Selling on Amazon can be hugely rewarding, or it can be a total nightmare! Success is largely based on product selection, customer demand and competition. 

One of the cheapest ways to start an Amazon business is through retail arbitrage and online arbitrage; the practise of buying products cheaply to resell on Amazon.

If you've got more upfront capital, you may choose to buy products in bulk from wholesalers, to resell on Amazon.

But how do you know what a good deal is?

ENTER: BuyBotPro!

Your highly advanced Amazon deal analysis tool.

What do we actually mean by 'deal analysis'?

So, when you're starting out on Amazon and looking to resell products, you're going to want to choose products which will ultimately make you profit and see a return on investment (ROI).

This can be extremely difficult without software.

Really?

Afraid so. This is not to say you can't source products without software, but it can be harder to spot bad deals and the quality of your deals may not be as good, simply because you have much less information available.

Let's put that theory to the test:

CASE STUDY #1 -
Analyzing an Amazon deal WITHOUT software

Here's our weapon of choice: 2 x yoga foam blocks.

Without the help from software, the following pieces of information will be key to analyze:

1) PRICE

This product is selling for £8.99. Sounds OK, although remember this includes two yoga foam blocks. At this stage, you should already be thinking, how cheap could you buy this product for to make a profit?

2) RATINGS

This product has 1,353 ratings which sounds pretty high, bearing in mind not every customer will leave a rating. This suggests that the product is probably quite popular. Then you need to determine when these ratings were made; this is important to know because we want to analyze if this product is selling well now. You can find this info out but it could take AGES to search through each individual review and try and piece it all together.

3) VARIATIONS 

There are five colour variations for this product. Although we have selected purple, how do we know if another colour variation is more popular? In the 'customer questions & answers' section on the product page, we can gain a possible insight:

The seller has mentioned 'most colour are sold out' but there will be 'limited purple colour' available on Amazon FBA within a couple of days. This could actually suggest that purple is the least popular, if there's a small amount stock left for that colour. But, it's hard to tell, and there's no guarantee customers would ask about variations/colours for different products.

4) WHO'S IN THE BUY BOX

An FBA seller currently holds the Buy Box (‘VeeLeisure’). This is important to note because if we were also selling FBA, we would want to be matching the current price. If the seller was Merchant Fulfilled, we might be able to increase our price by 10% as an FBA seller (because we would be able to provide Prime shipping).

5) OTHER SELLERS

There looks to be a total of two sellers on the listing, with the second seller having a lower price of £7.75. We can investigate further by clicking through to check:

Aha! So the other seller is cheaper because the product is classified as 'Used - Like New'.

The seller of this product is Amazon; it's likely this product has been damaged in their warehouse which is why it's selling at a cheaper price.

Only 'New' items can get into the Buy Box, so if a buyer did want to purchase this cheaper product and didn't mind about the damaged packaging, they would have to click through to the other buying options.

Now what?

Next, you'd have to work out if you can source the product from an online retailer at a cheaper price than £8.99.

In fact, it would have to be significantly less if you were going to see a return on investment.

You would then need to try and calculate all of the Amazon fees. If you were selling Amazon FBA, this would include referral fees, fulfilment fees and storage fees.

Then you would need to try and calculate the profit per product.

And only then would you be able to make a decision whether this would be a good purchase. That said, it doesn't guarantee this would be a 'good' deal...

It's still a bit of a gamble, because there are so many unknowns that you can't just predicate without looking at historical sales data for a particular product.

Here are some additional questions you'll be thinking of when trying to analyze a deal:

• How fast is the product selling?

• Are there seasonal fluctuations?

• How much stock do other sellers have on the listing?

• Has the sale price remained relatively stable?

• Is the Buy Box being shared?

• Is the product from a 'restricted' category meaning you're not eligible to sell it?

• Are there any Intellectual Property (IP) issues associated with the brand?

• Is the product listed as being 'HAZMAT' or a dangerous goods?

ALL of these questions are answered in SECONDS using BuyBotPro.

That's how powerful the tool is.

AND, BuyBotPro is not only a set of experienced eyes to help you spot a good deal, it's like a giant calculator which number crunches figures automatically, calculating all of the KEY FIGURES for you (amazing for those of us who aren't great at maths!).

That's right, BuyBotPro:

- Calculates your Amazon costs

- Calculates your profit

- Calculates your ROI 

- Calculates your 'confidence' score
(based on whether it thinks it's a good deal for your Amazon business)

Additionally, BuyBotPro has loads of other key features such as suggested product purchase quantity, competition analysis and estimated sales calculator – more on all of this later!

CASE STUDY #2 -
Analyzing an Amazon deal WITH BuyBotPro

Using BuyBotPro, let's take a look at the SAME product and see how we can analyze the deal more effectively.

With BuyBotPro enabled, this is what the page will look like:

The main BuyBotPro interface sits neatly along the right-hand side of the product page.

We'll go through each of the sections.

Firstly, input your Buy Price. This is the price you can purchase the product from (including any discount codes or promotional codes you can find).

