In this article, let’s talk about Amazon arbitrage sourcing hacks that you should know as an Amazon seller.
Do you want to save time sourcing products to retail on Amazon? I will discuss with you the 9 core tips and tricks that every Amazon seller will need to know that will let their business flourish and grow. If you’re at all interested in learning new ways to source your products for your online arbitrage business, then this article is for you.
Introduction
One of the most challenging parts of online arbitrage is finding products to sell on Amazon. Now, as a beginner on Amazon, learning about different sourcing hacks can help you save time and also help you find deals more efficiently.
That is why I’m going to share with you some of the sourcing hacks we do in our own Amazon business that are going to help you find deals efficiently.
Amazon product criteria to take note
If you are looking for products to if you say resell on the Amazon Marketplace with the goal of say buying low from retailers online to resell high on the Amazon Marketplace, you will also want to think about product criteria when sourcing online
You want to find out the product’s eligibility to sell
This is basically knowing if Amazon will let you sell a certain product or not. There’s no point in buying a product if Amazon won’t let you sell it. Make sure you can check that eligibility to sell.
Hazmat check
As you may or may not already know, we use Amazon Fulfillment or the FBA fulfillment by Amazon. This is basically where Amazon does all the shipping and prepping of the product.
With that being said, checking if an item is hazardous is of the utmost importance, because you want to make sure that Amazon will actually accept said product into their warehouses.
If a product is hazardous, then Amazon will not be able to store it in their warehouses, which means that you’d have to do the packaging and shipping of the product yourself, which you may find tedious or downright impossible if you’re not in the country of origin that you plan to sell the product.
Avoid competing with Amazon
It is quite hard to compete against Amazon, remember it’s their marketplace, and you won’t be able to guarantee that you’d be able to get a fair chance of winning that Buy Box. So, if Amazon is on the listing 9 times out of 10, they probably might not share.
If you find that Amazon is a competitor in that product, move on to the next one.
Check for the best-seller rank
It helps you understand if there is a demand for the product you wish to sell, and it also tells you how that demand has progressed over time. In my business, we usually go for sales ranks that are no more than 100,000 in the UK and generally around 200,000 in the USA.
If it exceeds those sales ranks, then we’ll probably skip that and move on to the next product.
Look for seasonal products
Why are you considering seasonality when it comes to sourcing? Basically, we do not want to be selling seasonal products at the wrong time. If you buy products at the wrong time, you’re going to be losing money, because you’d have to hold on to that stock, and it won’t sell.
The size and weight of the product
We want to make sure that the product is not too large, not only because big products in Amazon mean higher FBA fees but also because getting those products to Amazon is going to cost us more and we’re going to put less of them in a box, as a result, that will eat into your profits.
Get the Top 15 FBA Tasks to Outsource to Amazon Virtual Assistants
These 15 Top FBA Tasks To Outsource To Amazon Virtual Assistants are based on my own experience of running an Amazon Arbitrage business. I have taken the key tasks that make the biggest impact on my business and put them into this list, to help you in your business.
- These are the tasks I outsource
- I break it down into roles, sourcing, admin & purchasing
- This is regularly updated based on my actual business
- I explain what each tasks does and how it helps
- Use this to outsource your own business
9 Amazon arbitrage sourcing hacks
In this part of the article, I'm going to be talking about the different sourcing hacks. I'm going to categorize them into three areas:
- Tools
- Sourcing methods
- Automation and outsourcing
Tools
1: DS Amazon Quick View
What this tool does is, gives you information about a certain product and its data, such as its sales rank. It tells you if Amazon is listing, and it actually allows you to see it on the search page. Sourcing is a time-consuming process and, that is why having a tool to speed up your sourcing helps because you don’t need to open each item manually.
It can also tell you the number of sellers pertaining to a specific type of item. This is going to help you.
2: Installing Keepa and having the graph overlay setup
Basically, Keepa is a Chrome extension that provides a graph that shows the historical data of a Buy Box. What you’ll find in these graphs is the price history and the seasonality of the products. You can see all this data by using their graphs.
