Massive Scale Cross-Border Amazon Arbitrage

[maverick]

Today's Stats​

View attachment 53640

Weekly Goals​

• Get account reactivated NOT DONE

After several days of silence I got a reply from my account manager the unblocking the account will take some time, so I guess I better find something else to do for a while.

The sales above are from country 2, which has buy box eligibility back after a very long time but still needs time to build up the open order tolerance. This means it will get paused over and over again for having too many open orders, but hopefully I can build it up over time and hopefully my country 1 deactivation does not affect it.

Business idea spitballing:

I’m not jumping ship, but had a few ideas I wanted to list out along with my rough CENTS evaluation, with lower-case for partial qualification.

1. [CENTs] Meal-plan business SaaS (home-delivered meal plans are extremely popular where I live but I’m not sure what software these businesses use — I messaged my friend who owns one of these businesses to find out)
2. [CeNTS] Event coordination and photo collection SaaS (idea taken from an X post where someone successfully did this and later sold the business)
3. [ceNt] Parking spot leasing (my community is changing the parking system to install license plate cameras, which will reduce a massive illegal parking problem by people who own more cars than spots and increase demand for legitimate spots. I don’t have the cash for this but maybe I could run it like a fund and get investors to put up the capital and I take the management fee.)
4. [CEnts] Local drop-shipping support service (implement the consolidation mode I have for my Amazon business but market the service to other dropshippers, including those with independent stores)
5. [CENTS] AI product landing page generator or single product store SaaS (some cheap service that reduces the time investment to market test products - provide easy integrations with Google, Meta, TikTok, etc., provide some in-built experiment runner that will tell you to move forward with a product or not. This completely fulfills CENTS but is also by far the most work of all these ideas.)
6. [eNTS] Local price comparison website with affiliate marketing (this doesn’t really exist and this could leverage my existing product database, but not sure how to cross-reference SKUs across stores)
7. [CeNTS] ‘Request a cheer up’ service/app (users request a cheer up explaining what is getting them down, and other users post personalized videos to them. Several different monetization options. Maybe the best cheer up gets a bounty with a pay-out or a tip)
8. [Ents] Foreign language humorous YouTube channel (I have a unique skill in that I’m fluent in an exotic language and could post humorous videos that could get a lot of traction from the ethnicity-language mismatch)
9. [eNTS] AI-powered LinkenIn influence builder. (Automatically post on certain topics and build your follower base passively. Ensure your posts use the correct tone and dont have the ChatGPT giveaway words like ‘thrilled’)
10. [eNTS] Gimmick AI flirting app (idea from X, screenshot the message from the person you are flirting with and get back something to send back in the tone of your choice)

Potential idea to use all of the listings you've scraped, along with the sales that match it, to identify which title / copy / images etc perform best.

OR

What would be interesting to understand is the price elasticity of products / categories on amazon. So what happens if you lower your price with X; do we see increase volume to outpace the loss in margin? etc

 

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[GoldFibre]

Today's Stats​

No orders.

Weekly Goals​

• Get country 1 Amazon seller account unblocked NOT DONE
• Get Google Merchant Center / Google Shopping / Google Ads accounts unblocked NOT DONE

I chatted with my new account manager and asked him if my country 2 account was marked as a 'dropshipper' account and he didn't know I had a country 2 account. There were other mix ups too already, so it's clear I absolutely need to check everything myself every time.

 

[Andy Black]

Potential idea to use all of the listings you've scraped, along with the sales that match it, to identify which title / copy / images etc perform best.

OR

What would be interesting to understand is the price elasticity of products / categories on amazon. So what happens if you lower your price with X; do we see increase volume to outpace the loss in margin? etc

I'd say the best use of the data is to identify the handful of products that generated the most profits and load them by hand into Shopify and start advertising them.

 

[GoldFibre]

Today's Stats​

No orders.

Weekly Goals​

• Get country 1 Amazon seller account unblocked NOT DONE
• Get Google Merchant Center / Google Shopping / Google Ads accounts unblocked NOT DONE

I got an account deactivation warning on the Country 2 account. It says that if there are repeat violations my account can be deactivated at any time, even if it is healthy and in good standing.

I submitted my appeal for this and I really need to be all over account manager number 4 this coming week to finally get some traction.

 

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[GoldFibre]

Weekly Update​

I didn't meet either of my weekly goals. But got a bit of insight into what is going on behind the scenes in Amazon. And I have a new point of contact there that I can chase to try to get things done.

For the past month or so my living arrangements have been really not conducive to working on this business. I've been in a hotel room with my family temporarily while my apartment gets some repairs done. It feel like we are on top of each other and I have hardly any focused time to work.

