hi and welcome back to another Amazon selling video if you're new to my channel my name is
Nikki Kirk and I've been selling on Amazon for six years all out of an RV so I'm here in my RV
currently filming because here in Oklahoma it has been raining for the past week so it's a little
muddy outside and I can't go film outside like I would like to but since we renovate it it's still
nice so it's a great place to record lighting's great all that jazz by the time this video comes
out the shop update so there should be Concrete in the shop and it should be things rolling real
quick and it should hopefully be done by June fingers crossed but yeah so that's exciting
hopefully lots more videos in there once I get it all set up okay so the model of Amazon selling I
do is called Retail Arbitrage it's where I go out to stores retail stores like Walmart
Target TJ Maxx Ollie's buy stuff that sells for more on Amazon send it into Amazon via FBA for a
profit obviously right otherwise what am I doing here so in this video I'm actually going to talk
about pricing strategies both what to do before you buy something and both and then after you
buy something if the price should start to take so I'm sure if you saw on Amazon you've probably
bought something makes great profit everything is great and then you send it in and then a couple
weeks later some price takers start to come on the listing that is totally normal and something that
happens on Amazon all the time unfortunately but it is my crusade to help educate Amazon
sellers who might think that dropping the price is how you win a sale it's how you make your life
harder and that's how you make your business not work for you so in this video I'm going to talk
about pricing strategies the thing to remember about pricing your Amazon inventory is that it
takes more than one seller to create a race to the bottom to create that price tanky because if only
one seller is dropping the price well they're gonna sell out and then the next seller will go
right back up to whatever that price was it's when other sellers match that price or maybe it's their
repricer that's matching that low price and now it's creating the race to the bottom it can't just
be one seller so that's why I'm always an advocate for being involved in your business which means
being involved in your pricing whether that's smartly setting up a repricer and being aware
of what's going on with it or manually repricing I have manually repriced my whole entire time I'm
just now getting into a repricer and I am having a lot of issues so I can see how if you don't set
it up correctly it's not going to work for you so there is a lot that goes into replay pricer so as
I always say if you're going to use a repricer be smart with it be involved in your business
know what's going on like know what you're doing if your repricer this repricer I'm testing it's
automatically if you did nothing it's set to undercut a penny like that's just how they come
factory standards so you do have to I have to go no I don't want to drop I want to match or I want
to be within five cents above like all different things that I manually have to do so either way
you're doing it you want to be smart and involved in your business so as always when I am going out
to buy a product before I ever buy I evaluate it and for me that evaluation comes down to it
has to make a minimum of five dollars profit and 50 Roi now sometimes I'm a little lacks on my 50
Roi it depends on the item depends on which prep it involves depending how much it costs all that
kind of stuff but minimum five dollars profit is what I'm looking for so that is allowing
for that wiggle room should the price start to drop a penny or a dollar I'm still gonna make
four dollars right like I have that five dollar as that buffer I've always had it because that's what
happened with selling on Amazon you want to have a buffer room and then the 50 Roi it just means I'm
not going to spend 20 and only make five dollars if I'm gonna spend forty dollars I want to make
twenty dollars if I'm gonna spend twenty dollars to buy something I want to make at least ten
dollars back on it so that's the fifty percent ROI now like there are times when I'll buy something
for twelve dollars and it makes five dollars like that's where I'm a little bit like depending on
this is easy I got a slap sticker on it and it's ready to go or if it's involved with more prep
I'm gonna make sure that that Roi is there because my time is valuable all that dress so that's where
that comes in having that rule whatever your rule is for you that buffer room will really help you
so that you don't have losing money on this Amazon business the other thing I Factor before I buy
is how widely available is this if this is a toy that I'm staring at Walmart toy aisle and there's
20 of them right there I know that every other seller can also find it so it's pretty widely
available meaning that unfortunately there's some price taking that's gonna happen on it if there's
say it's a case pack of Plus and this only one plush is hot and that there's like five of the
other ones one of these others right and one of them makes the good money not only that you can't
find it everywhere sure they carry them at Walmart and Target but they're always sold out that means
that item is a little more safer the price is going to be more stable because there's limited
supply of them the demand is now higher so those are things that I look into how easily is this is
it a bundle that I found and it took me a while to find it while I was standing in the aisle or
is it something I just easily scanned and found now once I buy stuff when I'm packing up my FBA
shipments because that is majority of my business is FBA probably like 90 FBA 10 fbm so when I'm
packing up my stuff I make sure that I price it a dollar or two above the current buy box when I
list it so I list an inventory lab it tells you and I also am looking at the product page every
time I list so I can see what the current buy box price is I price above that why if for whatever
reason that current buy box is a low seller and they sell out then I'm going to be priced above
and I'm not going to be that low ball seller where I'm the one who is potentially causing that race
to the bottom when the price has gone up so again I price everything High the reason is now if you
saw an FBA you know this hopefully you know this once your stuff gets to the warehouse it's gonna
move around and transfer it's called FC transfer just because Amazon had you send it to Dallas
doesn't mean that's its end location they wanted you to send it to Dallas that's just where mine go
and then after that they're going to spread them around maybe other Southwest warehouses so things
