 What's up everyone take down here. Welcome back to another Amazon FBA video. Now today, like I mentioned in the last video, I'm going to be sharing how to source products for your Amazon selling needs. Now I'm an Amazon seller. I'm fairly new, like I've already mentioned in my previous videos, but I do have a couple methods that I like to use to get products to sell on Amazon. And right now I'm running low on products. I'm almost sold out of all my products. So I'm really going to have to start to step it up and look and really try to source more products, which is what I'm going to do. I want to make this video explaining my methods on doing so. So the first thing I want to mention is if you're paying for the Amazon sellers subscription to sell on Amazon, which is about $30 a month, you get access to the Amazon sellers app, which means you can go on the go, use the app and scan and find out if an item is going to be profitable for you. So if you're going to be doing Amazon FBA, definitely use the Amazon sellers app. You're not going to regret it. So the first method that I like to do is the easiest one. And that is retail arbitrage. And that is you physically going to a retail store, going in, looking for items, scanning them and trying to find items that you can sell on Amazon. And I do want to mention that depending on where you live, sometimes certain areas say this is illegal. So you're going to want to look it up because basically what you're going to be doing is you're going into the store purchasing an item that is cheap and selling it on Amazon for more money. Some places say that's illegal where I live, it's 100% legal and a lot of places is legal. However, you're going to want to check that before doing retail arbitrage because you could get in a little bit of trouble if it is illegal where you live. However, if you're going to do retail arbitrage and it is legal, it is one of the easiest methods to do, mainly because you're physically going to the store purchasing the item so you get to handle the actual item and see whether or not it's going to be worth it. You can do kind of a quality check. And to me, that is easier than doing it online or shipping it from China because you get to actually look at what the product is. So whenever you're in the store, as long as you have the Amazon sellers app, you literally, if you find a product, let's say you find a product and it's on sale for $20, it's regular $40, you think that's a great deal. Take out the Amazon sellers app, you scan the barcode. Now, most of the time it will work. Sometimes you'll have to try to punch in what the product is and try to find it that way. Once you do find the product, find the exact listing, see what it's selling for on Amazon. If it's selling for $40 or $50, then click it, look to see what it is, put your cost in and see whether or not it's going to be worth it with the Amazon seller fees. Now, each product you sell on Amazon, there is going to be an Amazon fee and by using the Amazon sellers app with the calculator, whenever you scan an item, it's going to tell you exactly what that fee is going to be depending on what you're going to be selling it for on Amazon. And you can change all that and see what your profit will be. Now, for me personally, I've done retail arbitrage where I've come up short and I've scanned items and it's either been just a couple dollars and that immediately makes me want to put that product back because I'm not going to purchase a product where it's only going to give me a couple dollars profit. And there's been a lot of times where I've scanned a product that looks like it's a really great deal, but the profit is in the negatives, which means the Amazon seller fees are more than the discount for that product in that store is. So you want to be very leery and if you find a product before you purchase it, scan it, see what your profit is going to be and see whether or not it's worth it. For me personally, I'm looking more for a $20 profit per unit items. That's what I try to go for or sometimes I'll go for a $10 profit per items. It just depends on what I'm looking for, what I can find and how many they have in stock. They have a bunch in stock. If they're going to give me $10 profit per units, it's cheap enough where it's not going to break the bank and I can purchase, let's say, 10 or 20 of these things, then that could be worth it for me because I can send them to Amazon and make $10 profit per units. So you definitely want to look at that, but retail arbitrage is time consuming and there's going to be times where not only you might not find products that are going to sell for too much, but you might not find any good products at all and you might leave the store without purchasing anything to sell on Amazon. And to me, that is okay. The more and more you do retail arbitrage, you'll know more and more what to look for, kind of what your niche is. So for me, I check out the clearance sections first, then I go to the tourist sections, then I go to the electronics and I try to find anything that I could look, something that I think I could sell on Amazon. And if you're in the store and you scan something and you think, okay, it could sell on Amazon, but it's not really something that you think will sell, chances are, don't purchase it. I mean, if you don't think you're actually going to sell it, even though it looks like it's going to be great profit if it were to sell on Amazon, if you don't think it's going to sell it, don't purchase it. And with the Amazon sellers app, you can scan an item and see what it ranks on Amazon for selling. So that is a handy tool. The app is definitely worth it. So retail arbitrage, is it worth it? If you're starting out 100% yes. It's just the more and more you do it, you'll see and kind of get a routine for going to the stores. I've spent at times two hours in stores and coming up empty handed, not purchasing anything. More and more you do it, you're going to cut that time right down and then you're going to start finding products. So definitely try it out, especially with the Amazon sellers app, and you should not regret it. The next thing is online arbitrage. So you're basically going on store sites and different websites that sell products. You're going to be scanning with the Amazon sellers app again. So if you go on, let's say Walmart's website, Target's or any website, the first thing I want to mention is it's saving you time from having to drive store to store and go in and look through the products. You can go on the website, start off with the clearance section because most have a clearance section tab and then you can go on what's on sale and then you can go on different departments of these stores. So whenever you bring it up, you take the Amazon seller app. If you find a product that looks like it's a decent product, something that is on sale cheap enough that you'd be willing to purchase for Amazon, you can literally just scan the image of it. So you don't have to scan the barcode if you're doing online arbitrage. You scan the image. It should come up. If not, once again, you're just going to want to search the name of it and hopefully you'll find it on the sellers app. Now, if you don't find it on the sellers app, regardless of doing retail arbitrage, online arbitrage or any other kind of product sourcing, that's whenever I just try to skip it. If I can't find it on Amazon, chances are it's not a highly sought after item and Amazon might not be selling it at the time at least. So I usually avoid it at that time, but definitely online arbitrage is easier. The only thing is you are not physically handling the item. You do not get to do a quality check before receiving the item. So if you find something that looks like it's a great deal, if you