Author: G-Wood

Maximize Profits with Cashback Tools: A Comprehensive Guide

As arbitrage sellers, we understand the importance of every dollar spent. Whether it’s in a physical store or through online purchases, our expenses directly impact our profit margins. While the primary focus of our efforts lies in generating sales on platforms like Amazon, there are ingenious methods to squeeze out more value from every purchase we make.

The Thrill of High ROI

There’s an undeniable thrill when we strike gold – finding products that promise quick sales and a return on investment (ROI) of 40%, 50%, or even 100%. While these finds are exhilarating, they are often just the beginning of our journey towards maximizing profits. Beyond discovering these high-ROI gems, we can further boost our bottom line by employing additional strategies for our purchases.

Harnessing the Power of Cashback

Today, I want to introduce you to a strategy that can significantly contribute to your profitability: cashback. It’s a simple concept that can lead to substantial savings. Several competing companies offer cashback rewards when you purchase items you would buy anyway. These rewards can range from 1% to an astonishing 20% or more.

Let’s dive into some numbers to illustrate the potential. Just a few weeks ago, I placed an order on a popular website where I frequently source products. The total cost of my order was approximately $450. However, before finalizing the purchase, I checked a cashback tool, and to my surprise, it offered a whopping 20% cashback on every order. This meant I would receive $90 back in my pocket, just for clicking a button before completing the purchase.

All the products I was buying were already promising a minimum ROI of 40% once they were sold on Amazon. But this additional $90 cashback on a single order was a game-changer! While it’s true that not every purchase will yield such a substantial cashback, even smaller amounts can accumulate significantly when making multiple orders per week. In a business where every penny counts, maximizing such opportunities is imperative.

The Role of Chrome Extensions

To make the most of cashback offers, it’s essential to be aware of the right tools and platforms. Many of the best cashback services are provided as Chrome Extensions. These extensions, once activated, notify you when you visit an online store that offers cashback. For instance, Rakuten, one of the most popular tools, pops up a small window in the upper-right corner of your browser when you visit a retail site like Walmart, alerting you to possible cashback and providing a button to activate it.

Here’s how these services work: when you click on the activation button, they redirect you back to the shopping site (e.g., Walmart) using their referral link. This allows them to earn a commission from your purchase through their link, and they generously share some of that commission with you in the form of cashback. It’s a win-win situation for both parties involved.

Exploring Cashback Options

Different cashback services offer varying levels of rewards depending on the site and current promotions. To maximize your cashback potential, consider having multiple extensions installed, allowing you to compare and choose the best offer for each purchase.

Below, I’ve listed several cashback services that I personally use and recommend:

Rakuten– Sign up and get a $30 bonus- Click HERE

Capital One Shopping-Spend $10 within 30 days using their services and receive a $20 bonus- Click HERE

Fat Coupon– Register an account and install the FatCoupon Extension to receive a $5 bonus- Click HERE

Top Cashback– Sign up and check for any available signup bonuses (varies) Mine was $5- Click HERE

BeFrugal– Receive a $10 sign-on bonus after earning $10 in cashback- Click HERE

Active Junky– Get a $5 bonus after your first purchase- Click HERE

Hoopla Doopla– (No bonus at the moment)- Click HERE

Sunshine Rewards– Receive a $5 signup bonus- Click HERE

55haitao– Get a $5 signup bonus- Click HERE

Inbox Dollars– Enjoy a $5 signup bonus- Click HERE

This list is by no means exhaustive, but these are the services I find most beneficial. When you sign up using the provided links, you can take advantage of bonuses that can range from $5 to $30, depending on the platform.

Managing Chrome Extensions

Once you’ve installed these cashback extensions, you might find it a bit overwhelming when every webpage tries to get your attention to use their service over the others. To streamline this experience, consider adding another Chrome extension called “Extensity.” With Extensity, you can easily enable or disable specific browser extensions with just a click.

This feature is particularly helpful when you’re not actively shopping. You can deactivate the extensions to avoid distractions. Then, when you’re ready to make a purchase, reactivate them and compare which one offers the best deal.

The Potential of Cashback Extensions

I strongly encourage you to explore the world of cashback extensions. There may be a significant amount of money left on the table when you engage in your regular shopping without these tools. Remember, in the world of arbitrage selling, where every cent counts, utilizing every opportunity is crucial for sustained growth.

Incorporating cashback tools into your purchasing strategy is just one of the many ways you can optimize your arbitrage business. As you continue on your journey, I wish you the best of luck, and I look forward to seeing your business flourish.

If you want to learn about other ways to grow your Amazon business, click HERE!

This question is something a lot of people ask and many have been confused as to the correct answer.

