Want to make money on Amazon, but you’re exactly sure how?
It is possible to make thousands or millions of dollars on Amazon, but it’s not going to be that easy or simple.
Being one of the world’s most popular online shopping websites, there is great potential to make money from Amazon, whether you want to sell products via the company or not.
It used to be limited to just Americans, but now Canadians can also use the Amazon platform to earn money.
Let’s go through the various ways on how to make money on Amazon in Canada.
Getting Started
Amazon offers two different selling plans after you create your Amazon Seller Account. Anyone that wants to sell on Amazon must create the Seller Account first.
The individual plan is simply that you must pay a 99-cent fee for every product you sell on Amazon. This plan may be useful for an infrequent or low-volume seller.
The professional selling plan has a $39.99 per month fee instead of the per-product fee. This plan also allows broader access to selling to the U.S, Canada and Mexico. Also, this plan has more eligible selling categories than the individual plan.
Note that other fees apply in addition to the plan fees.
1. Standard Product Selling with Fulfillment By Merchant (FBM)
Requires: Products to sell, space to store the products, knowledge on shipping products, and packing materials.
Earning Potential: Unlimited depends on how much you sell.
How To Start: Sign up for a Seller account.
Amazon presents two main options for selling on its website. You can choose to house and ship your products directly to consumers from your office, home, warehouse etc.
Alternatively, you can send your products to Amazon’s warehouses, and they can manage inventory, returns and shipping of the products using Fulfilment By Amazon (FBA).
By choosing not to use Fulfillment By Amazon, you will manage all the inventory and shipping on your own for every item you sell. This may create more work, but there are fees associated with FBA that you would save on by not using it.
A private label product can earn from $625 to $1,857 per month per product. Wholesale goods can earn up to $4,000 per month in total.
2. Product Selling Using Fulfillment By Amazon (FBA)
Requires: Products to sell, extra money to pay the FBA associated fees, a desire to outsource logistics or inventory storage
Earning Potential: Unlimited, depending on how much you sell
How To Start: Join Amazon’s FBA program after making your Seller account and getting the products you want to sell.
If you have a ton of product or simply don’t want to spend the time managing inventory, returns and shipping it out to every individual customer, consider Fulfillment By Amazon.
In short, this method differs from fulfilling sales yourself by having you ship your products to Amazon’s warehouses. Whenever a sale happens, Amazon will pack, ship, handle returns and assist with customer service on your behalf. It’s much simpler than doing it yourself. But, this service involves various fees.
3. Work For Amazon In Their Warehouses
Requires: Good physical strength, the ability to walk long distances in a warehouse each day, strong on-time performance and efficient item picking.
Earning Potential: $16.59 CAD per hour
How To Start: Fill out an application
Don’t want to sell products? No problem. Amazon hires a ton of fulfillment/warehouse associates for their network of warehouses. It is a good job to consider if you like being on your feet all day and can move quickly. Pay is generally competitive, much more than minimum wage.
In short, a fulfillment/warehouse associate is tasked with locating and picking items for customers’ orders within Amazon’s large warehouses. Amazon requires certain performance and speed metrics to be met while you perform your work.
Robots assist in some capacity with moving items around the warehouse and to you, but the job nonetheless requires a lot of standing and walking to retrieve items and get them shipped out to customers.
4. Drive For Amazon And Deliver Packages With Their Amazon Flex Program
Requires: A smartphone, an eligible mode of transportation (such as a four-door midsize sedan), money for vehicle expenses
Earning Potential: Most drivers earn $22-$27 CAD per hour, or about $100 a day. Actual earnings may vary depending on the circumstances.
How To Start: Sign up for Amazon Flex
Maybe you enjoy driving more than being inside a warehouse or managing online sales every day. Amazon Flex can be thought of as a program similar to UberEats or Doordash in a way. You would work for Amazon as an independent contractor to deliver a batch of orders to local customers.
You can set your own schedule, and you would use your own car to send the orders to the customers. The program exists as a way for Amazon to ship items more quickly to customers without waiting on large shipping companies.
Amazon Flex currently operates in Toronto, Vancouver and Calgary.
The Amazon Flex app is used on your phone on top of the process of delivering Amazon products. It will be used to keep track of deliveries you make, verify that a package has been delivered and more.
5. Work For Amazon Under One Of Their Virtual Jobs
Requires: Home internet, a compatible computer, a headset, applicable work experience
Earning Potential: Varies depending on the job applied for. For example, full-time customer service reps make about $30,000 a year.
