Online Arbitrage Overview

This module covers online arbitrage: finding products on retailer websites instead of on shop shelves. This first lesson sets out what changes and what the module contains.

Do the retail module first

If you have skipped the Retail Arbitrage module, go back to it. That is not a formality. The tools are largely the same, and the mechanics you learned there apply unchanged:

• The Amazon Seller app scans a barcode on a screen exactly as it scans one on a box.
• Keepa is read the same way, whichever kind of shop the product came from.
• Listing, labelling, prepping and shipping do not change at all.

Better still, do some retail arbitrage before continuing. Having bought, prepped and shipped real stock changes how you read a deal, because you know what the fees actually took and how long it took to sell.

The definition

Online arbitrage is retail arbitrage with the shop replaced by a website. You find a product priced low enough on a retailer's site, buy it, and resell it on Amazon.

The judgement is identical: cost against Amazon selling price, minus fees, with enough demand to sell it in reasonable time. Nothing about what makes a good product changes.

What does change

• Scale. Every retailer that ships to you is available, rather than the shops you can drive to.
• Competition. A web page is visible to every seller at once, so good deals go quickly and margins are usually thinner than in a shop.
• Automation is possible. Because it is all screens and data, software can search for you. That is what Arbitrage Hero does and it is the main subject of the second half of this module.
• Delivery is a cost. The retailer's postage is part of your cost of goods, in a way it never is in a shop.

What is in this module

The order is deliberate. Manual methods first, so you understand what any tool is doing on your behalf, then the tooling.

1. Getting Ready For Online Arbitrage. A short lesson on the buying setup that improves your margin on every purchase before you have found a single product.
2. Perfect Manual Sourcing. Working through a retailer site by hand.
3. Finding Limitless Product Ideas. Where candidates come from once the obvious clearance pages are exhausted.
4. Sourcing With Arbitrage Hero. Software doing the comparison across hundreds of retailers.
5. Advanced Product Analysis. Judging the shortlist properly.
6. Managing Returns and Reimbursements and Managing Stranded Inventory. The housekeeping that quietly costs money if nobody does it.

Learn the manual method even if you intend to use software from the first day. A tool produces a list of candidates and you still have to decide which to buy. If you have never done the comparison by hand, you cannot tell when the tool is wrong, and it sometimes will be.