567: 20 Ways to Make Money on Amazon

26:25And you also get other benefits like you get to do promotions, like free promotions. So every quarter, as in every three months, you get five days of running your book for free so anyone can download it. And that's a really good way to boost your ratings and get reviews. So that's why I went down that route of using the Kindle almost like a kind of, almost like a way to get people in like a kind of reader magnet was the word I was looking for, or sort of, to try and encourage people to get the paperback version as well. Okay. And actually, being part of Kindle Unlimited, you also, if your book is in the top, I think it's top 50 books, as in you get the most amount of page reads in that month, you win an award or a bonus called the All-Stars bonus.

27:13And I've won it on several occasions. And they're monetary bonuses, basically, for being in the top 50 or the top 10 or whatever. Oh, wow. Is it like per category? or overall there are two so there's one for all books bar illustrated books but obviously mine was in the illustrated books so there are only two okay buckets if you like most books obviously go in the non-illustrated because it's mostly for obviously you know um fictional books or non-fiction you know writing books that are mostly text rather than images but mine was specifically in the illustrated bucket if you like oh that's cool that's a little bonus on top of your author royalties.

27:50Yes, exactly. And they're quite chunky sometimes. You think if you get to the number one slot, it's something like$25 ,000. Wow. So obviously that's huge. I've got into the top 10 before, which is it's worth thousands of dollars for bonus. So yeah, that's a really nice top up on top of your royalties. Again, that's Matt Ralph from episode 450. If you want to go check that one out. Now rounding out our ways to make money on Amazon from your own books is number nine on this list, and that's creating an audiobook edition of your work. Not every title is going to be well suited to this format, but it can be a nice incremental source of royalties because some readers just prefer to consume content by listening to it.

28:33So skipping the audio version, you're missing out. It also makes your Amazon listing page for your book look more legit when you got all three formats available. To make it easy for authors to create audiobooks. Amazon has the ACX, the Audiobook Creation Exchange. That's where you can find narrators to produce your book for you, or you can upload your audio files if you're doing it yourself, especially as a podcaster. I felt compelled to narrate two or three. I don't know. I think I've done three at this point of my own. Now, for professional narration help, you can either pay a flat fee or you can get your book produced for free in exchange for a share of future royalties, which I think is a cool option to get your audiobook out there and then share the profits when it sells.

29:20The ACX Audible royalty scheme is a little complex, but in general, self-published authors earn 20 to 40 % royalties when their books sell. And that narration component is actually the way, the 10th way to make money on Amazon. That's as an ACX voiceover actor. This is a way to make money from audiobooks on Amazon without having to write the book yourself. If you have a background in voiceover, if you have a background in audio engineering, equipment and software, it could be a fun side hustle like getting paid to talk, right? But lots of hours of production that can go into that. So be sure to price yourself accordingly.

29:59The 11th way to make money on Amazon is by using it as a platform to resell used books. Very common side hustle to get started with. You can use an app like BookScouter to just look at what's on your shelf today. You scan the ISBN barcode on the back. It'll tell you what those books are selling for on Amazon. Just be aware that most mass market books are barely going to be worth the paper they're printed on, especially in use condition, because every other house has that same stack of Harry Potters. They're not exactly hard to come by in the supply and demand curve. But certain books do command a premium, even as used copies.

30:39And those are usually textbooks, out of print guides, other rare editions. And like retail arbitrage, it can be a little bit of a needle in the haystack search, a little bit of a treasure hunt component to it. So you check local garage sales, thrift stores, library bookstores, and you see if anything turns up. And the cool thing here is your upfront costs are super low because books are often priced like a dollar or less at garage sales. In episode 380, we did a whole episode on book flipping. Charlie William shared his unique strategy for sourcing some textbooks. Yard sales are pretty good, and they're fun in the summertime to just, or in the spring when the weather's nice, to just bounce around to a couple yard sales.

31:21What else? I look on Facebook Marketplace a lot, and I'll find college kids that are getting rid of cheap textbooks. And I actually have like a little method. I show you how to do it on my Instagram, But I pull up the Marketplace ads on my iPad, and then I scan the screen to get the ISBN number with the Amazon Seller app off my phone of the covers of the books off the screen to get the ISBN number to copy and paste into Scout IQ instead of manually typing in all the titles and everything. It's just way faster to scan it off the iPad with my phone. I live in a college town, so there's a lot of college kids, especially it's good at the end of each semester and at the beginning of each semester is when people are trying to sell books to get on the marketplace and let go and offer up and all those.

