A Complete Beginner’s Guide: How To Make Money On Amazon

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Amazon is one of the biggest e-commerce platforms in the world. Every month, hundreds of million people go to Amazon to buy stuff online. There are many (easy) ways that you can capitalize on this trend and make money with Amazon.

In fact, for some, you can even get started with zero investment and potentially make recurring passive income month after month.

Also, I will share with you EXACTLY how I am making money with Amazon every month on auto-pilot. (Yes, this might sound too good to be true. But, it’s REAL!)

Sell Physical Products On Amazon

Personally, I buy a lot of physical products online, ranging from clothes to gadgets.

And I bet, you do it too.

Many individual Amazon sellers are making a full-time living from selling physical products on Amazon.

So, how can you do the same?

If you want to sell physical products on Amazon, you can either create your own or you can sell private label products. 

Create & Sell Your Own Products

So, if you are into arts and crafts, you can your own sell handmade products online on Amazon. 

There are many handmade items that are already proven to sell online:

• Handmade jewlery ( i.e necklace, bracelets, earrings and etc)
• Handmade bags
• Picture frames
• Hand-knitted items like scarves, leg warmers and sweaters 
• Wedding accessories (i.e. corsages, bouquets, hair pins and etc) 
• Wedding decorations (i.e centrepieces, cake toppers and etc)
• Pottery
• Paintings

But what if you are not an arts and crafts kind of person?

You can always invent your own products and have it manufactured and then sell online on Amazon.

If you have watched Shark Tank, there are tons of examples of ordinary people coming up with brilliant product ideas.

Below is just one example of a brillian product idea.

This poduct is called “Simply Fit Board” created by a mother and daughter duo.

It is a dynamic workout tool which will give your abs, legs, and entire core a good workout in minutes.

So, how much sales have they done so far?

160 million in revenue in 4 years!

That’s how much earning potential you are looking at when it comes to selling products.

I hope that this inspires you to look for new product ideas to solve everyday problems:) 

Sell Private Lable Products

Private label products are those manufactured by one company for sale under another company’s brand. Private-label goods are available in a wide range of industries from food to cosmetics. Simply put, a private label product has your brand name on it but is manufactured by someone else.

-STARTUPBROS

One of my friends sells private label products.

One of his products is handphone case covers.

Here’s how it works.

He sourced the products from China at a very low cost per unit.

Then, he redesigned the packaging to sell it under his own brand name at a much higher price – about 500% higher than his cost price. (yes, that’s how high the profit margin for handphone accessories.)

After listing his products on Amazon, he spent some advertising dollars to market his products online to potential customers.

Did he make any sales?

He made a lot of sales in the first two months.

The problem?

His competitors started to bring in the EXACT same products and undercut his prices.

The result?

He had to keep sourcing for new products with good profit margin.

So, the challenge with private label products is that you don’t really have any competitive edge.

The barrier of entry is also pretty low, therefore you will face a lot of competition.

Another downside with selling physical products on Amazon is that you might have to invest some money upfront to buy inventory.

Dropshipping 

If you are tight with money or don’t want to risk your hard-earned money stocking up inventory, your next best option is to start a dropshipping business.

Dropshipping is a type of business model which allows you to sell products online without keeping inventory or even having to ship your products to your customers yourself.

Here is how dropshipping works:

1. The customer places an order for a product on your online store
2. The order is then automatically (or manually) forwarded to the dropship supplier
3. The dropship supplier then packages and ships the order directly to the customer in the name of your online store

Dropshipping is a pretty great business model for a first-timer.

It’s a low-risk and low-investment way of starting your own business.

But, there are also some disadvantages.

The profit margin is low and you often have high fulfillment cost.

Let’s not forget that the competition is pretty high and you also have no control over the supply chain.

Amazon Affiliate Marketing 

If you don’t want to sell your physical products online, you can choose to promote products that are being sold on Amazon and make money as an Amazon affiliate.

