How to Make Money With Alexa Skills, With NO Experience

how to make money with alexa skills

Can You Make Money With Alexa Skills And NO Experience?

Before we get started, let me confirm that it is possible to make money with Alexa skills. Most Alexa skills are available to anyone free of charge, but there are methods to very easily make money from the skills you create (more on this later).

Not only that, but you can even earn money from Alexa skills if you have no coding knowledge/experience by using Amazon’s simple no-code step-by-step Alexa blueprints. Getting your own skill onto any Echo device worldwide has never been easier.

These blueprints will allow anyone to make an Alexa skill in minutes, which you can then monetize.

How to Create an Alexa Skill with Alexa Skill Blueprints

As mentioned, you can create your Alexa skill (and make money from it) with zero need to write any code. Amazon’s Alexa Skill Blueprints allows you to create an Alexa skill by filling in a step-by-step form, that you can then publish for free.

Many blueprints are available (thirty to fifty depending on your country):

Alexa Skill Blueprints Examples
An example of some of the Alexa Blueprints you can use to make no-code step-by-step skills.

Steps to create an Alexa Blueprint Skill:

The process to create an Alexa Blueprint Skill is very straightforward. Running through these steps can take as little as a few minutes and literally anyone can do it:

  1. Think of a problem, or need that your skill will solve. Or something you’d like to see as a skill.
  2. Go to your country’s Alexa Skills BluePrint page:
  3. You’ll need to fill in some details for your “developer account”. Don’t worry though, you won’t actually need to develop or code anything!
  4. Now, choose a matching blueprint. We suggest “What to do” for random choice type skills, or Q&A for informational type skills.
  5. Follow the steps in the blueprint and fill in the content, choose sounds to accompany it, etc. You’ll also add in the trigger phrase.
  6. Save it. At this point, it is available only to you. You can test it on your own Alexa device by saying your trigger word chosen in the previous step.
  7. Once you’re happy with it, click on your skill back in Alexa Skill Blueprints and choose “Publish to Skills Store”.
  8. You’ll now need to enter some extra details such as the name of the skill, a description, and tags. Amazon even has a logo builder so you can create your skill’s logo with no design experience!
  9. Then, you wait for 1-2 days for it to be reviewed and approved.
  10. And after that, you’re officially published on the Alexa Skills Store and ready to start earning money from your skill.

So, now you have your skill created it’s time to actually learn how to make money with your Alexa skill.

For a full in depth walkthrough of how to create a no-code Alexa Skill in minutes check our detailed step by step article on how to create a No-Code Alexa Skill.

5 Ways to Make Money From Your Alexa Skill

As we’ve mentioned, Alexa skills are available free of charge (at least those created with Alexa Skill Blueprints), so that leads to the question, how exactly do you earn money from the Alexa skills you create?

Read on to see 5 ways to do exactly that.

#1 Alexa Developer Rewards

The first way to earn from your Alexa skills requires absolutely no input from you. Simply by publishing your skill, you are automatically entered into Amazon’s Alexa Developer Rewards program.

Alexa developer rewards
You are auto-enrolled in Alexa developer rewards.

How much you earn is dependent on how much interaction there is with your skill. The more people that use it and share it with others the more you can earn. Amazon will select the skills with the highest interaction and pay you, potentially up to $/£1,000s.

Currently, the program is active in the USA, UK, Germany, Japan, France, Italy, Spain, Australia, New Zealand, and India.

However, you will be competing against traditionally developed skills. You may get lucky and earn by your skill going viral but we suggest that you do not assume that you will earn through this program.

But, there are other ways to ensure that you can earn money from your Alexa skill:

#2 Finding a Community & Getting Donations

As we mentioned at the beginning, your skill should solve a problem or fulfill a need. If that need or problem is related to a certain community online, let’s say for example Playstation gamers, football fans, movie buffs, etc., then they are your target audience.

communities

Check out subreddits on Reddit, Facebook groups, or niche websites with forums and integrate with the community. Once you’ve been a part of the community for a while (posting, replying, etc.), start a new topic and introduce your FREE Alexa skill, and explain what problem it solves for them.

You’d be surprised just how generous people can be when you create something they enjoy, that is related to their passion.

Within that post, drop your Patreon or Buy Me A Coffee link but make it clear they are in no way inclined to donate but that you would appreciate it. If your skill is appreciated and of course, if people have some spare funds, they’ll donate to support you for creating the skill.

Just make sure you’re not spamming. Remember, you’re providing something free and helpful to the community.

buy me a coffee
Use Buy Me A Coffee for subscriptions and one-off payments.

Rinse and repeat with other communities, and when you update your skill, pop an update in to refresh people’s memories and increase the chances of donations.

