Reselling Series Part 3: Finding The Deals

This is the second part of Oren’s (from Oren’s Money Saver) guest post series on reselling products. You can view the first two parts of this series below:

Contents

Start Small

Now you know why you want to resell and how to buy things cheaply but where do you find the deals?
I recommend when you are starting out to focus on a small selection of products.  There are so many different possibilities out there that everything can get a little dizzying and you may not notice a great deal when you see it.  
I started with iPads, which was due to the influence of Big Habitat over on Saverocity for the most part.  After a few weeks I could look at the price for any size iPad (mini or air) with any amount of storage and now whether it was a resell possibility.  It wasn’t magic.  I was constantly looking up the resell prices and the corresponding fees.  I also knew the price I had just recently sold the exact same product which is a big advantage.  Sometimes the current Amazon fee may not fully reflect what your selling price can be. It’s a slow process at first but it gets easier with time.  Slowly, I’ve been adding more products to my repertoire.

Where to find the Deals?

 

By far the best place to find deals is on your own or in small groups.  These can have very high margins and the very nice advantage is that you will have very little competition.  I don’t feel I am able to share deals where the rank is not very solid.  Competition on price can get fierce with everyone undercutting each other and no one makes a profit.
Small groups allow for collaboration. You don’t have to find everything yourself but yet competition is not too great.
Here are list of sites I regularly check to see if there are any deals available:
  1. Big Habitat – The master reseller
  2. Oren’s Money Saver –  I don’t check this one, I already know what he’s going to say 😉
  3. Slickdeals – A lot of resellers check here so be ready for some competition
  4. FatWallet – Same as slickdeals
  5. eBay Daily Deals – eBay has a lot of benefits over other stores.  I hope to cover them in a separate part of the series
  6. DansDeals and Dan’s Deals Forums –  Primary focus is finding deals for personal consumption so most things are not fit for reselling, but every once in awhile there will be a real gem.
  7. Staples Weekly Ad and Coupons
  8. Target Weekly Ad
  9. Best Buy Weekly Ad
  10. Sam’s Club Shocking Values – Mostly a miss and usually on products that are very slow sellers, but every once in a while you can get a good iPad deal.
Sourcing deals can take time to get good at, but over time you will be able to find deals more easily. Find yourself a group of likeminded people, have some fun, earn a ton of points and make some money!
Editor note: Big thanks to Oren as always, he will be available to answer questions in the comments. If you haven’t already, follow him on Twitter and then check out his site which primarily focuses on reselling deals.
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Cowboyguy
Cowboyguy (@guest_182707)
October 8, 2015 17:01

William – I had a question for ya. When you talk about buying these (for e.g.) discounted Target, Exxon Mobile, BP etc. gift cards on ebay and reselling them, I basically don’t see any point in that since there’s little to no profit. You can maybe use that to meet the spending requirement on a card, but other than that I don’t really see a reason why anyone would do it. Even if you consider this high cash back scenario:

1) Buy a $100 BP Gift Card on ebay for $95. Profit $5
2) Get 5X ebay bucks (10%). Profit $9.5
3) Get 2% cash back from credit card $1.9
4) Get 2% cash back from portal $1.9

Total profit $18.3 on one GC. You can hardly sell this for 88% of the value i.e. Loss = $12
Net profit = $6.3

I haven’t even added the shipping fee (some sellers now charge ~$3). I don’t think $6.3 is worth the risk of the seller shipping the card to you, and then the risk of you shipping the card to a buyer.

Yes, its another story if you don’t resell the card and use it yourself. You can pocket a good 18% profit that way. Do you recommend using the cards yourself? I’m talking about all kind of GCs, like Target, Walmart, Best Buy, HD, Exxon, BP etc.

Rob
Rob (@guest_182862)
October 8, 2015 23:27

5X ebay bucks would be rare exception, not standard.

zalmy
zalmy (@guest_555886)
January 31, 2018 15:58

First, use them yourself. Second, scale ’em up! Don’t limit yourself to one of each. Third, use them for deals, like Oren outlined in the post to add to your overall profit margin. Fourth, you can use it to meet minimum spend, the rewards of which are innumerable… and Fifth, buying merchandise is often the only way to get miles and/or points, which, if utilized properly, can give you a value of 10 cents per point or more!