Top 9 Ways To Make Money on Amazon From Home
How to make money on amazon? Can you really make money on Amazon? How much can you make? These are very crucial questions people want to know about.
It’s not too late to start selling on amazon. Do you ever worry that maybe you’ve missed out on this whole ecommerce boat? Well, trust me when I say you haven’t in fact it’s just getting started. So in this article we’re going over 9 of the best ways to start making money on amazon. And for each of these we’ll talk about:
- How much money you can make and
- How easy it is to start the first way to make money
Key Tips:
- Take an example of Brian Lam
It is by promoting amazon products with affiliate marketing. This is actually how Brian Lamb started his website the Wirecutter which eventually sold to the New York Times for an insane $30 million. So how it works is like Brian.
- Create website and promote the products
- 9 Ways To Make Money on Amazon
- #1 Build your own Website and Social Media Channel
- #2 Sell products through Merch
- #3 Third way to make money on Amazon is by flipping retail products using Online Arbitrage
- #4 Make money on amazon by flipping store-bought products
- #5 Fifth way to make money on Amazon is by Drop Shipping products
- #6 The sixth way to make money on amazon is to publish your own books
- #7 The seventh way to make money is by selling wholesale goods on amazon
- #8 Selling Handcraft on amazon
- #9 The next way to make money is to sell your own private label products on amazon
9 Ways To Make Money on Amazon
#1 Build your own Website and Social Media Channel
You create a website and start promoting or even reviewing products already selling on amazon. Then when someone clicks your link and makes a purchase you get a little kickback commission of one to ten percent depending on the category. And the coolest part is even if the reader purchases a completely different product than the one you promoted you’ll still receive a commission as long as they got to amazon from your link and purchase within 24 hours.
But how do you actually go ahead and build a website and begin generating traffic? Well this is where you need to get creative and start brainstorming ways to position yourself.
The only way of doing this isn’t in the form of a blog or even niche website. In fact while those are great options you can do this 100 % on YouTube, Tick Tock, Instagram or other social media channels.
More importantly here consider the type of content you want to create. So here are some good ideas to help you get started regardless of whether these are blog posts or videos.
Choose a Topic that is highly targeted
The key component is to choose a topic that is highly targeted around one particular niche. For example here’s what these posts could look like if your niche was dog supplies not only will this help you establish authority but on sites like YouTube and Tick Tock the algorithms love knowing what types of audiences your content is catered to. So the more similar content you create the more these sites will gain confidence suggesting your videos.
How much money can you make?
How much money can you make while this does vary greatly depending on the size of your influence. I’m going to give it a four and a half and here’s why.
Imagine a business model that requires no inventory and partners with the largest internet retailer in the world, Amazon. You can do it from anywhere and it generates enough cash flow around the clock to maybe get you to quit your full-time job or at least supplement.
It sounds pretty amazing right also the amazon associates program which is the program that you’ll need to apply to to become an amazon affiliate. It takes advantage of the fact that most online shoppers already have an amazon account this means after clicking your affiliate link you’re not sending readers randomly to like a website.
It’s like a random website and asking them to pull out their credit cards and fill in their shipping information rather that’s all pre-loaded already into their amazon account which makes the whole click and buy process a whole lot smoother on their end.
Now the only reason why I’m not giving this the full five out of five is because if you don’t have a social media following or an existing blog. It can take some time to start generating enough traffic to see a lot of sales which brings us to this next grade.
How easy is it to start? Well, the startup costs are actually very low. In fact it can even be 100 percent free if you’re only going the social media route. Now if you do choose to build a website it can range anywhere from 50 to 500 a year depending on how far you want to take it although just keep in mind here that there are a bunch of free alternatives out there for tools that can help you build and even maintain your website in terms of time.
You’ll need to dedicate just a few hours a week to writing and publishing content or you can just outsource it all on sites like fiverr or upwork. Now to help you get started we have a comprehensive written guide on how to make money as an amazon affiliate.