BuyBotPro has automatically pulled in the current 'Sell Price' from Amazon (£8.99). You can change this if you intend on selling the product at a different price, but the current sales price is a good indicator to start your analysis.

There are three toggles below this section which are currently switched off. 

EFN = European Fulfilment Network. If you plan on selling across Europe, you can toggle this on.

MF = Merchant Fulfilled seller. If you are fulfilling orders yourself and shipping products to customers, you would toggle this on.

Bundle = if you are using a prep centre to package your products, they may charge a small fee for product bundles.

You can set this fee in the settings section of BuyBotPro (the wheel in the top right-hand corner). Once you've inputted this fee, turn on the Bundle toggle on and BuyBotPro will use the figure to amend the costs.

TOP TIP: if you hover over any of the text within the BuyBotPro window, you will get an explanation of what it means, example below:

Once you've inputted your Buy Price and hit the 'Analyze button', see the results appear in seconds:

OH NO! Immediately we can see that we are NOT eligible to sell this product and the ROI and Profit is in negative digits!!

When we analyzed this deal without software, we were not alerted to this at all.

Yes, we could have worked out the ROI and profit (although how long would this have realistically taken!), but we wouldn't have known about the eligibility of the product...

We may have been alerted to this when we came to list the product on Amazon, as it would probably say 'Apply To Sell' but what if we were too late and had already bought the products?

So this would be a NO-GO product. But for the purpose of understanding more about BuyBotPro, let's go through all the features:

ASIN - Every product on Amazon is categorized by a unique number; Amazon Standard Identification Number (ASIN). If you hover over the blue text in BuyBotPro, it will bring up the product details and will alert you if Amazon is on the listing or not:

BSR% - This is short for 'Best Sellers Rank'. The lower the BSR, the faster the product is selling. So a BSR of 1% means the product is selling really well, and BuyBotPro predicts it will stay at 1%.  

ELIGIBLE - Depending on your seller account, you are likely to come across restricted categories and restricted products. This means you would need to go through the process of 'ungating' to become eligible to sell the product. In this instance, we are not eligible to sell the yoga blocks which suggests there could be a brand or category restriction.

IP Radar - This stands for 'Intellectual Property' Radar. Some products have IP protections in place. Given that there are over 350 million products listed on Amazon's marketplaces, Amazon can't check the IP for every product. So, it's your job as a seller to make sure any product you resell on Amazon has no known IP issues.

You can't be certain of IP issues without researching it. And even then, that could take a LOT of time.

This is why BuyBotPro has the feature built in! It works like a traffic light system; green means the brand is safe to sell as far as ButBotPro knows, amber means you would need to do some extra research and red means there are known cases of IP issues, so you should avoid selling the product.

HAZMAT / DANGEROUS GOODS - Some products on Amazon are prohibited and some products are not allowed for FBA sellers. Although you can ultimately find out this information, BuyBotPro saves you SO MUCH TIME! It will alert you straight away if the products are HAZMAT or part of the dangerous goods programme. In the above example, the product does not fall under these categories, so if we were eligible to list this brand, this would be a 'safe' product to sell.

OVERSIZE - BuyBotPro estimates that this is not an oversized product. Why is this important to know? It's all to do with shipping costs. If you're selling FBA in particular, you want to be avoiding large, heavy products as the shipping costs will be much higher and may eat into your profits.

BUY BOX ANALYSIS - This is measured through a set of emoticons and can help give an indication of whether it's likely you will get a share of the Buy Box. Hover over each of the emoticons to see a description.

S.P.Q. - Suggested Purchase Quantity. BuyBotPro will look at a range of factors and suggest how many units you should buy of a particular product. Note: it only does this if the BuyBotPro Confidence Score is above 68%. In the example above, it has given a score of 0 because we are not eligible to sell the product and the confidence score is not above 68%.

Profit Margin - BuyBotPro will do the maths calculation and work out your profit margin as a percentage (result!).

Break Even - BuyBotPro works out the minimum price you would need to sell the product for if you were to make no losses or gains, once all the fees were accounted for. In our example, we would need to sell the product for £9.84 to break even, which is higher than the current sell price of £8.99.

TOTAL COSTS - If you hover over the blue icon, BuyBotPro will show you a breakdown of your costs. 

Referral Fee: £1.38
Fulfilment Fee: £2.32
UK VAT: £0.78
Total: £4.68

This is super helpful and means you don't have to waste time trying to figure it all out!

ROI - This is a percentage based calculation. Ideally, you should be looking at a minimum ROI of 30%, although different sellers will have different objectives.

PROFIT - Once all your costs have been taken into account, BuyBotPro will calculate your profit per product. In our example, the profit is negative £0.69 making this a problematic deal!

What about BuyBotPro Graphs?

Yep, that's right, all that information gathered, and we haven't even looked at the graphs!

Even if you HATE graphs, the BuyBotPro graph is SUPER EASY to understand, and unbelievably valuable.

On the vertical Y axis, there is a product price range from £8 - £17. This will vary depending on what product you're looking at.

