Benefits of Using Oaxray
There are many uses for the OAXRAY extension. Here’s a running list of the ways we’ve used OAXRAY and related sourcing techniques. We’d love to hear yours as well – send them to support@oaxray.com
1. Normal Online Arbitrage Sourcing – VIDEO
The classic way to use OAXRAY is search for products on one of the sites we support and with the click of the extension button, you will see which items may be profitable, which are not, and what the ROI, sales rank, and net payout are.
2. Power Sourcing – VIDEO
You can run OAXRAY on many search pages simultaneously. At the bottom or top of your search results, click on the 2nd, 3rd, 4th and so on pages of the search results and run OAXRAY on these pages as well. You don’t have to wait until the first page is done. In the options section of the extension, you can toggle your settings to choose whether or not to have the results for each search page appear in their own tab or in one consolidated tab. Here’s a bonus power sourcing tip: make sure you’ve got your search page set to display the maximum amount of products per page.
3. Clearance Sourcing
Most of the sites we support have clearance sections. These certainly can be over-sourced areas from which to choose products to resell, even before OAXRAY came along. However, if you learn the rhythm with which each store places new items on clearance (often at midnight or in the wee hours of the morning), you can be the first to quickly evaluate the new clearance stock and take advantage of these sourcing opportunities before they quickly disappear.
4. No Sellers on Amazon – VIDEO
OAXRAY helps you quickly locate items that currently have no sellers on Amazon. These items may have a poor rank because they have not had any listings. Hover over the Amazon price to quickly check the Keepa graph on these items to see how long its been since the item has had an active listing.
5. Merchant Fulfilled Opportunities – VIDEO
OAXRAY isn’t just for FBA sellers. Check the box on the extension popup tab to get merchant fulfilled calculations. Even if you don’t normally merchant fulfill items on Amazon, you may wish to do so late into Q4, during times when you expect price erosion and want to sell quickly, briefly while your items are being sent to you, your pre-fulfillment warehouse, or into the Amazon warehouse, or harness a very time-limited opportunity when newsworthy events cause short spikes in demand and price.
6. Retail Arbitrage “Pre-Scouting” / “Post-Scouting” – VIDEO
All of the sites we support have brick and mortar locations. Many of the products that you’ll find will be available there as well. In fact, you may be able to purchase them at the store in the quantity you desire more readily than you can online. Use OAXRAY to scan through sections you plan on scouting to quickly see some winners to pick up and the type of stuff that’s best to avoid. Conversely, after you’ve been out scouting in the stores, search for items you found to buy in more quantity or find similar items worthy of resale.
7. Set Alerts for the Stores We Support – VIDEO
Set up alerts on sites like Slickdeals or Fat Wallet to notify yourself of sales, coupons, price mistakes, and special deals for the sites we support. Then, you’ll be amongst the first to know when there’s a flash sale or big discount. And you’ll be ready with a powerful tool to take advantage of whatever opportunities emerge much quicker than your competition. Don’t forget Google Alerts either.
8. Harness the Power of Discounted Gift Cards, Cash Back Sites, Loyalty Programs, and Credit Card Rewards – VIDEO
You’re probably already buying discounted gift cards and using cash back sites like Ebates, Mr. Rebates, or Fat Wallet as well as store loyalty programs and credit card rewards. If not, you should. Stacking all or some of these together can often make a big difference in whether or not a product is worth purchasing for resale. In the discount box on the popup tab, you can enter a percentage discount you expect to receive. The figures will automatically update with new calculations for the ROI and net profit. Pro tip: You can also use a negative value in the discount box to calculate sales tax.
9. Set Alerts for Almost Deals
Much of what you’ll find will be close to your buying threshold, but not quite good enough to pull the trigger. Get into the habit of setting an alert with Keepa, CamelCamelCamel, Price Zombie, and/or Webscout.
10. Work Backwards from Amazon
OAXRAY doesn’t just work on non-Amazon sites. You can actually use it on an Amazon search to show you where you can find the products being sold on Amazon. Try focusing on items that Amazon is not selling or locate items in an over-retail situation and run OAXRAY to see where you can source these products. You may even wish to create a list of ASINs as you’re sourcing all year for items that might go into an over-retail situation in Q4. Come back later in the year and do a search for each item on your list and if your hunch was right, run OAXRAY to source the product.
11. Dropship Opportunities Video
Dropshipping isn’t for everyone, but OAXRAY will give you the tools to find many different types of dropship opportunities. Want a hot item, with a low rank, even if it has very thin margins, OAXRAY will help you find it. Alternatively, you may find an item that has great margins, but a terrible sales rank. Try dropshipping it – list on Amazon as merchant fulfilled, make yourself a note where you can buy it and when/if your item sells, you know where to come to get it. Now you’ve got a nice profit with no capital being risked. Warning: This is now considered against Amazon’s Terms of Service.
12. Watch for Price Matching
Find a great sale on one site, only to discover, to your surprise, that nothing shows up as being profitable. Look to see if the prices match exactly. Amazon often price matches sites, especially many of the sites we support. Hover over the Amazon price on these items to check the Keepa graph. You may find a sharp drop in the pricing that is the result of Amazon price matching. What originally looked like an unprofitable item is now a double opportunity to buy in quantity from both Amazon and the store where you were sourcing.
