How to Make Money on Amazon in 2026: A Realistic Guide

Quick answer: the method we recommend first for how to make money on Amazon in 2026 doesn't need an Amazon seller account. You use Amazon (or AliExpress) as your product source and sell in your own eBay store with Ecomli, which takes on much of the product research, listing, stock updates and supplier ordering. Ecomli makes that tool, so read our pick with that in mind. If you would rather earn on Amazon itself, the main routes are selling your own brand through FBA, wholesale, Amazon Handmade, Kindle Direct Publishing, Amazon Associates and Amazon Flex. Each one is covered below with its published fees.

This guide ranks ten realistic methods and shows, for each, what it costs to start, how the money arrives and what limits it. It also runs the per-sale math, answers whether $1,000 a month is realistic, explains how Amazon's product-tester program works, and flags a well-known Amazon side gig that is closing. It gives no typical income figure, because there isn't an honest one.

How we ranked the ways to make money on Amazon

We judged every method on four things: how much money you put at risk before the first sale, how soon a first payment can arrive, how much of the routine work software or Amazon can take off your plate, and whether income can grow without a matching rise in your hours. A method that pays per hour ranks below one that takes more setup but can grow with listings or content. Every fee in this guide links to the platform's own page.

Amazon is as much a marketplace as a store. Amazon's own seller blog says more than 60% of sales in the Amazon store come from independent sellers, and online shopping keeps growing: US retail ecommerce sales were $340.2 billion in the second quarter of 2026, 17.1% of all retail sales and up 12.2% on a year earlier, according to the Census Bureau's quarterly ecommerce report. That demand is real. So is the competition, which is why the per-sale math later in this guide matters more than any headline number. If you are still deciding whether Amazon is the right place to start at all, our plan for making money without a traditional job compares the wider options.

10 ways to make money on Amazon in 2026

1. Use Amazon as your supplier and sell on eBay with Ecomli (our pick)

Best for: beginners who want a product business without buying stock first or opening an Amazon seller account.

How it works: you list products in your own eBay store. When an eBay buyer orders, you buy the item from Amazon or AliExpress and have it delivered to that buyer. What you keep is the eBay sale price minus the supplier cost and eBay's fees. To be clear, you are selling on eBay, not on Amazon. Amazon is your supplier, so you need an Amazon buying account rather than a seller account, and eBay's fees and rules apply instead of Amazon's selling plans and referral fees.

For suppliers beyond Amazon and AliExpress, our guide to eBay dropshipping suppliers covers the wholesale side.

What eBay takes: its selling fees page lists a final value fee of 13.6% of the total sale (item price, shipping and sales tax) up to $7,500 for most categories, plus $0.40 per order over $10 or $0.30 per order of $10 or less. You get up to 250 listings a month with no insertion fee, then $0.35 per listing.

Where Ecomli fits: Ecomli is a non-API browser extension that works through the eBay seller account already signed in to your desktop Chrome browser, so there is no API connection to authorize, and eBay is its only selling channel. It finds products with Product Hunting, drafts and publishes listings, keeps them in line with supplier stock and prices, places supplier orders within your buying limits, and shows your profit on one dashboard. The step-by-step version is in the "How to do this in Ecomli" section below. Our comparison of Amazon to eBay dropshipping software sets it beside the other tools.

What it can't do: promise sales or profit. The gap between an Amazon price and an eBay price can be thin after fees. The work also needs regular check-ins: listing, Stock Monitoring and Auto Ordering run in your desktop browser while it is open, and orders outside your buying limits and buyer questions come back to you. Our guides to the eBay dropshipping workflow and building an eBay side hustle around a day job go deeper.

2. Sell your own brand on Amazon with FBA (private label)

Best for: people with savings to invest and the patience to build a brand over months.

