My Top 2 Amazon Online Arbitrage Sourcing Methods

In this article, you will learn my top 2 Amazon online arbitrage sourcing methods that you can apply to your Amazon business.

Finding the right products to sell can be a time-consuming task, but with the right tools, it can be made much easier. I will discuss my top 2 fastest ways to find products on Amazon using tools I’ve personally used before. Whether you’re a beginner or an experienced seller, these tools will help you save time and increase your chances of success.

Topic Rundown:

• Introduction

• 3 tools I use when sourcing products on Amazon

  • SellerAmp

  • FBA multi-tool

  • Amazon DS Quickview

• My Top 2 Amazon online arbitrage sourcing methods

  • Reverse Sourcing

  • Storefront Stalking

• Top Tips

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 methods can help you find more deals to resell on Amazon. The two sourcing methods that we will be using in the next chapter are reverse sourcing and storefront stalking. 

Basically, reverse sourcing is a sourcing method where you begin sourcing products that sell well on Amazon and then find the supplier online. While storefront stalking is a way of finding deals by looking at what other sellers are selling IE going to their storefront, then you will stalk their storefront to find out what they are selling and find the suppliers.

3 tools I use when sourcing products on Amazon

SellerAmp

This is one important tool to consider. This calculator tool helps you evaluate the eligibility, competition, and profitability of potential products. It can also assist you in analyzing deals and determining if they meet your criteria. You can try it out for free for 14 days, but after that, you will be charged. 

When you shipped your first products and they are on sale on Amazon, my advice is to manually reprice them during the first week. This will give you a better understanding of how the buy box works and how other sellers’ repricers function.

To do this, adjust your prices and check back on them every hour to see how the competition has responded. It usually takes 15 to 30 minutes for competitors to update their prices, so an hour is enough time to observe any changes. Keep in mind that this approach is not suitable for long-term use but it is a good way to learn.

FBA multi-tool

In Fast Track FBA, we utilize a chrome extension tool to streamline the deal analysis process. This tool includes features such as:

• Checking product eligibility to sell

• Identifying Hazardous Material (Hazmat) items

• Verifying that Amazon is on the listing

• Calculating taxes and fees based on inputted Buy and Sell prices

• Displaying margin and return on investment (ROI)

• Providing sales estimation

This is one of the tools that comes with a cost, but it greatly improves the speed and efficiency of sourcing and analyzing deals. The entry-level package for this tool is around £20 for a couple of licenses, and the cost increases to £30 pounds for 8 licenses. While it may have a cost, the time saving it offers makes it well worth the investment.  

Amazon DS Quickview

To help you analyze the Amazon page, you need to use this tool and it’s going to show you the information at the bottom. It’s really nice and simple and can be easily understandable. A top tip for you is to make sure you put in your delivery address, and also make sure you’ve got your marketplace in the currency you want. 

My Top 2 Amazon online arbitrage sourcing methods

Reverse Sourcing

Step 1

Remember: reverse sourcing is the opposite of manual sourcing. 

What we want to do is start with the product or a brand. Something that works for you. Ideally, something that you’ve found that you’re ungated in already. What I recommend is a brand that’s going to work for your Amazon business. 

Let’s say Burt’s Bees. That is a product which I know we sold before and also we’re ungated in. So, that’s a top tip, especially if you’re a beginner. Let’s have a quick look at the layout of the screen and what’s going on with the use of Amazon DS quick view. 

We would want to avoid listings that Amazon’s on. If it says sold by Amazon, avoid that. Also, look at the sales rank (1,857, 385, and 19,507 in Beauty). This will tell you how fast the item is selling. Always remember that the lower the sales rank, the better. 

Step 2

You’ll also notice the sponsored tag. Avoid listings with sponsored tags at the top because they might not be selling as fast as we think they would sell. Since they’ve paid to be at the top.

