Last Updated on January 11, 2023 by pf team
Amazon work from home jobs offer a great way to earn some extra money on your own schedule. You’ll also learn some new skills and — you never know — the knowledge you gain could lead to a new business.
Here’s how to be your own boss while partnering with Amazon.
In this article :
Why work for Amazon?
There are countless reasons to work with the world’s largest online retailer. For starters, Amazon is much more than just an online retailer.
What began as an online bookstore evolved into a multinational company with products ranging from e-commerce to cloud-computing and storage to artificial intelligence.
Here are just some of the reasons to work for Amazon:
- Enjoy flexible hours. Most Amazon work from home jobs offer flexible hours. Many times you can work on your own schedule, ranging from a few hours a week to full time.
- Learn marketable skills. Exposure to new markets and new ways of working has both pitfalls and perks. Over time, you’ll learn the best way to accomplish a task or to market your product. You may even be able to turn your newly honed skills into a full-time business.
- Leverage Amazon’s massive reach. It’s hard to find a company with the reach that Amazon has. If you partner with Amazon as a seller, author, or even as an app developer, you’ll enjoy a ready-made audience of potential customers.
- Find your niche. Because Amazon’s product and service offerings are so diverse, you can build within a niche and focus on what you do best. Amazon rewards expertise and offers a way to build successfully while maintaining a narrow focus.
Amazon work from home side hustles list
Earning opportunities with Amazon work from home jobs range from easy work that you can do while listening to music or catching up on your favorite show to full-blown businesses that harness the enormous reach of Amazon.
However, what makes Amazon work from home jobs unique is that you can start small and grow your side hustle — if you choose — or just keep it as a way to earn a few extra dollars each month.
Amazon selling partner (FBA)
Did you know that more than half of the products sold on Amazon are sold by 3rd party sellers?
Amazon offers multiple ways to partner with the site and have your products appear alongside Amazon’s own inventory.
In fact, Amazon can even handle inventory and ship your products for you. The top level of the program’s integration is called Fulfillment by Amazon, or FBA.
As an Amazon FBA selling partner, your products appear on Amazon.com and benefit from Amazon’s respected user review feature.
With FBA, Amazon also keeps your product in stock in their warehouses. Of course, Amazon also ships these items and handles the labeling.
While drop shipping and eBay stores have been around for a long time, neither of these options give you the same level of exposure and consumer trust that you’ll enjoy with Amazon.
If you’ve been thinking about starting an online business or you already have a product to sell, Amazon’s FBA program deserves a closer look.
Smaller sellers can start listing products with Amazon for about $1 each.
Higher volume sellers can pay a fixed monthly fee of about $40. Fees can add up, but Amazon FBA is still more efficient than trying to duplicate all those services yourself.
Amazon customer service associate
While many Amazon work from home jobs build around a product that you sell through Amazon, there are ways to work for Amazon directly and still work from home.
Amazon offers hundreds of work-at-home positions, although availability of jobs may depend on your physical location.
However, this doesn't mean you'll have to go into the office. Your office is your home. Go ahead and wear your fuzzy slippers if you want.
Amazon's customer service work from home jobs are available worldwide, although most of the jobs are in the US.
Those are seasonal jobs and expect to be listed starting with the month of September each year.
You'll also find many of the jobs center around Amazon Web Services (AWS), which is Amazon's cloud computing platform.
You’ll also find opportunities in fulfillment, finance and accounting, and even human resources.
As with many virtual positions, it's helpful if you know your way around tech products and online tools.
For many positions, you may also need specialized training, especially if assisting clients with AWS cloud computing tools.
You'll find both full-time and part-time work with Amazon's virtual locations, but expect the majority of jobs to be full-time.
Amazon influencer
If you’ve built a large following on social media, the Amazon Influencer Program offers a way to earn money by directing social media traffic to Amazon.
With Amazon’s Influencer Program, you can start your own storefront on Amazon, which gives you one convenient URL to link to.
Typically, you’d stock your virtual storefront with products your followers would like and that you discuss on your social media pages.
Of course, you can also link to specific products as well. As an Amazon Influencer, You learn commission every time someone purchases through one of your Influencer links.
If you have a large following on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or YouTube, Amazon’s Influencer program provides a way to connect your followers with products you recommend and to get paid a commission directly by Amazon.
Commission percentages vary by category and range from 1% up to 10%.
For example, most beauty products pay 6% commission, while outdoors products pay a 5.5% commission.
Amazon’s Influencer program offers a unique opportunity to recommend products that you believe in and get paid for sales without keeping any inventory on hand or spending any extra money on marketing.
The program bases qualification your number of social media followers and other engagement measurements.
Kindle direct publishing
From fiction and poetry to how-to and finance, if there’s a writing niche you want to explore, Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) provides a platform and a ready audience.
Amazon started as a book retailer and those roots hold strong. E-book sales make up nearly 15% of the market, with audiobooks making up another 8% and paperbacks representing over a third of the book market.
