(02-06-2014 01:42 AM)dirkg Wrote: [ -> ]Update on my first sale. Because of sales tax, I lost $3.66. Had it not been for the tax, I would have made about $4.
I also saw this morning that quite a few of my prices from Amazon had jumped up to my selling price on Ebay. So I need to go edit the prices before someone buys.
I hate to hear that, but it is a minor mistake. Yes, you do have to track everything about your products when doing arbitrage.
You are relying on others to maintain prices, keep things in stock, and deliver them as they say they will.
The best advice I can give you is to keep a cost analysis worksheet with all of your itemized costs for the items you sell. Break everything down so you know what stuff actually costs you - before AND during the auctions.
This is the hidden side of arbitrage. It isn't a big deal, but you have to be focused on both pre-auction pricing and ensuring the status of the goods remains the same until fulfillment.
It is a management and organizational issue - not a problem.
You have to get used to doing a daily routine to protect yourself from taking a hit like that. Even though it is minor, I don't like losses and am sure no one else does either.
As you grow, this entire process can be easily outsourced. Regardless of the size of your business - mom and pop, individual or otherwise - make and keep an operations guide for everything you do in your business.
If something happens to you, you have left footprints for others to follow and do the same job in exactly the same manner as you did. This is continuity of management - and it works extremely well - especially when you grow your business to a success or as an outsourced model.
Outsourcing should be planned for from the beginning. The costs are incredibly affordable for having a better lifestyle without having to be married to all the details and gruntwork associated with working IN your business instead of ON your business.
Your business growth usually goes ballistic when you do it. This is the benefit of living in both a virtual world and a global economy - you can reach out and touch someone and/or do business with them easily.
Incidentally, the operations guide I mentioned above?
Seems silly for a one-man operation, doesn't it?
This has been SOP at Google since Day One. When one person gets promoted, is absent, leaves the job, the guide they have kept for doing every detail of their job is passed to the next person. One of their primary job responsibilities in the job is to document everything they do every day and how they do every step.
The lesson: They don't skip a beat - everything runs just as smoothly as it always does.
Little companies get big when they imitate the little, successful stuff the big guys do.
I do this in my business every hour of every day. It is how I can often get one-week of an average person's productivity into every one of my days. (Notice I said one-week of productivity - NOT one-week of work!)