3: Seller Amp (SAS)
Seller Amp allows you to check things like I.P., hazmats, and dangerous goods. It also allows you to see if you’re eligible to sell a certain product and all this information you can access very quickly. You can also find the BSR sales for a month, and you can also encode a certain amount of the product you want to buy and it’s going to work out for you the profits you’d make. This tool has a lot to offer.
You may also come across a situation wherein you are eligible to sell the product, but there is a symbol entailing that the specific product is dangerous goods. Now, how will you navigate that situation? It basically means that you are able to sell it. If you are part of the Dangerous Goods program Amazon, if not, you won’t be able to sell the product or ship it to Amazon.
Sourcing Methods
4: Storefront Stalking
This is a way of finding deals by looking at what other sellers are selling. You're going to stalk their storefront to find out what they're selling and then go and find the suppliers for the products they're selling now.
If you feel like you need a step-by-step tutorial on how to do that, I made a previous article about my Top 2 sourcing methods that focus on Storefront stalking and Reverse sourcing.
5: Deal Websites
Deal websites are like a deal platform that provides a list of low prices of deals shared by other Amazon sellers or even just thrifty shoppers who like cheap deals. Using deal websites like HotUKDeals or LatestDeals in the UK and in the US, we have SlickDeals and BrickSeek. They can help you discover more deals by understanding what other sellers or other shoppers are looking at.
Expect when you are buying these products that they're likely to have a lot of competition, since a lot of other Amazon sellers are going to be checking these deals websites very regularly.
If you want to know more about deal websites, I have made a video about the topic of three profitable deal websites that can help you in your Amazon arbitrage UK experience.
6: Look for a product with no sales rank and use a review count
Sometimes Amazon doesn't record sales rank data. Instead, we’re going to look at the review count of the product that we think we want to be selling. By checking the review count and estimating an amount based on how many reviews there are, you can see if the item is actually selling, based on the frequency of reviews and the dates the reviews were posted.
Then, we can go find the supplier and the net result is that we can now find a product that most other sellers are going to skip because they can't see the sales rank data.
7: Keepa offers count
How does this help you? Basically, by checking the Keepa offers count, you can see how competitive a listing is, and you can see how an item has been doing over an extended period.
The thing about Amazon is it’s a marketplace. It follows the rules of economics, supply, and demand. When demand is greater than supply, prices go up, but when supply is greater than demand, prices generally go down.
What are we looking for? We’re looking for situations whereby fewer sellers, i.e. new offer count is going down, you’ll notice shortly thereafter that the prices go up. Because the amount of supply is decreasing, causing the prices to go up.
Automation and Outsourcing
8: Deals or Leads List
Is a subscription-based resource that provides you with multiple profitable arbitrage deals which you can decide for yourself if you want to buy in order to resell on Amazon.
Now, I really recommend a deals list for anyone who's just getting started or is at the beginning of their Amazon journey. Why? As an Amazon seller just getting started, you’re going to get overwhelmed by the number of products you have to buy, all the worries. By having deals lists, you’re going to have an idea of which items are profitable to sell, quite simply, this is going to save you a lot of time for finding deals and also finding what types of deals you might be interested in.
9: Outsourcing your business
For sellers who built their business in certain areas, you can afford to outsource various tasks in your business you might want to think about getting a virtual assistant which will help you scale your Amazon business.
Now, an Amazon virtual assistant is going to work remotely in an area of your business and will provide help for you. This is so you can take some of the burdens off your shoulders, which will free up your time to focus on bigger projects that will help you grow your money and scale your business. Allowing you time to work on your business rather than working in your business.
If you’re in doubt as to when you should start thinking about hiring a virtual assistant, I have made an article on that topic that will educate you about the correct time when you should hire a virtual assistant for your Amazon business.
Which Amazon arbitrage sourcing hack will you use?
Apart from teaching you all my 9 Amazon arbitrage sourcing hacks and tips. Hopefully, you’ve gleaned some helpful information from this article. And if you're still eager to learn more about where we get our best deals for both UK and USA, you can check out our previous article that enumerates all websites and retailers we use to grow our Amazon business.