I have a plan now which is a bit extreme. Next week when the apartment is ready my family will move back in, but I won't. I'll stay in a hotel room and hunker down to get as many hours per day in as I possibly can and try to free us from the rat race. I am spending about 30 minutes per day on this now, but if I'm alone I'm sure I can get in at least 5 hours per day of focused work - 10x the time and I'm sure more than 10x the output.

When do I move back in? I guess I should set the right milestone and then stay as long as it takes, as long as being in the hotel is useful.

Yes, it's a tragedy to not spend time with my family, but it is a temporary sacrifice to allow me to spend much more time with them once I no longer have to go to my full time job and potentially not even have to work anymore, if I can liquidate the company for enough money. We need to think of it as an extended business trip, which I used to do a lot earlier in my career.

 

[GoldFibre]

Today's Stats​

No orders.

Weekly Goals​

• Get country 1 Amazon seller account unblocked NOT DONE
• Get Google Merchant Center / Google Shopping / Google Ads accounts unblocked NOT DONE

I spent the entire day out handling stuff related to preparing my apartment for move-in. It kills me to not have time to work on this or any other side business all day. Soon I can implement my plan though and have lots of time.

 

[GoldFibre]

Today's Stats​

No orders.

Weekly Goals​

• Get country 1 Amazon seller account unblocked NOT DONE
• Get Google Merchant Center / Google Shopping / Google Ads accounts unblocked NOT DONE

Daily Tasks​

• Get an update with account manager over the phone DONE
• Do all the contact info improvements for GMC reactivation DONE

​

Amazon Account​

I set up a time to speak with my account manager and got more details about the process. It also seems like he has some good experience because he also manages my number 2 competitor in the market. He is wanting me to take a much more cautious approach and I'm not sure how this is going to affect my profitability when things get going again.

I separately asked if there is anything he can do about my open order cap, which was currently affecting country 2. He wasn't sure at the time but then called me back after five minutes and told me about a 'secret' option to manually override it myself. This is not mentioned anywhere in the notifications or in any of the main menus. If I knew about this earlier I would have sold so much more!

So I set the country 2 account back to active and now I should be getting orders every day.

Committing More Time​

I had the discussion with my wife about needing a lot more time to work on the business. We came to some compromise which might work out better than my extreme plan. I'll work late and eat dinner in the office of my full time job three days per week, and I will get the full mornings of Saturday and Sunday to focus without distraction. These longer stretches will be really good for productive programming.

I will also wake up earlier and get administrative things done since I will have usually only an hour or so.

Google Merchant Center​

Wow, I'm dumb!

I went to add my contact info at the bottom of each page, and then realized that my address was not on my contact page at all! Hence the misrepresentation violation.

It turns out that my new theme overwrote my contact page URL in Shopify with some premade page that only has a form and no address. Even though the original page still exists in the admin panel, in the UI there is no way to navigate to it.

So I added my address both to that page and to the footer of every page as well. I'm feeling confident my account will get approved once I'm allowed to appeal again on February 5.

 

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[freek]

Really excited to see how much progress you are going to make with comitting more time

 

[GoldFibre]

Really excited to see how much progress you are going to make with comitting more time

Thanks, me too!

 

[GoldFibre]

Today's Stats​

Weekly Goals​

• Get country 1 Amazon seller account unblocked NOT DONE
• Get Google Merchant Center / Google Shopping / Google Ads accounts unblocked NOT DONE

Daily Tasks​

• Meet with account manager in person DONE

I told my account manager I wanted to come to the Amazon office, so we met up and discussed a bit.

He has an appointment with someone from the central account health team on Thursday and will get whatever information he can. Ultimately we need to give them some explanation why my account had the same type of activity that got it shut down the first time around, and provide new actions we will take to prevent it from happening again.

I also learned a few interesting things:

• I'm on my second strike and if my account gets closed again it will be permanent
• The biggest competitor has already had two accounts permanently shut down, which means they are on their third legal entity they are using to sell
• The second-biggest competitor only lists against ASINs recommended by Amazon. They are still on their first account
• Amazon has a new program in place this year for dropshippers, with an emphasis on improving service quality
• My logistics cost profile is pretty competitive

 

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[GoldFibre]

Today's Stats​

Weekly Goals​

• Get country 1 Amazon seller account unblocked NOT DONE
• Get Google Merchant Center / Google Shopping / Google Ads accounts unblocked NOT DONE

I was working on moving house until late at night so only got my transactional stuff done.