32:10And I'll track down college kids. I mean, I have a lot of times I'll just say, hey, I'm busy, but can I Venmo you and give you my address? And I'll come home and have textbooks sitting on my doorstep. So that's nice. Oh, okay. Okay. Did you know there's a disease running rampant alongside hustlers and new entrepreneurs? It's called superhero syndrome. Symptoms include a feeling like you got to do everything yourself, thinking you're the only one who can do it right, and struggling to let go of certain tasks. Does that sound familiar to anyone? But the good news is there is a cure. Our sponsor Indeed can help you find the best candidates for the roles you need to fill and find them fast.

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33:23Just go to indeed.com slash side hustle show right now and support the show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com slash side hustle show. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring Indeed is all you need. In that episode, which was episode 380, Charlie reported earning up to four grand a month. He also recommended the much faster Scout IQ app, which is a paid app after a free trial. But the reason it's faster is it downloads the catalog and pricing to your device without having to ping some server, you know, to look up a price in real time. So it just makes it a little bit faster.

33:59And you can set your kind of buying criteria, kind of like what Ryan talked about. Well, if the sales rank is this and the return on investment is this, like, then I'm, you know, that's something that I want to go for. A way to make money on Amazon at number 12 is selling private label products. Now, to be fair, the private label Amazon FBA gold rush of 2014 to 2018 has certainly subsided, but private labeling is still a viable option. It just makes me a little bit nervous because it's so capital intensive, like you can have a lot of money tied up in inventory, but still as it, if it hits, it hits.

34:34And I remember asking Mitch Davis, who was doing private labeling on Amazon Japan about his initial product order. I forget the product that he was buying, but it was something like$3 ,000 for the minimum order quantity for it. And I was like, you know, weren't you nervous making that investment? And he's like, you know, of course I was nervous, but at a certain point you got to do something or tomorrow is going to look like today. And that is a quote that has really stuck with me. And I think for anybody, you know, looking to make a change in your life, you got to do something or tomorrow is going to look like today.

35:05So in a nutshell, how this private label process usually works is you're going to try to identify simple to manufacturer products that are already selling go where there's already some demand versus trying to create demand for a new category. Second, you're going to look at the reviews for those products in trying to find out, you know, what people don't like about them. Look at those, you know, one, two, three star reviews, what are people complaining about? How can I improve upon this? And you'll find a manufacturer, hopefully somebody who's already making that product that you found that had negative reviews.

35:38Can they produce something similar? Can they produce something better with your design changes, your product changes? Usually that's on Alibaba, but sometimes you can find local manufacturers too. You create your own brand name, your own packaging, and then it's that leap of faith to make that bulk order that Mitch talked about. You know, you send in once it lands, which could be potentially a several month process. Actually, you typically would order samples first, like, you know, go back and forth, make sure that the product is to your liking before sending your first bulk order. And you send that in to Amazon if you're going to do fulfillment by Amazon.

36:13And then, you know, it's competing with those existing products. And it's trying to build up a critical mass of sales to start ranking in search and running paid ads and, you know, collecting reviews, and all of the other elements that come with running an e commerce business. But the interesting thing is that more than half of Amazon's inventory actually belongs to third party sellers like you and I, it's a very, I think, a very savvy way of them to expand their product offerings at very little risk to them. Yeah, they got to store it. but you can kind of crowdsource their inventory in that way with very little upfront cost.

36:53So I think that's very innovative of Amazon and it gives us as side hustlers, a platform to go and try and do business. Now that said, when you have a product that hits, it can be tough to keep in stock. And I saw this with my retail arbitrage side hustles. Like I was, I almost didn't believe the app. Like I just, I just sent this stuff in and it said, you sold$128 yesterday. day, I was like, really? So it just goes to show the volume of traffic, the volume of commerce that is happening on this platform is beyond comprehension until you kind of dabble into it. Now, I've seen some people grow some pretty serious e-commerce operations in a really short time with this business model.