#2 Sell products through Merch
The second way to make money on amazon is by selling shirts, hats, coffee mugs and much more through a program called merch by amazon. Let’s face it not everybody has or wants to spend the cash needed to launch a private label business especially in this economy. So fortunately amazon offers a cool way to start selling stuff on their platform without having to spend thousands to purchase inventory.
The biggest advantage this program has over other forms of selling is that the barriers to entry are really really low here. It’s easy to set up. There’s no upfront cost and even if you aren’t an artist graphic designer or have a large social media following you can start an amazon merch account. So, say you have a cool idea for a t-shirt designed for dog lovers and even if you’re not an artist you could just do a text based design just like this. Once you have a design all you have to do is upload your artwork and wait for amazon to approve it.
Once approved they’ll create a listing for you as soon as your product sells amazon will also handle all the printing shipping and customer service on your behalf and then give you a royalty. Merch by amazon is so popular even the big brands use it and yeah that baby oto shirt you bought it was probably created by merch by amazon.
So how much money can you make? I give this one a four out of five mainly because it’s a truly passive income opportunity because you aren’t paying for actual inventory. When you make a sale it’s not just revenue it’s profit all of it now. Of course if you outsource some of the design work then it’s not all profit but I think you get what I’m saying.
It’s also great because you don’t need to know how to build a website or even have an existing social media following none of that matters although it certainly does help. How the payouts work is when you sell an item amazon will pay you a royalty fee on that sale.
The royalties can range anywhere from 13 to 37 percent depending on your product’s price basically the higher your price the higher the royalty you earn. For example if you sell a t-shirt for fifteen dollars on the low end you’ll make around two dollars and on the high end you’ll make around five dollars per sale and if that doesn’t sound like much to you just remember this is 100 percent passive. And every dollar you make is considered profit not revenue.
#3 Third way to make money on Amazon is by flipping retail products using Online Arbitrage
If you’re new to amazon this is one of the best ways to get started Online Arbitrage is the simple process of buying discounted products from online retailers and then reselling those products at a higher price on amazon. Now you may be asking yourself is retail arbitrage even legal? Well, fortunately it is according to the first sale doctrine.
Once you purchase a product you legally have the right to resell that product as long as it’s sold in an unchanged condition. So if you buy it and sell it as new the product that must be in new condition. This allows you to source profitable products from thousands of online websites. And the best part is you can do it from anywhere but how much money can you make?
The amount you make really just depends on how much you’re able to put down in order to buy large quantities. So let’s say you find a really great deal. You obviously won’t be able to make much if you only buy one or two units to get the most out of this business model you’ll want to start slow and then eventually build up the cash flow to buy in bulk. That’s where the money is made by finding a really great deal and squeezing everything you can out of it.
How easy is it to get started! Well unlike private label where you need to invest like thousands of dollars up front you can start online arbitrage with as little as a hundred dollars in terms of how easy it is to sell. The concept is pretty straightforward. Here you search for discounted products on sites like brickseek.com that show you where to find the best online deals.
Once you found one you’ll then look up the same product on amazon and confirm a large enough price difference to be profitable selling it. When you do move on to step three and purchase as many units as you can reasonably afford. Wait for the products to arrive at your home and then list them for sale on amazon immediately via fbm which is where you package the products and then send them to customers or repackage those products and ship them to amazon and use fba to have amazon send them to your customers.
#4 Make money on amazon by flipping store-bought products
The fourth way to make money online is by flipping store-bought products with retail arbitrage. If you used to watch the us version of the office you might remember an episode where Dwight brought up all the princess unicorn dolls around Christmas time.
His plan was to sell them for over 200 to last minute shoppers and that in a nutshell is how retail arbitrage works. It’s the complete opposite of online arbitrage. We actually need to go into physical retail stores like Walmart and buy discounted products to sell on amazon.
So how much money can you make? Well to be upfront with you retail arbitrage can be very competitive and often difficult to scale but it is still a very fast and low cost way to start making money on amazon. In fact a lot of big sellers started their amazon journey by using this method although when you first get started it’s important to know to have a little bit of patience.
