Podcast Episode 108 – Ten Black Friday Sourcing Strategies to Maximize Reseller Profits

Today we’re talking all about Black Friday and how to get the most out of a day that has so much to offer for Amazon sellers. We kick off the discussion with some helpful retail arbitrage tips that can keep your in-store Black Friday action speedy and efficient. Then we turn to discuss how Black Friday sales are more than just the one big day of the year. Retailers will also be providing other great sourcing opportunities both before and after Black Friday.

Next, we dive into profitable ideas for online arbitrage Black Friday sourcing strategies. From cash-back and coupon extensions that give you more bang for your buck, to shipping and hiring a virtual assistant, this episode is brimming with our top tips and tricks to get you ahead of the curve for the big day. Tune in today to learn more about how to really maximize those reseller profits before, during, and after Black Friday.

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Key points from Episode 108:

• Tips about pre-gathering all the Black Friday sale information you need.
• Teamwork makes the dream work: involve your employees, friends, and family to make the most of your time.
• On the big day, the name of the game is speed!
• The number one thing to avoid doing when you’re sourcing Black Friday deals.
• How you can reward the people who are helping you.
• Some handy tips and tricks to optimize online arbitrage pre, during, and post-Black Friday.
• Explaining cash-back and coupon extensions, and how to use them to save more sourcing money.
• We talk shipping and recommend a fantastic program for scanning online retail websites.
• Stay informed by getting on the store email list with a work-related email address.
• We list a couple of great sites with “leaked Black Friday ads” to get you prepped and ahead of the game.
• Getting a virtual assistant to help organize and sort through all the deals.
• And more!

Links and resources mentioned in this episode:

• The Reseller’s Guide to Black Friday course (only open for a limited time)
• Black Friday “Leaked Ads”  Sites:
  • www.blackfriday.com
  • www.bestblackfriday.com
  • www.earlyblackfriday.com
• Rakuten – Free cash back for online & in-store purchases
• Honey – Search for online coupon codes and cash back
• Tactical Arbitrage – Scan online retail stores for profitable inventory (Use the code FULLTIME10 for an extended 10-day trial)

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Episode 108 Transcript:

[INTRODUCTION]

[0:00:01.8] ANNOUNCER: Welcome to The Full-Time FBA Show. In each episode, it’s our goal to help you turn part-time hours into a full-time income, selling almost anything on Amazon. Now, your hosts of the show, Stephen and Rebecca Smotherman.

[WELCOME]

[0:00:20.0] REBECCA: Hello there and welcome to this episode of The Full-Time FBA Show. Today, we’re going to be talking about 10 strategies to maximize your reseller profits from your Black Friday sales on Amazon FBA. Today with me to talk about this topic, as always, is my co-host, Stephen. Hello Stephen.

[0:00:37.2] STEPHEN: Hey, I am super excited about talking about black Friday. I love black Friday, buying stuff on Black Friday, before Black Friday, after Black Friday, all around Black Friday to sell on Amazon. I’m excited. Can you tell I’m excited?

[0:00:49.1] REBECCA: You look excited.

[0:00:49.9] STEPHEN: I just finished most of my coffee.

[0:00:51.9] REBECCA: Yeah, I was going to say, is this caffeinated excitement?

[0:00:55.2] STEPHEN: Yes, it totally is.

[0:00:56.3] REBECCA: All right, let’s get into the show.

[CONVERSATION]

[0:01:02.3] REBECCA:  Today, we have some tips for you about how to maximize your reseller profits for Black Friday and if you’re like me, you are sitting here thinking, what? It is Black Friday already? We’re getting there, it’s not Black Friday now but it will be here in a blink of an eye. This year has gone by so fast, I don’t know, maybe it hasn’t for everybody but for me, it has gone by in a flash and so it is time to already be thinking about your strategies for Black Friday.

We’re going to be giving some tips that relate to different types of sourcing. Four of them are going to be for retail arbitrage, four will be for online arbitrage and then we have a couple of other tips that relate to any type of sourcing for FBA. Stephen, why don’t you kick us off with the first of our tips for doing RA on Black Friday?

[0:01:46.5] STEPHEN: Well, the first thing you want to do is make sure that you have all of the information about Black Friday. Gather all the ads, get them together, make a plan, know what you want to get at each store and when it comes to retail arbitrage, you want to get the most of your time.

