Side hustlers have been earning a steady stream of income on Amazon for decades now.
But this isn’t another scammy video about Amazon FBA, short for fulfilled by Amazon.
If you’re not familiar, FBA is a retail arbitrage model where you buy goods at a discount
and then ship them to Amazon where they worry about fulfilling the orders themselves.
While this is a great business model, it has become incredibly saturated - which is why
we made a video a while back about why FBA isn’t as profitable as people make it out
to be.
So in this video, we're going to be discussing a few of the lesser-known ways that you can
make money with Amazon.
As the world's biggest retailer and the third most visited website in the United States,
there is a lot of traffic on Amazon, and therefore, a ton of opportunities to make money.
Here are some of the top ways you can tap into Amazon’s profit potential.
Amazon Customer Service Associate
While the majority of Amazon side hustle opportunities involve selling a product, there are a few
ways that you can work for Amazon directly while still working from home.
Amazon offers dozens of work-at-home positions, although the availability of these gigs might
be dependent on your physical location.
That being said, you still won't have to go into the office every day if you land one
of these jobs.
Amazon's customer service jobs are available worldwide, although the majority of jobs are
in the United States.
They also have several seasonal positions that you can expect to be listed around September
of each year.
Other remote positions that Amazon offers include opportunities in fulfillment, accounting,
finance, and human resources.
Many positions will require you to receive some level of specialized training – especially
if you're assisting clients with Amazon Web Services cloud-computing tools.
Amazon has some part-time positions, but you should expect the majority of jobs to be full-time.
Amazon's Influencer Program
If you have a lot of followers on social media, Amazon's Influencer Program is a great way
to earn a little extra cash by directing your social media following to Amazon.
The program allows you to start your own storefront on Amazon.
You're given an URL which you can then link to on your various social media platforms.
Ideally, you'd want to stock your virtual storefront with products that you think your
followers would be interested in.
Then you would promote those products on your various pages.
For each sale made through one of your influencer links, you'll earn a commission.
Commissions vary by category and range from 1% all the way up to 10%.
For example, outdoor products pay out a 5% commission while beauty products pay a 6%
commission.
Kindle Direct Publishing
Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing platform provides you with an easy way of delivering
written content to a broad audience.
Since Amazon got its start as an online book store, it shouldn’t be a surprise that this
is a big market on Amazon.
E-books take the largest share of that market, making up 15% of sales in total, more than
both paperback books and audiobooks.
With the Kindle Direct Publishing platform, you can publish to any one of these formats.
Even if you're just a novice writer who's just getting started, you can get your writing
into the world's biggest book retailer.
Amazon KDP has effectively eliminated the barrier of entry to publishing.
There's no gatekeeper with the platform.
If you have an idea, you can simply put it out there without having to jump through a
bunch of hoops or send off your work to dozens of publishing houses for review.
Once your work is finished, you can simply go online, post a description and some cover
art and publish it immediately.
There's no need to keep an inventory of your work either since Amazon will personally print
any physical books that you sell.
Now, you're probably not going to sell millions of copies of whatever it is you're publishing
right off the bat, but if you have a sizable following on social media or you can effectively
promote your writing, you could be the next Amazon KDP success story.
Wholesale Or Private Label Seller
This hustle involves buying up manufacturer's products in bulk and then reselling them on
Amazon.
You can either buy items directly from a wholesale supplier or from a manufacturer.
Just as you would do with typical retail arbitrage, the key is to 'buy low and sell high'.
By purchasing in bulk, you can acquire products at a significantly discounted rate.
As such, the potential to turn a profit is much greater.
Not only are you able to earn a significantly higher profit by following this model, but
you'll also maintain a large inventory of wares which will help you to consistently
make sales.
And by opting out of Amazon's FBA program and handling fulfillment on your own, you'll
be maximizing your profit.
If you go this route, it would be wise to take a few precautions.
Since your reliability and reputation as a seller is so crucial to your success, you
want to make sure that you're always dealing with authorized distributors who are selling
legitimate products.
Be on the lookout for suppliers that are trying to pass off fake products as real ones.
One of the quickest ways to fail as a wholesale seller is by offering your customers counterfeit
products.
Finding the right wholesaler and developing a good relationship with them is the only
way that you're going to pull this hustle off successfully while maintaining a high
customer rating.
Do your research and make sure that what you invest in is quality.
Similar to wholesale reselling is private label selling.
Instead of simply selling another manufacturer's products, however, you're selling products
featuring your own branding.
There are two ways to approach this business model.
One route is buying generic products in bulk like we just described, and then putting your
own brand label on them.
Another way is by manufacturing new products, typically through outsourcing their production.
Some sellers will add a brand name, logo, or other identifying mark on the products
before selling them, while others merely sell them as is while listing them as being under
their brand in the product description.
If you choose to instead have products manufactured for your brand, this will obviously be more
expensive on your end, but you run the benefit of offering your customers unique products
that they won't be able to find elsewhere.
Some common products that private label sellers have manufactured for their brand include
T-shirts, hat pins, coffee mugs, art prints, jewelry, and tapestries.
A quick google search will yield countless results for companies that offer customized,
monogrammed, print-to-order, and small-batch minted items.
For example, the company WizardPins, produces custom enamel pins that feature whatever design
you submit.
Since you're selling products that are unique to you, you own the product listing.
That means you won't have to compete for the lowest price in the Buy Box.
It's also worth noting that a staggering 71% of Amazon sellers use this business model.
Amazon's Trade-In Program
You might be surprised that Amazon will actually pay you for some of your gently used items.
Amazon's official Trade-In program pays you in Amazon gift credit for things like books,
video games, movies, Kindle devices, cell phones, laptops and other products.
While receiving gift card credits is not quite as good as getting cold hard cash, considering
how many things you can buy on Amazon, it shouldn't be hard to use.
Amazon's Handmade Program
Following the success of Etsy, Amazon decided to get in on that action by opening up their
Amazon Handmade program.
This entry is open to sellers by application only at the moment, so there's no guarantee
that you'll be able to get in, but if you're a talented artist who makes things like clothes,
accessories, jewelry, toys, games, pet supplies, stationery, beauty products or sporting goods,
it might be worth your time to submit an application.
If you're approved you could let Amazon handle all of the fulfillment logistics with their
FBA program, but you'll make a heftier profit if you handle all of that on your own.
The downside to this program, however, is that Amazon takes a higher percentage of each
sale compared to Etsy.
At 15%, that seriously cuts into your profits.
Even so, Amazon has a much greater reach than Etsy does, so it may balance out with more
sales.
ACX Voice Over Acting
Since Amazon has a thriving audiobook market, another great side hustle is becoming an audiobook
narrator or prouder.
If you have a decent speaking voice and like the idea of getting paid to talk all day,
this business idea might be right up your alley.
Beginners start at earning around $100 per finished hour of material, or PFH.
This means you’ll get paid $100 for an hour of recorded product - although keep in mind,
it could take you much longer than one hour to record.
You will need to have a working knowledge of how to use audio engineering equipment
and software.
This can be a rather expensive barrier of entry for those that don't already have audio
gear and digital audio workstations, but if you're an audiophile, Youtuber, or podcaster,
and don't mind reading other people's work, you should have no trouble getting started.
Best Amazon Side Hustles
Those are just some of the best and most profitable Amazon side hustles at the moment.
If there’s anything we missed or anything you’d like more details on, let us know
in the comments below.
Since we skipped over Amazon FBA in this video, be sure to check out our previous video here
covering what you need to know before you get started.
It’s not the easiest Amazon hustle, but you can be successful if you use the right
strategy.
We’ll see you in the next video!