How to Boost Your OA Business and Maximize Profits with Sourcing Lists?

Unlocking the Potential of Sourcing Lists: Key Advantages for Your Business

Before we get into the details, let’s find out the advantages of using online arbitrage sourcing lists for your Amazon business:

Time Efficiency: Streamlining the Product Research Process

This is one of the most significant advantages of using OA sourcing lists. Instead of spending countless hours searching across different websites to find profitable products, you can refer to a list of opportunities pre-compiled by experts. Sourcing list providers usually have a team of OA experts who use various tools and software to source products or a virtual assistant who does the sourcing. This can free up time to focus on other aspects of your business.

Increased Profit Margins: Identifying High-Potential Products

Sourcing lists are typically compiled based on data-driven product sales and profitability analysis. Providers use various tools and software to check price history, monthly sales, etc., to identify products with a track record of solid sales and low risk. This information also helps sellers make informed purchasing decisions.

Competitive Edge: Staying Ahead in the Online Arbitrage Market

Sourcing lists help online arbitrage sellers identify products in high demand and sell fast. By focusing on products with a proven track record of sales – among other critical criteria – sellers can increase their chances of success and avoid products that might not sell. By providing them with a steady stream of profitable products, sourcing lists allow them to stay ahead of the competition.

Curated Products: Handpicked and Checked by Experts

This is one of the most significant benefits of online arbitrage sourcing lists. As mentioned, these lists are compiled by teams of experts or VAs with years of experience in this business. They use various tools and software to conduct extensive research and analyze the products using factors such as monthly sales volume, competition, etc., to handpick leads with the highest quality.

Lower Learning Curve: Fastest Way to Find Deals

Online arbitrage sourcing lists are designed to be user-friendly and easy to navigate, even for beginners. This allows sellers to quickly and easily find profitable products without extensive knowledge or experience. Instead of spending weeks or months learning to find leads, sellers can refer to a sourcing list and start sourcing products immediately.

Non-Problematic Products: Lower Risk of Account Suspension

Amazon has strict policies regarding product quality, authenticity, and other factors. Violating these policies may result in account suspension or even permanent banning from the marketplace. OA sourcing lists help sellers avoid these risks by providing a curated list free of problematic products like hazmat, fragile, or oversize.

Ability to Test the Waters: Trial Periods and Money-Back Guarantees

Sourcing lists usually include trial periods, money-back guarantees, and personal support, which provides sellers with additional peace of mind. Trial periods allow sellers to try out the sourcing lists for a specified period, and money-back guarantees offer a refund if the seller is unsatisfied with the list.

Discovering Quality: How to Find and Evaluate the Best Sourcing List Providers

Finding and evaluating the best OA sourcing list provider can be challenging. Still, there are several factors you can consider to ensure you choose a reputable and reliable provider:

Reputation and Reviews: Assessing Provider Credibility

The reputation of the provider is an essential factor for determining their reliability. Sellers can read customer reviews and feedback to evaluate the provider’s services. These reviews can be found on review websites, forums, and social media platforms where OA sellers discuss their experiences with different providers.

Identifying Your Needs: Matching Your Requirements with Providers’ Plans

Before deciding on a specific provider, you must identify your business needs and goals. This can include budget, growth plans, product niche, etc. From there, you can develop an individual strategy with various metrics that you have set for yourself. Then, you should evaluate the different plans offered by the provider and compare them to your needs and goals to see if they match.

Customer Support and Resources: Ensuring Provider Reliability

To ensure provider reliability regarding customer support and resources, sellers should research and consider the provider’s response time and availability, check the available resources (such as training materials and educational articles), and look for trial periods and money-back guarantees. 

If you find a provider that seems reliable, you can contact them before purchasing any plans to ensure high-quality support and ask any questions you may have regarding their services. Some companies also offer money-back guarantees, which is the best way to test the quality of their plans. The money-back-guarantee allows you to purchase a plan, test it, and cancel your trial or get your money back if you are not satisfied with its quality.       

Analyzing Key Features: Comparing Profit, Seats, ROI, and Other Essential Attributes

Last but not least, sellers should compare different providers to see which one fits their business. To do this, they can compare the profitability of listed products using trial periods, evaluate the number of seats included in the plan to see whether it’s suitable for their business needs and assess the ROI of the leads to see if the lists are worth investing in. They can also analyze other essential attributes such as sales rank, customer support, pricing, diversity of plans, etc.