Along the horizontal x axis, are the dates over a select period (in this example the time period is set over the previous 90 days, starting mid-August). You can change the period of time; select '360' if you want to see how well the product has performed over the past year. BuyBotPro also gives you the option to select the product's 'All time' sales data. Use these set periods to spot trends in how well the product is selling - is it a fast seller all year round, or is it more seasonal based? (e.g. sells very well in December in the run up to Christmas but 

On the far-right vertical axis, you have the Best Sellers Rank, which in this example is in increments of #5,000.

Probably the most important line on the graph is the green BSR line, as this gives a very quick visual indicator of how fast a product is selling (every ‘drop’ of this line indicates at least one sale has been made).

Throughout August and the beginning of September, the BSR line was climbing in rank (#25,000) which suggests not many sales were being made.

BUT, on around September 12th, the BSR line dropped significantly to a BSR of #5,000. 

From this point on to November 8th, the BSR line stays close to the bottom of the graph which suggests the product has consistent sales, corresponding to BuyBotPro’s 1% BSR calculation.

The Buy Box price is represented by the pink diamond on the graph. In the above example, the Buy Box price correlates directly to sales; when the price dropped to £9, the sales increased.

This is quite a simplistic graph; on some Amazon graphs you will see the Buy Box price fluctuating quite a lot in relation to other sellers entering the listing.

Whilst we're on the subject of new sellers, there is a second graph which shows you how many sellers are on a listing at any one time, and whether this changes across a set period: 

This can be hugely useful for identifying trends. If, for example, the new seller count was on the increase and more and more sellers were joining a listing, you might choose not to list the product due to increased competition which could become over-saturated.

Wait, BuyBotPro ALSO shows Product Variations?

YES!!

Remember earlier when we were trying to analyze the deal without software and we weren't sure if a particular colour variation was selling better than the rest? Well if there's product variations, BuyBotPro will show you:

By coincidence, it actually looks like the purple variation is the best-seller with a review count of 33%. It's closely followed by pink at 32%.

This information can be really useful when making your buying decision because the prices might vary depending on the popularity of the colour, and the colour you choose may end up effecting the sales rate.

For example, the colour 'pink & grey' has no reviews. This suggests that this colour is a slow seller.  

BuyBotPro Shows Competition Analysis

Without using software, the only way to see your competitors is by clicking through to ‘see other sellers’. But that in itself gives you limited information.

The competition analysis window in BuyBotPro shows you how many other sellers are on the listing, the price they are selling the product for, in addition to their profit and ROI.

In this example, there is one seller with a huge amount of stock: 621 units. The green box means they are an FBA seller. If Amazon was on the listing, the box would be orange, Merchant Fulfilled sellers are represented by a grey box and light blue indicates Seller Fulfilled Prime members.

The competition analysis is great for a quick overview of other sellers and can be powerful when used together with the graph data. What you're really looking for is how likely you are to get a share of the Buy Box. Even if there are 15+ sellers, if the stock is selling extremely well and in high volumes, and there is evidence of the Buy Box being shared, it could be a good deal.

Speaking of high sales volumes...

BuyBotPro has an Estimated Sales Calculator

BuyBotPro's estimated sales calculator is a KEY feature that you'll want to pay attention to!

 Without software, there's no way of telling how the volume of sales changes per product.

Well, you might be able to guestimate based off the reviews, but that will not be as accurate at the estimated sales calculator seen above.

The middle box represents the monthly estimated sales and if you hover over the number, it will give an estimated monthly breakdown:

The left-hand box (1516) is the previous 90-day average, and the box on the far right indicates the predicted future 90-day sales.

In the example above, there is no number assigned to this box which means there isn’t enough data to be able to accurately predict the sales.

This could be a warning sign as limited data could suggest limited sales. This is why it’s important to look at ALL of the info provided by BuyBotPro before making your buying decision.

BuyBotPro also features a ‘Multi-Market Analyzer’ which tells you how well a particular product is selling in different marketplaces:

 In our case study example, the product is selling the best in the UK, followed by Germany and then France.

However, BuyBotPro is also making us aware our profit and ROI is in negative figures for all marketplaces! 

BuyBotPro also features a ‘Manual Sourcing Accelerator’, a ‘VA Toolbox’ and is linked with its sister company, ProfitProtectorPro which is an advanced repricing tool.

That’s for another day!

What have we learnt?

This article has examined two different ways to analyze the same deal. Although it’s possible to gain information and insight without using software, there were certain aspects we couldn’t check (eligibility, IP issues, HAZMAT). Working out FBA costs and additional fees would take additional time and there’s risk of human error.

Using BuyBotPro, once we inputted our Buy Price and clicked ‘Analyze’, key data was revealed in seconds.

So very quickly, we could see there was no profit in this deal (plus a load of issues) and could move on to another product.

The sales history chart on BuyBotPro provides a very good picture of how well an item has performed over time, allowing you to see seasonal trends as well as current/past sales velocity - key information you wouldn't be able to see otherwise!

BuyBotPro saves you valuable time, protects you from bad buys and gives you more capacity to grow and scale your business (which is what it’s really all about!).