How to be Amazing at Amazon to Amazon Arbitrage

By Christopher Grant

November 28, 2016


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Amazon to Amazon arbitrage or Amazon flips (the current parlance for the Amazon crowd) can be a great way to make a profit selling on Amazon.

Basically, you find a product on Amazon that is priced lower than usual, buy it, then ship it back to Amazon via your FBA account and wait for the price to come back up.  Prices often bounce back quickly.  Especially if the demand is high or stock is low.  These are great opportunities to make a profit.

Let's dig in!

What Causes Prices to Dip

That is a great question.  I appreciate you asking.

There may be a flash sale.  Amazon’s algorithm may have had a hiccup.  A third party seller may not know what they are doing.  Maybe a repricer has gone haywire (I know this has happened very recently, but that is all I can say).

It doesn’t really matter what causes the price of a product to drop precipitously.  It just matters that you are able to be there when it happens.

How Can I Be There

Well, there are several ways.  Fortunately, they aren’t particularly hard either.  However, they may take some learning.

The first place to be is Keepa.  Click on the deals button in the top left corner.  It will show you all the price drops and update them every time you hit refresh.

Keepa Daily Drops

Over on the left side of the screen you can even use the filters to only show certain price drops by percentage, you can filter for seller, how old the price drop is, the price range of the item, and also sales rank.

Once you have all that set it is easy to sort them by newest and refresh for new price drops to show at the top.

A quick glance at the chart and a little math or a quick check with the Amazon Calculator Widget and you will know if the item is profitable for a flip.

Pro tip:  Follow the keepa notifier on twitter.  You can easily see what price alerts people have set up and possibly take advantage of them for yourself.

Use Software to Make Things Easier

Tactical Arbitrage has a built in Amazon to Amazon arbitrage feature.  It will search products on Amazon based on your criteria and will pull back items that are ripe for flipping.

If you want to learn more about the Amazon Flips feature inside of tactical Arbitrage you can check out my How To Guide.

Tactical Arbitrage Product Search

As you can see the Amazon Flips feature has a ton of filters for you to choose as you please.  You are also able to search bulk categories, bulk product codes (ASIN’s or UPC’s), as well as Best Seller categories if you have StoreFront Stalker Pro.

Once you have found some winners it is time to buy or set an alert for when the price dips back down to where you want.  You can do this easily with the keepa extension.  You can be notified via email, twitter, or even facebook.

Remember, look in many categories for flips.  Lots of people really like to focus on a particular category or two for amazon flips.  You shouldn’t.  You can find profitable items to resell in just about every category.

This feature pays easily pays for the $99 monthly subscription all by itself.  Plus you get product searches, reverse searches, and The Library search features and you can run all of them simultaneously.

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This Seems Hard (It's Not)

The vernacular of Amazon to Amazon arbitrage, reading charts, using software all seem hard.  But it really becomes second nature with a bit of practice.  Before you even make a purchase you can do mock trials with alerts and manual tracking to see if you would make a profit on a flip.  Once you feel a bit more comfortable it is time to practice with a little money.  I believe you always learn the best when you actually have some stakes in the game.

If you spend just a few hours and a few dollars on learning the process through trial and error (never go deep, always go wide on flips) you will be a master in no time.  I promise.

So, what tips and tricks do you have for Amazon to Amazon arbitrage?  Please share them in the comments below.

Chris

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  1. Great video Chris! First off, thank you for the information on A2A flips. I tried to locate more information on your blog about how to actually find a winner with A2A and watched the how to video. As I was watching the tail end of the video showing the flip results, and was extremely confused as the keepa charts on both of the top two items in your results showed that Amazon was actually in stock? Or is that a different time period and not current? Suggestion (don’t hate :D) It would be cool to see maybe a net profit result after calculating fba fees/shipping (using wieght of product) to better my decision making ability. I hope I can gain a better understanding of why maybe the top two items were worth more investigation, even though it appeared that Amazon was actually in stock. Thanks again Chris and great tutorials here.

  2. In order to buy from Amazon for reselling I believe that you need a buyers account & you should not use your prime personal account. Should the buyers account have a different email address and/or a different credit card from your seller account? Will I end up with 3 accounts (1 for personal, 1 for selling & 1 for buying)? Thanks.

  3. Chris–
    As a newbie, I really appreciate your videos. Quick question–If you are buying product for AZ to AZ flips on an AZ biz account with a different email, are you still using your name or biz name on the account? Do you use your storefront name? Sorry if these seem like stupid questions. Can you tell me where to find the policy you referenced in your video about not using our personal prime accts. in flipping. I believe it, just like to know exactly what AZ is and isn’t okay with since I’m brand new.
    Thanks!

    1. Thank you, Stacey. I really appreciate that!

      I have my business account n the name of my business. I use my LLC rather than my storefront name.

      The policy regarding resale with the use of your prime account can be found here: https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=13819201

      Also, this. “There are naive questions, tedious questions, ill-phrased questions, questions put after inadequate self-criticism. But every question is a cry to understand the world. There is no such thing as a dumb question.” -Carl Sagan

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