How it works: you source a generic product from a manufacturer, add your own brand and packaging, and sell it on Amazon. With Fulfillment by Amazon, Amazon stores your stock in its fulfillment centers and, per its FBA overview, will "pick, pack, and ship orders, as well as handle customer service and returns." You can also fulfill orders yourself (FBM).

What Amazon takes: Amazon's selling fees page lists two plans, Individual at $0.99 per item sold and Professional at $39.99 a month, each plus a referral fee on every item. The referral fee is a percentage of the total price or a minimum amount, whichever is greater: 15% with a $0.30 minimum in Home and Kitchen and in Toys and Games, and in Beauty, Health and Personal Care 8% on items of $10 or less and 15% above that. FBA adds fulfillment fees based on price, weight and dimensions, monthly storage fees, and charges for aged inventory, returns processing and removals.

The catch: you pay for inventory, packaging and often design before the first sale, so this is the method with the most money at risk. It can also build the most valuable business if the product works. Our comparison of Amazon FBA and dropshipping puts the two models side by side, and our Amazon dropshipping workflow covers the no-inventory route step by step.

3. Resell established brands wholesale

Best for: sellers with steady cash flow who would rather sell proven products than build a brand.

How it works: you buy branded stock in bulk from the brand or an authorized distributor and sell it on existing Amazon listings. There is no product to design, but margins are usually thinner and you compete with other sellers on the same listing. Access is the first hurdle. Amazon's seller FAQ says some categories are open to all sellers, some require a Professional plan, some require approval from Amazon and some can't be sold by third-party sellers, and that for a branded product "your ability to list and sell it in the Amazon store may also depend on your relationship with the brand."

4. Flip discounted stock with retail and online arbitrage

Best for: people with more time than money and a good eye for prices.

How it works: you buy discounted or clearance items in stores or on other websites and resell them on Amazon for more. The startup cost can be small, but the hours are high: sourcing trips, checking which brands you can sell, prep and shipping. Amazon's own blog notes that "some forms of reselling aren't permitted in the Amazon store," so check brand and category restrictions before you buy. If you expect fewer than 40 sales a month, Amazon's FAQ suggests the Individual plan may suit you best. For product ideas, browse these ideas for things to sell to make money.

5. Sell handcrafted goods on Amazon Handmade

Best for: makers who already create jewelry, home goods, art or other crafts.

How it works: you apply, pass Amazon's application and audit process, and then list your products in the Handmade store. Per the Amazon Handmade page, the monthly Professional selling fee is waived for approved makers (Amazon puts the saving at $480 a year), and you pay a referral fee of 15% or $0.30, whichever is greater, on each unit shipped. The work is making the products, so income is tied to your production time. Our look at hobbies that make money covers where else crafts sell.

6. Design apparel with Merch on Demand

Best for: designers who want to sell without holding stock.

How it works: Amazon's seller blog describes Merch on Demand as a way to design apparel and accessories and sell them on a print-on-demand basis, "so you don't have to manage inventory, printing, or shipping." You supply the designs, and Amazon produces each item after it sells. The work that decides results is design and niche research, and a design can sit unsold for months. Read the current program terms on the Merch on Demand site before you start.

7. Self-publish books with Kindle Direct Publishing

Best for: writers who can finish, edit and package a book.

How it works: you publish ebooks (and paperbacks) through KDP and earn royalties per sale. KDP's royalty page offers two ebook options: 35% of the list price, or 70% of the list price less delivery costs for sales to customers in eligible countries. The 70% option applies to in-copyright works only, and on Amazon.com it needs a list price between $2.99 and $12.99, per KDP's list price requirements. Writing is the heavy part, and sales for a new book are hard to predict.

8. Earn commissions with Amazon Associates

Best for: people who already run a website, newsletter or social account in a niche.

How it works: you link to Amazon products and earn a commission on qualifying purchases. The fixed rates in Amazon's commission rate table vary a lot by category: 10% for Luxury Beauty, 4.5% for physical books, kitchen and automotive, 3% for toys, home and pets, 1% for grocery and health and personal care, and 4% for all other categories. The rate is the easy part. Building the audience that clicks and buys takes months of steady content. Our list of the best ways to make money online compares affiliate work with other online methods.

