Selling on Amazon is a great idea, especially if you already have inventory as an e-commerce business owner. Even if you don’t, you can always start an e-commerce business, sell on Amazon or do both through retail arbitrage. That’s a fancy term for buying products from another retailer or a wholesaler and selling them at a profit.
Whatever you plan for your online business, you need to do product research on Amazon, given that you’re competing with approximately 6 million third-party sellers. Like most other e-commerce businesses, you need to access and analyze Amazon data to ensure you can move the product you choose to sell and make money from it. With that aim in mind, Profit Bandit is one of the best investments you could make for your e-commerce business for online arbitrage.
Key Takeaways
- Profit Bandit is a standalone mobile app for product research and price tracking designed, specifically for online arbitrage on Amazon
- The information provided by Profit Bandit includes live sales ranking, prices, Buy Box owners, and profit calculations
- E-commerce businesses can significantly benefit from using Profit Bandit for selling on and off the Amazon platform
- E-commerce sellers can also use Profit Bandit to search for products on other platforms like eBay
How Does Profit Bandit Work?
If you plan to set up your e-commerce store on the retail arbitrage model, you still need a good e-commerce platform to do it. Shift4Shop, for instance, offers a wide range of features and integrates with Amazon, so you can sell products on your e-commerce platform and Amazon if you choose.
The concept of retail arbitrage is simple, but there may be unexpected hurdles if you sell on Amazon. For one, Amazon restricts the selling of certain products. If you sell something from the Restricted Products list inadvertently, you could find yourself in trouble. For another, deciding on which product to sell requires looking at multiple factors, including current sales ranking, shipping costs, and profit and loss (P&L) calculation.
Profit Bandit addresses many of these concerns. As a mobile tool, it’s included in the paid plan for SellerEngine, or you can use it as a standalone app for $9.99 a month.
What’s on the Screen?
The way Profit Bandit works is simple. You can begin as soon as you download the app on your Android or iOS mobile device and sign up for the service. Listed below are the features you see after scanning a product and what these factors are used for.
#1. Scan
#2. Search bar
#3. Special Search
#4. Real-time sales rank
#5.Sell It
#6.Buy Cost/Sell Price
#7.Profit/Loss
#8.Browse on Amazon
#9.Scanning History
#10. Bluetooth scannerinstructions
#11.Item condition
#12.Restriction alerts
#13. Competition information
The only work you need to do is provide Profit Bandit with the product identification information. Using the Scan button (#1), you get back all the information you need in a few seconds, faster if you use the Bluetooth scanner (#10). For products with no bar code or crossed bar codes, you can use the search bar to manually input the ISBN, bar code, ASIN, or keywords and select the product from the list.
What Do These Features Signify?
Aside from the List Price and Sales Rank (#4), Profit Bandit has a Special Search (#3) feature that lets you look up information about the product being researched. This information is collated from other Amazon sellers with the same product, other platforms, such as eBay, or related tools like camelcamelcamel.
Click on the title and category header (refer to #3 in the illustration above) and choose a special function to go to the site or tool you want.
You can use the Sell It (#5) button to reach your Amazon Seller Central account and directly list the product currently loaded on your Profit Bandit App. This feature lets you list the product directly from the app. You can also use it to add the product to the Buy List.
Perhaps the most critical function of Profit Bandit is the Buy Cost/Sell Price (#6) that calculates your likely profit based on the buy cost or sell price you put in. It produces your Profit/Loss (#7) for the product. The Profit/Loss calculation uses Amazon’s application programming interface (API) to include factors such as all Amazon fees, cost of goods, shipping rates, weight, and anything else that might cut into your bottom line.
Another important Profit Bandit feature specific to Amazon sellers is the Restriction Alerts (#12). You know at once if the product you scanned is on the Restricted Products list. You need to have an Amazon seller account to use this function.
Finally, Profit Bandit lets you see all the sellers on Amazon who have a listing for the same product and whether it’s classified as Fulfillment By Amazon (FBA), New, Used, or Collect. You see their prices at a glance, and you can then decide if you can match them or offer a lower price. The list may include a listing with an asterisk (*), identifying it as a seller who has the Buy Box. Any highlighted listings in brown are products sold by Amazon itself.
How Does Profit Bandit Benefit Your E-Commerce Business?
Profit Bandit makes it easy for you to build your e-commerce business through arbitrage. You can find the best products to sell from other retailers and wholesalers easily without tedious research.
Profit Bandit automatically pulls the information and calculates your potential profit to help you decide whether something is a good deal or not. It combines the functions of product searches and price tracking so that you have everything you need to set up a retail arbitrage business.
The only drawbacks with Profit Bandit are its resource-intensiveness and the requirement for a stable Internet. Profit Bandit needs to be always online because it pulls real-time information from Amazon and other sources on the web. Given that you get critical live data at any time, having a power bank handy to keep it running 24/7 seems a small price to pay.
Is There a Profit Bandit Alternative?
While Profit Bandit is pretty nifty, it isn’t the only player in the mobile product research app on the field. Here are two alternatives ― one free, one paid ― you can consider instead of or combined with Profit Bandit.
Amazon Seller App
You can access the free Amazon Seller App if you sell on Amazon. This tool is critical for selling on Amazon and provides the essential information you need to remain competitive off the platform as well. These include the sales rank, restricted status, and lowest prices for new and used listings of the product you plan on selling. The Amazon Seller App is a necessity for e-commerce and Amazon sellers on the go.
But the problem with Amazon Seller App is it doesn’t integrate with price-tracking tools, such as Keepa and camelcamelcamel. Another drawback is that it doesn’t accurately calculate your projected profit for a product. While the Amazon Seller App takes the FBA fees into account while calculating, it doesn’t add the taxes Amazon sellers have to pay.
Scoutly
Scoutly (formerly FBAScan) by ASeller is another helpful tool for offline product research. You can download its databases for Amazon products in popular categories for the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom markets to your phone. You can then search for a product using this data, even offline.
Scoutly provides a relatively accurate profit calculation as it displays Amazon fees for seller-fulfillment and FBA. You can also switch to live mode when you have access to the Internet.
The ASeller tool allows customizable profit-based triggers to tell you if you can make money with a product. It also provides historical trends in sales rank, price, and Buy Box from the previous 12 months.
But when offline, Scoutly draws information from a database that might not have current prices. In addition, the Scoutly databases use up a significant amount of storage space on your mobile device (minimum of 2 GB). It repeatedly crashes as well, so that could be a problem.
The subscription fee for Scoutly Lite is the same as Profit Bandit at $9.99. But that doesn’t include the database search option, which is the tool’s best advantage. To avail of that option, you’ll need to sign up for a Professional plan at $35 a month for one device.
To find out more about product research tools for your e-commerce business that go beyond online arbitrage, check out our article on the best websites for Amazon product research.
Does Profit Bandit Work on eBay?
Profit Bandit’s Special Search (#3) feature allows you to check the potential of a product you want to sell on Amazon on other marketplaces too. That includes eBay, so Profit Bandit does work on eBay as well.
To access the information from eBay using Profit Bandit:
- Click on the product title and category to activate the Special Search function.
- Choose “Search on eBay” to see the listings on that platform.
Note that your profit calculation still provides you with costings based on the Amazon fees.
You can watch this video on how to use the Special Search feature from SellerEngine for eBay and other sites.
What Should You Do Next?
Hurry over to the SellerEngine website and download the Profit Bandit version for your mobile device to start online arbitrage. It’s the best $9.95 a month investment you can spend on product research for your e-commerce business.
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