This is a time where you are wanting to get in and out of the store as soon as possible. So as best as you can, look at all the ads, find out what items you want to buy, check and see what it’s selling for on Amazon and if you can make a profit, come up with a plan, know exactly where you’re going to go, what you’re going to get and make sure you, of course, you have the funds to get it.

[0:02:20.2] REBECCA: Okay. Then our second strategy that we want to make sure that you are ready for Black Friday is to involve your friends and family or any employees that you have working with you on a regular basis, or maybe some employees that you might want to hire for just this occasion.

You really need to have teamwork to make this happen. It is possible to do a really great amount of sales from your Black Friday purchases just by yourself, but think about what you can do if you have a team that’s working with you.

This might be that if you’re going into a store, that you have one person that grabs the cart in the parking lot, one goes and gets the inventory while the other one gets in line and waits at the cash register, while the other waits in line at the cashier.

You really can split up and divide and conquer, you can take that list of items that Stephen was talking about, take your plan and one person takes one section of the store, another person takes another section.

There’s a lot of ways to do it and this is really a great time to either enlist the help of friends and family who are interested in going or if you have people that you can hire for the day or if you have teenagers that you can hire, this is a great time to build a team, even just for the day. Make the most out of this really awesome shopping day.

[0:03:36.4] STEPHEN: Yeah, the name of the game is speed. You want to get in and out as soon as possible so the more people you have, the less time you have to spend doing all the things. The third tip is to stick to the plan. You’ve got a list of inventory items that you want to buy, you know which sections they’re in, you know what stores they’re at, stick to the plan.

This is not a time to get out your phone and spend – this is not a time to get out your phone and scan barcodes of other items. It is just a time to grab and go. I know some sellers that will have items that they will get and they have someone else stand in line for them while they go off and go to the next store. You just need to stick to the plan, this is not a time to find new items to sell on Amazon.

[0:04:18.5] REBECCA: All right, then our fourth tip for RA on Black Friday is that you want to make sure that whoever is helping you with this plan is rewarded very well for their help. This can look a couple of different ways. If you are hiring people for the day, you want to make sure that you pay them a really good rate for the time that they spend, whether it’s a flat fee that you agree to ahead of time, or whether it’s an hourly wage. Or if it’s somebody that’s in your family who is just wanting to help out and they’re like, “No, you don’t need to pay me.” You still want to reward them for helping you.

This is a situation where if you have a spouse who doesn’t normally work with you or if you have parents or siblings or whoever, that you make sure that you pay for lunch or pay for a really nice dinner. Something to give them some sort of reward for their time and the effort that they spend, so that they are not just doing this favor for you and you reaping all the benefits, but that you really are helping them to feel appreciated and just making it an even more fun day by having that fun meal at the end of it.

[0:05:24.4] STEPHEN: Those are four strategies that focus mainly on retail arbitrage tips for the big day, big Black Friday. Gather all the ads together, make a plan, involve your friends and family, stick to the plan and reward those who are helping you.

Just so you know, Black Friday, most people just think it’s one day. Well, when it comes to Black Friday sales, there’s Black Friday sales before and after Black Friday, the week before, the week after, two weeks before, two weeks – I mean, there’s so many opportunities. It’s more than just the one day, especially when it comes to online arbitrage Black Friday type sales.

[0:05:56.5] REBECCA: Right. Even more so this year than in years passed, with all of the supply chain issues that have been happening around the globe, there are lots of rumors that the sales are going to be happening earlier than ever this year so that people are shopping even before Black Friday this year, with those really steep discounts.

You want to make sure that you’re on the lookout for those types of sales and opportunities well in advance of Black Friday this year. Now, let’s get into some of our online arbitrage tips for those pre, post, during Black Friday type sales. This could be post, like on Cyber Monday or it could be even in the days after that. So what have you got for us, Stephen?

[0:06:37.3] STEPHEN: Yeah, the first tip when it comes to online arbitrage, Black Friday type sales is to use cash back extensions like Rakuten. Rakuten, formerly Ebates, is a great tool that you can use that can get you a percentage cash back.

It doesn’t cost you any more to use Rakuten, the items that you’re buying don’t cost any more. But guess what? You get a percentage cash back and so you’re able to get your inventory for less, because you get cashback, and be able to spread out your sourcing capital even more.

