What started as an online bookstore has turned into one of the largest companies in the world covering businesses that range from books to transoceanic shipping to video streaming. It also empowers entrepreneurs to make a great deal of money by providing an online shopping platform. There are many different ways to make money with Amazon. The most popular programs for driving income include selling on Amazon, Fulfillment By Amazon (FBA), the Amazon Associates program and Kindle Direct Publishing.
Selling on Amazon
Selling on Amazon is simply listing a product for sale on the Amazon website and fulfilling orders that are placed by customers. It costs money to use Amazon to sell your products, but the cost is dependent on how much you sell.
Top Tips for How to Succeed with Selling Directly on Amazon:
- Target physical products that match your niche and website keywords
- Link to products within your content such as a landing page or blogs
- Display product images and make them clickable
- Link to Amazon.com multiple times on your website
- Review products on your website that have historically high conversion rates
Fulfillment By Amazon
Fulfillment By Amazon allows Amazon to take care of the shipping and handling for you. The benefit of this arrangement is valuable when a seller has orders that surpass what a single person can process by themselves. Did you sell 10 items? That might not problem for a single person to package and ship. But what if you’ve sold 1,000 items in a day? Do you have room to store the inventory? Can you process and ship 1,000 orders? Probably not. This is where Fulfillment By Amazon shows its true value.
Joining the program is as easy as creating a Selling On Amazon account and adding the Fulfillment By Amazon function. From that point, you can list the products you want to sell and ship the products directly to an Amazon fulfillment center. From there Amazon will receive the orders, pick, pack and ship them while crediting your account for the sale. Fulfillment By Amazon also provides customer support 24/ 7.
I cost more when using Fulfillment By Amazon. You can choose a flat fee per order fulfillment based on the product’s dimension and weight and storage fees. There are other optional fee-based services provided by Fulfillment By Amazon such as the addition of bubble wrap or other packaging materials, product disposal or return, labeling services and so on. Fulfillment By Amazon can be a good option for sellers with large volumes and little storage space or someone who wants to remain relatively hands off when it comes to shipping and handling.
Top Tips for How to Succeed with Fulfillment By Amazon:
- Register as a professional seller to avoid being charged a .99 cent transaction fee per sale
- Create product bundles to increase profits
- Be the lowest price including shipping for popular products
- Find unique products not being sold on Amazon and be the first to list
- Answer customer emails and communication promptly
Amazon Associates
Amazon Associates is an affiliate marketing program whereby you can make a commission by placing advertisements on websites linking to products that are sold by Amazon. When someone clicks on one of your advertising links, and makes a purchase a referral fee is paid.
There is no cost to sign up as an Amazon Associate. Amazon provides some simple tools to help you add text and/or image links and banner ads to your website. Amazon also provides what it calls Native Shopping Ads which are stylized in a format similar to Amazon’s own website lending trust to your listing. As an Amazon Associate, you will have access to daily reports to learn what ads are most effective, and what kind of products customers have bought using your links and the other items they have bought. Beyond these free tools provided by Amazon, there are plenty of free and paid-for apps available on the Internet that can streamline your report analysis.
Top Tips for How to Succeed as an Amazon Affiliate
- Learn basic HTML to be able to insert images and create links on your website
- Build links to Amazon that include your affiliate ID
- Promote your site through online communities and business networking sites
- Create blog categories to help users quickly find products they are searching for
- Sign up for Google Adsense for additional revenue opportunities
Publishing with Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing
Are you a writer, blogger, novelist? Have you ever dreamt of publishing a book, but have never been able to find a publisher willing to take on your work? No longer is it a substantial financial risk to self-publish a book. Without the costs associated with printing, storing and shipping an entire run of books, Amazon’s print-on-demand service has created a financially risk-free environment for self-publishing ebooks or physical books.
There is no upfront cost to sign up with Kindle Direct Publishing. Simply create an account, upload your book, give it a description, choose which categories it belongs under, pick a price and it can end up in Kindle stores around the world in a couple of days. You continue to own the rights to your book and you’ll receive 70% of the sales. Of course, marketing the book will be up to you, but Amazon allows you to publish your work, experiment with different variations and test the market without the usual costs associated with self-publishing.
Top Tips for How to Succeed with Amazon direct publishing:
- Write interesting, captivating book descriptions
- Research top selling books for new content ideas
- Generate reviews to build credibility and buyer confidence
- Post an interesting biography on your author page
- Have your book cover professionally designed
There’s no doubt that Amazon has created a new retail environment affecting both consumers and retailers worldwide, but it has also created a whole new way of making money for store fronts, marketers, writers, inventors. There is serious money to be make by aligning your business with the Amazon brand.
About this author
Kavita G. Sahai is founder of HaveBIGplans. Kavita has 10+ years of experience working with entrepreneurs that are looking to better the world through technology, education, healthcare and/or business model innovation. The company virtually, conveniently and affordably connects entrepreneurs with certified business coaches. It is the first-ever text business coaching platform. For more information, please visit www.havebigplans.com.