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Online Arbitrage For Beginners

In today’s post, I want to go through the first steps of starting a new online arbitrage business.

I think a lot of people jump into selling on Amazon using online arbitrage as a base point. But I do think a lot of people get it wrong, make mistakes, and also I think a lot of people get disillusioned and give up.

Before really getting into any decent profit a lot of the complaints I get with online arbitrage is there is too much competition, there’s too much undercutting, I can’t find enough profitable items. My stock is taking too long to sell. Now, all of these issues can be solved by running this business correctly. If you’ve got these problems it means you’re not doing it right, as far as I’m concerned.

I wanted to create this post to show you what I think is the best way to run this business. It means you’re in profit, you’re going to make a lot more profit, and you’ll be able to build a long-term sustainable business this way. If you’re just getting started and it’s not quite working out the way you want it to, or you’re about to get started, then this is a really important post because I think is going to help you a lot.

To kick it off, let’s very briefly cover what online arbitrage is.

It’s a very posh sounding name, but ultimately all it is is finding cheap and discounted items online via retail websites, buying those items, and selling them on Amazon using the FBA method. The principle behind this business is simply a method of filtering the data that you can find online, to make a factual data-driven decision on what to buy in order to maximize your profits on Amazon using FBA. Now, the backend process is relatively automated and taken care of with Amazon. All we have to concentrate on is buying well. Everything else is just a procedure. It’s straightforward, it’s easy to learn.

The real talent and the real key comes in buying and making well-thought-out buying decisions. Once you hit that right, then it’s just a case of rinse and repeat. You really can semi-automate this, scale it up very easy and make an awful lot of money. But there are some principal mistakes that a lot of people make and I see it time and time again. I see the sellers on Amazon. It’s obvious they’re new sellers, and they’re making those mistakes time and time again. It’s always the new sellers.

If you’ve been watching my YouTube channel for a while, you will know one of my primary pet hates is unnecessary price cutting or penny-pinching. Is usually a habit brought over from eBay. Because a lot of eBay sellers come on to Amazon and try amazon out using the arbitrage process but are effectively still in the eBay mindset, and bring their eBay habits to Amazon. That’s your first major mistake. Amazon is not eBay. It does not work the same way.

In fact, Amazon’s major strengths is it’s not eBay. It does not work in the same way. If you are an eBay seller or you have been an eBay seller and you’re looking to get started on Amazon, try to look at it with a fresh insight and a fresh perspective. Because if you bring your eBay habits to Amazon, you will cause yourself problems. The major issue comes down to competition.

If you stop reading right now, take note of this one sentence as being the primary sentence of this entire piece. And if you listen to one thing, listen to this.

You do not need to be the cheapest on Amazon.

You don’t need to be a penny cheaper than the other guy on Amazon. You don’t need to be two pennies cheaper than the other guy. You don’t need to be $3 or £5. You just don’t need to be.

If you match the lowest price of the other FBA seller, not the other merchant fulfill seller, but the other FBA seller on Amazon, you will share that buy box which means if there’s just you and one other person, every other person that clicks on that listing will see your item on the buy box. Which means you’ll get 50% of the traffic and 50% of the sales. If there are three of you, then you’ll get every third one. That means you can keep the price higher, and still get the sales. Because, ultimately, what happens when you go two pennes cheaper than the other guy, he’s going to come back and say, “Son of a–” And go two pennes cheaper than you.

Then a new seller will come in and say, “Oh, I need to be the cheapest.” So he’ll then be five pence cheaper than you. If you think you’re going to undercut the current seller by two P and remain the cheapest, you’re dreaming. Because the next guy will come and do the same thing to you. By undercutting the last person by two pence or five P. You’re not just taking off two pence or five P, you’re initiating a steady decline in profits.

Because the next person will go, and the next person will go, and it will slowly go down and go down and go down, and that will keep going down until the lowest common denominator, until the person who is willing to take the least profit. Or the person who is desperate enough not to be left holding on to the stock and needs to get rid of his stocks, he’s going to go even lower to the point where maybe he doesn’t even have profit. Or he’s barely breaking even just because he’s desperate to get rid of his stocks or worried he’s not going to get his money back.

Don’t do that. Do not do that.

You’re not helping yourself. You’re pissing off other experienced sellers who are trying to make real profit. They’re making the buying decisions based on the profit that they want. You are then coming in and undermining that listing which provokes other people to do the same which only results in one thing. You are making less money, and most of the time it means you make very little.

What is the point? You still going to go out buy something, have it delivered, label it, repackage it, and send it in. There is an element of work involved in this. If you end up undercutting each other to the point where you’re not making any money, you might as well go and get a job in McDonald’s. Because you’re going to be working for less than minimum wage. That is not what this business is about.