13. No Matches on Amazon
While seeing that a product does not have a match on Amazon can be disappointing, it is also an opportunity for those willing to put in the work to create a listing. If you find a product at a great price, give it a shot. It is advisable to do a manual search on Amazon first, however, to double check that we have not missed the product under consideration.
14. Virtual Assistants – VIDEO
OAXRAY is perfect for virtual assistants. With your subscription, we expressly give you permission for your virtual assistant(s) to use the tool, provided they are using it in support of a single Amazon account. Use the buylist feature to have them source a ready made list just for you. Bonus tip: have them read this document for ideas on how to source for you. Double bonus tip: We’ve partnered with 20four7va.com to provide special OAXRAY trained VA’s. Check it out!
15. Personal Shopping
Don’t overlook your own personal and gift shopping. With OAXRAY, you’ll have the most powerful tool available to professional resellers available working for your personal purchases. That’s money in your pocket as well. And now we offer a free dedicated extension for personal shopping as well called OAXRAY Shopper.
16. Price Matching
On July 15th of 2015, Amazon offered a slew of historically low deals to their Amazon Prime customers. Unfortunately, it is against Amazon’s policies to use your Prime membership benefits to purchase items for resale. OAXRAY can help you source the deeply discounted Amazon items on other sites such as Wal-Mart or Target that have price-matching policies. This will allow you to take advantage of deeply discounted sale items when most sellers have assumed there is no way to take advantage of Amazon’s sales. The same concept applies to Amazon’s lightning deals. Check out the video link above for more details on sourcing this way.
17. Using Linkclump Extension – VIDEO
Use a Chrome extension called Linkclump to quickly open tabs to all the sites we support so you can check their front pages to see what kind of sales/discounts they are currently offering. This will help you make the best decisions about where to spend your time sourcing.
18. Find Amazon Sources to Dropship and/or Sell on eBay
Use the tool on Amazon and compare to prices on eBay. Do a negative sort on ROI (click ROI header once) and check out the worst ROI items for potential items to sell on eBay. These will have the lowest price on Amazon, relative to eBay’s price. Furniture and other large items are often fruitful areas to search for in order to leverage the free shipping available to Amazon Prime members.
19. Find “Shadow Listings”
For a variety of reasons, there are some listings that sell well on Amazon that do not have sales ranks. We call these “shadow listings, ” because they fly under the radar of most sellers. Look for items with zero rank that have some brand recognition. Your key that the item is selling well is the number of product reviews. An item without a sales rank, but 50 product reviews is likely a shadow listing and if the price is right a good item that is likely to be good for you for a long time.
20. Use CSV Loader to Get Amazon and Store Leads – VIDEO
Use the Load CSV tab to load your own .CSV (comma separated value) file into OAXRAY and run the extension on your own list of UPC’s/ASIN’s/ISBN’s and costs. You need a simple .CSV file with a cost column and UPC, ASIN, or ISBN column. Great for running data you’ve previously found on OAXRAY and exported or lists from wholesalers. To use this feature, you’ll need to enter your MWS credentials into your OAXRAY settings. Instructions are available here.
21. Set Out-of-Stock Alerts – VIDEO
When you find great OA deals, sometimes others have beat you to the punch and the item is OOS. Sure, you can wring your hands in agony and curse the gods who befell you with such misfortune. But instead, you might try setting an alert. We have built in integration with ScanPower’s Webscout which can give you quick email alerts when items come back in stock. You can also use consumer tools like Visualping or MyAlerts to do the same thing.
22. Scanning Seller Stores
You can scan many seller stores on Amazon, if they have a traditional storefront setup. Great for when you find dropshippers on a listing to help you identify the source. You can also scan specific sellers on eBay – make sure to view all their listings instead of viewing the store view – OAXRAY works only with the former and not the latter.
23. Used Products –VIDEO
OAXRAY now supports data for used FBA products. Use sites like Amazon, eBay, Half.com, Alibris, and Abebooks and enable Used FBA data in your settings. Then OAXRAY will use the low FBA used price to compare against as the expected sale price. This method protects you against “saturation” and there is a nearly endless ocean of products that can be flipped this way.
24. Buy-It-Now, Newly Listed
On eBay, sort products for Buy-It-Now, newly listed – these are products that haven’t been combed over yet by lots of other sellers. OAXRAY gives you the ability to sort through them
25. International Arbitrage – Video
Buy from your home country and resell in other countries including Amazon.co.uk , Amazon.ca.
26. Used Book Sourcing – VIDEO
OAXRAY is now better than ever for used book sourcing. Compare the “Lowest Overall” (enable in options) from Amazon to the low used FBA (enable in options) to find books to flip. Can use with other categories too (e.g., video games, CD’s, DVD’s, etc).
27. Evaluate Pallets/Liquidation Lots on BULQ – VIDEO
Use the power of the CSV Loader and some spreadsheet tricks to evaluate the value of liquidation pallets on BULQ. Check out the video on this one for a detailed guide.