In our last post, we shared an example of our online arbitrage business growth timeline, as well as when we implemented certain pieces of our staff and tools to support the growth.
In this post, we share a list of our current staff and their roles, as well as the tools and services we use in in our online arbitrage business model.
Core Staff Breakdown for Online Arbitrage Business
8-12 Product Lead Sourcers – These assistant wizards are manually sourcing online websites for products and comparing them with prices on Amazon for resale value. They follow the guidelines of the metric rules that we give them, and they find products that meet our metric standards. They also use web scanners such as OAxray and Tactical Arbitrage on occasion. Five days a week, they put together a list of the leads that they find for our buyers to analyze further. These lists are also now publicly for sale to a limited number of sellers here.
1 Buyer – The buyer is a hired U.S. based employee who goes through the lead lists that the sourcers create to double-check the metrics and then decide which products to buy. The quantity of products purchased for each unit are based on the velocity of sales and competition data. We also step into the buyer’s role at times to maximize leads purchased. You can view our guide.
1 Virtual Admin Assistant – The virtual admin assistant tracks the products that are purchased by the buyers, manages the inventory life-flow, coordinates with prep companies for checking products in and creating shipments, sets pricing and manages the repricer, reconciles shipments, handles customer questions and inquiries, and manages email and coordination with the retailers that we purchase from.
External Services Used in Our Online Arbitrage Business
Prep Companies – We use a few different prep companies in sales tax-free states, so there is no tax when shipping products to them that are purchased online. As we discussed in the previous article, “How to Automate Your Amazon FBA Online Arbitrage Business,” we ship our products to prep companies. These companies label, prep, and package our products for shipment to the Amazon FBA warehouses where they are stored until sale.
1 Bookkeeper – Because this is a business with massive amounts of transactions, it’s always wise to have someone who knows what they are doing to keep your books.
Tax Advisors – As an online seller with inventory in Amazon warehouses across the country, it’s important to stay compliant with collecting and passing sales and use tax wherever nexus is established. Again, this is not our area of expertise, so we often hire professional advisors to make sure we are registered, collecting, and making payments on time. Finding someone in your local area is probably the best solution here. TaxJar.com is a great resource for figuring out compliance, nexus, and other resources.
Tools Used in our Online Arbitrage Business
With an online arbitrage business, there are always new tools and gadgets popping up to help make the life of an Amazon seller easier. This is the list of tools that we are currently using, but they change quite often. Here is a quick overview of the tools, what they do, and an estimate of what they cost at the time of this writing. Many prices vary depending on the plan.
Amazon Seller Pro Account – $39.99/month – Required for any seller that wants to have a serious business on Amazon.
Inventory Lab – $49.00/month – For scouting inventory, managing inventory, creating shipments, and generating valuable inventory reports. You can get a free 30-day trial here.
Informed.co – $99.00/month – Automated strategic repricer for staying competitive in the buy-boxes on listings. Sign up for a free 14-day trial here.
Tax Jar – $17.00/month – A simple platform for tracking, managing, and paying sales & use tax.
JungleScout Chrome Extension – $39.00/month – For researching product metrics and comparing lists.
OAXRay – $99.00/month – A nifty lead scraper that allows our team to scan full website pages and auto-populate metric spreadsheets comparing the items to Amazon. Get a FREE 10 Day Trial Here.
Tactical Arbitrage – An intricate and powerful lead scraper for scanning full websites for leads. Free 10 Day trial if you use code FBALIBRARY or click here. Pricing varies based off package.
RevSeller – $99.00/year – On-page estimator and variation viewer (one of the most helpful tools ever for sourcing clothing, shoes, or any item with a lot of variations) – You can get $20 off your first year with code REVFBA20 or by clicking here. Comes with a 30-day free trial.
Keepa – Free & Paid – $17/month – Website and browser extension which displays price and sales rank history in a beautiful graph directly on the listing.
Context Menu Search – Free – A simple chrome extension which allows you to cross-search different search engines by highlighting and right-clicking text.
AZ Insight – Prices vary – A solid all-around tool with a hazmat and seller restriction detector, stock checker, variation viewer, historical data, and more. Get a free 10-day trial.
AMZ Seller Browser – Free – Displays metric and rank information on the category pages of an Amazon search.
AMZScout Stock Stats – Free – Check the stock quantity of your competition
These are just a handful of tools and resources that are offered for Amazon sellers. As the business grows, it’s easier to make a decision to spend a little extra money on a tool that will help increase the business margins. Because of them, there is better cash-flow, and we believe they are 100% worth the money that is spent on them.
Try to analyze the next step in scaling your online arbitrage business and then see if any of the tools or services are going to be an anchor for taking that next step. They will speed up the work of your team which directly generates more leads. Because you have more leads, you can sell more products and more than cover the costs of the tools.
Check out the Time of Growth article if you wish to review when we implemented most of these products as we built out our online arbitrage business.
Read The Next Post:
Simple Methods for Sourcing Online Arbitrage Leads for Your Amazon FBA Business
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