place an order, get it shipped to you and you don't like it, then you're going to have to do the whole return policy. That's the only concern I have with doing online arbitrage, but it's an easier method. You can blast through more stores. You can scroll through all of the stores, clearance sections, stores, the departments and the sales that they have. And you can do it a lot quicker than retail arbitrage, but you also have to consider what your shipping costs are going to be. It can be easier to source on online arbitrage especially. Now, the one thing with online arbitrage is let's say you find a product that you really want to sell on Amazon, something that might be on the Amazon's best sellers list. What you're going to want to do is one thing that you could do. Now with online arbitrage, let's say you find a product that you want to sell. Maybe it's on the Amazon's best seller list. What you could do is go on a store's websites and search that product to see if they sell it and what they sell it for. Or you can just go on Google and search that product and try to go through stores and try to find what the lowest price is for it. And then go from there and try to do things that way. But if you're just looking to browse, go on to Walmart or different stores around you. Go on their website and just search through and see if you can find anything. Now, once again, I have come up empty-handed doing this method, but it is something that is worth checking out. I've had more success with retail arbitrage once you start to get into the groove of things. But it is something that is time consuming where online arbitrage, if you find products which I have, I just never purchased them yet. It is something that takes a lot less of time and it's not too bad doing online compared to retail. You get to do it in your own home. That's the one benefit with that. And the last thing that I want to mention is Alibaba. Now, Alibaba is a shipping or a place where you can buy wholesale products from China, India and other countries. So it is something that looks like it can be very profitable. For example, something that might be selling for $20 on Amazon. You might be able to find it on Alibaba for $1.50. And a lot of people think that's great. $18.50 profits. That is most likely not the case. Now, whenever you go on, you can search, you can find things like Roku's, you can find a whole bunch of different things. But sometimes you want to be very leery using Alibaba because products might not be the actual thing. They might be a cheaper version, something that was manufactured really quick. It might not be the real thing that is selling on Amazon. So you want to be very leery if you're going to be purchasing from them. Another thing you want to look at is the MOQ. Must order quantity, which some sellers for Alibaba, they might have an MOQ of one item, which means you have to purchase at least one item for them to ship it to you. So you can just purchase one item at a time if you wish. But a lot of sellers have $25.50 or $100 plus MOQs, which means for them to even ship it to you or to process it, you need to order 25 units at that time in one go and have that shipped to you. So let's say you're ordering something that is $150 and you have to have $50 units ordered. Well, now you're going to take that $150 times it by $50 and realize that's a lot more money than you're willing to spend. Another thing you're going to want to do, let's say if you are ordering $50 units from them, contact the seller first and ask what the total is going to be for $50 units. I've heard of people ordering 50 units, let's say they were supposed to be on Alibaba for $1, they order 50 units but they were charged $100, meaning even though it was listed for $1, they charged the person $2 per unit and at that time things will not make sense for your Amazon sellers app and you are not going to get the profit that you thought you were going to get at one time. So you definitely want to ask the seller first hand what the total is going to be for the X amount of units that you're going to be purchasing from them if you wish to purchase from them and the last thing that you're going to want to definitely check with the seller is how much the shipping is going to be to your area. I've seen first hands where I found a product that I liked, it was going to be great profit, it was selling for about $0.50 on Alibaba which I thought was a great deal and it was $20, $25 on Amazon so I thought that's going to be great profit if it turns out the shipping was about $500 to ship 50 units from China to me in Canada so you're basically going to want to ask them if you find a product hi I'm interested in this product what is the total for 50 units and how much is it going to cost shipping to get those 50 units to my country so you're just going to say if you live in Canada you're going to want to say how much is it going to cost to ship to Canada and they will tell you but it's all going to be in US currency so if you live in a different country and you're going to be doing the Alibaba method you're going to have to convert that currency into your currency so US currency into your currency, your country's currency to find out how much your cost is actually going to be for the most part I'm still looking on Alibaba I'm still trying and hoping that I'm going to find a product that I can get and be able to find but you have to remember it's coming from China it's going over on boats that's how it's getting shipped to you so it might be two months plus until you receive it especially during these pandemic times sometimes you might be months until you receive the product and once you get it definitely before shipping it off to Amazon do a quality check make sure it's what you want, make sure it's the real item sometimes it can be very leery so personally I have not found anything and I have not shipped and purchased anything from Alibaba yet I'm hopeful to find something but it is something definitely worth checking out but you definitely want to check out contact the seller and see what the cost is going to be before making a purchase you don't want any hidden costs so you want to find out right away how much it's going to cost for however many units you're going to purchase and definitely want to find out what the shipping is going to be I've had a lot of cases like I've already said where shipping is in the hundreds like two, three, four, five hundred dollars to ship the items over at that point if it's something that you think might still be worth it you're going to take what the cost is the total cost plus what the shipping cost is you're going to divide that by how many units you're purchasing and that's going to give you the cost per units you're going to open up the calculator find the product again and you're going to put that new cost into where it says cost and it's going to calculate whether or not it's going to be profitable nine times out of ten for me whenever I do that it always says negatives or it says a couple of bucks at that point it's not worth ordering from Alibaba so I just wanted to mention this video sharing a couple products sourcing methods that I use now I'm in the hunt right now to find more products for my store, for my Amazon store and I've been doing good with the products I have except I just want to find more products and get them to Amazon so I can continue to sell so there's no period where I'm out of items and I have nothing to put on Amazon and sell so I'm definitely looking right now I just wanted to make this video online arbitrage and Alibaba so hope you guys enjoyed this video and hope this has helped you guys find more ways or hopefully how to do more ways to product source but I'm going to leave this video here please take care, peace