Is It Worth It? Conducting a Cost-Effectiveness Analysis of Sourcing List Services

Online arbitrage sourcing lists can be a cost-effective way of sourcing products for sellers, but this depends on several factors, such as the quality of the sourcing list, the seller’s business needs and goals, and the plan’s pricing. Let’s see how you can conduct a thorough cost-effectiveness analysis of the sourcing lists:

Weighing Service Costs Against Potential Profits

First, sellers must weigh service costs against potential profits to determine whether sourcing lists are cost-effective for their business. To do this, sellers should look for trial periods or money-back guarantees. This way, they can evaluate the potential profit of the leads by considering market demand, competition, etc.

They can also calculate the ROI by comparing the potential profits with the cost of purchasing sourcing lists and other hidden costs (such as Amazon fees, shipment expenses, etc.). Other important metrics to remember when weighing service costs against potential profits include the possible time and effort savings, along with the scalability of the sourcing lists to evaluate whether the provider’s plans can accommodate future growth.

If you want to conduct a thorough cost-benefit analysis of each provider you work with, you can make an Excel or Google sheet containing every profit you have made with their leads. This way, you’ll know if the return on investment was enough. Since you use various providers’ lists and different sourcing methods, you won’t have a good understanding of which method is more efficient unless you have an organized sheet. 

Evaluating Time Savings and Efficiency Gains

One of the most significant benefits of online arbitrage sourcing lists that makes them highly cost-effective is saving time and gaining efficiency in product research and sourcing. As mentioned previously, these lists save a significant amount of time because they are pre-compiled by experts, and all sellers have to do is check if the leads match their specific criteria. 

Usually, sellers only consider their monetary costs as an investment, but time is as important – if not more – as the money they invest in tools, sourcing lists, and other things. However, using a time-consuming but cheap method can lead to losses instead of profits because the seller could save time by investing more money in an efficient method – ultimately gaining more profit. 

For example, using sourcing lists, sellers can quickly and easily identify profitable products, which increases productivity and decreases the required time and effort for finding products.

Creating Your Own Rules: Customizing Criteria for Selecting Profitable Leads

Since every online arbitrage seller has specific goals and needs, you must develop rules and criteria for selecting profitable leads. To do this, you must consider the overall state of your business, your individual goals, and how much risk you’re willing to take. After that, you can identify the essential criteria to choose an online arbitrage profitable lead, establish a threshold for each metric, and develop a unique strategy.

Most experienced OA sellers customize the following criteria to develop their individual strategy to use when selecting suitable leads:

Analyzing BSR, Number of Competitors, and Their In-Stock Levels

BSR (Best Sellers Rank) is an Amazon product rank that measures the selling rank of ASINs in their relevant categories. This metric shows how fast the product sells and the demand for it. Generally, a low BSR indicates high demand, but this differs from category to category. Since most online arbitrage sellers deal with numerous categories, it’s not easy to gain enough experience in one of them to use BSR effectively. Therefore, it’s recommended to focus on other metrics, such as monthly sales.

The number of competitors offering the same ASIN as you is crucial, but the competitors’ in-stock level is even more important. The number of competitors can impact the market competition level, profitability, and how fast the product gets sold. You must consider competitors within your price range because these are the sellers you will compete with. In addition, you should assess their in-stock level to ensure you won’t stay behind and be forced to deal with unsold inventory.

Assessing Profit Margins and ROI

ROI (Return on Investment) is a critical metric that can be used to measure the profitability of an investment. ROI is calculated by measuring the potential profit minus hidden costs such as Amazon fees, etc. Its formula is as follows:

(Net profit) / (COGS) * 100 = ROI

Choosing a lead according to ROI requires a balance between risk and reward, meaning that if the lead is very risky, the ROI should be higher. On the other hand, if the lead is stable, it makes sense to choose it, even if the ROI is not that high.

Profit margin is another key metric that measures the difference between the cost of acquiring a product and its selling price. When calculating the profit margin for a lead, you should deduct hidden costs such as Amazon FBA fee, referral fee, shipment, buying cost, and other possible expenses using an Amazon FBA calculator.

Considering Seasonal and Market Trends

During specific holidays and events such as Christmas, Halloween, etc., some products experience high demand. For example, Christmas light decorations are only bought and used during this particular holiday. So, it’s good to consider seasonality and market trends during specific times of the year when evaluating leads on an online arbitrage sourcing list.

