Amazon offers at least half a dozen distinct ways to earn money, ranging from selling physical products to delivering packages to publishing books. Some require upfront investment and business skills, while others let you start with nothing more than a car or a laptop. Here’s how each option works, what it costs, and what you can realistically expect.
Selling Products on Amazon
The most common way people earn money through Amazon is by listing products for sale on its marketplace. You can sell items you manufacture, buy wholesale, or source through retail arbitrage (buying discounted products from other stores and reselling them at a markup). Amazon gives you two selling plans to choose from: an Individual plan, where you pay per item sold, and a Professional plan at $39.99 per month with no per-item fee. If you plan to sell more than a few items a month, the Professional plan is almost always the better deal.
On top of the monthly subscription, Amazon charges a referral fee on every sale. This is a percentage of the total price, and it varies by product category. Most categories fall somewhere between 8% and 15%. So if you sell a $30 kitchen gadget with a 15% referral fee, Amazon keeps $4.50 from that transaction before you account for any other costs.
You also need to decide how you’ll fulfill orders. With Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA), you ship your inventory to Amazon’s warehouses, and they handle storage, packing, shipping, and customer service. This convenience comes with fulfillment fees based on your product’s size and weight, plus monthly storage fees. The alternative, Fulfillment by Merchant (FBM), means you store and ship products yourself. FBM keeps your Amazon fees lower but adds the labor and logistics of running your own shipping operation. Most new sellers start with FBA because it qualifies their listings for Prime shipping, which significantly boosts visibility and sales.
Profit margins vary enormously. Some sellers net 10% to 15% after all fees and product costs, while others build brands with margins above 30%. The key variables are your product cost, the category’s referral fee, and how competitive the pricing is. Amazon provides a Revenue Calculator that lets you estimate your net profit before committing to a product.
Publishing Through Kindle Direct Publishing
Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) platform lets you publish ebooks and paperback books at no upfront cost. You upload your manuscript, design a cover (or hire someone to do it), set your price, and Amazon handles printing, distribution, and payment processing. There’s no inventory to buy and no minimum order.
For Kindle ebooks, Amazon offers two royalty tiers. Books priced between $2.99 and $9.99 earn a 70% royalty on each sale. Books priced below $2.99 or above $9.99 earn 35%. So a $4.99 ebook at the 70% tier pays you roughly $3.49 per sale.
For paperbacks, a tiered royalty structure applies: books priced at $9.99 or above earn a 60% royalty, while books priced below that threshold earn 50%. In both cases, Amazon deducts printing costs from your royalty before paying you. A 200-page paperback priced at $12.99 might net you somewhere around $3 to $5 per copy after printing, depending on trim size and ink type.
KDP works well for people who can write consistently and build a catalog. A single book rarely generates life-changing income, but authors with 5, 10, or 20 titles in a focused niche can build a meaningful revenue stream. Low-content books like journals, planners, and puzzle books are also popular among sellers who aren’t traditional writers.
Earning Commissions as an Amazon Affiliate
The Amazon Associates program pays you a commission when someone clicks a special tracking link you share and then buys something on Amazon. It’s free to join, and you don’t need to handle any products. You just need a platform where you can share links, whether that’s a blog, YouTube channel, social media account, or email newsletter.
Commission rates depend on the product category. Luxury beauty products pay up to 10%, fashion items earn 4% to 7%, home and kitchen products pay 3% to 4.5%, and electronics sit at the lower end at 1% to 3%. Amazon Games offer the highest rate at 20%, though that’s a narrow category. When someone clicks your link, you earn a commission on everything they buy during that session, not just the product you linked to.
The math works like this: if you run a cooking blog and link to a $50 kitchen appliance at a 4% commission, you earn $2 per sale. That sounds small, but affiliate income scales with traffic. A site getting 100,000 monthly visitors with strong purchase intent can generate thousands of dollars per month. The challenge is building that audience, which typically takes months or years of consistent content creation and search engine optimization.
Delivering Packages with Amazon Flex
Amazon Flex is a gig-work program where you deliver packages using your own vehicle. You sign up through the Flex app, choose available delivery blocks (shifts typically lasting 3 to 5 hours), pick up packages from a nearby Amazon facility, and deliver them along a set route. Pay ranges from $18 to $25 per hour, according to Amazon.
Keep in mind that you’re an independent contractor, not an employee. That means you cover your own gas, vehicle maintenance, insurance, and taxes. After factoring in those expenses, your effective hourly rate drops. How much depends on your vehicle’s fuel efficiency, local gas prices, and how far the delivery routes take you. Flex works best as supplemental income or for people who value schedule flexibility over maximizing their hourly rate.
To get started, you need to be at least 21 years old, have a valid driver’s license, pass a background check, and own a midsize or larger vehicle. Availability varies by location, and in popular metro areas, delivery blocks can get claimed quickly.
Completing Tasks on Mechanical Turk
Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) is a platform where businesses post small digital tasks called HITs (Human Intelligence Tasks) that workers complete for pay. These tasks include things like categorizing images, transcribing short audio clips, answering survey questions, and validating data. You browse available HITs, accept the ones you want, complete the work, and get paid once the requester approves your submission.
The pay per task is generally very low, often a few cents to a dollar or two per HIT. Most workers treat MTurk as a way to earn modest side income during downtime rather than a primary revenue source. Experienced workers who learn to identify higher-paying HITs and complete them efficiently can improve their hourly earnings, but this still typically falls well below what you’d earn through other options on this list. MTurk is best suited for people looking to earn small amounts with zero upfront cost and complete flexibility over when and how much they work.
Choosing the Right Path
Your best option depends on what you’re working with. If you have capital to invest in inventory, selling products through FBA offers the highest income ceiling but also carries the most financial risk. If you have a skill for writing or content creation, KDP and the Associates program let you build passive income over time with minimal startup costs. If you need money quickly and have a car, Amazon Flex pays within the same week. And if you just want to earn a little extra with no commitments, Mechanical Turk is the lowest-barrier entry point.
Many people combine multiple approaches. A seller running an FBA business might also earn affiliate commissions by reviewing products in their niche. An author publishing through KDP might include Amazon affiliate links on their website. The platform is large enough that the different income streams can complement each other as you figure out what works best for your situation.