Jeff Bezos’ Amazon is no doubt the biggest eCommerce business in the whole world and millions of people rely on it for different things almost every day. Many of the people who visit Amazon’s website every day are people who sell merchandise on the platform; making a decent living in the process.
My guess is that you hopped on this blog post because you’re looking at learning how to make money selling on Amazon or perhaps learn some other ways to earn from or with this eCommerce giant which is estimated to be worth some $602 billion. If my guess is correct, then you are reading the right article. What follows below is a selection of some of the very best ways to make money on Amazon in 2020.
Top 5 Ways to Make Money on Amazon
If you’re ready to explore ways to make money with Amazon, these are some of your best options.
1. Sell a Physical Product on Amazon
A better term for this is FBA which stands for Fulfilled by Amazon. What this means is that you can register as a seller on Amazon and send your merchandise to Amazon. Following that, you create a listing of your products online. When buyers place an order online, Amazon handles everything else from packaging to shipping to the customer. This is what it means to be “fulfilled” by Amazon.
Of course, they charge a fee for each transaction placed on the seller’s account even though sellers still have the option of shipping the purchased items by themselves to avoid Amazon charges for shipping. However, shipping by the seller makes sense when sales are little and far in between. But for sellers who get plenty of orders, it makes perfect sense to let Amazon handle the processes while they (the sellers) focus on marketing their products to attract more customers.
Though selling products on Amazon can yield you a great income, you must understand the dynamics of the eCommerce industry before delving in. What kind of products are in demand? How high is the return on investment? How frequently are these products bought? What amount of money will be required to get started? How bulky are these products and how will that affect shipping? You will need to answer these questions and more before moving forward with this option. You can read more about Amazon FBA here.
2. Your Own Private Label Product
Many products on sale on Amazon are somewhat popular branded products. From kitchenware to sophisticated drones, almost every major brand on the planet is represented. What most people do is join the bandwagon. They look for a popular fast-selling branded product and start promoting these products. While this is by no means a despicable thing to do, you will face one major problem doing it.
Competition!
These mega brands are selling their products and so are their thousands of affiliates and sub-dealers. The numbers are way too much and you will very likely struggle with sales no matter how determined you may be.
But you could choose to own your product. This is where private labeling comes into the picture. For some people, getting their own private label products is as simple as obtaining certain fast-selling products from bigger brands, then repackaging and selling it as their own. A good number of other merchants would go further by creating their own version of the product. Whatever option a seller chooses does not matter. The benefits remain the same and they include originality, differentiation and some creativity.
3. Retail Arbitrage with Amazon
Buy low and sell high. The simple sentence you just read explains what retail arbitrage is all about. It is an entirely separate niche on Amazon and sellers who know their onions are crushing it. These sellers typically source products at places where they can find the cheapest prices. This could be Groupon, eBay or their local Walmart stores.
To thrive on Amazon using this sales technique, you need to be very good at sourcing cheap products that are good quality. This could mean looking as far as China for cheap high-quality supplies.
4. Amazon Kindle Publishing
As a Kindle publisher, I receive email notifications for the monthly budget Amazon would release for writers who have their intellectual property in the Kindle market. On average, the monthly budget is some 20 million dollars or more which anyone who can write books – even if it’s just short stories or small self-help guides – can gladly earn from.
Writing categories on Amazon range from weight loss to dating advice. Literally, anyone who can write fairly decent English can be an author on Amazon. In fact, you do not need to be a writer. For as little as $60, you can hire a good writer on any good online freelance platform. In a couple of days or weeks, your books will be ready. Get a nice cover design done for your book at about $5 – $10 and you’re ready to publish on Amazon Kindle. Amazon does the extra work of distributing your book to dozens of markets across different languages all over the world.
Keep in mind, however, that earnings from Kindle publishing are rather passive and not a lot especially when you are getting started. Unless your book goes viral in a very short time, you can expect to earn decent income several months down the road.
5. Join Amazon Associates
Do you have a blog? Do you have some traffic? Amazon Associates is a very good way to make good money from the eCommerce giant. Think about it.
Amazon sells just about every product under the sun and the good news is that no matter your niche (as a blogger) there are Amazon products that you can promote. Admittedly, some products will sell faster than others and may earn you more money per unit sale than others. However, there will always be products you can promote.
What you need to do is to join the Amazon Affiliate program. After being accepted, you will get a unique code for products you promote and will earn between 4% and 8.5% of every sale that is generated from the links you place on your blog.
Honorable Mentions
There is also a tone of other ways to make money on Amazon though they may not be as easily scalable as the first five listed above. But they are great options nonetheless and deserve mentions. Below are five of them
- CamperForce
You help Amazon pick and receive product orders and get paid for it.
- Amazon Trade-In
Amazon will pay you some money for your used items such as videogames, books, electronic appliances and more. As expected, you won’t earn a lot of money doing this but you will be making money nonetheless.
- Amazon Vine
Get paid via free merchandise when you help Amazon review a product. This opportunity is only open to people who write reviews frequently on Amazon for the products they purchase.
- Amazon Services
When you join Amazon Services, you will get the opportunity to render your services to clients in your neighborhood who need them. Amazon does the job of connecting you and these clients. You can expect to render many household services like plumbing, landscaping, painting and more.
- Mechanical Turk
Amazon Mechanical Turk is a crowd work platform that allows users to earn little amounts of money doing various tasks. Also known as MTurk, it is a virtual workforce of Amazon’s designed to perform what is collectively known as ”Human Intelligence Task”
So here you have it. Is there any legit way you have made money through Amazon which is not listed here? Share with us in the comment section below.