37:34So yes, yes, capital intensive, but it can be like a rocket ship. In fact, sometimes your product idea, maybe it doesn't come from that process I just described. Maybe it comes from just having a really in-depth knowledge of your niche. For example, my friends Chris and Julia were pursuing a content business in the craft cocktail space. They were doing blogging, podcasting, affiliate marketing, online courses. But it was a frustration with the existing physical product options on the affiliate marketing side that drew them into e-commerce. And that ended up being a huge inflection point for their business.

38:12But we, so we really wanted to send people to Amazon, but there was just nothing on Amazon we could recommend. And we just were not willing to drop to the level of the low quality products that we were seeing. And so I started, you know, I'm listening to all the podcasts and hearing all the things and everybody keeps talking about FBA. I was like, Oh, well, this is, you know, is this really a thing? Is this the next get rich quick scheme? And, and finally, I actually, gosh, Nick, I was talking to you at a conference in San Francisco. Do you remember this? And we were talking about cocktail muddlers.

38:44And I was saying, yeah, you know, all the muddlers on the market stink. They're not long enough. And you said, well, have you thought about doing like FBA about selling on my Amazon? And I said, I don't know. And it turns out you were right. This was the funny biz event? Yes. That's what it was. Gosh, that was a million years ago. So yeah, I showed up like not knowing anyone in the room and was very grateful to see a familiar face there. Right back at you. Same, same thing. Oh gosh, I haven't thought about that in ages. So the rest is kind of history, really, right? I mean, in the beginning of 2016, we did a summit.

39:23You remember that was like the year of summits. All the cool kids were doing summits. And so I worked my tail off trying to get sponsors for the summit. And that was going to be the thing that worked. And it just didn't. it wasn't really worth how much time we put into it. But right around that time is when I started just saying, you know what, I'm just going to try this. I'm just going to reach out to some folks on Alibaba. I'm going to follow the rule, you know, follow all the blog posts on how to do this. You know, our product development methodology was me shouting at Chris across the room, hey, like, what would your perfect shaker look like?

39:53And he would tell me. And so I relayed that information to a factory in China, and they sent a prototype, and he liked it, Chris liked it. And so we cleaned out our savings and bought a thousand of them and shipped them here. And meanwhile, by the way, I found out I was pregnant. That was fun. And gosh, it must have been like two weeks before our shipment arrived. Chris found out his job was going away. And so we had a very exciting sort of summer slash Q3 of 2016. It was all falling apart. And then it wasn't because we shipped those shakers into Amazon. We shipped a thousand into Amazon and they sold out in three weeks.

40:31Wow. Which was wonderful and terrifying and really, really bad because of course it was like a three month lead time. So we immediately placed another order and honestly, the rest is history. We'd just been kind of chasing inventory for years after that. Again, that was Julia Tunstall from episode 495. I think we titled that one something like the multi-million dollar pivot. Definitely worth checking out in the archives if you're into e-commerce at all. If you like the private label model, you should also check out my episodes with Greg Mercer from Jungle Scout. He's been on several times, and in episode 263, he breaks down his top three private label product research strategies, talking about how to evaluate the existing demand for a particular product or particular category, and then trying to add your layer of value-added innovation and improvement on top of that.

41:24So that was number 12, private label products on Amazon. Number 13 is an e-commerce strategy as well, and that's wholesale. This is something that was introduced to me by Dan Meadors. Started on Amazon with the retail arbitrage strategy. Started with an initial inventory investment of$600. So he gave himself a little bit more spending money to go out and experiment with than I did. But when we connected, they had sold over$13 million worth of merchandise on Amazon, starting with that little investment. And I imagine it's much, much higher now because this episode is several years old as well. So Dan defined wholesaling as purchasing directly from a wholesale company or the manufacturer of a given product for the purposes of resale.

42:09So pretty broadly defined how that works in contrast to private labeling. So instead of approaching a factory, ordering samples, arranging your own packaging and your own branding, like you would do with private labeling, wholesaling involves approaching a manufacturer who maybe has a less than optimized Amazon presence and then offering to help them sell their products. How can you be of service to them and come up with a win-win? And so based on what Dan told me, it sounds like wholesaling might carry less risk than private labeling. Your upfront investment is likely to be lower. You probably end up spending less on marketing and product giveaways to seed reviews for that.