If you’re unfamiliar with Patreon or Buy Me A Coffee, they allow your supporters to pay for a monthly subscription/donation to your (Patreon) or give you a one-off donation (Buy Me A Coffee) to support you and your work.

#3 Share Your Alexa Skill as a Premium Service

When you publish an Alexa skill, you’re granting free public access to anyone who wants it. However, there is another option that allows you to make money directly with your Alexa skill.

With Alexa Skill Blueprints you can choose to share instead of publishing your skill. This will mean that only people that you directly share the skill with via the Alexa Skill Blueprints site will be able to access and download it.

So how exactly will sharing the skill earn you money?

If you run a blog, website or social media account related to your skill, you can offer your members, readers or followers exclusive access to the skill in exchange for a one-time payment, or monthly subscription.

Again, you’ll utilize Patreon and/or Buy Me A Coffee to take payments but instead of it being an optional donation, it is a paid service.

You can promote your skill directly on your website/social media account or better yet in your newsletter. The newsletter approach means that you already know that the people you’re addressing are interested enough to at least subscribe to your content for free. Some will be willing to pay for something extra, something premium.

One thing you need to bear in mind is that people that pay for premium access to your share link, can then share that link themselves. So, you need to accept that this will work on an “honesty model” where you trust people to not forward it on. Or at least you need to accept that some people will act in bad faith and share your paid content (such is life on the internet, unfortunately). But regardless, with this method, you will earn money that would have otherwise been left on the table.

#4 Advertise Inside Your Skill

marketing strategy

When publishing your skill, you’re asked the question “Does your skill contain advertisements or marketing.” This is Amazon hinting at our next way to earn via in-skill adverts.

In Alexa Skill Blueprints you have complete control over what Alexa says as part of your skill, especially the introduction. You can use this to your advantage to advertise in the following ways:

  1. Add the phrase “This skill is brought to you by ‘my site’ at ‘www.mysite.com’, visit for more info on ‘xyz'”.
  2. Add phrases that Advertise another skill that you’re serving through the premium share option (#3) – direct them to your site.
  3. Direct them to your Patreon/Buy Me A Coffee link (#2).
  4. Source an external partner and negotiate a price to include an ad for their company/product. Add in a phrase along the lines of “This skill is sponsored by ‘company name’, the leading manufacturer of ‘xyz’.

With this method, you’re using your free Alexa skill to make money by pushing users and traffic towards locations that you profit from.

Remember that Alexa skills are meant to be quick and to the point. Make sure that your advert or marketing is not too intrusive and that it is “short and snappy”. It needs to be quick and clean and let them get to the content of the skill asap.

#5 Get Paid to Create a Skill for Someone Else

You now know that you can create an Alexa skill with zero coding knowledge via Alexa Skill Blueprints but most people are completely unaware of this. And a lot of those that are, are under the wrong impression that it is still difficult.

You now know that it is a piece of cake, so you can approach local businesses, websites, etc., and offer to create a simple Alexa skill on their behalf (for a price).

To manage expectations, make sure you outline what is possible (and not possible) based on the available Blueprints in your region.

This can turn into a nice sideline business and you can even charge a small fee to update the skill in the future if your customer requires that service.

Remember, you’ll need to sign them up with Alexa Skills Blueprints (with their own account), so that when you’re done they retain control of their own skill.

Moving Beyond Alexa Skill Blueprints

If you’re based in the US and want to move beyond no-code skills, you can learn to code and create truly developed Alexa skills.

With this approach, you can actually choose to charge for your skill directly through Alexa. This will mean that when a user tries to use the skill, they will be prompted to accept payment.

Personally, I would never pay for an Alexa skill in this way and believe the earning potential of charging directly is not as effective as the options we’ve mentioned above. But, if you feel like trying this approach, it is of course an option.

Conclusion

For a service that essentially creates an Alexa skill for you, it is surprisingly easy to create a professional feeling skill.

Using our methods above you can legitimately earn money from Alexa skills that are usually free. Subscriptions, donations, marketing, and in-skill adverts are the pinnacle of turning a non-profit opportunity into an incredibly profitable opportunity.

Check Out Other Ways to Earn With no Prior Experience

This is just the beginning.

Earnologist provides hundreds of ways to earn money online with no need for prior experience or skills.

> Show me more ways to earn! <

Free Earning Guides & Reviews

Keep your earning journey going!

50+ Best Legit Paid Survey Sites in Australia Let’s take a look at the â€Ĥ

InboxPounds full review and earning guide. Is it worth your time and is it legit? Learn all about InboxPounds and how to use it to earn money online.

Money Making Sites/Apps Guides & Reviews At Earnologist we provide detailed reviews and guides â€Ĥ

We've spent time reviewing KashKick to give you this detailed breakdown. Is KashKick legit & how much can you earn: our own personal experience.