I am very critical of the ultra-rich and giant corporations which makes me pretty hypocritical by working for Amazon one way or another.
The first passive income stream I started with Amazon was the affiliate program. You may have noticed the amazon products and banner ads on my site, well that's the affiliate program in effect. Every time someone clicks one of the links they are redirected to Amazon. Once there, if the person purchases anything, the affiliate collects a portion from Amazon's profits while the customer's experience and cost are the same.
I also self-published two books through Amazon's publishing branch KDP.
The books are sold in e-book and paperback formats. Amazon handles the customer transactions as well as the creation and delivery of the books across the world.
Lastly, I recently signed up for the Amazon Merch program which lets you design clothing. Amazon handles the printing and shipping as well as all of the customer interactions for the sales of your shirts, while you are responsible for creating unique designs and collecting your royalties. Click here to see the first shirt!(available on amazon.com only.)
I find the quality of Amazon's print on demand to be top-notch and the convenience they offer is unbeatable.
Unfortunately, there are some flaws in working with Amazon.
For instance, with the Affiliate Program, actual royalties are slim to none but that has to be my own fault by not driving enough traffic to the site.
When it comes to self-publishing, the book quality itself is amazing. They do a great job and are extremely fast printing and delivering but the ability for the author to order copies for themselves at cost is a privilege afforded to Americans and not Canadians like myself.
So I end up paying full price for a copy of my own book, big deal, it's worth it for the phenomenal job and ease of actual creation.
My last gripe is with Amazon Merch which handles the print on demand shirts. A bit of a slap in the face to Canadians is the fact that the products aren't available to us. We Canucks are allowed to participate in the program and sell our creations, but not to our fellow Canadians, instead the shirts are only available on amazon.com, .co.uk, and .de.
To me, there are more positives than negatives with working with Amazon for passive income and as hard as I am on Jeff Bezos and other elites, I am truly impressed with Amazon and appreciate the opportunities for income.