As an affiliate, you earn a commission when people buy something at no extra cost to them using your link.

A while ago, I signed up to be an Amazon affiliate.

As an Amazon affiliate, I was given a unique affiliate link, and I can promote any product that is being sold on Amazon using my affiliate link.

So, how do I actually promote Amazon products on my website?

First, I had to decide what products are suitable for my blog readers. 

As I wrote quite a lot of blog posts on investing, I figured that investment books would be a good choice.

Here’s an example of me promoting Amazon books on my blog.

The investment books above are shown at the end of one of my investing blog posts because I felt that it is helpful to some readers who want to read more on the topic.

If any of my readers thinks that the book is good and decides to buy, then I will be paid by Amazon a small commission at no additional cost to him or her.

Amazon Kindle eBook

If you love writing and have something that you want to share with people, you can consider writing and self-publishing an eBook on Amazon.

Here are some eBook genres that you can consider:

• Business & Money
• Children’s eBooks
• Comics, Manga & Graphic Novels
• Cookbooks, Food & Wine
• Crafts, Hobbies & Home
• Foreign Languages
• Health, Fitness & Dieting
• Mystery, Thriller & Suspense
• Parenting & Relationships
• Religion & Spirituality
• Romance
• Self-Help
• Travel

When you are trying to figure out what ebook you can create, it might help to ask yourself the following questions:

• What skills do you have that other people want to learn from you?
• What knowledge do you have that can help solve other people’s problems?
• What results have you achieved that other people want to learn from you to get the same results?

Let’s say that you are very good at vegan cooking, you can write a cooking eBook teaching people how to do that.

If you are very good at helping people with their marriage problems, you can write an eBook about saving marriage.

If you have a lot of knowledge about parenting, you can write a parenting eBook.

Writing a book is one of the best ways to share your knowledge and story with the world.

Although creating eBooks might take a lot of work upfront, you only need to do the work once and then you can sell it over and over again.

So, it’s highly scalable.

The best part is that it generates passive income for you 24/7.

Read Also: A Beginner’s Guide: How To Make Money Selling Online Courses

Sell Apps On Amazon Appstore

If you know how to develop apps or have a great idea for app, then you can consider creating and selling apps on Amazon appstore.

The best selling paid apps are gaming apps, as shown below.

In fact, more than 90% of the top 100 paid apps are gaming apps. That’s how popular it is.

Quite some time ago, there was this free popular mobile game called Flappy Bird. 

It was developed by Vietnamese video game artist and programmer Dong Nguyen.

The game is a side-scroller where the player controls a bird, attempting to fly between columns of green pipes without hitting them. 

It is a very simple yet addictive game.

Within a short time after its release, 50 million people downloaded and installed the game.

It was reported that this mobile game app was making $50,000 per day in advertising revenue.

That is $150,000 in monthly revenue!

If he were to sell this gaming app, I believe that a lot of people would gladly pay for it too.

So, you can see the income potential of selling apps.

If you know about app development, you can do it yourself. 

But, if you don’t know any programming, you can also hire programmers to help you.

All you need to get started is a great app idea.

Sell Services On Amazon

Sell Under Amazon Private Brands

Amazon owns a lot of its own private-label brands. If you have a good product, you can also explore the possibility of selling under Amazon’s own brands. 

Here are just some of Amazon-owned brands:

For example, Amazon Essentials , a private label of Amazon, sells extremely affordable clothing.

AmazonBasics, another private label of Amazon, sells various electronic items, including USB cables, disposable batteries, tripods and more.

There are currently more than 100 private label brands owned by Amazon selling a wide range of products from vitamins to furnitures.

It just works the same way in the physical world. 

If you always shop at Walmart, you will see that it also has a lot of house brands.

Generally, house brands will priced at a lower prices than branded products. 

To save money, a lot of people (me included) will go for house brands which are very likely manufactured by companies that also sell their own branded products at Walmart. 

There is no stopping Amazon starting their own private lable products, so you might as well capture some of the profits.