Amazon + Half.com Arbitrage
This week I was introduced to the genius world of Half.com + Amazon arbitrage.
What's that, you ask? Let me explain.
Apparently there are a few people who have written some programs which look at Half.com (through the eBay APIs) for products at cheap prices, then automatically post those products on Amazon's Marketplace (through Amazon's APIs) for a markup.
Once the product sells on Amazon's marketplace and the developer receives notification, they automatically buy the product from the Half.com seller, telling them to ship it directly to the address of the Amazon buyer.
Of course, they also watch the Half.com listings at all times to ensure they aren't bought and if they are, they cancel their Amazon listing immediately.
This is so genius. You can easily take 30% premiums with virtually zero costs day-in and day-out. Once the program is written, you literally don't have to do any work. Allegedly, one developer is pushing ~$350,000/mo of goods this way. We looked up a couple of his listings and they were between 25%-45% markup, meaning he's likely making between $87,000-$150,000/mo. Not bad.
I'd love to see this on a larger scale, perhaps with more retailers. I'd love to see the developer keep the data and use that for predicting eBay auction prices and using eBay along with Half.com. There's a whole slew of things you could do with this type of data.
One interesting side note is that apparently in most cases the Amazon Marketplace is worth more than Half.com.
What's that, you ask? Let me explain.
Apparently there are a few people who have written some programs which look at Half.com (through the eBay APIs) for products at cheap prices, then automatically post those products on Amazon's Marketplace (through Amazon's APIs) for a markup.
Once the product sells on Amazon's marketplace and the developer receives notification, they automatically buy the product from the Half.com seller, telling them to ship it directly to the address of the Amazon buyer.
Of course, they also watch the Half.com listings at all times to ensure they aren't bought and if they are, they cancel their Amazon listing immediately.
This is so genius. You can easily take 30% premiums with virtually zero costs day-in and day-out. Once the program is written, you literally don't have to do any work. Allegedly, one developer is pushing ~$350,000/mo of goods this way. We looked up a couple of his listings and they were between 25%-45% markup, meaning he's likely making between $87,000-$150,000/mo. Not bad.
I'd love to see this on a larger scale, perhaps with more retailers. I'd love to see the developer keep the data and use that for predicting eBay auction prices and using eBay along with Half.com. There's a whole slew of things you could do with this type of data.
One interesting side note is that apparently in most cases the Amazon Marketplace is worth more than Half.com.
posted by Ian Sefferman at 12:18 PM
3 comments
