How to Make Money on Amazon in 2025
Making Amazon your side hustle takes work, but you have options as a seller, influencer and gig worker.
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Amazon offers legit ways for regular people to make money. Options include selling products, affiliate marketing and gig work like delivery driving. But as with any online business venture, it’ll take good ideas, time and effort to make real money.
Here's a breakdown of how to make money on Amazon.
Sell products on Amazon
Unless you’re all set with a private label business, selling existing products is a good place to start with Amazon. Retail and wholesale are popular selling models. There’s also Amazon Handmade, an Etsy-like option for artisans, and Merch on Demand for graphic designers.
1. Retail arbitrage
Retail arbitrage is a tactic that involves buying products from a local or online retailer at a discount and then posting the items for sale at a higher price on a platform like Amazon.
It could be an interesting approach if you understand the market for the items you’re selling and are good at finding bargains, but there is some grey area around what’s allowed. Amazon’s website says it’s possible to effectively use this tactic if you follow selling guidelines. For example, you may need to provide additional documentation, such as product invoices, when you resell from a retailer. In short, do your research before loading up on 100 packs of socks to sell online.
Do the math, too, to make sure you’ll actually turn a profit after Amazon’s seller and referral fees. Read on for information about fees.
2. Wholesale
When you source a product directly from a brand or manufacturer at a discounted rate, it’s called wholesale selling. The brand is the wholesaler, and you’re the reseller. Ideally, you’ll buy in-demand items in bulk at a reduced rate and use Amazon to move products to customers. Search brand names of interest along with the term “wholesale” to look for potential partners.
3. Amazon Handmade
Etsy is the household name in online artisan goods, but there’s also Amazon Handmade. If you’re an artisan who can handcraft items — like jewelry, clothing, toys, accessories and more — you can apply to sell in Handmade. It’s free to create a shop, but you’ll need to go through an audit process to prove you’re selling your own creations and, if accepted, Amazon deducts a 15% referral fee with each sale.
4. Amazon Merch on Demand
Another route for designers is Amazon Merch on Demand. With it, you upload artwork, pick products on which to print your designs (like T-shirts) and earn royalties on products that sell. Amazon takes care of production and shipping.
How to fulfill orders with Amazon FBA
You can outsource shipping and handling to Amazon with FBA, or Fulfillment by Amazon. Using Amazon FBA takes a lot of the grunt work out of ecommerce, for a cost.
How it works: You add your products to the Amazon catalog, prepare them for sale and send shipments to Amazon fulfillment centers. Once received at the fulfillment center, your products are available for purchase. Amazon will pick, pack and ship orders. Amazon will also handle customer service and returns.
What it costs: Amazon charges by the unit for fulfillments costs. Costs are based on the size and weight of the product. Heavier items carry a higher FBA cost.
The alternative: The other route is to manage and ship orders yourself. Referred to as Fulfilled by Merchant, this option leaves everything to you, the seller. You’ll have to keep shipping performance in good standing to maintain an account health rating.
You may be more in full-on business territory than side hustle if you’re ready to fulfill orders yourself.
How to sign up to sell on Amazon
Standard fees depend on your plan. Choose one of two selling plans to get started as an Amazon seller:
Individual plan: Sellers pay $0.99 for each item sold.
Professional plan: Sellers pay a $39.99 monthly subscription that covers unlimited items sold.
Additional fees: Amazon charges a referral fee for every item sold, which is a percentage of the total price plus shipping (and any gift-wrapping charges). Amazon says most referral fees are between 8% and 15%.
Taxes: As a seller, you’re considered self-employed. So even though Amazon generally calculates the sales tax on items, you’ll likely have to set aside more money to pay estimated quarterly taxes on your income.
How to make money on Amazon without selling
You can also earn with Amazon through affiliate marketing, deliveries and software development tasks.
1. Amazon Associates program
If you have a solid online audience for your original content, you may be able to earn through Amazon’s affiliate marketing program, Amazon Associates. As a participant, you can use custom links to recommend products sold on Amazon to your audience within your content, and earn commission on qualifying purchases when your site drives clicks to Amazon.
You need a qualifying site to apply for Amazon Associates, which can include an established social media page or YouTube channel, and will have 180 days to drive at least three sales through Associates links to stay in the program.
This could be a good route for content creators who specialize in product reviews. Platforms like YouTube, Instagram and Pinterest are popular places to post affiliate links.
Amazon Associates program commission rates range from 1% to 20% depending on the product category.
2. Amazon Flex
Amazon relies on more than UPS to make deliveries. Its gig economy delivery offering is called Amazon Flex, and it offers work opportunities for individuals in many cities and towns across the U.S. If you’re 21 or over, have a driver’s license and at least a midsize vehicle, you may be able to apply to deliver packages in your town.
Earn between $18 and $25 an hour, according to the Amazon Flex site.
3. Amazon Mechanical Turk
If you can take the tedium, you may be able to lend a human touch to software development projects as a Turk Worker. Mechanical Turk is a marketplace offered by Amazon that lets companies outsource application development tasks that require real people. Tasks can include analyzing imagery, collecting and editing information and general data processing.
How much you can actually hard to peg. A search of r/mturk, a subreddit dedicated to Mechanical Turk, suggests the site is hit or miss for casual “turkers.”
Expect to earn just a few bucks a day on Mechanical Turk as a casual user.
Reddit is an online forum where users share their thoughts in “threads” on various topics. The popular site includes plenty of discussion on financial subjects like making money, so we sifted through Reddit forums to get a pulse check on how users feel about earning with Mechanical Turk. People post anonymously, so we cannot confirm their individual experiences or circumstances.
Other ways to earn cash online
If Amazon isn’t a fit, consider these other sites for some extra income:
Look into how to make money on Ebay.
Explore how to make money on YouTube.
Or discover how to sell clothes online.