How to Make Money With Retail Arbitrage

Want to make a little money on the side? You can use that old chestnut of ‘buy low sell high’ to your advantage. There are a ton of people making money selling on Amazon and eBay using retail arbitrage.  If you want to learn how to make money selling on Amazon we’ll teach you how to get started with retail arbitrage.

 Forty percent of Amazon sales come from third-party sellers.

 Their merchandise stored in Amazon’s warehouses. So clearly, there is money to be made. We talk to a master at selling on Amazon, Jordan Malik is not only an award-winning Amazon seller, he’s written a best-selling book on how to make eBay and Amazon selling work for you.

 Buying & Selling? No, It’s Retail Arbitrage

 Arbitrage is defined as, “The simultaneous purchase and sale of an asset in order to profit from a difference in the price.” Which is a fancy way of saying, buy low and sell high?

 The general idea is simply of finding products for a good price, maybe something on clearance which you are able to sell for profit. Most people seel through Amazon, because well, they are you can find anything online at a great price.

 For example, maybe you see a hair product on clearance at Walmart for $1.75 which is regularly selling on Amazon for $18.99. Clearly, you can make a huge profit here. So you buy it, send it to an Amazon warehouse using FBA and they ship it to you when it sells.

 Yes, it does entail a little more work than that but you get the idea. Let’s go a little deeper, shall we?

 What Are You Selling?

 If this sounds good to you so far, give Amazon selling a try. Start small, though. Go through your own things and sell a few on eBay and a few on Amazon.

 This will enable you to familiarize yourself with the way both sites work before you decide to jump in. It has the added bonuses of getting rid of some of your clutter, freeing up storage space and making you a few bucks with no outlay.

 Just checking what’s already selling on Amazon will show you what types of products are doing well. Choose a category and then Best Sellers. Monitor best sellers for a few days or even a few weeks to help make your decision. Within those items, choose some things you have some familiarity with.

 Video game consoles might be trending well but if you don’t know anything about them, you won’t know what you’re buying and won’t be able to answer seller questions.

 Jordan sold books for a time and was making $2000 a week at it! Books are a good category for a few reasons; they’re small, light, and fairly sturdy which makes them easy and inexpensive to pack and mail. Books are also readily available and cheap. Some libraries even give them away for free. Thrift shops are another good place to buy books, some are even selling them by the pound.

 Jordan recommends not falling in love with selling in just one category, though. You love books but so do a lot of other people. Be diversified in what items you sell.

 Sell on eBay or Sell on Amazon?

 If you have a “one of a kind” item, your Magnum PI lunch box, for example, eBay will be better. They also take some things that Amazon doesn’t sell, like used clothes and some used baby items.

 eBay is also better for large items, like cars and furniture. It’s more work to list things on eBay and more time consuming than to sell on Amazon.

 Amazon does a lot of the work for you because they have so many items, if they have something you want to sell already listed, you can skip things like uploading photos and writing detailed descriptions.

 Where To Buy Your Inventory

 Jordan doesn’t use wholesalers. It can tie up a lot of your money and unless you find a relatively unknown one or negotiate an exclusive contract with them, there is too much competition to make it worth his while.

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