How To Start: Search and apply for virtual jobs.
Amazon actually hires many people who work at home for the company, most commonly as customer service reps. You can be an Amazon customer service rep at your home, answering phone calls and live chats to assist with customers’ concerns.
In terms of Amazon’s virtual jobs in Canada, there are various openings on their Amazon Jobs website. There are HR jobs, software development jobs, sales jobs, corporate jobs and more, in addition to available customer service jobs.
6. Earn Passive Income Through Amazon’s Affiliate Program
Requires: A web presence and fan following you can refer to, social media accounts, affiliate marketing knowledge.
Earning Potential: Unlimited, depending on how many people you manage to refer. Earn up to 10% commissions on eligible purchases.
How To Start: Join Amazon Associates
If you don’t have products to sell, but you still want to earn money online from Amazon, generating referral sales is one way to accomplish this.
In short, you can earn money from Amazon purchase referrals by signing up for their affiliate program. Then, you will drop your special referral links on your blog, website, YouTube and other social media for your audience to use.
Eligible and confirmed orders are then noted so that you receive commissions on your audience’s purchases.
Having a decent fan following or viewership is definitely something important to have to make this passive income idea a possibility. One simple way to integrate referral links into your content is to include them whenever you recommend or review a product that Amazon sells.
7. Write An E-Book And Sell It On Amazon
Requires: A book idea, an editor, a completed book or manuscript, familiarity with Amazon Kindle and other book format options.
Earning Potential: Unlimited. It depends on how many books you sell. Revenue per book varies on book pricing and other factors.
How To Start: Explore Amazon Kindle and Amazon’s audiobook production service and create a Kindle Direct Publishing account.
Have a fiction or nonfiction book to sell? Amazon and Kindle Direct Publishing are worldwide juggernauts in the online publishing and online bookselling arenas. They absolutely dominate the North American markets for online book sales.
Amazon allows you to sell e-books, physical books and audiobooks. They can even do the publishing for all three, which can be a convenient service. It is free to publish a book on Amazon Kindle, and author royalties can be as high as 70% on each sale of e-books. For print books, author royalties are up to 60%.
Kindle Direct Publishing can create many different types of content, including novels, book series, comics, cookbooks, poetry and more. If your work is serialized, you can consider looking at one of Amazon’s newest offerings, Kindle Vella. Kindle Vella is designed for distributing serialized content.
Beyond the standard purchase and sale of e-books, Amazon additionally offers a subscription service called Kindle Unlimited. In the vein of services like Netflix, this allows customers to browse and consume an unlimited amount of select content from the Kindle library for a monthly fee.
This service is very popular due to the value that it brings to consumers. Eligible books can become a part of the Kindle Unlimited content via joining KDP Select. Customers will then see the option to read your book for free if they are signed up for Kindle Unlimited.
Kindle Unlimited pays royalties to authors based on how many pages a customer reads of your Kindle Unlimited book, excluding repeat readings. In other words, royalties are paid based on readership. The more one customer and all your customers read your book, the more you earn.
Amazon Kindle is very popular for authors and readers because of the numerous self-published books that are sold in the Kindle Store. However, you can also sell audiobooks alone or alongside your book.
Within Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP), one can self-narrate or hire a narrator on the Audiobook Creation Exchange.
Professional audiobook producers then turn the narration into a digital audiobook edition of your work. Customers can then purchase the book via any Audible retail channel, on Amazon and on iTunes. For audiobooks, royalties are up to 40%.
8. Work on gigs on Amazon Mechanical Turk
Requires: A computer with internet access, a desire to work online, a preference for repetitive tasks
Earning Potential: Hundreds of dollars a month depends on the volume of work taken. A part-time, 20 hours a week worker can expect to earn $120 to $200 for the 20 hours of work.
How To Start: Sign up at the Mturk website to become a Requester
One branch of Amazon is called Mechanical Turk. This platform offers various small jobs, called microtasks, that users can sign up to complete. There are surveys, data entry gigs and other online-based work that can be done.
Finding and applying for work is simple, though most users only go here for side income. It is reasonable to expect about $10 an hour and around $500 a month for work done on this site; it just depends on how many microtasks you complete every day.
