$1,200 with one click: Online arbitrage for Cyber Monday

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A rushed article on how I just made $1,200 doing online arbitrage during the holidays.

Note: This quick article captures a rushed experiment I did that yielded some big results. The deals referenced will have expired by the time you read this, but the concepts are relevant to doing online arbitrage year-round.

What’s in this article:

• How I profited over $3,000 (expected profit) with online book & media arbitrage in the last 6 hours.
• The exact steps you can take to duplicate this.

This will be by far the most rushed article I’ve ever done. And the most time-sensitive.

My online arbitrage holiday experiment

I can say I’ve never shared any Amazon-selling tactic within six hours of figuring it out.

What I’m about to explain may be obsolete in less than eight hours from when I post this, so let’s go through this fast.

Like all of us, this morning I woke up to 100,000 emails advertising various “cyber monday” deals. These are specials that (mostly) vanish tonight at midnight.

One of the first ones I opened was for a semi-famous business / motivational guru I follow (he’s not one of the cheesy ones). He was offering virtually his entire life’s work for $1,999. It amounted to 15 DVD and CD box sets and a bunch of extras, most with a retail price of $100 to $500.

This got my attention. I opened a new tab and started running the various sets though Amazon. Only one of them was selling for less than $100. Two of them were at $500. And one wasn’t available at all (that means I get to set my own price, and I don’t come cheap).  All were low-competition (most had fewer than 5 other sellers).

I ran each through the Amazon FBA revenue calculator.

The expected payout was $3,200. That’s a $1,200 profit. With one click.

That’s way below the profit margins I am accustomed to, but for one click and an hour listing, I’ll take it.

I bought the whole set.

Now I was on the warpath. I started going through every email in the “Promotional” and “Updates” tab in my Gmail account, looking for more Cyber Monday online arbitrage deals. And there were tons.

The online arbitrage opportunities I just found in my inbox

Here are the online arbitrage opportunities I found in my inbox since 9am this morning (bear in mind these deals are limited just to the email lists that I’m on, and is particularly biased towards record labels):

• Five record labels offering CD or vinyl bundles, which I could resell on Amazon for at least 2x profit. Most of these took the form of “we’re clearing out our warehouse for the new year” type promotions, where you get to pick any 10 or 20 items from a list for a super-discounted price.
• One high-end audio book publisher having a 75% off everything sale (HUGE profits here). Most of their products sell for $40 and up.
• An even higher-end DVD and audiobook publisher that deals in obscure academic subjects, having a 70% off everything sale. Their products bottom out at $200.
• And the aforementioned $1,999 DVD / CD bundle.

The final tally: My cyber-monday arbitrage experiment

And here’s the final tally on what I’ve purchased so far (I took a break from shopping to post this, and there is more to come):

• $125 on CDs and vinyl from various record labels. No huge returns here, but worth the investment. Expected net profit: $140.
• $500 on the first audio book publisher. There’s really no reason I stopped at $500, it just felt like a nice round number. I’ll probably place another order when I calm down a little from spending so much money today. Expected net profit: $714.
• $999.25 on the really high end DVD / audiobook publisher. Round numbers for no reason other than getting irrationally nervous. Expected net profit: Approximately $1,050.
• And as mentioned, the $1,999 mega-bundle from the business guru. Expected net profit: Approximately $1,200.

For each purchase, I carefully checked the price and sales rank history to be sure I was getting 50% returns even in a worst-case-scenario.

Added bonus: Every bundle I purchased had things I’m keeping for myself, while still getting the returns I want.

Once I calm down from spending (and typing this), I’ll go back for more. I’m seriously considering purchasing a second $1,999 bundle from the business guy.

Online arbitrage tips to share (in my 6 hours of doing this)

Spend money to make money. Getting 70% off a $10 CD isn’t likely to leave room for profit on Amazon. 70% off a $500 DVD course…. Another story.

The riches are in the niches. Honestly, just about every “household name” company email promotion I received offered unimpressive deals. Every seriously amazing sale I found was from niche company providing niche products.

Check that Amazon sales rank history. When your margins are somewhat thin, you need to be even more confident than usual that your items will sell.

Many deals are email-only. A considerable amount of deals I found are being advertised via email only and link to offers not visible on the company’s main page. Set up a burner email account, subscribe to every email list you can think of, and don’t log back into that account until next cyber-Monday.

My heart is in getting my hands dirty out in the field, but when I can make $1,000  from a computer with one click, I’ll do that all day long.

If you feel the same, time is running out. Most of these deals end at midnight tonight. So here is what I recommend you do right now:

1. Go through every “junk” email you received today. Even the spam folder. Comb for opportunity.
2. Go to every website you can think of that sells high-end products (particularly media). There’s still a ton of deals that are “public” (i.e. not email-only).
3. Have your set desired profit margins and stick to them ruthlessly. Make them non-negotiable to avoid emotion-based buying decisions.
4. Before pulling the trigger, know your numbers. Check price and sales rank history to dramatically mitigate risk.
5. If you sell with Fulfillment by Amazon, ship everything into Amazon as soon as you get it. As in, same day. It’s the holidays, and everything new is flying out the door. Don’t put this off.

That’s the formula. There’s way too many websites and way too many deals for people reading this to bleed the internet dry, so there’s tons of opportunity.

Go for it. Depending on when you read this. you may only have a few hours…

-Peter Valley

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