Here many times sellers can spend the better part of their day searching through stores only to come up empty-handed. But I wouldn’t let that deter you from at least trying it out the next time you’re shopping. How easy is it to start! We actually collected some really cool data on this in a study of more than a thousand amazon sellers a third of those doing arbitrage were able to launch their business with less than five hundred dollars. And almost half of them did it with less than a thousand dollars also two out of five were able to launch their businesses in fewer than six weeks.
#5 Fifth way to make money on Amazon is by Drop Shipping products
The fifth way to make money on amazon is by drop shipping products on amazon. Let me ask you a quick question do you have a few hundred dollars lined up for your business idea right now? If not drop shipping is something you should seriously consider. Because it doesn’t require any upfront cost with drop shipping you don’t ever touch your own inventory meaning you simply list products for sale.
And once a customer places an order you buy the product from a supplier at a lower price and then have them ship it to your customer. You as a seller earn money without ever touching or seeing the product. Now there are some caveats you need to consider but first how much money can you make while drop shipping isn’t the same get rich program that it used to be like retail and online arbitrage.
A lot of sellers actually start this way and then graduate up to other business models like private label for that reason it’s definitely a great way to build up some initial cash flow that can later be used in larger ventures that are easier to maintain and then scale which brings us to this next question.
How easy is it to start! Well even if you’re already familiar with how drop shipping works amazon has made it a little bit harder to do it the same way it used to be done. So recently amazon updated the drop shipping policy which included a key message that states you must be identified as the seller on all packaging materials meaning you can’t sell products to an amazon customer that arrives in a walmart box.
This is a fast way to get your account suspended or even shut down. So the trick with drop shipping is to find a reliable supplier that doesn’t include their branding on the packaging. How do you do that in short use a site like aliexpress and contact the supplier asking them to remove the branding you can then place a sample order to see for yourself. If they did remove the branding and if it looks all good you’re all set.
#6 The sixth way to make money on amazon is to publish your own books
Publish your own books on kindle. Do you love to write your own stories but wish you had an audience to share them with kdb is amazon’s self-publishing platform that allows authors to sell their books to amazon’s massive audience without the hassle of going through a traditional publishing company.
This is actually very similar to selling merch by amazon as it’s a free print-on-demand service that requires no print cost or inventory orders on top of that kdp gives authors full rights to their books which is typically something not even a traditional publishing house will do.
If you’re an author or even an aspiring author of any kind kdp is one of the best ways to get your book published and listed for sale for free. You won’t pay any fees to amazon instead you earn royalties. So how much money can you make? Well obviously this does vary greatly depending on your sale level.
But it also depends on your pricing strategy for example amazon gives you two royalty rates to choose from 35 percent and 70. I know you’re thinking well obviously you should go with the 70 royalty option right. I wish it was that simple so in order to qualify for the 70 royalty rate your book must be priced between 299 and 9.99. There are some other factors as well but keeping it within this price range is the main one here.
Now for the 35 royalty option this is for books that are priced below 299 or above 9.99. This is going to be better for those books that you truly believe are more valuable than a sub 10 price point.
And I actually did the math for you on this if you price your book above 10 and therefore fall into that 35 royalty rate you’ll need to sell it for at least 20 to make the exact same royalty you would have made selling it below 10. So I’d really only recommend this if you plan on selling it closer to 30 on the other hand paperback books are a little bit different.
Amazon just offers a fixed 60 royalty rate but then subtracts the printing cost from your royalty. These costs will depend on things like page count ink type, and the amazon marketplace your book was ordered from. How easy is it to start, typically you will need to write somewhat prolifically. In order to find success here though it is possible to publish just one or two wildly proper their books volume is a true name of the publishing game. The more you write the more you make however thankfully signing up for an account is very simple and you can have your own book published within a week.
#7 The seventh way to make money is by selling wholesale goods on amazon
This is one of the most lucrative opportunities and it’s when you purchase branded products in bulk from already established suppliers and then resell those on amazon. Examples include selling popular consumer electronics kitchenware and even popular toys. This is different from the other business models we’ve mentioned because you’re actually buying physical inventory and you’re doing it with larger and established brands.