Analyzing Estimated Monthly Sales and Price History

Estimated monthly sales estimates how many units of a product get sold each month. This is one of the easiest and most effective criteria to work with. Therefore, most OA sellers use this metric. You can use various tools such as Viral Launch, AMZScout, and Unicorn Smasher to estimate the monthly sales for a lead. However, note that each tool uses a unique formula so the results might differ.

Price history is a more concrete metric that shows the price of a lead during the past months. You can use price history to measure the stability of a lead and find out about sudden spikes or setbacks. A good lead must have a stable and reliable price history. You can check the leads’ price history using tools such as Keepa.

Studying the Number of Reviews and Its Trend

The number of reviews and trends for a lead shows how well a product performs in terms of customer satisfaction and popularity. The more reviews a product has, the more it’s selling. Additionally, you must look at the review graph for the past few months: if the chart is ascending, the product is in-demand and selling well. On the other hand, if the graph is flat, the product is not popular, and it’s best to avoid it.

Checking the Lead Against IP Complaints

IP (Intellectual Property) complaints are when a brand sends a complaint to Amazon to stop a seller from using their intellectual property. IP complaints can lead to account suspension or legal issues, so avoiding such products or verifying their authenticity is essential before purchasing them. Include this metric in your overall strategy to prevent potential problems in the future.

Don’t Miss Out: Keeping an Eye on Old Leads for Hidden Opportunities

So, imagine you’ve bought sourcing lists and analyzed the leads, and some didn’t pass the evaluation process. In such cases, keeping the sourcing lists for later is best. This has a few benefits: by revisiting old leads, you can identify missed opportunities that may have happened due to reasons such as changes in customer demand. It also allows you to analyze customer demand and preferences trends, develop new product ideas, and discover new niches.

Now, let’s find out how you can analyze the old leads to find hidden opportunities:

Monitoring Price Fluctuations and Availability

Monitoring price fluctuations and availability can be an effective way for online arbitrage sellers to identify products with changing demand and find products currently underpriced due to changes in the market, product availability, etc. Sellers can use price tracking tools like Keepa to monitor price fluctuations, set up alerts for products they’re interested in buying, and check the availability of products listed in old sourcing lists. Suppose a product is no longer available from the original supplier. In that case, sellers may need to find a new supplier, which can lead to the discovery of other products that are currently not on the seller’s radar. 

Revisiting Unsold Inventory for Potential Gains

Sellers can also identify hidden opportunities by revisiting unsold inventory. For example, a product that was not popular in the past may have increased in demand due to changes in the market. Additionally, revisiting unsold inventory can help sellers optimize their pricing strategy, free up storage space by removing unsellable products, and find opportunities to bundle products on Amazon. Bundling products together can increase the product’s perceived value, enabling you to sell it for a higher price.

Leveraging Historical Data for Future Decisions

Analyzing historical data can help sellers make informed decisions about their future buying and selling strategies. Analyzing sales trends and review charts can also help sellers optimize their pricing strategy and forecast future demand for particular products.

Digging Deeper: Analyzing Other Products of Profitable Leads for Additional Gains

Sometimes, the leads in a sourcing list can direct you to other profitable leads and opportunities. For example, you may find a good lead from a specific brand on one of the lists you have purchased. In this case, you can check out similar products from the same brand and find new and potentially profitable leads. In simpler words, sellers must dig deeper into the sourcing lists they purchase to find additional opportunities.

Exploring Alternative Suppliers and Platforms

One of the ways to dig deeper into the sourcing lists is by checking out other suppliers and websites that sell a specific lead. For example, imagine a profitable lead with Walmart as its supplier. Sellers can check out the same or similar products on other websites to find other suppliers and potentially buy the product at a lower price.

Conducting In-Depth Product Analysis

Conducting an in-depth analysis of the leads can help sellers better grasp the market and adjust their sourcing strategies accordingly. To do this, sellers can check out other products from the same brand as the lead and analyze their price history and other essential metrics.

Building a Database of Potential Opportunities

After conducting thorough research and analyzing the leads, sellers can build a database of potential opportunities they can refer to occasionally. This database can help sellers identify new leads and opportunities in the future.

Final Thoughts

Online arbitrage sourcing lists can be a powerful tool for sellers who want to boost their business and maximize profits. Sourcing lists allow sellers to identify new deals and opportunities without investing too much time and effort. Analyzing old leads on previously purchased sourcing lists can help sellers find hidden opportunities and forecast future demand. Utilizing OA sourcing lists is a valuable strategy for any seller looking to succeed in the online marketplace.