There are two different types of people that undercut. One, is the person that I’ve described, the beginner. They’re the people that have just started. They usually buy one, two or three items, and they go straight in and undercut people. Now the second type of undercutter is a different scenario, these are large scale corporate companies that are buying on massive wholesale orders. They usually have their own warehouses and truckloads coming in on a daily basis. They’re going to be pricing to an algorithm. They’re going to be using re prices, and they simply have far too much volume to be able to individually price their listings, and look at the competition and make educated pricing decisions.

So it’s all algorithmic. They want to dominate the listing. They want to go in there. They’re quite happy to make 15% or even 12% or 10% profit margin because they’re selling thousands of items a day. If they can make a pound or a dollar net profit on every single item, they’re golden, because they’re making thousands of dollars a day. That is their business concept, and it works for them because it’s sheer volume. Massive volume.

But that’s not what we’re doing. We’re not in that business. They are not our competition. If those sellers have those items, you either have to assess whether you can make money at that point. And quite often you can, because their wholesale price is quite often not as competitive as an online arbitrage item. In a 70% or 80% sale, you’re going to get items cheaper than wholesale. You might be able to match that price. If so, great. Otherwise, if you have got those guys with 500 items in stock and it’s below what you can make a profit on, then just move on. There’s plenty more opportunities out there. So you don’t have to compete with those guys.

Hopefully, I’ve got that point across to anyone that may be of thoughts about undercutting their competition. Now that I’ve got that little rant out of the way, let’s look into the mechanics of making a buying decision. A lot of the time the tool I use for my online arbitrage is FBA wizard. It’s a piece of software that you can use that massively speeds up the process of looking and highlighting profitable stock that’s available on live for you then to sell on Amazon. Let me be clear, you don’t need this software to run the business but it’s a good tool when you start scaling up. Because you couldn’t search and filter through a much larger amount of potential stock than you can on your own.

I’m showing you what I use, but if you’re just starting out and you have a relatively limited budget, you don’t need to get this straight away. You can do this yourself manually. This is a time saving and scaling tool. This tool should be paid for with your arms and profits within the first month. There’s no reason why you shouldn’t be making at the very least enough to pay for this, and to be honest with you should be 10 times more in your first 30 days without a problem.

If you’re just getting started I would suggest practice without this first, get a few purchases under your belt, get used to the buying and selling process. Then you can grab this once you start scaling. If you feel like you’ve got a good idea of the online arbitrage process, there’s a link in the description box below for FBA wizard. It’s my affiliate link, so I’ll get a small commission from FBA wizard for recommending you and sending you over there. It doesn’t affect the price you pay it’s exactly the same anyway, so that might be worth bearing in mind.

If, however, you’re just getting started and you still got a bit to learn in this process, then my advice is just hold off. Definitely, something that will add a lot more profit to your business and a lot more scale, but wait until you have a bit more experience when you can make better a more effective use of it.

 

Coming up in part two of this series I’m going to be explaining the mechanics of a buying decision. How to understand a keepa graph, the key elements that make up a consistent effective buying decision. When some deals look like a good buy and are definitely not. I’ll show you how to understand the whole supply and demand concept.

Any questions let me know in the comments.

FBA Wizard Arbitrage Tool: https://wholesale-help.com/FBAwizard

FBA Academy Coaching Course: https://wholesale-help.lpages.co/fba-academy-lives-session-recordings/

Filed Under: Wholesale Articles

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Amazon FBA Training Now Available Online

fba-academyIf you have been following my YouTube channel for a while you may already know that a few times a year I hold an Amazon FBA training course in Kensington London. I teach course attendees the whole structure of arbitrage selling from what to buy, how to use research data to make a fact-based buying decision and then how to scale the business into a full-time income.

Previous students have created some very profitable businesses as a result of the training and some will be leaving their 9-5 employment as a result.

I have been asked for quite some time if I would teach this course online but I have always said that it wasn’t an option because I felt that the content needed a live training approach in order to provide real-time feedback.  But there were so many people watching my YouTube videos that lived all over the world and couldn’t get to London for the course so I wanted to find a way.

I’m pleased to say that I have now found a way to teach this course via live online training webinars that will be recorded. This allows me to take the class but also to answer questions from the students live, and follow up with them via the graduates’ group where I will be on hand to ensure they put the training into practice.

Each time I have taken the class in London I have noted any questions added additional content and enhanced the training so that at this stage I believe it is the best way to learn to make a life-changing income via Amazon FBA.

