As part of my evaluation of whether something is a good reselling option, I look at a few different variables before I make the plunge.
Included in that is profit per unit, profit margin, number of units I can purchase, sales rank, number of sellers and/or FBA sellers, review ratings, number and recency of reviews and price history.
Just for example, I would rather buy 2 MacBooks, make $50 on each on them, earn 1,500 points and a portal bonus, be able to sell it quickly than buy 10 toys in a store that I will net $1 on each, even if my profit margin is 50%. Profit margin is important, but you can't pay grocery bills in 50% margins. (Even better is to do both without it taking too much time!).
Today, I want to talk about two price history tools that I regularly use: Keepa and Camelizer
Keepa - link to add to chrome - is an extension that you can add to to your browser that will show a nice graph of sales on Amazon's website when you are searching for a specific product.
Let's take the iPad Air 2 16GB Silver model as an example. Here is the graph you see once the plugin is installed:
You can see that it comes up automatically on the Amazon page. Here is a closeup of just the graph:
We know that iPads sell well. What does the graph look like when you have a poor seller? Let's take this Dell printer which is ranked 158.000th in office supplies. Here is the graph
When you look at the rank for the printer (green), you see lots of huge jumps, both to high rank and low rank. The graph on rank for the iPad is much steadier.
In addition, when you look at price (blue), the line is relatively straight with just a couple of bumps representing changes in price from sales. For the iPad, you see tons of little increases and decrease. I like to see "squiggly lines" for sales, not straight lines.
Camelizer - link to add to chrome - is another extension put out by the people who run Camelcamelcamel.com which is a site for Amazon price history as well. The idea of Camelizer is to avoid having to go to the site.
The biggest problem with Camelizer in my opinion is that it isn't automatic. You need to click on it.
Let's look at the same two products on Camelizer
Here is the iPad (the Camelizer button is right on top of the top right corner of the graph):
Here is the Dell Printer:
What I like about Camelizer is that it shows each sale more closely so you can really see what's going on. That being said, I almost exclusively use Keepa because it's automatic and has the rankings on the graph as well.
Do you use any other tools for price history? Let me know what they are and why you like them in the comments
Included in that is profit per unit, profit margin, number of units I can purchase, sales rank, number of sellers and/or FBA sellers, review ratings, number and recency of reviews and price history.
Just for example, I would rather buy 2 MacBooks, make $50 on each on them, earn 1,500 points and a portal bonus, be able to sell it quickly than buy 10 toys in a store that I will net $1 on each, even if my profit margin is 50%. Profit margin is important, but you can't pay grocery bills in 50% margins. (Even better is to do both without it taking too much time!).
Today, I want to talk about two price history tools that I regularly use: Keepa and Camelizer
Keepa
Keepa - link to add to chrome - is an extension that you can add to to your browser that will show a nice graph of sales on Amazon's website when you are searching for a specific product.
Let's take the iPad Air 2 16GB Silver model as an example. Here is the graph you see once the plugin is installed:
We know that iPads sell well. What does the graph look like when you have a poor seller? Let's take this Dell printer which is ranked 158.000th in office supplies. Here is the graph
When you look at the rank for the printer (green), you see lots of huge jumps, both to high rank and low rank. The graph on rank for the iPad is much steadier.
In addition, when you look at price (blue), the line is relatively straight with just a couple of bumps representing changes in price from sales. For the iPad, you see tons of little increases and decrease. I like to see "squiggly lines" for sales, not straight lines.
Camelizer (HT - IA via DM)
Camelizer - link to add to chrome - is another extension put out by the people who run Camelcamelcamel.com which is a site for Amazon price history as well. The idea of Camelizer is to avoid having to go to the site.
The biggest problem with Camelizer in my opinion is that it isn't automatic. You need to click on it.
Let's look at the same two products on Camelizer
Here is the iPad (the Camelizer button is right on top of the top right corner of the graph):
Here is the Dell Printer:
What I like about Camelizer is that it shows each sale more closely so you can really see what's going on. That being said, I almost exclusively use Keepa because it's automatic and has the rankings on the graph as well.
Do you use any other tools for price history? Let me know what they are and why you like them in the comments
Posts