In a nutshell, this is how it works you set up a seller central account on amazon you use a tool to find high demand products to resell. You then contact suppliers and request to open a wholesale account then you create the amazon listing and manage all of the inventory and sales.
So how much money can you make with wholesaling? For a lot of sellers wholesaling is one of the most popular ways to make money on amazon. This is because you can sell established brands that consumers are already searching for and purchasing. And if you do it right it can also be very profitable more than half of the wholesalers that we asked said they started to see a profit in just under six months.
It’s also one of the most scalable business models since you can focus your time on growth rather than having to build a brand from scratch. Create listings or really all the other things that new brands have to do. But how easy is it to start out of all these business models in this course.
This one’s definitely not the easiest although don’t let that scare you away I only say that because there are some requirements before getting started for example you’ll typically need to get a wholesale license.
#8 Selling Handcraft on amazon
The eighth way to make money on Amazon is to handcraft your own items to sell through amazon handmade. This is very similar to etsy.com where if you’re looking for a way to reach millions of potential customers amazon offers a unique artisan only platform to help you sell your handmade products. These can be things like cutting boards artwork pottery bracelets and much more now obviously this method does take a little bit more work to stay on top of your orders since you would be producing them all yourself.
But the exposure amazon offers your brand is massive so if you’re already selling on etsy you might as well be selling on amazon.
How much money can you make? well in terms of sales it’s not the highest on our list but we did ask a lot of handmade sellers how profitable they are and a third of them told us that they have profit margins above 20 which on amazon is really really good. It’s also worth noting that for handmade items amazon doesn’t charge listing fees so you will save some money there.
How easy is it to start? well this one’s kind of tricky because obviously you do need to be an artist of some sort and like merch by amazon it is an invitation only platform. But if you are creative and perhaps maybe you’re already selling on etsy you should definitely apply and get your products out there in front of amazon’s massive global audience.
#9 The next way to make money is to sell your own private label products on amazon
We’ve launched four different products on amazon that have sold for over a quarter million dollars in sales last year. And the best part is we run this entire business on the side of our full-time jobs here at JungleScout.
So trust us when we say this is the best way to make money on amazon how it works is you research generic products that are in high demand low competition and are also highly profitable you then find a supplier to create your product at the right price.
You then find a supplier to create your product at the right price. And then have them slap your logo on it just like we did here and then the supplier will ship your products directly to amazon’s warehouses. You’ll create a listing for your product within your seller account and then launch the business with ppc ads to help you rank within search results. In short your job is to find the best product that will sell on amazon then once a customer orders your product you get paid.
This is actually when amazon takes over if you’re using fba which I highly consider. To this program called fulfilled by amazon, amazon will receive your products from the supplier and store it in their own fulfillment centers which are those massive warehouses that are run by robots. Then when a customer places an order for your product, amazon will pick pack and ship it to the customer for you.
And if for some reason you do get a return or customer complains you actually don’t have to worry about it because amazon manages all the communications with your customers. So with that plus the fact that you don’t even have to touch your inventory this makes it so much easier for anyone to get started selling on amazon.
How much money can you make? Like I said this is the best way to make money on amazon because you’re actually able to build a brand that you own 100 of and eventually you can even sell it for thousands or even millions of dollars.
Finally…
There’s a lot of success stories out there it really just comes down to finding the right product and committing some time and effort to creating a solid brand. If you do that right you can make tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars per year even as a new seller how easy is it to start! Well, in terms of getting started it all begins with product research now thankfully this is becoming way easier for new sellers.
Some recommended books on Amazon
#1. How to make money on Amazon: How to create Your First Private-Label Product on Amazon and an income of $ 5,000 per week for 90 days
#2. HOW TO MAKE MONEY ON AMAZON: How You Can Utilize Different Platforms on Amazon To Make Passive Income And Grow Your Business
#3. E-Commerce Business – Shopify & Dropshipping: 2 Books in 1: How to Make Money Online Selling on Shopify, Amazon FBA, eBay, Facebook, Instagram and Other Social Medias
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