9. Build a storefront with the Amazon Influencer Program

Best for: creators with an engaged audience on YouTube or Instagram.

How it works: per Amazon's Influencer Program help page, you get your own page on Amazon, with a vanity address at amazon.com/shop/ followed by your handle, curated with products you recommend in your videos or photos. You are paid for purchases from that page in a similar way to Amazon Associates. It suits people whose content is already about products. If you mostly create on your phone, our guide to making money from your phone covers related options.

10. Deliver packages with Amazon Flex

Best for: people who want paid hours this week and have a car.

How it works: you reserve delivery blocks in the Flex app, up to one week in advance, and deliver Amazon packages. Amazon Flex says most drivers earn $18 to $25 an hour and adds that actual earnings vary with location, tips, delivery time and other factors. You need to be 21 or older, with a valid driver's license, a qualifying vehicle and a smartphone. Fuel and wear on your car come out of what you earn, and income stops when you stop driving. It ranks last here because it is a job with flexible hours rather than something you build. Our guide to making money on weekends compares it with other shift-based gigs.

Two Amazon options you'll still see in older lists: Amazon Mechanical Turk, the microtask marketplace, is closing. Its help page says it "will permanently close on September 30, 2026," so it is not a method to start now. Amazon Vine, the product-tester program, is invitation-only and doesn't pay (details in the FAQ below).

How to do this in Ecomli: Amazon-sourced products on your eBay store

If you choose the first method, this is the workflow in Ecomli.

1. Set up the basics. You need an eBay seller account signed in to desktop Chrome, the Ecomli extension in that browser, and an Amazon or AliExpress buying account. Ecomli works through your signed-in eBay session, so there is no API connection to authorize.
2. Find products with Product Hunting. Research an eBay seller's sold history or current listings and match those products to Amazon or AliExpress, or search Amazon keywords, Best Sellers and category, brand or store pages. Filter by price, keywords, reviews and ratings, Amazon FBA or AliExpress Choice, then save the hunt or export it as a CSV. A match is a lead to check, not proof of profit.
3. List with Create Listings. Send your picks over, choose your settings and start. Ecomli reads the supplier product, prices it with your markup, writes optional AI titles and AI descriptions from the supplier facts, applies your description template, runs Safety Shield (a checkpoint for flagged brands and restricted items, not a guarantee) and fills in eBay's listing form in your seller session, up to 10 listings at a time.
4. Keep listings in line with Stock Monitoring. It checks supplier stock and prices for your Ecomli listings and updates the eBay price and quantity, or sets the quantity to zero or ends the listing when the item is out of stock, using your rules. If a supplier page can't be read, the listing is held unchanged rather than ended.
5. Fulfill orders with Orders and Auto Ordering. On Starter you start Auto Ordering batches in your own browser. On Pro, with Auto Ordering, you click Auto Order and Ecomli places the supplier order in your own browser. On Scale, once you turn it on, Auto Ordering runs on Ecomli's servers and places the supplier order for new eBay orders, as long as each order is within your buying limits. Those limits are a maximum purchase price and a maximum loss, and orders outside them need manual handling. Tracking Conversions then turns supported AliExpress and Amazon TBA tracking numbers into eBay-compatible tracking through Aquiline (an add-on at 1 credit per conversion) and adds it to the eBay order after automatic checks.
6. Check what you keep on the Overview dashboard. It shows eBay sales, fees, Promoted Listings costs, refunds, supplier costs and recorded profit by day or period. Profit is only as complete as the supplier costs recorded, so log them.

Starter is $29/month with Auto Ordering batches, Pro is $99/month and adds hourly Auto Ordering, and Scale is $199/month and adds optional server ordering, all billed monthly in USD with a 7-day money-back guarantee on your first payment, so you can compare the three plans against the work you want to hand off.

