Amazon offers at least half a dozen ways to earn extra income, ranging from delivering packages in your car to selling products you never touch. Some pay by the hour, others generate passive royalties, and a few can scale into full businesses. Here’s how each one works, what it pays, and what you need to get started.
Deliver Packages with Amazon Flex
Amazon Flex is the fastest way to start earning because there’s no inventory, no startup cost, and no special skills required. You pick up packages from an Amazon delivery station and drop them off at customers’ doors using your own vehicle. Most Flex drivers earn between $18 and $25 per hour, according to Amazon, and you choose your own shifts through the Flex app.
To qualify, you need to be at least 21, have a valid driver’s license, pass a background check, and own a midsize or larger vehicle (a four-door sedan works for most routes, but SUVs and minivans make larger blocks easier). Shifts, called “blocks,” typically run three to five hours. You can grab blocks as your schedule allows, which makes Flex a solid option if you want predictable, hourly pay without a long-term commitment. Keep in mind that you’re an independent contractor, so you’ll owe self-employment taxes on your earnings and won’t receive benefits.
Sell Products Through Fulfillment by Amazon
Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) lets you send inventory to Amazon’s warehouses. Amazon stores it, ships it when a customer orders, and handles returns. You focus on finding products and managing your listings. This is the path with the highest income ceiling, but it also requires the most upfront capital and learning.
New sellers typically start with one of three sourcing methods. Retail arbitrage means buying clearance or discounted items from stores and reselling them at a markup on Amazon. Wholesale involves purchasing products in bulk directly from brands or distributors. Private label is creating your own branded product, often manufactured overseas, and listing it as a unique item.
Amazon charges two main fees. A referral fee is a percentage of each sale, usually between 8% and 15% depending on the product category. FBA fulfillment fees cover picking, packing, and shipping, and they vary by item size and weight. You’ll also pay monthly storage fees for inventory sitting in Amazon’s warehouses, and if products sit unsold for over a year, aged inventory fees kick in at $0.30 per unit per month (or $6.90 per cubic foot, whichever is greater) for items 12 to 15 months old. Items older than 15 months cost $0.35 per unit or $7.90 per cubic foot.
You can sell under an Individual plan with no monthly subscription (you pay $0.99 per item sold) or a Professional plan at $39.99 per month with no per-item fee. If you plan to sell more than 40 items a month, the Professional plan is cheaper. Most people testing the waters start with the Individual plan and upgrade once they have consistent sales.
Self-Publish Books on Kindle Direct Publishing
Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) lets you publish ebooks and paperbacks for free. You write (or commission) a book, upload your manuscript and cover, set your price, and Amazon handles printing and delivery. There’s no inventory to manage, which makes this one of the lowest-risk Amazon side hustles.
KDP offers two royalty options for ebooks. The 35% royalty option applies to books priced between $0.99 and $200. The 70% royalty option is available for books priced between $2.99 and $9.99 in most markets, though Amazon subtracts a small delivery fee based on file size. Paperbacks earn a 60% royalty minus printing costs, which depend on page count, ink type, and trim size.
The genres that perform well for side-income publishers tend to be niche nonfiction: recipe collections, how-to guides, journals, planners, and low-content books like puzzle books or coloring books. Fiction can earn well too, but typically requires building a catalog of multiple titles in a series. One book probably won’t change your finances. A catalog of 10 to 20 titles in a focused niche, each earning a few dollars a day, starts to add up.
Design Products with Merch on Demand
Merch on Demand (formerly Merch by Amazon) is a print-on-demand service. You upload original designs, Amazon prints them on t-shirts, hoodies, phone cases, and other products, and you earn a royalty on each sale. You never buy inventory or handle shipping.
Royalties depend on the product type, your price, and your royalty tier. At the base Creator tier, a standard t-shirt priced at $19.99 earns about $2.44 per sale. A pullover hoodie priced at $35.99 earns roughly $3.95. Higher-priced items earn more: a t-shirt at $25.99 pays $4.66, and a hoodie at $39.99 pays $5.39.
Amazon also offers Plus and Premium royalty tiers that pay 2x and 2.16x the Creator rates, respectively. To qualify, you need to sell at least 10 units per month and drive a percentage of your sales through non-organic traffic, meaning you’re actively promoting your products through social media, ads, or other channels outside of Amazon search. At the Premium tier, that same $19.99 t-shirt would earn closer to $5.27 instead of $2.44.
The program is application-based. Once accepted, you start with a limited number of design slots and earn more as your sales grow. Success here depends on creating designs that target specific interests or communities, then promoting them where those audiences spend time online.
Earn Commissions as an Amazon Associate
The Amazon Associates program pays you a commission when someone clicks your unique referral link and buys something on Amazon. It’s the classic affiliate marketing model, and it works best if you already create content through a blog, YouTube channel, podcast, or social media following.
Commission rates vary by product category. The highest rate is 10% for luxury beauty products. Digital and physical music, handmade items, and digital videos pay 5%. Physical books, kitchen items, and automotive products earn 4.5%. Most electronics, fashion, and home categories pay 4%. The catch is that these percentages apply to relatively modest purchase prices, so volume matters. A 4.5% commission on a $20 book is $0.90. But the 24-hour cookie window (the period during which any purchase the person makes counts toward your commission) means a single click can generate revenue from items the buyer adds to their cart beyond the product you recommended.
To join, you apply through Amazon’s Associates portal and need to generate at least three qualifying sales within your first 180 days, or your account gets closed. You can reapply, but this requirement means you should already have an audience or traffic source before signing up. The program pays monthly, with a minimum payout threshold of $10 for direct deposit.
Amazon Influencer Program
The Amazon Influencer Program is a step up from the standard Associates program. Instead of just sharing links, you get your own Amazon storefront page where you curate product recommendations. It’s designed for people with established followings on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, or Facebook.
Commission rates are the same as the Associates program, but the storefront makes it easier to organize product lists by theme or category and share a single link to your audience. Some influencers also earn by creating short product review videos that appear directly on Amazon product pages, giving you exposure to Amazon’s own traffic rather than relying entirely on your social audience to click links.
Amazon reviews your social media presence during the application process. There’s no publicly stated follower minimum, but approval tends to favor accounts with engaged audiences rather than raw follower counts.
Complete Tasks on Mechanical Turk
Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) is a micro-task platform where businesses post small jobs like data entry, image tagging, survey completion, transcription, and content moderation. You pick tasks, complete them, and get paid after the requester approves your work.
Individual tasks typically pay anywhere from a few cents to a few dollars each. The earning potential is modest compared to other Amazon income streams. Most workers report earning roughly $6 to $10 per hour when selecting tasks carefully, though experienced workers who qualify for higher-paying batches can do better. MTurk works best as a way to fill idle time, not as a primary income strategy. Earnings are deposited into your Amazon Payments account and can be transferred to a bank account.
Choosing the Right Fit
Your best option depends on what you’re starting with. If you have a car and free afternoons, Flex pays immediately with no startup cost. If you have some capital to invest, FBA offers the highest long-term income potential but carries real financial risk if products don’t sell. If you’re a creator, whether you write, design, or make videos, KDP, Merch on Demand, and the Associates or Influencer programs let you earn passively once you’ve built up content.
Many people combine two or three of these. A blogger might earn Associates commissions while self-publishing related ebooks on KDP. A designer might sell Merch on Demand products while promoting them through an Influencer storefront. Starting with one, learning the mechanics, and layering on a second income stream once the first is running smoothly is a more sustainable approach than trying everything at once.