I recently had an email come into my inbox from a well-known company that designs software for Amazon businesses. (*COUGH*, Jungle Scout, *COUGH*) In that email, they said that you could start an Amazon business for as LITTLE as $1,200. The real answer, though, is much lower than that.

In the past, starting any kind of retail business required huge startup costs.

You needed a storefront, which requires money. You’d need equipment – money. You’d need inventory, lots of it. – money. You’d need to advertise to get in front of as many people as possible. – money. Market research- stumbling through trying to figure out what people actually want to buy- time and money! So many things were needed to start a physical retail location.

However, to sell things on Amazon, a lot of this is in place for you already. How so?

1. Rather than needing a public storefront, that is done by having a central marketplace where people already are shopping in masses.
2. Equipment, all you need is a phone or computer, a printer and internet connection. Most of us already have what is needed to get started.
3. Advertising- Amazon spends millions to keep people shopping there so we don’t have to
4. Market Research- Amazon shows you what products are selling and how well. All you have to do is see what ones you can source for cheap enough to make a profit on them!

What Is Really Needed To Start An Amazon Business?

The answer is much less than you think. Lets break it down.

To start a professional Amazon seller account, the cost is $40 per month. You can get an account that is free, but I recommend you get the $40 one.

You need to find a few things to sell. You could easily start with $20 or $30 to test a few items and get a feel for what you are doing.

You will also need a few basic shipping supplies:

1. Boxes or envelopes, depending on what you are selling.
2. Tape, and maybe some bubble wrap or packing paper.
3. You will also need a computer and printer for shipping labels and a smartphone, most of us already have these things already though.

The reality is, that you could easily start with as little as $100-200 if you already have those basic items, which most of us do.

Follow the Best Methods

So what about those guys saying you need $1,200 or more to start? In reality, they are trying to sell you on the riskiest way to start selling on Amazon. And you will hear the same pitch from most of the so-called “guru’s” on Youtube. That you need to put down thousands of dollars buying 1 product from China, based on all this research you have done using those expensive softwares that will magically tell you what you should sell.

What they won’t tell you is that for a beginner to find success in that field is very rare. Most people who do that will end up thousands of dollars in the hole, with a garage full of unsellable junk that they bought from China and they will be too ashamed of their failure to go back to that “Guru” and tell them it didn’t work.

Why? They sell it as though it is such a surefire way to make money that you must be REALLY bad and doing something REALLY wrong to fail. They only post about the handful of people that make it work.

The reality is that less than 5% of those will succeed.

The approach that I prefer is much less risky and is much easier to succeed with. Will you be making $1 million in the first month? NOPE! Is it passive income with minimal effort? NOPE!

Can you start making money right away? YES! It won’t be retire-in-a-week money, but you will see how it works quickly.

And with that small amount that you start with, you can slowly watch that grow, and grow. Like the tortoise and the hare, you will make slow but steady forward progress, and soon you will have a productive, successful business selling on Amazon.

How can you do this? Believe it or not, you can do it just by buying simple, everyday products off the shelf of virtually any local store and reselling them on Amazon.

How can you determine which products to sell? Do you need to buy that fancy, expensive software to find them? NOPE!

A lot of good products can be found just with the Amazon seller app on your phone when you are in the store.

I explain my favorite method in a video using a rather inexpensive Google Chrome extension, Keepa. This is a key program for any Amazon seller, but it will not break the bank.

The great thing about this method is:
1. You have your products immediately. You don’t need to wait for them to be shipped across the ocean.
2. You can get them listed to sell very quickly.
3. You already know if the product is selling based on rank and history.
4. You don’t need to build brand recognition for a cheap product that you hope is something people want.
5. You don’t need to pay for advertising because people are already looking for these products.
6. You don’t need to buy 10,000 units to test if something is good, just buy a couple.
7. If it doesn’t sell, you can probably use it or return it to the store where you bought it.

The risks are so small in this business model and it is much simpler than the other way.

Now, to be fair, there are challenges to this process. As you start your Amazon selling account, you will be restricted in several categories, and a ton of brands, and at times it will feel like you can’t sell anything.

But there are still so many things you can start selling, and as you do, those other ones will open up.

You will have to compete more directly with other sellers since you will be using listings that anyone can list on, so sometimes an ASIN will get saturated and the price will drop.

But that is why we keep looking for more things to sell, keep moving, and don’t get attached to any product or listing.

You have to go find the products rather than just sitting behind a screen and making someone else do all the work.

In reality, though, if you never do any real work, how successful do you think any business could be? People on the internet aren’t just going to send you their money for no reason. You need to work. And the purpose of retail is to provide a service to them. That is work.

How Much Do You Really Need To Get Started Selling On Amazon?

Not a lot. Obviously, the more you have to start, the faster you can grow, but you don’t really need it to get your feet wet.