Rakuten, it’s like a chrome extension that you can download to your laptop. Just purchase through that chrome extension on that particular online arbitrage website, and if it’s a participating partner of Rakuten, you get cash back so that’s more money in your pocket.

[0:07:18.8] REBECCA: All right, then our next OA tip is along the same lines. You also want to make sure that you’re using all the right coupons or coupon codes for your online arbitrage purchases, and we love to use an extension called Honey for this type of coupon code search.

Honey is another Google chrome extension and it works on all of these different OA websites that are participating. Any, not just OA, but any type of online retailer who is participating with Honey, has coupon codes that are available. Honey can search that website and pull up for you automatically when you’re making your purchase, whether or not that website, that online retailer has any active codes that apply to your particular purchase.

You want to make sure before you check out on that retailer’s website that you have checked all of the available coupon codes. Honey does that automatically for you so that you’re not having to search, see what the coupon codes are, enter them in manually. It just does all of that automatically for you.

Now, I do want to warn you that there are some different ways that Honey and Rakuten can kind of cancel each other out. So you want to make sure that whichever one you click on last is the one that you’re going to be getting your cash back through. Make sure, if you’re wanting to get your cashback through Rakuten, that you haven’t clicked on Honey after you’ve clicked on Rakuten, so that you get your cashback in the place that you wanted.

[0:08:39.1] STEPHEN: Yeah and so there’s a lot of different tools that we’ve talked about so far, we’re going to talk about some other tools again really soon. All of these can be found, the links to these can be found at our show notes, fulltimefba.com/108, we’re going to have all of those links for you so you don’t need to worry about trying to write all of this down. It will be there in the show notes for you, episode 108.

The third online arbitrage tip for Black Friday pre or post or during sale is to consider upgrading your shipping. Usually when people do online arbitrage, they buy at least enough to qualify for free shipping but that is just free standard shipping. And again, the name of the game was when it comes to Black Friday is speed. When you are in a retail store, you want to get in and out as soon as possible.

With online ordering, you want that inventory to get to Amazon as soon as possible, so upgrading your shipping to next day shipping to have it sent to you so you can prep it, or send it to a prep center so they can prep it and send it to Amazon. Upgrading your shipping could get your inventory available sooner and the sooner it’s available at Amazon, the faster it can sell and the faster you can reinvest those profits.

[0:09:39.1] REBECCA: One more online arbitrage tip for Black Friday sales is be sure that you’re using a program like Tactical Arbitrage to scan online retail websites before, during and after Black Friday. This is not the time to be doing manual online arbitrage matching your OA website with Amazon catalog.

You can do that but it’s going to take you a lot of time and it is going to really slow you down. So if you can use a program like Tactical Arbitrage, you will be able to maximize your purchases before, during and after Black Friday by scanning the websites quickly and knowing really quickly whether there’s been any changes in price on those online resell websites that you could really maximize your profits on Amazon.

If you aren’t already using Tactical Arbitrage, we highly recommend it. You can find out more information about this really great program for doing online arbitrage scans at fulltimefba.com/ta and if you use the code “fulltime10” that’s full-time, the number 10, you will be able to get an extended trial of this program.

[0:10:47.1] STEPHEN: Four online arbitrage tips for you, use cash back extensions, use coupon extensions, consider upgrading your shipping, and using a program like Tactical Arbitrage to scan the sites to find the inventory to speed up the process. Those all will help you maximize your profits from the Black Friday sales.

We got two more tips for you today before we go and these apply to no matter what type of strategy you are using. The first tip when it comes to Black Friday sales in this last section is to stay informed on all of the Black Friday deals. That means get on the email list, the store email list. In fact, I recommend people coming up with their own work related email that is specifically for store mailing list.

You can get on the store mailing list and, however many stores you can find, trying to get on their mailing list so that you get their ads sent to you. That’s why I say have your own email address for that work purpose, because you don’t want your personal email to be flooded with all of these ads, but you do want to get access to all the ads. Not only the ads, the coupon codes, the sale dates, all that kind of stuff so you can properly plan ahead.

You can also find a lot of Black Friday sales, the information online. There’s blackfriday.com, bestblackfriday.com, earlyblackfriday.com, so many different types of websites that give you the “leaked ads.” We know they’re not leaked, we know the stores like to get them out soon just so it just sounds fun to get a leaked ad. But anyway, you can get access to these leaked ads and make your plan ahead of time.