Amazon’s KDP offers a way to publish to any of these formats and get your title onto the virtual shelves of the world’s largest book retailer.
Amazon takes a percentage of the sale, but so does a traditional publisher.
Amazon’s unique advantage here isn’t just the online retail giant’s reach, it’s also that Amazon removes the traditional barriers to entry in publishing.
There’s no more gatekeeper. If you’ve got something to say, put it in print.
With a bit of marketing, you might become the next big Amazon KDP success story.
With Amazon KDP, you can work on your books in your spare time. There’s no ceiling to your earning potential and no need to stock inventory.
However, don’t expect to make money right away unless you already have a large online following.
In most cases, it’ll take some time to get your KDP business off the ground.
Merch by Amazon
Print on demand isn’t just for books. With Merch by Amazon, you can sell T-shirts, sweatshirts and hoodies, long-sleeve shirts, and more.
If you’ve got a great idea for a T-shirt or imprinted hoodie, this is your chance to get your message or artwork out there.
Started in 2015 as a way to help app developers monetize their Amazon apps, Merch quickly grew and eventually had to become more selective due to infrastructure costs.
Now, there’s an approval process but the process is fairly quick. Approval generally takes less than a week.
The biggest risk in most businesses is that there isn’t enough income to offset the early expenses.
Arguably, most businesses that fail aren’t bad businesses. Instead, they just run out of money.
Along with several other Amazon work from home opportunities, Merch by Amazon removes almost all the risk faced by traditional businesses.
Once you upload your design, Amazon prints your custom apparel on demand.
They handle the shipping, billing, production, and inventory. Of course, your apparel is also listed on Amazon’s website.
You’ll earn a commission on every sale, which some seasoned sellers estimate to be about 13% of sales.
Once the design is made, however, your earnings are passive income. Go ahead, use your free time to make some more designs — and some more money.
Amazon affiliate partner
The Amazon Associates Program is easily one of the most popular and successful affiliate programs you can find online.
If the traffic you send to Amazon results in a sale, you’ll earn commission.
Rates range from 1% up to 10%, with the commission for most items falling in the middle of this range.
Amazon tracks your traffic through special links assigned to you. You can use these links on your social media posts or blog posts to drive traffic and earn some extra money.
Adding links couldn’t be easier. Once you’re approved as an Amazon Associate, you’ll see a special toolbar at the top of Amazon.com web pages called Site Stripe.
This toolbar allows you to copy the link you’ll need to earn commission for the product on that page.
It’s often best to use your Amazon Associate links for products you know or even for things you use yourself.
Think of an affiliate link as a recommendation. It makes sense to recommend products you know and trust as opposed to linking to whatever is expensive or pays a higher commission rate.
Again, there’s no need to carry any inventory. You’re just linking to items Amazon stocks and delivers.
Amazon Mechanical Turk
The Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) platform differs from the other Amazon work at home jobs on our list because it’s a unique way to work.
If you think of any task you’ve ever completed, you can break that task down further into smaller tasks.
Amazon Mechanical Turk lists thousands of these small tasks, which are called HITs or Human Intelligence Tasks.
Don’t let the intelligence part fool you — you won’t need a college degree to complete HITs but they are tasks that are better done by humans than by machines.
Most can be completed while also doing something else, like listening to music.
Like many other Amazon work from home jobs, working through Amazon’s Mechanical Turk program is based on approval by Amazon.
It isn’t clear what criteria they use to accept or reject workers — also called turkers — but often people who are initially rejected are simply put on a waiting list and may be approved at a later date.
Don’t expect to get rich working as an mTurk for Amazon.
By most accounts, you’ll earn somewhere in the area of $10 per hour, but that can depend on your efficiency.
However, mTurk offers a great way to earn a few extra dollars without breaking a sweat.
Amazon Handmade
The artsy-craftsy website Etsy has long been the place to sell your handmade wares online if you’re a creative type.
Amazon is hoping to change that, however, and Amazon Handmade now offers a compelling marketing option.
They’ll also handle the shipping if you choose. Yes, you can participate in both Amazon Handmade and Amazon FBA, so Amazon handles the inventory storage and shipping.
Amazon Handmade brings together products from artisans in over 80 countries and allows you to build a custom profile which doubles as an online shop for your handmade goods.
All of this is free. Amazon just deducts a 15% fee when you make a sale.
As you’d expect, Amazon uses an artisan application, which can be for single artists or for a group, like a non-profit organization or a charity. You can even apply as a small business with employees.
Amazon also uses an auditing process to ensure that handcrafted products are really handmade.
However, there is some flexibility in the definition. For example, hand-painted clothing would qualify for the program as what Amazon calls “Handmade Customized”.
Amazon Appstore
Many of Amazon’s devices run a customized version of the popular Android operating system called Fire OS.
However, these devices can’t natively access other app stores. This creates a vibrant market for apps that run on Kindle Fire tablets as well as the Fire Stick, Fire Cube, and Fire TVs.
