Amazon has millions of shoppers on its site everyday. They are all there looking for something they can’t find in the store, are trying to avoid shopping in person, or are looking for a deal. No matter the reason for them being there, the fact that they are gives you an opportunity to sell to them.
Amazon is essentially an army of private sellers who use their platform to make money. One way to be a seller on Amazon is to try retail arbitrage which is simply buying an item on sale and reselling it for more money on Amazon. You can find deals all the time at stores like Walmart or even at yard sales that can then be sent to Amazon to be fulfilled by their warehouse.
In this article, we will go over some of the more important aspects to doing retail arbitrage on Amazon.
Table of Contents
Fast delivery
Getting your product into the fulfillment center quickly is one of the most important aspects to making money with retail arbitrage. Since it is not your own product, it is safe to assume that many other sellers will be sending the same exact product to Amazon as well. You should have the listing up and running and ready to buy before anybody else.
Buyers are always on the site so your product could be sold the very same day it’s listed if you’re lucky. If there are others flooding the listing when yours arrives then it could get lost in the crowd. Not only that, but when your product is the lone one, you can set whatever price you want. With others under the listing you’ll need to lower your price to get the buy box which means less profit.
Use a same day courier like www.californiacourierservices.com to get the package to the fulfillment center as soon as possible.
Pick good sellers
Since you aren’t just manufacturing one specific product, you are free to choose whichever ones will sell well and bring you the most profit. This means that you should shop carefully and pick the items that you know there is demand for.
A general rule of thumb is that toys, electronics, and home goods sell well. If you stick to items in those three categories then you are off to a good start. However, you should also take some time to research specific types of products that do well on Amazon.
Check out the BSR number in the listing and when you see a low number, under 100,000 for example, then this means that this product sells multiple units per day. If you find that product on sale somewhere then it is a great candidate to sell.
Determine ROI
Before you buy the item to sell, add up all the fees you will encounter including the shipping to Amazon and figure out what your ROI will be. This is the most important factor in determining if you are going to make money from doing retail arbitrage.