125: $4k a Month on the Side with Amazon FBA Clearance Arbitrage


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I was really excited to sit down with Travis Scott from StuffParentsLike.com to share his success with the Amazon FBA (Fulfilled by Amazon) clearance arbitrage business, and also to get his insight since I just started playing around with this side hustle myself.

Travis has seen impressive results with Amazon, netting $25,000 so far this year through July, in addition to his full-time job and duties as a dad.

You may remember Travis from a guest post he contributed on his FBA adventures last year (back when he was only at $500 per month). Indeed, he’s been a vocal supporter of Side Hustle Nation from the very early days.

And how’s that for scaling up in just over 12 months!

It was a toy store liquidation that earned Travis his first big “win,” and he’s been hooked ever since. If you’re not familiar with how this business works, basically it’s a game of “buy low, sell high,” only amplified because Amazon takes care of the selling and shipping for you.

You find items on clearance locally, and send them off in bulk to Amazon. This is one of the absolute cheapest side hustles to get started. (I started completely for free, not including the “inventory” I bought on my first sourcing trips.)

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Learn:

  • How Travis works this business in less than an hour a day.
  • His favorite sourcing spots.
  • The best products to flip, and the criteria he looks for when making purchases.
  • The tools and tech he uses to get ‘r done.
  • His plans to scale and grow the business even more, to potentially fully replace his day job.
  • Travis’ #1 tip for Side Hustle Nation.

Tweetable:

Learn how @stufparentslike earns $4k a month bargain shopping and selling on Amazon https://www.sidehustlenation.com/125 via @nloper #AmazonFBA

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What do you think? Viable side hustle or no?

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Nick Loper

About the Author

Nick Loper is a side hustle expert who loves helping people earn more money and start businesses they care about. He hosts the award-winning Side Hustle Show, where he's interviewed over 500 successful entrepreneurs, and is the bestselling author of Buy Buttons, The Side Hustle, and $1,000 100 Ways.

His work has been featured in The New York Times, Entrepreneur, Forbes, TIME, Newsweek, Business Insider, MSN, Yahoo Finance, The Los Angeles Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Financial Times, Bankrate, Hubspot, Ahrefs, Shopify, Investopedia, VICE, Vox, Mashable, ChooseFI, Bigger Pockets, The Penny Hoarder, GoBankingRates, and more.

14 thoughts on “125: $4k a Month on the Side with Amazon FBA Clearance Arbitrage”

  1. Trying to make this arbitrage thing work overseas is challenging! I just sent a message to support at Profit Bandit, inquiring about eMart and HomePlus, two very big Korean mega stores. Maybe I’ll get arrested, we’ll see…

    Reply
      • Hi Lindsey!

        It seemed like more of a hassle than it was worth, at least for my given circumstances. I didn’t want to start doing it here given that I could be laid off any day and be forced to leave the country. Still, I think this could work for people who have familial ties to the country or who have a skill-set and a deep enough connection to the country where one severed tie doesn’t necessarily force you to leave. That’s kind of how it operates here in Korea. It’s not secure enough for me, I think.

        I don’t know though, let me know what you think!

        -T

        Reply
  2. I haven’t looked to much into Amazon selling but everything he says can be applied to Ebay. I had a man buy one of my Ebay accounts a few years ago because I had a lot of 5 star reviews (thousands from me selling my extra coin stock from my coin/gold/pawn shop). He sells through Ebay and treats it like Amazon. Interesting post.

    Reply
  3. How does the shipping to Amazon work? Do you have to pay for these shipping costs or do they allow you to print out a shipping label?

    Reply
    • Yes they provide a shipping label for you to print out, and just deduct the charge from your account. I was amazed at how low their shipping rates are compared with what you’d pay just going to the post office or UPS store!

      Reply
  4. Omg…

    Hello Todd,

    The bar code of a product should be the same in every country, so you should be able to scan items and get the results.
    The only problem we’ve heard of in the past, was some stores putting their own bar codes on top of the original ones. I cannot tell you for sure whether this would happen or not in your case.

    Best regards,

    —-

    It’s on now!

    Reply
  5. I got an email yesterday with some great insight into the FBA business and wanted to share it here, with permission:

    Hey Nick,

    My friend Joel Zaslofsky put me onto your show, and I was just listening to your podcast on FBA. I’ve been an FBA seller on the side for almost four years now. (Although with books, not products.) I think FBA is a great opportunity for people because most businesses live and die on their marketing, and if people market badly, they just fizzle out, and sometimes if they market well, it overcomes some serious shortcomings in other aspects of the business (like revenue models.)

    So I love FBA for teaching things like supply chain management, cash flow and projections, pricing strategy, and other (to me) interesting stuff, without interminable marketing efforts.

    Anyway, I didn’t write to sing the praises of FBA, I wrote to offer you a couple of tips and insights.

    For books, anyway, an N/A salesrank means the item has NEVER SOLD on Amazon. So unless the product is very niche, it’s a no-buy for me.
    Using AZ Seller App is a decent no-cost solution, but if you’re going to invest in FBA as an income stream, cough up for Profit Bandit or FBAScan. (I prefer the latter.) Then you can make use of services like a direct link to CamelCamelCamel to see the salesrank history for the item you’re thinking of buying.
    I spend $30/mo for FBAScan’s database feature, which I prefer because it is A MILLION times faster than a 4G live connection.
    Definitely look into getting into the gated categories. Your biggest issue is that your competition is shopping the same Target discount bins as you, and that race to the bottom is REAL. The gated categories are a big hassle to get into and that’s what keeps people out. There are also services that help you do this, for like a couple hundred dollars.
    Protect your seller reputation like a debutante’s virginity. BE VIGILANT. And be proactive and use a service like Feedback Genius to solicit good reviews from your customers so that the occasional nastygram doesn’t have as much of an impact. Everyone should use FG because the free level gets you 100 free emails per month, no obligation.
    And this last tip is perhaps a little too advanced if you’re just getting started, but explore the pricing advantages of FBA fulfillment. I routinely sell books for several times the lowest offer simply because it’s Fulfilled By Amazon. People know this means that they deal with AZ’s famous customer service if anything goes wrong, and the shipping is much faster, and so are willing to pay extra.

    Anyway, just started listening today, but I loved the 50 lessons session as well. Looking forward to a lot more episodes in the future,
    Shanna

    Reply
  6. If you want to make any money on Amazon you have to find manufactures that will BRAND their generic Products with your OWN brand name. This way you can corner the market on Amazon and not end up in a price war with someone willing to sell the same thing for .01 cent. I won’t do price wars. Not worth it.

    Reply
    • So like re-branding yes? Do you need to get/acquire the physical product and make some new packaging or label to it? Or just brand it online with your brand/store logo on it? Thanks much!

      Reply

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