How much money can you make on Amazon, realistically?

There is no reliable average income from any of these methods. Results depend on category, pricing, capital, competition and consistency, and many new sellers never reach a meaningful profit. What you can work out before you start is what one sale, one referral or one book leaves you. The examples below are illustrations built on stated assumptions, not forecasts.

One eBay sale of an Amazon-sourced item. Say an item sells on eBay for $25 in total and costs you $18 to buy from Amazon and deliver to your buyer. At 13.6% plus the $0.40 per-order fee, eBay takes $3.80, which leaves $3.20 before ad costs, returns, taxes and your software plan.

One product sale on Amazon. Say a Home and Kitchen item sells for $25, so the 15% referral fee is $3.75. You are on the Professional plan and spread its $39.99 across 100 orders a month (about $0.40 per order), the product costs you $12, and you pay $5 to ship it yourself. That leaves about $3.85 before returns, advertising, packaging and taxes.

One affiliate month. At the 4.5% rate Amazon lists for kitchen products, $1,000 of qualifying purchases through your links earns $45.

One ebook. A $4.99 ebook on the 70% option earns about $3.49 per sale before delivery costs. Fifty copies in a month would bring in about $175 before those costs.

What $1,000 a month would take. Divide the target by what one unit leaves you. At $3.20 per eBay sale, $1,000 a month is about 313 sales, or roughly 10 a day. At $3.85 per Amazon order it is about 260 orders. At a 4.5% commission it is about $22,200 of qualifying purchases through your links, and at $3.49 per ebook it is about 287 copies. That is why raising what each sale leaves you, through better products, pricing and lower costs, matters as much as selling more.

Startup cost is the other half of the math. The eBay route, arbitrage, affiliate content and self-publishing can start without much money, while private label and wholesale need stock paid for before the first sale. The same honest-math approach applies on any marketplace, as covered in this realistic guide to making money as an eBay reseller, and our breakdown of eBay dropshipping profit margins runs more fee examples.

Choosing a method: money, time and skills

Here is the trade-off for each method, in the same order as the list. Fees are as of Sep 2026 and link to their sources above.

Our recommendation is the first row: a product business without stock or an Amazon seller account, with Ecomli taking on much of the repetitive research, listing, stock and ordering work, in exchange for a monthly plan, eBay's fees and rules, and regular check-ins. Affiliate and content routes are cheap to start but slow to pay. Private label can build the most valuable business but is capital-heavy. Flex pays soonest but only for the hours you drive. Pick the row that matches your real constraint, whether that is money, time or skill, and see other online business ideas worth sizing up if none of these fit.

How to start in 2026: your first 90 days

1. Pick one method. Use the table to choose by your real constraint. For the route we recommend, that means an eBay seller account, an Amazon or AliExpress buying account and Ecomli in desktop Chrome.
2. Price the costs before you commit. On the eBay route, list eBay's final value fee and per-order fee, the supplier cost including delivery, and your plan. On Amazon, list the selling plan, the referral fee for your category, and fulfillment and shipping. Start on the Individual plan if you expect fewer than 40 sales a month and move to Professional when the volume justifies it.
3. Test small with products or topics that have demand. Start with a small batch of items that show recent sales. On the eBay route, Product Hunting starts from eBay sold history, and other product research tools help too. For content, publish consistently in one niche before you judge results.
4. Track profit per sale, not revenue. Supplier prices and fees change, so check your margins every week and reprice when costs move. The same logic is explained in this breakdown of rule-based repricing.
5. Reinvest, then scale. Put early profit into more products or more content only once the per-sale math works. Scaling a method that loses money on each sale just loses money faster.

Frequently asked questions

Is selling on Amazon still profitable in 2026?

