More and more people are shopping on Amazon, the most popular e-commerce site on the Internet. And because Amazon draws so many customers, this gives you an incredible opportunity to make some good money online. In this article, I’ll share five great ways to make money on Amazon from home.
The first way I’ll show you requires little work, but earns you a bit of extra money. Three of these ways will require you to put in work to sell something. The last method I’ll be showing you doesn’t require much work because you don’t need your own products to sell.
Obviously, you will need an Amazon account to make money on Amazon. You should already have one if you shop on Amazon, but if not, creating one is free and easy!
So without further ado, let’s get going with all the five ways you can start making money on Amazon.
1. Selling on Amazon
This is obviously straightforward and self-explanatory, but let me explain to you just exactly how selling on Amazon works.
If you’re looking to sell books or e-books on Amazon, I recommend you check out the second method I have for you.
Amazon offers two plans to allow you to get started as a product seller: the first is the Individual plan which I would recommend, especially if you’re starting out. Under this plan, you can sell up to 40 different items every single month. There is no recurring fee for this plan; you only pay an easy $1 fee for every sale you make.
However, if you want to take your selling to a higher level, then you may want to consider the Professional plan which will cost you around $40 a month. The Professional plan gives you more options for your sales, including adding your own shipping fees, earning top spots in certain product categories, and the ability to sell products in more categories.
Of course, selling on any site such as Amazon is not passive income, but you can earn a lot of money by putting in the work to stock products, ship them yourself, as well as respond to customers when they contact you. As mentioned earlier, if you choose the basic Individual plan, all you pay for is $1 for each sale you make. As far as I know, Amazon will send your payment regularly to your bank account.
All in all, this is a great opportunity if you have a lot of time on your hands and the ability to keep yourself busy, but if not, you may want to consider my last two methods.
START SELLING STUFF ON AMAZON!
2. Kindle Direct Publishing
If you’re thinking of becoming a writer and selling your works on Amazon, you will need the help of a different program that Amazon offers, and that is Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP). This service allows you to upload any book you create from scratch so that it can be sold to anyone who searches for it. In the case of KDP, your work will be sold as an e-book or paperback.
It’s easy to get started using KDP. All you need is your Amazon account (yes, the one you use to buy your Amazon stuff) and you too can start making money publishing books to Amazon. Just upload the book you created and a cover image for it. Keep in mind you may need to revise your work to meet Amazon’s guidelines. Then just set the cost for your work. As for fees, there are none if you choose to upload a simple e-book, but if you’d rather have your book printed, you will need to pay a small printing fee. As with the previous method, I believe you will be paid regularly through your bank account.
KDP makes it simple to share your ability to write books and share your creation or knowledge with the world, all with little to no fees and without the pain of restocking inventory!
START SELLING BOOKS ON AMAZON KDP!
3. Amazon FBA
FBA stands for “Fulfillment by Amazon,” which is a service that is basically selling on Amazon, but with two big differences:
- Amazon takes care of shipping. You’d send your inventory to Amazon’s special fulfillment centers and, when you make a sale, Amazon will do the work of preparing, handling, and shipping the product sold. So all you do is supply Amazon with your stuff regularly and just watch the money come in.
- Amazon handles customer service. Not only do you have to worry about shipping, but you also don’t have to worry about responding to your customers. If something happens, your customer will get in contact with Amazon and they will work out any issues your customers may encounter. That means no talking, no hassle, no stress!
Now all this sounds great, but there is a caveat. You will need to pay two big fees.
One is a fulfillment fee so that Amazon can fulfill your products for you when any of them sell. This fee can range from as low as $5 per unit to as high as $100 or above per unit. It simply depends on the weight of each unit.
The other is a monthly inventory fee which you pay to have your products stored in Amazon’s fulfillment centers. This fee is typically less than $1 per cubic foot of inventory, but it rises up to $2 or more per cubic foot during the holiday season.
So while Amazon FBA makes it convenient for you to make sales, it is also pretty costly. But it’s all worth it especially if you don’t have the time and energy to do the work of getting products out yourself. And like the previous two methods, I hear that Amazon will send your payments regularly through your bank account.
Now if selling is not your thing, you’re in luck because the last method is a way to make money on Amazon that practically anybody can do, with little to no fees and without the need for inventory (or creating books)!
START SELLING WITH AMAZON FBA!
4. Amazon Associates
This is Amazon’s affiliate program and one of the oldest started in 1996. To use Amazon Associates, you’ll need to get acquainted with the concept of affiliate marketing. I have a beginner’s guide on affiliate marketing that you can read if you are interested.
It’s completely free to sign up for Amazon Associates. All you need is a platform to promote Amazon items. I recommend you start your own blog or website where you can create content now and make passive income later.
But, if you’d rather promote Amazon items on your YouTube channel or a different social network, during the sign-up process, you can specify the link to your social page instead of a link to your website.
Commission payments range anywhere from 2 to 15% of the product cost, so they are not all that great. Nonetheless, you can make a pretty good side income by becoming an affiliate on Amazon. Head over to this page for each Amazon product’s commission percentage (the first table on the page).
For your work as an affiliate, you will be paid every month as long as you meet your payment threshold. You can have your payment sent via direct deposit, via a gift certificate, or via check through the mail.
START SELLING AS AN AMAZON AFFILIATE!
5. Amazon Mechanical Turk
If you’re not really all that serious about how much money you earn, you could earn peanuts by doing very easy tasks like finding certain shapes and typing in captchas. And the most popular site to earn money for these kinds of tasks is Amazon Mechanical Turk.
How does Mechanical Turk work? Well, if someone had a ton of simple tasks that they just didn’t want to deal with, they could submit them through Mechanical Turk and pay someone else a few dollars to do all those tasks for them. You could be one of those task workers and earn some extra money on the side.
Of course, these tasks are insignificant, so you don’t earn that much pay. But if you have a lot of time on your hands and just want something simple to do, micro-tasks can be profitable if you do it consistently enough.
You can cash out your earnings as Amazon credit that you can spend on Amazon.com or through Amazon Pay, where you can link your bank account and receive your earnings that way.
BECOME A MECHANICAL TURK WORKER!
Wrapping Up
So, all in all, Amazon has a good number of opportunities for you to make money from home. All you need is a little bit of money, a lot of time on your hands, and the willpower to put in the work that it demands. So now instead of giving money away to Amazon, with any of these methods, you can receive money through the popularity of Amazon.
I hope this article gave you ideas on how to get started making money on Amazon from home. There is quite a bit of money you can earn with the world’s largest online retailer, so stop buying and start selling or promoting, using Amazon!