When I had a free moment I listed out some potential coding tasks to work on.

Tomorrow my account manager should have more information for me and we can attempt to rewrite and resubmit the POA.

 

[GoldFibre]

Today's Stats​

Weekly Goals​

• Get country 1 Amazon seller account unblocked NOT DONE
• Get Google Merchant Center / Google Shopping / Google Ads accounts unblocked NOT DONE

My account manager spoke with the account health team and there is some good news - the violations I was shut down for are of a different nature than the first time around. So I can make the case that it isn't a 'restumble' and have a better chance of getting reinstated than if it had been the same reason as last time.

I need to rewrite the POA and he is also waiting on some email feedback from another team he has escalated to.

I was working until about midnight on some crisis at my full-time job, so I wasn't able to do any coding.

 

[Spenny]

I'm telling you, if you can keep your head above water & keep plugging away at getting these issues solved, it's going to be an explosive growth. Don't give up. I look at your weekly growth, and you were absolutely raking it in. I'm sure you can get back to those days.

 

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[GoldFibre]

Today's Stats​

Weekly Goals​

• Get country 1 Amazon seller account unblocked NOT DONE
• Get Google Merchant Center / Google Shopping / Google Ads accounts unblocked NOT DONE

Today again I was dealing with the same full time job crisis until midnight.

I only had time to do the transactional work for this business.

 

[GoldFibre]

Today's Stats​

Weekly Goals​

• Get country 1 Amazon seller account unblocked DONE
• Get Google Merchant Center / Google Shopping / Google Ads accounts unblocked NOT DONE

I woke up to the nice surprise that my account has been reinstated. Thanks to an escalation from my account manager, the decision was overturned, without appeal.

I spoke with him and we decided to only list recommended ASINs, so I received a list of about 600k and will be deleting the rest. This means my catalog will shrink by more than 50% initially. Revenue and profit will also shrink but we can build it up over time.

I also got the invoice from my supplier and it was more than they initially told me. I also realized that I’m failing to take tax into account and so I was underestimating my costs a bit.

I want to make a claim for the damaged goods, but when I first mentioned it to them they told me I didn’t buy insurance. I want to push the issue with them.

I had 45k USD locked up in the account and was able to release all but 2k of that by requesting immediate payment. Now I can pay off the credit card and my suppliers.

 

[GoldFibre]

Weekly Update​

Well I got my country 1 account back and it doesn't currently have BuyBox eligibility, so it's still not performing as it should yet.

I can only reapply for GMC reactivation tomorrow, but I am pretty sure I figured out the reason why it wasn't getting deactivated before.

I'm so busy with housing stuff plus my full time job that I had very minimal time left over for the business. Thankfully I should finally be moving in on Wednesday and then I can switch to my new schedule where I have dedicated multi-hour time slots each week for improving my systems.

 

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[GoldFibre]

Today's Stats​

Weekly Goals​

• Get Google Merchant Center / Google Shopping / Google Ads accounts unblocked NOT DONE
• Switch listings to recommended ASINs only NOT DONE
• Review and adjust for cost exceptions NOT DONE

Again I was busy with moving all day.

I want to look into where I'm losing money and take the necessary actions.

Two ideas come to mind:

• Either do not list, or inflate the price of any bulky items that have a large risk of underestimating the shipping cost
• Buy insurance if I'm not able to claim the damaged goods without it. Usually this is about 1% of the value

 

[GoldFibre]

Today's Stats​

Weekly Goals​

• Get Google Merchant Center / Google Shopping / Google Ads accounts unblocked NOT DONE
• Switch listings to recommended ASINs only NOT DONE
• Review and adjust for cost exceptions NOT DONE

I had planned to reapply to open my GMC account today but the button is still disabled. Hopefully tomorrow it will be re-enabled.

Again busy with moving today... can't wait to be done with it.

 

[GoldFibre]

Today's Stats​

Weekly Goals​

• Get Google Merchant Center / Google Shopping / Google Ads accounts unblocked NOT DONE
• Switch listings to recommended ASINs only NOT DONE
• Review and adjust for cost exceptions NOT DONE

My GMC appeal was immediately rejected again even though I had my contact information on every page. Now the waiting period to re-appeal is significantly longer and I can only do it on February 26. I suppose I have plenty of time to prepare for it.

I got a list of about 3000 risky ASINs from my account manager to remove and immediately deleted them.

Otherwise again I was busy with moving/renovation. I know a few people on this forum do real estate renovations as part of their business and I think I can begin to understand the complexity of it now that I've gone through one project.