Step 3

The thing I noticed right away is that it’s got a discount code. It says a -43% discount, and the price is also going down to £7.99. Now, I know that buying for £7.99 or buying lower than £7.99 to selling at the same price means you’re not really going to make any money. Your profit would be less than a pound. So, let’s skip that.

Step 4

The next product is selling at £23.82 and it’s got 8 FBA sellers. That’s good because it means there’s competition. Another meaning is that people are selling it. Also, the sales rank is at 40,000 – that’s good and I like that. So let’s load it up.

Step 5

As we can see in the FBA multi-tool; we can check the estimated ROI of the product by percentage. And at the bottom part, let's confirm if we can sell this product. 

Yes, we can sell it, not a HazMat, is eligible to sell, and not a dangerous good – all green, that’s good. So now, we’re going to be looking for a supplier based on the percentage we want from the calculator. For example, 20% – £12.43 is the ideal price.

Step 6

Let’s have a good look at the Keepa graph. There are 11 sellers on the listing, which is normal but not too bad. You can also see the listing is being sold by FBM and FBA, we can see that sellers are coming and going, which is good. Let’s also check the sales drop, which is good; it’s at 17 drops a month. Checking the sales drop gives you an idea of sales. Also, we want units to actually sell.

Step 7

Now that we’ve checked on this, it’s time to go look for suppliers. Let’s have a look and straight off, free delivery. That’s not going to increase my costs and also we have a 15% off. What we want to do is think about the actual product itself. Is it the same kind? So, just go through it and carefully check all the contents, the appearance, and the size.

After calculating the price minus the 15% off, we got £11.89 per unit. It’s now time to input that data into our calculator so that it can calculate it for us. The profit would be £2.93 per unit sold while the ROI (Return on Investment) is at 24.64%, which is not bad. And that is reverse sourcing!

Storefront stalking

Remember: storefront stalking is finding another competitor of ours in the marketplace and then using the reverse sourcing method to find where they bought their products from. And hopefully, we can sell them as well. Obviously, that’s going to help us.

Step 1

The first thing to do is jump into a product that you can sell that other FBA sellers are also selling. Ideally, you would want at least 3 other FBA sellers on the listing to start the storefront stalking. You should also check if you can sell it and not a HazMat by taking a look at the FBA multi-tool.

Step 2

Always look at the Keepa chart and look at how many sellers are on the listing. As you can see under the offer section, we’ve got multiple FBA sellers, which means other people are on the listing. This also means that I can look at what they’re selling and see if I can find any of their suppliers as well. What I’m going to do is hover over each of the FBA sellers and look at the review counts. Ideally, about 100 to 200, but anyone below that might be a beginner.

Step 3

We can click on that and this is going to load up; this is a part of the new functionality of SAS. It’s going to show you information about the seller, the brand, the rating count, and how many products they’ve got. 

Step 4

Other than that, you can also see all their top-selling items. When scanning for competitors' products, check the BSR (the lower the better), the Max costs – if you were to try to buy that product to make it profitable offers, and then the Buy box. After checking, we can see that the seller’s price is £18.99 while the Buy box’s price is £17.50. Remember to be mindful of that.

Step 5

We go to this Beauty of Joseon, we can sell this product as a beginner. Do you remember what we did at reverse sourcing? Do the same process we did at reverse sourcing. 

After checking one product from storefront stalking, you can continue doing this process with other products using storefront stalking first and then doing the reverse sourcing.

Top Tip

Try different sourcing methods

What I will say is that using different sourcing techniques can help you get more deals. So try combining different sourcing methods like reverse sourcing plus storefront stalking. By doing this, you can turn 1 deal into 5,10, or even 20.

Subscribe to different stores' newsletters

This will help you get notified of their discounts and sales. So if you want to look for cheap products and be updated on their promos, you might as well subscribe to your supplier’s newsletters.

Build a list of top stores and products.

Building a list of top stores & products that are working really well for you can help you form something called replenishables–which are products reordered. And let me tell you this, having replenishables saves you time from sourcing!