42:53So definitely recommend checking out Dan's episode. That was episode at 221. You can scroll a ways back in the archives for that one. And his website is thewholesaleformula.com if you want to check it out. All right, so that was number 13, wholesale. Number 14 is Amazon Alexa skills. There's a couple ways side hustlers can make money with Amazon's popular Echo devices. The first is kind of like Apple's App Store. You build special Alexa voice app, which Amazon calls skills. And as a skill developer, you can set your own price and earn just like the App Store 70 % of the revenue when users buy it.

43:31One interesting example I came across was Nick Schwab, who created an ambient noise skill and was reported to have 10 ,000 paying customers for a premium subscription version. I think it was, you know, 99 cents to a buck 99 a month for that. So it adds up to quite a bit of change, especially if it's a recurring subscription there. Now that's the first way. The second way is that Amazon has a rewards program. They're trying to incentivize people to help them build out their library of skills. Everybody remembers, you know, when the iPhone came out, hey, there's an app for that. Amazon is trying to match that.

44:07Hey, there's a skill for that. You're trying to build out the equivalent there. And so the rewards program is based on the popularity and the engagement of your skill. But some skill developers report earning thousands of dollars a month doing that. And so that is Amazon income stream number 14, Amazon Alexa skills. Number 15 is Mechanical Turk. This is kind of a controversial or an interesting crowdsourced labor platform. It specializes in really low skill tasks, but ones that had at least at press time still require a human eye. We'll see how far the AI takes this. In fact, each task is called a hit, a human intelligence task.

44:51And And because of that low skill required, these tasks often pay next to nothing, like usually starting at pennies. And a lot of the workers on Mechanical Turk are overseas where the costs of living are lower, but the platform is open to US workers as well. It wouldn't be my first choice of side hustles, but it is an option. And I was really kind of surprised and intrigued when a Side Hustle Nation reader, Mike Nabb, reached out and he wrote this guest post on, hey, this is my experience on Mechanical Turk, having earned over$50 ,000 on the platform in his spare time. To be fair, that's over the course of several years of doing it.

45:33But he reported averaging around 25 cents a task. And he said, yeah, you kind of have to take these low ones as you're building up your account. But as your account history levels up, some better paying human intelligence tasks become available. So that's number 15, Amazon Mechanical Turk. Number 16 is as an Amazon Flex delivery driver. And the first time I discovered this was when we were at our old place and there was this dude like pulling packages out of the backseat of a Jetta or something. I was like, do you work at the post office? Like, are you an Amazon employee? You know, are you with UPS?

46:11How does this work? He's like, no, I'm with Amazon Flex. This is a new thing. It's flex.amazon.com. People report earning$18 to$25 an hour, helping Amazon with this last mile logistics piece. How do we deliver packages even faster to surprise and delight our customers? So that may be an option for you, if you don't mind getting out and driving and making deliveries. The 17th way to make money on Amazon is actually as an Amazon work from home employee. Now, like most modern companies, especially tech companies, Amazon has started to embrace the remote work movement, the work from home movement.

46:49And so you can check the virtual Amazon job openings. When I did, I saw full time options, part time options, seasonal work options, you can filter by job category, there's IT and engineering, there's customer support, there's sales and advertising, there's operations and fulfillment. There's lots. There's hourly positions, there's salaried positions, making money on Amazon by being a part of their team. Number 18 is an interesting one. If you already run an existing local business, and that's Amazon services. So professionals like house cleaners, handy persons, electricians, landscapers, plumbers, and lots of different categories can apply to sell those services through what's called Amazon services.

47:31And at the time of this recording, applications were temporarily closed, but I suspect they'll reopen again at some point. So this is an important one to have on your radar if you are in that service landscape. Because after you join, you'll be able to see a new job when it pops up in your area, and you get to choose the ones that fit your schedule. According to Amazon, it's a great way to keep your business busy or to fill in the open gaps throughout your week. No startup costs, no membership fees, but Amazon does take a percentage of each job booked based on service type and the final service price.