9. Sell T-shirt Designs on Merch By Amazon
Requires: Artistic talent, creativity and designs
Earning Potential: Unlimited, depends on how many T-shirts are sold. The average sale earns $1.50 in commissions per product. Also, up to 50 designs are allowed on the platform by each artist.
How To Start: Sign up on the Merch By Amazon website using your existing Amazon account.
Another division of Amazon is called Merch By Amazon. It is a platform where artists can upload their art, select a product type and price and list it for sale. Whenever a sale is made, Amazon will print, ship and handle customer service inquiries for your product.
In exchange, you get monthly royalties based on sales. Amazon manages the inventory and even provides Prime Shipping as an option on all sales. This service is used by well-known companies including Disney, Marvel, Fortnite, Overwatch and Universal.
Interested artists and businesses need to apply to join this platform, so if you are interested, check out the website soon.
10. Receive Commissions from the Amazon Influencer Program
Requires: At least one compatible social media account, a sufficient following, sufficient engagement metrics, and content that is compatible with Amazon’s requirements
Earning Potential: Unlimited, depending on how many followers make purchases via the program.
How To Start: Apply at Amazon’s Influencer Program website
Similar to the Amazon Associates program in a way, Amazon’s Influencer Program is an affiliate program that offers payment for eligible sales made on Amazon through a special link. However, the Influencer Program is tailored for individuals who have a sizable social media following.
In short, an Influencer will create an Amazon page with product recommendations for their followers. Then, whenever a follower buys a product from the page, the Influencer earns money.
Unlike the Associate’s program, the Influencer program uses one set link to that page of product recommendations. The program is designed to work by having the Influencer share the link consistently across his or her social media platforms.
11. Trade In Old Tech in Exchange For Amazon Gift Cards
Requires: Compatible unused tech that you wish to sell
Earning Potential: Unlimited, in the form of Amazon gift cards though
How To Start: Take a look at Amazon’s trade-in program
Amazon Trade-In is a program that lets you trade in various used devices in exchange for an Amazon gift card.
Amazon allows the trade-in of numerous tech devices, including cell phones, tablets, Kindle devices, Bluetooth speakers, wireless routers and more.
12. Offer In-Person Home Services To Amazon Customers Via Amazon Home Services
Requires: Expertise and experience in repairing, assembling and installing various items in the home
Earning Potential: Unlimited, depends on how many service requests you get and fulfill
How To Start: Fill out the application forms required by Amazon Home Services.
Are you a handyman around the house? If so, consider signing up to sell services for Amazon. Most of the services involve setting up various items in the home or assembling them.
Amazon offers services in conjunction with the sale of select items on Amazon. When a customer purchases an add-on to receive product assembly or other help, Amazon will send you the job. After the job is completed, Amazon pays you for the completed service.
Amazon doesn’t charge anything to sell services on its website. They collect a percentage of the service revenue on each service.
How Can I Sell To Amazon US Customers As A Canadian?
Some sellers are particularly interested in selling to US customers on Amazon.com for reasons such as access to a bigger market and the ability to get paid in US dollars.
If you want to sell across country borders, you will want to get an Amazon North America Unified Account. This will allow you to sell in the US, Canada and Mexico.
If you joined Amazon as a Pro Seller, you would only be responsible for the subscription fee of your home country. You will have to pay the US marketplace fees, though.
In addition, if you are selling products in more than one North American country, you can use the Build International Listings tool to manage the various listings.
You will still be able to choose whether you want to fulfill orders yourself or via Amazon’s warehouses.
How Can I Make Money On Amazon Without Selling Products?
Amazon is most well known for being the online destination to go to when you want to buy something. There are still numerous ways to make money from Amazon without selling products, though.
They include delivering products for Amazon via Amazon Flex, working for Amazon in a warehouse, getting a virtual work-from-home job from Amazon and more.
Conclusion: No Matter Who You Are, There Is A Way To Get Paid From Amazon
Amazon offers numerous ways to earn money beyond selling products on its website. If you enjoy walking, you can work in one of their warehouses. If you like driving, you can deliver packages as an Amazon Flex driver.
If you are creative, you can make T-shirt merch designs. If you want a formal job, you can search Amazon’s virtual jobs. It doesn’t just have to be selling products to customers, though that is completely viable in itself.
Still looking for more ways to make money beyond Amazon-related work? Check out our guide of Proven Ways To Make Money Online In Canada. If you prefer a more laid-back, hands-off approach to making money, check out this list of Passive Income Ideas. Now is the time to get started earning money!
