channel, you will gather a larger following. Now is the time to roll out your own merch (you can use Merch by Amazon for this), look for brand partnerships and apply to become a Twitch Partner. As a Twitch Partner, you receive a share of ad revenue. Most successful streamers earn millions every year, but even average ones can earn $2000-$5000 every month which is a decent income.
How to make money streaming on Twitch:
- Choose a genre or a game and a unique approach.
- Create your channel on Twitch.
- Start streaming regularly (same days, at the same time).
- Connect with your audience and interact with other streamers and their audience.
- Add a “Donate” button to your channel.
- When available join the Twitch Affiliate program.
- Stream regularly to gather a following.
- Start offering your personalized merchandise.
- Look for brands to team up with and promote their products.
- Apply to join the Twitch Partner program.
- Continue streaming and interacting with your audience.
Twitch has a Creator Camp where you can learn all the ins and outs of how to start the channel and become a successful creator, and it’s completely free.
Mechanical Turk
Mechanical Turk (MTurk) is Amazon’s microtask marketplace. As much as technology and AI are developed, at some tasks human beings are still much more effective than computers. This is where MTurk comes in. The platform serves two types of customers, Requesters (customers that have a task that needs to be done by a human) and Workers (customers that offer their time and skills to complete a task for a fee). Tasks on MTurk are all virtual, performed on a computer or laptop. They are mostly really easy to complete and include things like content moderation, data entry, surveys, data deduplication, fact-checking, research, and similar tasks.
Because tasks are easy to complete, they are paid very little. So in order to make money from this type of work you need to complete as many as you can. What’s good about this type of work is that it’s flexible, you choose when, what, and how much you want to work. If your day job is demanding and you don’t have much power to do much after work, but you do want to increase your earnings, then this side gig might be perfect because of the simplicity of tasks. Few hours daily can build up to a decent side income over the month.
Amazon Third-Party Seller
You can sell on Amazon even if you don’t have or produce any product yourself. There are two clever ways you can start selling products and making good money with Amazon. That is retail arbitrage and white label products.
Retail arbitrage means you buy products in a bulk at a low price, usually on clearances, and resell them for a higher price, earning on the difference.
White label products are products that have no label/brand. Meaning you can add your own label and create the whole inventory of branded products to sell. There are companies that produce generic products which you can buy for a cheap price straight from the production line. This requires more work but you don’t rely on random clearances to stock up your inventory.
Together with the FBA (Fulfillment by Amazon) program where Amazon does all the work of storing, packing, shipping, and customer support, this could be a good low-maintenance side job.
How to make money selling products on Amazon when you don’t have a product:
- Find and buy already existing products
- Create your Amazon seller account
- Set up FBA
- Add products to your inventory
- Prepare and ship your products to Amazon
- Promote products on social media
- Sit back and wait for sales to start coming in
- Restock your inventory as needed
BONUS TIP:
Themed gift boxes are a neat way of wrapping together various little products from the same category. Some products have a big competition, but packed together in a gift box they become a unique product. For example, you can sell pet supplies found at a really good price on Alibaba, or you can create My First Puppy Gift Box that is packed with all the essentials and have a product that grabs attention.
Sell on Amazon Business
Amazon Business is a B2B e-commerce platform. If you have a product and are looking for a way to expand your market and increase sales then you should consider selling on Amazon Business. There are millions of businesses regularly buying on Amazon and enjoying the convenience it brings. Instead of spending hours having to meet face to face with countless businesses and pitching them your product, you can create a listing of your offer on Amazon Business and have buyers come to you.
Amazon Handmade
More and more people every day are turning away from mass production. That’s why Amazon introduced Handmade, a separate category of products that are handcrafted by artisans and hobbyists. Most Handmade buyers are there shopping for unique gifts for their loved ones and one-of-a-kind decorative pieces for the home. So if you have a crafty hobby that you enjoy doing and end up with a decorative or useful product at the end then you should consider offering your products on Amazon Handmade.
