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Online arbitrage is the act of purchasing a product from one ecommerce platform and selling it on a marketplace of your choice for a profitable price. I have been able to build a business focused on this practice to the point it’s one of my largest income sources. In fact, most of it is done by making daily purchases on eBay and selling on the UK’s biggest online store – Amazon.co.uk. So how is it possible to find enough products to be able to do this?

There are so many ways to source products. I primarily use sourcing software that uncovers the full-priced opportunities in plain sight (once you’ve sifted through the thousands of non-deals). There are then the one-off opportunities that come around for clearances and flash sales. Tactical Arbitrage picks most of these up too. Less obvious profitable buys come when I apply gift cards to my basket. So how do you stack gift cards for online arbitrage?

Zeek is a company that advertises heavily around Christmas, and disappears for the remainder of the year. They specialists in gift cards, giving users the ability to both sell unwanted gift cards, and purchases gift cards at a slightly lower price than their face value. Popular ones disappear quickly, so you need to get into a routine of checking what’s in and buying them as soon as you can.

The ‘stacking’ aspect is the act of buying multiple gift cards to get as great a saving as possible. For example, an Argos gift card worth £100 at £98 may not sound that exciting, but if you know you’re about to spend £1,000 on their website (which is very easy to do with a good online arbitrage deal), you would have saved yourself a whole £20 from your basket.

Beyond Zeek, it’s very difficult to get a hold of many gift cards in large quantities. Even on Zeek, you have to be quick to claim the popular ones, as someone else will always be around the corner waiting to buy them before you get chance to.

Your early days in online arbitrage should focus on experimentation. You need to get a feel for the different product categories, online stores and the promotions they run. You will eventually get to the point where a handful of strong, reliable websites consistently supply you with a constant stream of deals. That’s the point where it’s in your interest to stock up on stacks of gift cards. Get as many as you can for the websites you know you’re going to buy from again and again.

While we’re on the topic of savings, always make sure that you’re using promo codes and claiming any cashback you can from your online arbitrage purchases. Even if you’re spending a few hundred pounds per week on products, it will likely accumulate to a few hundred pounds of cashback by the end of the year. Top Cashback is my go-to and I’m sure it will be for you too.

Chiino
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