It can be, when your per-sale numbers work after every fee. Demand is growing: US retail ecommerce sales were $340.2 billion in the second quarter of 2026, up 12.2% on a year earlier, and Amazon says more than 60% of its store's sales come from independent sellers. Competition is heavy too, so profit depends on the referral fee for your category, fulfillment costs, advertising and returns. If you'd rather avoid Amazon's seller fees and requirements, using Amazon as a supplier for an eBay store is the alternative we recommend.

Can I make $1,000 a month on Amazon?

Some people do, and many don't, so work backward from one sale. In our illustrations, a $25 eBay sale of an Amazon-sourced item left $3.20 after eBay's fees, so $1,000 a month would take about 313 sales. A $25 Amazon sale left about $3.85, or about 260 orders a month. At a 4.5% affiliate commission you would need about $22,200 of qualifying purchases through your links. If those volumes look out of reach, raise what each sale leaves you before chasing more sales.

How can I make money on Amazon without selling physical products?

Amazon Associates pays commission on qualifying purchases at fixed category rates of up to 10%, Kindle Direct Publishing pays ebook royalties through a 35% or 70% option, the Influencer Program gives creators a storefront that earns commission, and Merch on Demand prints your designs only after they sell. Reaching $10,000 a month this way takes a very large audience: at a 4.5% commission it would mean about $222,000 of qualifying purchases a month. Treat big monthly figures you see online as outliers, not a plan.

How do I become an Amazon product tester?

Through Amazon Vine, and only by invitation. Amazon's Vine page for sellers says Vine Voices are reviewers Amazon has invited, selected on the insightfulness of the reviews they have published in the Amazon store. You can't apply. Voices can order enrolled products free of charge and review them, and Amazon's program page says they are not paid to take part. The only way in is to write consistently useful reviews and wait for an invitation, so treat it as free products, not income.

Can you make money with Amazon without an Amazon seller account?

Yes. Associates, the Influencer Program and Amazon Flex don't need a seller account, and neither does the route we recommend: listing products in your own eBay store and buying them from Amazon or AliExpress after each sale. That is selling on eBay, so eBay's fees and rules apply. Ecomli covers product research, listing, stock updates and ordering on that route, from $29/month.

How much does it cost to start making money on Amazon?

On the eBay route, you buy each item only after it sells, so the fixed cost is an Ecomli plan (Starter $29/month, Pro $99/month or Scale $199/month) plus eBay's fees on each sale. Selling on Amazon costs $0.99 per item sold on the Individual plan or $39.99 a month on Professional, plus a referral fee that is 15% with a $0.30 minimum in categories such as Home and Kitchen, then your product, shipping or FBA fees. Private label and wholesale need inventory before the first sale. Affiliate content, KDP and Merch on Demand cost little beyond your time.

Is Amazon Mechanical Turk still a way to make money?

Not for long. Amazon's Mechanical Turk help page says the service "will permanently close on September 30, 2026," and it asks current workers to check their payment settings so they are paid after the closure. Don't start there now. Amazon Flex is the Amazon option for paid hours, and freelance platforms are the usual alternative for task-based online work.

Which Amazon income methods need the least ongoing time?

None of them keeps paying without work. Running an eBay store with Ecomli cuts much of the manual work, but it still needs regular check-ins for new listings, orders outside your buying limits, buyer questions and tasks that run in your desktop browser. Books and affiliate content can keep earning from earlier work, but take a lot of upfront effort. FBA takes over storage, shipping and returns, but not sourcing, pricing or advertising. Choose by when you want to do the work.

The bottom line

If you want to make money with Amazon without an Amazon seller account, our pick is the first method here: source from Amazon and AliExpress, sell on eBay, and let Ecomli handle much of the research, listing, stock and ordering while you watch buying limits, buyer questions and profit per sale. If you'd rather sell through Amazon itself or earn from content, the other methods are real options with published fees. Whichever you pick, know what one sale leaves you before you scale.

Ready to run this on your own eBay store? Get started with Ecomli → Plans from $29/month · 7-day money-back guarantee on your first payment · cancel any time.