 

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[StrikingViper69]

Congrats on sticking with this, excited to see where it goes!

 

[GoldFibre]

Today's Stats​

Weekly Goals​

• Get Google Merchant Center / Google Shopping / Google Ads accounts unblocked NOT DONE
• Switch listings to recommended ASINs only NOT DONE
• Review and adjust for cost exceptions NOT DONE

No time again today.

I got a couple of IP complaints on some country 1 brands, which is high risk for account deactivation. I decided to put my entire account on holiday mode until I can find the time to actually clean everything up.

 

[GoldFibre]

Today's Stats​

Weekly Goals​

• Get Google Merchant Center / Google Shopping / Google Ads accounts unblocked NOT DONE
• Switch listings to recommended ASINs only NOT DONE
• Review and adjust for cost exceptions NOT DONE

I was only able to handle the transactional work again today.

Two more days until I'm moving into the renovated place and not shuttling back and forth between there and the hotel.

 

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[GoldFibre]

Today's Stats​

Weekly Goals​

• Get Google Merchant Center / Google Shopping / Google Ads accounts unblocked NOT DONE
• Switch listings to recommended ASINs only NOT DONE
• Review and adjust for cost exceptions NOT DONE

I had two of my extra accounts deactivated because Amazon tied them to my main one. Since the main one came back I had a simple appeal to get the extra ones back as well. Hopefully they will be turned on soon.

 

[GoldFibre]

Today's Stats​

No orders.

Weekly Goals​

• Get Google Merchant Center / Google Shopping / Google Ads accounts unblocked NOT DONE
• Switch listings to recommended ASINs only NOT DONE
• Review and adjust for cost exceptions NOT DONE

I finally moved into my renovated place today. There is still more unpacking work to be done tomorrow, but from Monday I will be full speed ahead on this business.

 

[GoldFibre]

Today's Stats​

One order for ~$20 profit.

Weekly Goals​

• Get Google Merchant Center / Google Shopping / Google Ads accounts unblocked NOT DONE
• Switch listings to recommended ASINs only NOT DONE
• Review and adjust for cost exceptions NOT DONE

Again unpacking all day.

I keep appealing my other account suspensions with the required documents and they immediately get rejected. Will have to ask my account manager tomorrow what is the correct way to deal with this.

 

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[GoldFibre]

Today's Stats​

Weekly Goals​

• Get into new routine!!!

I wasn't able to put my plan into action today because of some extreme weather event today causing logistical issues.

Hopefully things calm down tomorrow and I will work late at the office and start making real progress again.

 

[GoldFibre]

Today's Stats​

No orders.

Weekly Goals​

• Get into new routine!!!

Again schools and my office were closed due to bad weather and contractors were still running around my house. I couldn't leave my house and couldn't get 5 minutes to do anything on this business.

 

[GoldFibre]

Today's Stats​

Weekly Goals​

• Get into new routine!!!

I threatened my delivery vendor today and took all of todays orders to a competitor. They have had a number of bad service failures and I wanted them to wake up since they didn't take things seriously with our usual communication.

 

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[IceCreamAction]

This is my best try at a 10 year old child summary:

I have a robot that finds products in the US and puts them on Amazon sites in other countries.

The products aren't available in those countries, and some people are willing to pay more to get them.

I save money on shipping by combining small packages together into one big package.

Love the energy emanating from you and this current project.

Just wanted to add a 2cents on this aspect.

I live in the Caribbean and most people who shop on Amazon in this territory utilize a freight forwarder of sorts. (Web Source for me) where we just utilise a Miami address, the respective taxes shipping costs etc are all handled by this third party and the package arrives at my doorstep. Not sure if there is an overlap in these operations with your project but I figure it would be a good place for comparison

 

[GoldFibre]

Love the energy emanating from you and this current project.

Just wanted to add a 2cents on this aspect.

I live in the Caribbean and most people who shop on Amazon in this territory utilize a freight forwarder of sorts. (Web Source for me) where we just utilise a Miami address, the respective taxes shipping costs etc are all handled by this third party and the package arrives at my doorstep. Not sure if there is an overlap in these operations with your project but I figure it would be a good place for comparison

This is the type of business that my vendor is in, which we call 'Shop and Ship'. They make a great margin on the shipping from individual shoppers. I checked the rates of Web Source and they are charging $5 for the first pound. They are probably paying $0.80 for the international leg, a bit more for final delivery, and they will also have some tricks to reduce taxes.

I have special rates with this type of vendor so I am paying somewhere in-between, plus I get the manpower to do all the order packing and fulfillment included without having to hire anyone directly.