are moving around and that is generally takes like two to three weeks for that stuff to happen before
it becomes available so FC transfer I don't want to be lowballing because as I'll later explain
that doesn't mean you're going to win the buy box and so you're just doing yourself a disservice so
I don't start touching my prices once I've sent stuff in above the buy box until my items are done
transferring around that FC transfer okay so now you've sent your stuff in you have it priced high
it's going to make good profit five dollar minimum all that right now you see the price has started
to take now what so this is after now right we're kind of stuck with it what do we do first I use
keepa to look how much the low ball sellers have now again like I said if stuff is transferring
around I'm not even touching the price I'm letting it do its thing it's moving around it's
not going to sell anyways I mean yes it will sell if it's a hot product but it's not something that
I'm worrying about readjusting my pricing at the moment so even my repricer is set like that it's
not touching my prices until my stuff is available you can set them up really smartly you guys
okay if you see the price start to tank and your items are available you want to head to
the product page of the product and look at how much it has in stock so you can see this on keepa
you can see it both in the app this is the paid version in the app and on desktop I tend to use
keepa in the app when I'm in store and at home I'm always looking at on a desktop just because it's a
lot easier for me so let's look at an item that have an example of so this is an item that I've
sold in the past you can get them from Walmart you obviously buy them separately and then you bundle
them you can get them from Walmart for sometimes five dollars I think there might be like seven or
eight dollars each there was a whole like thing that they were gonna get rid of them but they're
still there so I'm not sure what that's about but anyways so on here this is Rev seller box right
here if you're not familiar with what that is over here if I click this pop out to see more offers
you're gonna see how many they have so the current buy box winner is prime picks LLC
uh relatively new seller because they only have three ratings and they have four in stock I don't
know why did that disappear so anyways there's this from keepa you can see they have four
then we have a collectible like new we're not worried about them again so if you're selling
Retail Arbitrage like I am you're selling like new or not like new you're selling new
not like new that's used new items so we don't care about the collectible we don't care about
the use we just care about new so again we don't care about that one even though they
just have one now this Farm wheel seller again a newer seller only three ratings
they're priced at 15 for some reason but you see the date they're charging for shipping
and not only that the fastest I can get it I'm recording this on April 28th and it's telling me
that the fastest I can get it is May 5 to 22. that's a huge window so that's for fbm it has
a window right and that window is based off of you the seller's handling time so that's a huge
window so they're probably not going to win the buy box not only that because they are charging
for shipping Amazon prefers free fast shipping to the customer so this is not fast nor free so
that's why they even though they are low price and in stock they are not winning the buy bucks
but they have five should they be the one who was in the buy box of fifteen dollars five of them
let them sell out a hundred thousand rank toy that is a great rank it's gonna sell out don't
worry about it again we have a collectible like new then we have some more low sellers so again
the buy box price over here was thirty dollars and now we've got a five dollar so really what's that
twenty six dollars again huge shipping window time if you're gonna fbm you really want to pay
attention to your handling times because your handling time is how fast so anything today's
Friday but let's say it was Thursday anything I sell on Thursday I have to ship out Friday
so everything I sold yesterday I shipped out this morning now Friday until I won't have to
ship again until Monday anything I sell over the weekend but because they have their handling time
so long it's making me feel like I might not get this for a month almost so I'm not gonna buy it
but if they had shortened their handling time so like mine it's only like I don't know five
to seven days on the slowest because that's what first class takes five to seven days so why would
I think let the customer think it's going to be even longer so those are things of why your fbm
handling time is important and why these lower sellers are not wanting the buy box just want to
note that they are lower by like ten dollars and they're not winning the buy box again we've got
all these new sellers fbm in charge and shipping finally we've got a 32 seller here but you can see
here on keepa that they have two and four and this one has three and five so these sellers here are
waiting out and you can see I can get it real fast but they are waiting out the lower seller who is
currently in the buy box and this buy box is given to the FBA seller I can see that because it ships
from Amazon FBA so you want to use Cuba to see how many they have now just as I was like identifying
those there's no reason for me if this was me this Prime picks LLC if this was me or maybe I'm the 32
seller that's probably a better example so I see the buy boxes at thirty dollars even but mine is
currently priced at 32.99 I would leave it at 32.99 because I can see that this FBA seller
only has four and they're gonna sell out probably over the weekend so I'm just gonna wait them out
if you're only in your manage inventory and you see that there is a thirty dollar buy box right
now and you hit match it and you're going to go down to thirty dollars well maybe you want
to maybe you need to cut it Loose I don't know but you don't need to because you don't know
how many they have they could just have one they could have one and it's used for whatever reason
like there's all different things that you don't know until you click into the product page and so
that's why once things it can be overwhelming if you have a lot of stock but if you just sort by
available which is what I do I sort by available so the ones I have the most stock available that's
where I'm going to start my repricing journey and I go through my manage inventory like that so I
look I click through I don't just blindly match whatever it is so say I have something for my
