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Comment by ikeboy | Hacker News Reader

I'll refer to my recent comment at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13267536

It's not quite single person, I have two remote virtual assistants handling various tasks like ordering, sourcing, etc, but you only really need that above a certain scale.

Most of the business currently is drop shipping from US retailers to Amazon and eBay. I got started reselling a year ago with a specific stacking deal (discover had 10% cashback on Apple pay purchases for a few months, staples had ipads on sale, I bought around 25k worth, broke even on the ipads, made money on the cashback). Then I started reading everything I could about reselling, followed lots of blogs, tried different things, eventually found some great items and models that worked.

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I read your post so you basically arbitrage from US retailers to amazon/ebay? It seems you are doing retail arbitrage? Like when there is a sale on Toy R Us, you list that same item on Amazon/Ebay. But don't you need to keep the stock you buy at some place first? How do you deal when AMZ just price matches it?

I am currently reselling alibaba stuff but after amazon PPC and shipping, it seems it's just break even, not including my effort. It's mostly PL so I can control my price but there is a lot of competition because I don't have patent on my product. It's a white label basically.

In your post history, you said 300K sales. That's all from drop shipping?

> you basically arbitrage from US retailers to amazon/ebay?

Yes.

>It seems you are doing retail arbitrage?

Retail arbitrage has a technical meaning in the industry, it refers to physically going into stores to buy inventory. What I'm doing is referred to as drop shipping or "online arbitrage" (where you buy inventory online then take possession and sell it).

>Like when there is a sale on Toy R Us, you list that same item on Amazon/Ebay. But don't you need to keep the stock you buy at some place first? How do you deal when AMZ just price matches it?

First of all, it's not all sales. Many of the items I sell are a regular price at the source, amazon just doesn't have stock or charges more. Items where Amazon isn't on the listing are much better.

For drop shipping, the point is that you have the retailer ship directly to the customer, so I don't need to keep the stock. There are some things I do buy, have it sent to amazon warehouses for fulfilment.

>In your post history, you said 300K sales. That's all from drop shipping?

Around half drop shipping, around half either FBA or MF but with shipping it myself (or a warehouse). Did over 100k in November, and 50k in December. I'm hoping to build up to 250k a month or so over the next year.

I've never done PL so I can't help too much there.

Can i get your email so I can ask you some stuff if that's fine..

In my profile.

If you're drop shipping from US-based retailers, how are you able to make margins on Amazon & eBay? Aren't those retailers also listing on Amazon - with better branding than you - and getting all the sales?

(Just spent a few hours reading on this based on another comment in this thread so trying to learn how the "sourcing things below Amazon price" piece works...)

No, most retailers aren't selling on Amazon. Some are.

And yes, most products won't have any profit to be made. The trick is to find the ones that sell well but are more expensive on Amazon, there are thousands of such products, probably even more.

If you're interested in actually doing this, feel free to email me and we can chat.

Who do you use for virtual assistants?

Onlinejobs.ph. Costs $50 a month to contact workers.

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