What is Retail Arbitrage?
Retail arbitrage is a side hustle where you visit brick-and-mortar stores such as a Walmart and buy items for a regular or discounted price and then list those items on popular marketplaces like Amazon and eBay and sell them for a higher price. 🤔
You might be wondering what the heck is this fancy word, arbitrage?
It’s just a word that means you’re buying low and selling high. There are more complex strategies and context for the word and the process of arbitrage, but we’ll cover those later in the article.
What are people selling during retail arbitrage?
All kinds of stuff.
Typically though you’ll find that most items are considered “cash and carry” or items that are small enough to fit in your car.
And that’s part of what makes retail arbitrage so appealing is that anyone can do it. If you have a little extra spending money to invest and a car to grab the items, then you’re well on your way to making a nice little side income.
AccelerList sees hundreds of thousands of items get listed on our platform each month and the items we see the most are:
- Books
- CDs
- Toys
- Household Items
- DVDs
- Vinyl Records
How can I get started doing this and making money?
It doesn’t take much.
The best place to see the quickest returns is on Amazon. If you want to buy items and keep them at your home until they are sold on Amazon than you are what they call a Merchant Fulfilled seller. This is the cheapest and easiest way on the platform.
The problem with that approach is that you end up having to store hundreds or thousands of items in your home while you wait for them to sell which could be counter productive or get you divorced.
Amazon has an FBA seller or Professional seller program where you can list items you buy on their website AND send those items into them. Once received in by Amazon they just sit in their warehouse until they sell. This is a much better option usually as you are then free to send in as many quality items as you can to sell.
What tools or software might I need to do this?
You can’t just go off of your gut as to what is going to sell on Amazon.
Your going to need a professional scouting app on your Android or iPhone. These apps help you “ping” the Amazon catalog via their API and tell you what items are worth buying.
So you might have to pass on the latest romance novel but send in that Foo Fighters CD.
The scouting app we recommend the most right now is ScoutIQ. They have built an incredible application that is #1 in book scouting and awesome across other products as well.
Once you have a solid scouting app on your phone then the world is your oyster. You can walk into any store and start looking for bargains. You are already out shopping for your everyday items so why not take a few minutes and see what you can flip online for a nice profit.
Still not convinced?
Checkout Reezy Resells as he walks you through how to make a boatload of money with shoes doing retail arbitrage.
The other software your going to need is a listing application. We’re a little bias over here but we think AccelerList is the best listing application out there. We’re the mid priced option with the most value packed into the solution.
You can take your RA (retail arbitrage) items and quickly list them on Amazon and get them to the warehouse within days. We enable you to import your Amazon sales reports and view your business in whole new ways and we sell on Amazon just like you.
If you wan’t try us out for FREE for 14 days, go ahead and head over here.
What other types of arbitrage are there?
We’re glad you asked actually.
If getting out is a problem for you or you don’t have a car, you can actually perform arbitrage right from your computer or laptop. Anywhere in the world.
Online arbitrage is the same concept of buying low and selling high but doesn’t require you to visit any stores. There can be a lot of cost savings with this method as you won’t be spending any money on gas with this method.
You’ll be looking for deals on the same sort of products but instead of checking out at the store, you’ll be checking out online.
One example of this is finding deals online at a Dollar Store and then flipping those items online at Amazon.
Some really popular software to help you online arbitrage is eFlip and Tactical Arbitrage.
Wrapping it all up…
If your just getting turned on to retail arbitrage then I bet the wheels are spinning right now for you.
If they are not, then you might be dead…check your pulse.
But let’s recap what you read so you can get the most out of this article.
- You can buy everyday items at a low price and sell online for higher
- You can buy items anywhere
- You need a scouting app
- You need a listing app
- You can do this online too
OK – so what are you waiting for. Go out there and sign up at Amazon and eBay and start sourcing products right away. Let’s make some money together.