48:06So again, another way to tap into a an audience of buyers that already knows likes and trusts Amazon, and is looking for you're looking for kind of them to use them as your marketing channel to connect with new customers. So that's 18 Amazon services. Number 19 is a little bit of a different one. This is the Amazon trade in program, which I discovered several years ago. And this is kind of an interesting one. You know, Amazon will actually pay you for used books, DVDs, Kindle devices, tablets, cell phones, and other products. Again, it's a way for them to, you know, get inventory on the cheap in a way.

48:42So there's this official trade-in program. They don't pay you in cash. They pay you an Amazon gift credit for your stuff. So, you know, it's as good as cash in our house. You know, we'll eventually use it on Amazon anyway. So no hard feelings about that. You tell them about your items, they give you your trade in offer. And what's cool is you well, you can accept or decline it. And you might some some things you might be offended by how little they give you I traded in my, you know, season one of the office for like 25 cents or something. Or maybe I was like, well, 25 cents, maybe I should just keep it.

49:14But they give you a prepaid UPS label, or shipping label. And so all you got to do is package this stuff up, send it off. In that sense, it's a lot easier than trying to deal with Facebook Marketplace and deal with eBay. You don't have to take pictures. You don't have to wait around for an auction to end. You don't have to deal with messaging buyers back and forth. So what it makes up for in low cost and not giving you actual cash, it makes up for that in just ease of use. I found it very easy to use. So if you got old DVDs, video games, books, electronics, lying around, stuff that's collecting dust, if you check out what it might be worth on the official Amazon trade-in program.

49:55And I want to round out this list with number 20. And this is free Amazon gift cards. Technically not a way to make money on Amazon, but a way to offset the cost of what you buy on Amazon, or you can go out and resell them, I suppose. But I've got a whole article on this. If you Google, you know, free Amazon gift cards, side hustle nation, it'll pop right up. I'll just go through a couple of these. The first is user interviews. This is my favorite platform for paid market research studies, usually in the$50 to$100 an hour range, more if you're really hard to reach professional in a specific industry.

50:33And oftentimes those get paid out in Amazon gift cards. So sidehustlenation.com slash user interviews is my referral link for them. I've got a full review on Side Hustle Nation too. If you want to learn more, just Google that user interviews, review, side hustle or something, it'll pop right up. The second one is Fetch Rewards, which I've had on my phone forever. You just take pictures of your grocery receipts. The app gives you points for your everyday purchases. I don't know why they care what we bought at the store. I don't really care what we bought either. It's like, okay, you just eat regular groceries.

51:07And then after a while, you earn enough for a free Amazon gift card over there. And then the newest one that I have for Amazon gift cards is called Cash Walk. This is, I think it's US only, but it's basically a pedometer app that gives you app coins for tracking your steps. And then every three or four weeks, for whatever reason, you know, you've earned enough and you cash out for a$5 Amazon gift card. I've earned three of them so far. And it's like, hey, if you know, free money, every little bit counts, I'll take it. So lots of ways to offset your Amazon habit with free gift cards. you know, a fun fact for you, I actually interviewed for a job at Amazon.

51:45This would have been 2004, 2005-ish in gift card marketing was the department or was the job position I was interviewing for. Did not get the gig. Was maybe a little bummed about that at the time, but happy with how things turned out. Although those stock options, you know, from 2005 would have been nice. But whoever did get the job, this is the funny part, they went nuts with it. Amazon gift cards are everywhere now. So good work to them. Again, so that was number 20 free Amazon gift cards. I hope you enjoyed this list. Again, I want to invite you to grab your personalized side hustle show playlist at hustle.show.

52:20How it works is you answer a few multiple choice questions and I give you a custom curated playlist based on what you told me that hopefully will be more relevant to you most impactful to you. You can add it to your device, you can learn what works, and you go make some more money. Again, that's at hustle.show. I need to send a big thank you to all our guests over the years for sharing their insights on how to make money on Amazon. Thank you for supporting the advertisers that support the show. It really does make a difference. That is it for me. Thank you so much for tuning in. If you're finding value in the show, make sure to text it to a friend.

52:54Hey, have you ever heard of this? Until next time, let's go out there and make something happen. And I'll catch you in the next edition of the Side Hustle Show. Hustle on.