[0:12:18.6] REBECCA: Then our final tip for this episode is hire a virtual assistant, a VA who can help you organize and sort through all of these deals, and can help you match up your deals with the Amazon product page. A VA can help you in so many different ways in getting ready for Black Friday. Whether it’s organizing those emails that Stephen was just talking about, going through some of these websites and ads for you, compiling different information, there’s so many ways that a virtual assistant can help you.

We highly recommend having somebody else, especially helping you with email and keeping track of sales and coupon codes that you don’t want to miss out on, so that they can help you remember, “Oh this is the day for this, and be sure you check out this on this day and let’s do a scan on Tactical Arbitrage with this coupon code on this day.” A VA can help you keep all of that straight.

[0:13:07.3] STEPHEN: We’ll put in our show notes a few links of places that you can find a VA to hire and so those are 10 strategies that we use, other people use to maximize reseller profits from Black Friday sales, pre-Black Friday sales, post-Black Friday sales, on the big day. So we hope these have been helpful for you.

Now, this has just been a quick 15-minute podcast, just scratching the surface of what we’d love to teach you about Black Friday. My friend, Kristin Ostrander and I have put together a course called The Resellers Guide to Black Friday: How to Rock Black Friday Sales Every Single Year. You can find it at fulltimefba.com/blackfriday and it is now open for sale.

The course is usually closed throughout the year. For only a few days out of the year, the course opens up and we allow people to purchase it and get access to it. The course is an eBook. It includes a masterclass and bonuses. You could find out more about the course, fulltimefba.com/blackfriday.

If you are listening on this episode on the day it drops, the course just opened today for sale and so you can use the coupon code, “bfsale” to get 10 dollars off of the course. But the course is only open for a short time so you want to grab that as soon as possible before we close the doors. Because when we close the doors to the Reseller’s Guide to Black Friday, it will not be open up again until next year.

We keep the book up to date, the information is amazing and can help you. Kristin Ostrander focuses a lot on the retail arbitrage side and she’s been able to make like $3,000 in five hours of sourcing on Black Friday. That’s what she’s been able to do. And I focus on a lot of the online arbitrage teaching on maximizing your Black Friday sales so you can get retail arbitrage teaching, online arbitrage teaching, and be able to take advantage of both strategies to rock your Black Friday sales.

Again, the link is fulltimefba.com/blackfriday and the coupon code is “bfsale” and if you happen to be listening to this you know, once down the line, guess what? If you go to that same link, fulltimefba.com/blackfriday, you can sign up for the waitlist and be notified when it is open again to the public. Those are our strategies that we like to use to maximize our Black Friday sourcing opportunities and we hope you can do the same thing as well.

[CLOSING CONVERSATION]

[0:15:26.0] REBECCA: All right, well thank you so much for joining us for this episode of The Full-Time FBA Show. We are so glad you tuned in. As always, be sure and check out any of the links that were mentioned. I knew there were a lot actually in this episode, including some links that we didn’t give you the link in the episode. You’re going to need to check out the show notes. You can find those at fulltimefba.com/108 because this is episode number 108.

We’ll also have the transcript of this episode there, and you can see all of the tips that we’ve mentioned. If you didn’t have a chance to jot down any notes while you were listening, this will be a great opportunity for you to go back and read through the transcripts, so that you can take notes or so that you can remember some of the tips that you want to put into practice.

[0:16:06.6] STEPHEN: Next week on The Full-Time FBA Show, we’re going to be talking about the things you should not be doing during Q4. There is a lot of Q4 things that you should be focused on. We’re going to tell you the things that you do not need to worry about doing, so that you can focus on the profitable things that we love to teach people what to do during Q4. So join us next week where we’re going to talk about the things you don’t need to do during Q4.

[OUTRO]

[0:16:30.6] ANNOUNCER: That is all for this episode of The Full-Time FBA Show. So head over to fulltimefba.com/podcast, where you will find the show notes and links from this episode. While you’re there, subscribe to our newsletter where you’ll get several free downloads of our popular and helpful Amazon FBA resources. Now, take action on what you have learned today so you can find success at turning part-time hours into a full-time income with Amazon FBA.

[END]