Your product can easily reach a global audience. While other platforms are already very crowded, on Handmade you could more easily make a breakthrough as the new seller. After they verify you are authentic and truly do handcraft the products, you get your own page to create your shop and list all the products you have to offer.
Since Handmade buyers are looking for unique products and want to support artisans making them, they are willing to pay top dollar for it. That means that, although Amazon keeps a 15% referral fee from every sale, you can set a price that will cover the cost of materials, work, amazon fee, and little extra to make a profit, and still find buyers willing to pay the price for your product.
Amazon Accelerator
Making a product is one thing, marketing and selling are another. Manufacturers who want a streamlined way of selling their products can apply to Amazon Accelerator where they will receive guided support and tools to brand their product and track performance, marketing support, and a venue to test, receive feedback, and learn. By giving Amazon exclusive rights to carry your brand you get to sell your products all over the world from one place, and on shelves of Amazon’s physical stores.
Amazon Hub
Amazon offers its customers the option to pick up their packages from a fully automated locker. There are over 7000 lockers throughout the US and the company is looking to have much more. Those that have some free space in a public location can apply to host Amazon Hub locker. This kind of deal would be perfect for cafes and shops. While Amazon doesn’t pay for providing a location for their locker, you do benefit from increased traffic to your location, exposure to new customers, and ultimately more sales.
Businesses that host one of these lockers report an increase in sales. Customers that use lockers prefer convenience. Once they discover your business as a convenient place where they can pick up their package and do some shopping or get coffee they will use the opportunity to do both at one place.
Amazon Flex
Amazon Flex is a delivery service that allows anyone over 21, with a medium to large vehicle, to deliver packages. Drivers can earn from $18 to $25 an hour, which depends on location, duration of delivery, and tips. The work is organized through the app. Flex drivers can choose from available delivery blocks and also mark themselves as available in the app and wait for instant offers. Every delivery block is defined with a time frame and estimated earnings. Depending on the type of delivery (Amazon.com orders, store pick-ups, Prime Now orders), one block can last from 2 to 6 hours. Amazon pays drivers twice a week via direct deposit. Which makes this a great way to quickly make extra money.
Amazon Delivery Service Partner
Those looking to start their own business but are unsure about doing it alone in this time of uncertainty can choose to become Amazon Delivery Service Partner. As DSP you are building your own business with the support and collaboration of one of the biggest companies in the world. If you think of yourself as a good leader who can organize and manage a good delivery business then this might be the perfect opportunity for you. Those applicants that pass the screening process receive full training, tools, technology, and on-demand support along the way to build a successful business.
What’s more, the company announced a Diversity Grant and offers to fund startup costs to qualifying candidates from Black, Latinx, and Native American communities. You can read more about the opportunities that Amazon DPS has to offer here.
Amazon Home Services
Amazon Home Services is introduced by the company because of frequent interest for the services like installation, mounting, or set up of products purchased from Amazon. If you know how to set up a home theatre, assemble furniture, mount a wall tv, and do similar tasks then this is something you could do as a side job. Now, the opportunity to apply and become a technician is not always available. But when available it’s a great way to earn something extra. Here you can look to see when the applications will be open.
Amazon CamperForce
More people every day decide to change an address for the road. The freedom, flexibility, and low cost of such a life are appealing, but at the same time that same lifestyle limits job opportunities. Amazon CamperForce is a program specially designed for campers, it even pays an extra $120 weekly to cover campground expenses. The schedule is flexible to correspond with the lifestyle campers are accustomed to. Jobs are seasonal and all over the country, or to be exact wherever there’s a fulfillment center. With benefits like 401k, medical coverage, paid overtime, and completion bonuses this really is a decent way to earn with Amazon as a camper. Read more about the job and how to apply here.
There are plenty of ways anyone can make money on Amazon. Hope you find this resource helpful and possibly found your way to make money from Amazon.