price is 24.99 I see that it's currently featured offer from a manager inventory of 19.99 but then
I click through and I see they only have one and the next seller is 24.99 so there's no reason for
me to drop my brace I'm gonna let that one sell out okay here is another example so let's say
that I was gonna price my price for this thing is 24.99 I can see the current buy box is suppressed
so you see that right here that's the suppressed buy box that does not matter if anything that just
means that you can get more money for your item a lot of people freak out and they try to drop the
price to get the buy box back people are gonna buy it I would tell you I sold out of these a
couple weeks ago so people are going to buy it with the buy box suppressed it just means more
profit to you don't think of it as a bad thing so we're going to click here and see the buy box
so you can see there's a seller with 19.99 but they're not winning again they're charging 60
for shipping no wonder they're not winning that buy bucks but then you have the 20.99 and all
these other sellers basically the same price they could pretty much raise their price on this one
but say I wanted to sell mine for 24.99 I only have to wait out one two three four
eight sellers that have a combined total of eight so I would just wait those sellers out and mine
would sell now that might mean I wait a week or two but if that's fine I don't need things
to sell I don't need to flip things fast I'm not trying to do that I'm trying to make money
with my Amazon business and so I'm fine selling things one month two months three months because
again that FC transfer is going to take a while to move around the warehouses and you are not going
to win the buy box not necessarily they're not one that you can win it but you're less likely
when your stuff is further out to ship so just like I'm looking at the shipping dates so it's a
customer and so if they want stuff fast Amazon wants them to get it fast so they're going to
prioritize that buy box to people who have free shipping and who can get it to the customers fast
now let's say for example I clicked on a product and suddenly that low price seller has thousands
well they probably got it wholesale they probably got it for really cheap they can afford to go
lower and maybe they have something with the brand where they have to price at a certain price or
maybe they have an expiration date that is coming up fast and they're trying to offload it all of
these are reasons that you don't necessarily want to match that lowest price but if the person has
a thousand and you're not ready to wait them out for a couple of months then you got to do what you
got to do and you might need to drop the price cut your losses and run maybe you want to ask
for them back you can do all kinds of things I have asked for stuff back and ended up fbming it
because I didn't want it to sit in the warehouse for months on end so it's all a part of your
business and when that does happen when all of a sudden Amazon comes on with a thousand of them
it's it's a sucky situation that you either gotta sit and wait on them or just price to move them
if you see that there's like this asper cream for example if you if I happen to see that there were
sellers undercutting there's not a lot of sellers on this if you can find them at Ollie's still
that's where I got them but if you see like one seller's undercutting and one other is matching
or it's a reprice or whatever you can just let those sellers wait out this it's like price
thinking funnily enough is not really an issue during Q4 because things sell so fast that those
low ballers sell out and so you don't even have to worry about those low price Tinkers who don't
want to make any money just let them sell out the rest of the year some products will the low
ball sellers will sell out fast maybe they won't it just depends on the item's rank but I always
recommend using keepa anytime something seems too good to be true you want to check out keepa to see
was it always selling at that price was it always that rank like you want to know the history of it
so you know whether or not you should buy a lot of them if there happens to be a large seller who had
a lot of them which you can see in the offers on keepa the historical offers that they just
like sold out and now all of a sudden they could come back on with a lot more so just things you
can read into knowing keepa to help you make your decisions on the first front end and then using it
to know how much stock they have if you don't want to pay for keepa which I highly recommend you do
but if you don't there is a free Chrome extension called how many with a question mark I think you
get 10 free a day it'll tell you how many of the other sellers on a specific product page will have
so that's a Chrome extension called how many okay so that's it for this video the main takeaways are
making sure you buffer on the front end do that product research before you buy it make sure it
has enough profit and then should something happen just price smartly price knowing is my
stuff transferring around still because then it's not worth it to even look at the pricing
save yourself some time leave it priced high and just wait until it's available when it becomes
available then you can decide if you you want to lower the price of dollar to match that buy box
or if you want to wait it out longer but be smart with your pricing go to the product page see what
the sellers have see how new they are new sellers tend to be the price takers they either have just
launched or very limited number of reviews so you can kind of tell I actually have my price repricer
set up to not match any just launched or three stars or less or three reviews or less sellers
because again some sometimes new sellers they don't watch my videos and they don't know that
you don't have to drop the price to win the sale so I just want to filter that out and not match
their prices so you can make the same decision either on your repricer or by manually repricing
hope this video was helpful and encourage you to just be active in your business know what's going
on and most of all make money by not tanking the price if you want to learn more from me
I have the beginner FBA Amazon selling course I have that leadless bolo Group which you can join
at any time it's happening every month we are in there chatting about just different Amazon
things as well as lists of profitable leads to look for doing Retail Arbitrage and online
Arbitrage or I have the ungating guide you can find it all at yoursellingguide.com have a great
week and I will see you next time right back here for another Amazon selling video foreign
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