Don’t get fooled by those guys telling you to go invest your life savings into a trash product from China that will never sell. Don’t listen to the “Guru’s” that want you to buy their $2,000 course and then get hung out to dry.

Instead, just set aside a little bit, or try selling a few things from around your house that you don’t need anymore and invest that money. Dip your feet in and slowly learn the business. This way will allow you to grow, though slowly at first, until you have a healthy, profitable e-commerce business.

How Can You Get Funding for Rapid Growth?

In the line of retail, funding is an essential ingredient for growth. Unless you have a large amount of capital in the bank, it is a very slow process to grow the business to the point where you can pay yourself a full-time salary and still be able to keep growing.

When you start an Amazon business, you can definitely start with a much smaller amount than if you were opening a physical store and still be able to grow, but that growth can be slow if you are starting with just a couple hundred dollars. It takes time to find the right product, make the sale, and then get paid by Amazon.

That last step can feel like an eternity if you are depending on getting the money back to be able to buy more products to sell. Once you start growing, there are ways to stretch your funds to get them to work for you in a more efficient way, such as only investing a certain percentage each week so that you can always be sending in merch to sell, and make your payments and profits more consistent, rather than spending it all at once and having a couple of big days, then nothing while you wait to get paid.

What If You Could Get Your Money Faster?

There could be another option to consider. What if you could make a sale today, and get the money as fast as tomorrow? You could keep rolling those funds back into your business and make those profits grow much faster than when you have to wait 2 weeks for Amazon to let you have it.

While it is best not to use this kind of service when you are just getting started, once you make about 10k in sales each month, you may want to look into a way to turn your profits faster and grow more rapidly.

Why is it best not to do this from the beginning? Because you are just learning. This is the time for baby steps. It is more important to focus on learning the business and processes before you try to spend larger amounts on inventory.

When you are just getting started, you are just learning what kind of things to look for that might be a good seller. You are more restricted in categories to sell in. You are still learning how to read a Keepa chart. There are so many things you need to learn as a new seller.

However, once you have grown to where you are doing about 10k each month consistently, that means you have more experience. You have a better idea of how to find the products to spend that money on. You are better at tracking your margins and expenses. And by this point, you will likely have a list of products you want to test, but just don’t have enough cash flow to make those purchases.

Once you get to this point, it may be worth exploring an option where you can get your money paid back to you immediately rather than waiting for the Amazon payout.

What Kind of Service is This?

There is a company that works with Amazon sellers to get our funds back to us faster so we can reinvest back into our business and grow at a much quicker rate. There is a charge for this service, though, and that is another reason it is best to wait until you have grown and have a good sense of the business.

The company is called Payability. They will work with you to help you grow at a much faster pace than waiting for Amazon to pay you.

There are a couple of things to take into consideration before signing up to their service. There is a fee that comes with it. They charge a 2% fee on your total sales. So if you are selling $10,000 in a month, their 2% would come to $200.

This is something that needs to be factored in before making such a commitment. Remember, we are trying to make decisions that will GROW our business, not shiny objects that sound good.

So make sure you know your numbers well and make sure this is a reasonable thing to pay for the service. As a business owner, it can be hard to want to pay that much money out to any service, but it seems like to will make you grow, rather than cripple you, it could be very much worth it.

How Does it Work?

If you choose to sign up for this service, it is good to know what you are getting into. To get started, they require that you have done over a certain number in sales for at least 3 months. They don’t want to sign up a brand-new seller that doesn’t understand what they are doing.

They will provide you with a new account that your Amazon payments will go into so that they are getting paid when they should. Each day, as you make sales, they will track them. Usually, once the product ships, whether it is FBA or FBM, that is when Amazon adds the funds to your “Total Balance”. This is the number you see on the top of your Seller Central page. Payability will track that number and release 75% of that amount to your usable funds the following day.

They will give you a credit card that allows you to immediately spend your available funds. You have the option to either use that card, which also give 2% cash back, or you can transfer the money into your business bank account. For fastest growth, the card they provide is very helpful. But if you are purchasing wholesale, sometimes the only way to pay is by bank transfers, so you may need to move it to your account before you can use it.

Either way, Payability is a much faster way to get your capital back fast and to be able to invest it right back into your business to keep it rolling.

Should I Sign Up?

Only you are in a position to make this decision. Take some time to really look at your numbers and see if it is a good fit for your business. If you are content with how Amazon payouts come to you, that is a better option since you avoid another expense. But if you feel like you need those finds faster and are able to reinvest them quickly, this may be a good option for you.

If you would like to sign up for Payability, click HERE. This is my referral link and it will get you $150 dollars as a bonus when you sign up with it and get approved. It will also help me be able to keep providing this kind of content free to business builders like you, so I really appreciate your support.