Through Amazon’s Appstore, you’ll gain access to over 200 countries and a wide audience of potential customers who put their trust in Amazon and its user-friendly Fire OS devices.
You’ll have a head start if you’re already familiar with programming or if you’ve already developed apps for Android.
Amazon indicates that if your app works on Android devices, there’s a 75% chance it will work just fine on Fire OS powered devices. In fact, they even offer a handy online tool to check compatibility.
Amazon offers a software development kit (SDK) and several testing tools to help you get started.
Once your app is live, you can earn money through sales for the app itself or through in-app purchases.
Because these purchases use the customer’s Amazon account, you’ll enjoy trouble-free transactions and you can focus on making your app’s next version or on building something completely new.
Alexa Skills
“Alexa, remind me to eat lunch in 10 minutes.” If you’re busy developing apps or making products for Amazon Handmade, it’s easy to forget to eat.
Alexa, Amazon’s AI persona, can remind you, but she can do much more.
Amazon’s Echo still dominates the smart speaker market and has even made its way onto smartphones and Fire OS devices.
These Echo devices utilize “Alexa Skills” to offer even more functionality.
Top skills include “Alexa, open white noise” and “Alexa, find my phone”, but the only real limit is your imagination. With the right programming, you can teach Alexa nearly any skill.
There are several ways to make money with Alexa Skills:
- Amazon Pay for Alexa Skills: If you sell a product or service, Alexa can use voice purchasing to let customers complete a purchase transaction with their Amazon account.
- In-Skill Purchasing: Similar to in-app purchases on mobile apps, Alexa supports in-skill purchases to unlock digital products.
- Alexa Developer Rewards: Many people build Alexa skills for the fun of it or to help others. But you can also earn rewards from Amazon if the skill you’ve built drives traffic and engagement.
- Amazon Alexa Prize: The Alexa Prize is an award for university teams who enhance Alexa’s conversational ability in key areas. The goal is to make Alexa AI talk like a person and the stakes for teams are high with the top prize being a $1 million research grant.
AWS Marketplace
Similar to the way Amazon FBA eliminates some key business challenges like storage and shipping, AWS Marketplace simplifies software deployment.
Leverage the power of Amazon’s cloud platform and computing power while focusing on development and support.
Also a parallel to Amazon’s retail website, AWS Marketplace gets your product listed on a trusted platform that helps ensure reliability.
Amazon removes or reduces most of the challenges a developer faces, such as marketing and infrastructure. Let’s face it — duplicating what AWS offers would be cost prohibitive for many developers.
Deliver data, transaction processing, or even entire operating systems on a virtual machine while earning a fee from users.
Some projects charge an hourly fee while others use a subscription service.
AWS Marketplace offers a reliable platform to launch your SAAS business without the high startup costs that could cast clouds over your dream.
Other ways of making money with Amazon
Of course, you can work for Amazon through one of their facilities as well, while also maintaining your independence.
Amazon Flex
With Amazon Flex, you can earn up to $25 per hour making deliveries for Amazon with your own vehicle.
As the name implies, you’ll be an independent contractor and can work when it fits your schedule. Amazon Flex offers work 7 days per week.
Be aware you may need a specific type of vehicle for certain types of deliveries.
For example, orders shipped from Amazon.com require an enclosed vehicle, mid-sized or or larger.
There may also be some insurance coverage considerations. Amazon provides specialized coverage in all areas except NY, but you’ll need base coverage as well.
Amazon Flex uses a mobile app to help you find “offers” which are opportunities to earn money making deliveries.
There’s no pressure to accept an offer and you can set filters to alert you about offers at certain times of day.
Amazon Delivery Service Partner
You’ll need some seed money for this one but Amazon’s Delivery Partner Program could be among the most lucrative opportunities for entrepreneurs partnering with Amazon.
The retail giant says that with as little as $10,000 as an initial investment, you can build a delivery business that earns hundreds of thousands of dollars per year.
This innovative new program allows entrepreneurs to start a business and build a team of drivers with up to 40 vans, delivering packages from Amazon warehouses to Amazon customers.
Amazon estimates that entrepreneurs with 20 to 40 vans can earn up to $300,000 per year.
However, as in all businesses, there are no guarantees and actual earnings may be higher or lower.
Leasing more trucks as your business grows allows you to closely match expenses to revenue and reduce the investment risk common to other trucking businesses.
Your team wears Amazon branding and becomes the face of the retail giant.
Understandably, Amazon is selective when choosing candidates for its delivery partner program.
Expect the company to favor those with previous business experience, good credit, and liquid assets of $30,000 or more.
Summary on amazon work from home jobs
Amazon's runaway success creates some opportunities similar to those you'd find elsewhere, but the company's innovative business model also brings a new breed of work from home jobs.
With some careful course planning and Amazon’s wind in your sails, you can turn your Amazon work-from-home opportunity into a long-term business that you can control and say goodbye to the 9-to-5.
Of course, if your goal is simply to earn a few extra dollars — and to do it on your terms, Amazon offers plenty of ways to do that as well.