The course will open for registrations on Sunday, the registration period will only be open until all the places are filled and then the training sessions will begin. They will be held in the evenings with each session being available to watch the following day. At the end of the course, all the session recordings will remain available indefinitely to re-watch and review.

After the course every student will have access to the graduates’ private group, where students can discuss things ask questions, graduates from previous training will be on hand to offer help and advice along with some words of encouragement.

Everyone will have their own follow up time where they can talk to me one on one and make sure they are on track and follow the steps to build their Amazon business. There will be no one left behind on this course, support will always be available in the group and you can go at your own pace that suits you.

If you would like to take the course it doesn’t open until Sunday but you can sign up for early notification by clicking the link below, once signed up you will be the first to know when registration opens.

http://www.fbaacademy.net
This is the biggest thing I’ve done online and I’m really excited about helping more people ditch their jobs and live life on their own terms if you want to join me, the fun starts very soon!

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Auction Fundamentals Has Arrived!

auction-fundamentalsAfter six months in the works my newest eBay tutorial course is finally ready to launch.This is the second eBay training product I have produced, the first being a DVD course that is now a few years old and in need of an update.

But rather than updating the eBay course I decided to create a whole new course from the ground up. It takes you through the business building process right from opening an eBay and Paypal account all the way through niche selection, product buying, listing, templates and even customer service and keeping your 100% feedback.

So if you are new to eBay or if you have been selling for a while but not managed to get to make it earn as much as you would like this course will help you achieve your goals.
Take a look at the short intro video for more information..

https://wholesale-help.leadpages.co/auction-fundamentals/

Filed Under: eBay, eBay Sellers Tips & Tricks, Wholesale Articles Tagged With: ebay, ebay course, ebay traning, ebay traning course

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How to Use eBay Templates

eBay listing templates are a good way to display your items in a clear and clean way so the potential buyer can see the information they want and make decision. Some eBay sellers make the mistake of cluttering their listings with cross promotion items and too many graphics which will confuse the eBay search engine and could be detrimental to your search rankings plus it looks really bad too!

Keep your eBay listings simple, easy to read and this will pay off in more sales conversions and a better buying experience for your eBay customers.

In this YouTube video not only will I be showing you step by step how to use eBay templates but i will be giving you my eBay templates for free!

I had my graphic designer put together this pack of templates especially for this series and so you can follow along with this video and build clear and professional looking eBay auctions that will maximize your sales.

You can make the video bigger by clicking on the bottom right of the screen.

Let me know what you think in the comments below.

 

 

 

Filed Under: eBay, eBay Sellers Tips & Tricks, Wholesale Articles

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Terapeak and Alibaba Have Joined Forces!

Big news this week as online eBay and Amazon research big hitter Terapeak have joined forces with Chinese eCommerce giant Alibaba to integrate inventory sourcing within the testing and tracking platform of Terapeak.

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To mark this momentous occasion I jumped up and down on the Terapeak big wigs and a free membership fell out! So I will be holding a competition this week where you can win a full years professional membership to Terapeak so stay tuned to the Wholesale Help YouTube Channel for more info on how you can enter.

This collaboration in my opinion is really good news for us eBay sellers, it cuts down the time needed for niche research dramatically and enables you to get straight to the data you need to make the correct buying decision.

If you haven’t heard of Terapeak and you sell on eBay then you need to know about it, it’s a powerful research and analysis tool that harnesses the live data from eBay and tells you what the hottest selling products are, how often they are selling, what day of the week they are selling what time of the day, who your competitors are and what they are selling the most of. In short its gives you all the data you need to choose profitable products to sell on eBay and Amazon, plus helping you find new opportunities and enhance your current sales.

You can also connect your eBay accounts and keep track of your own sales performance and listing strategies.I have had a Terapeak membership for over two years now and I use it often to check up on new niche opportunities and tweak my current listings that need a boost.

Enter Alibaba!

This latest update for Terapeak sees a strategic collaboration with Alibaba, the go – to place for sourcing products to sell from China, so now as you are researching products you can click straight through to the exact product on Alibaba and check out the unit prices and get in touch with a supplier. I’ve have been playing with this feature over the last few days and it works perfectly, no miss communications, no dead links it all works as it should which is pretty impressive.

My only gripe is that currently there is no support for UK Amazon sellers within Terapeak it’s only for Amazon US right now which renders this feature useless for us Brits, but I understand this is being worked on as we speak and hopefully we will be able to make use of it soon.

So if you want to check out Terapeak right now you can grab a Free 7 day trial by clicking the banner below so you can see for yourself just how powerful this tool really is.

Terapeak Banner3

 

 

 

 

 

Filed Under: eBay, Wholesale Articles

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