27 ms·

I've bought Amazon out on some items when they have a sale and then sold later for a profit. The best items to do this on is discontinued items that will still

by ikeboy 9y ago

I've bought Amazon out on some items when they have a sale and then sold later for a profit. The best items to do this on is discontinued items that will still be in demand, as you can sure that eventually there will be no stock. Or when they have a significant sale on items that still sell reasonably well at regular price. The significant shipping fees for reselling mean you need to have a large discount. You also have costs of returns, storage, etc. You typically want a minimum of 15-20% gross ROI after those fees. For example, I've bought shavers at $180 and resold at $290-$300, from Amazon and on Amazon.

amelius 9y ago
I appreciate the frankness, but this is a lot like the usurious trade of concert tickets: not a very noble thing to do, to make an understatement.
- a_t48 9y ago
  On the other hand, isn’t the alternative the product being impossible to find? Storage ain’t free.
- ikeboy 9y ago
  It's fairly simple to show that trading in concert tickets is Kaldor-Hicks improving given reasonable assumptions. I've made the argument in the past. In this situation, it's arbitrage across time, and provides a benefit to customers buying later. It's meeting demand, which is good. It's only a tiny minority of my business, because it's a lot easier to buy in bulk from wholesale in many cases. I have talked to people that do millions just using this model, there's nothing wrong with it. Generally when Amazon has a sale they strictly limit how many you can buy to 3 or 27 or something, so it's not like you're buying out the market - just taking savings from when it's on sale and meeting demand at a different time.
  - Retric 9y ago
    You can't increase tickets for a popular event, but an optimal strategy will not sell out every ticket to every concert. Thus ticket resellers are a net loss of sales.
    - ikeboy 9y ago
      Ticket resellers only exist when the people selling the tickets directly price them below the market clearing price. Ticket resellers move tickets to people willing to pay more, which means they have a higher utility. If there were enough tickets for everyone that wanted to pay the set price there would be no room for profit for resellers. Oh and in general you can increase tickets by booking a larger place or doing whatever it is on multiple dates.
      - leereeves 9y ago
        Measuring utility of luxury goods by price is saying that rich people enjoy the concert more than poor people, which is clearly untrue. Rich people pay more not because the concert offers more utility but because the same number of dollars offers less utility.
        ikeboy 9y ago
        Well, it's an extension of thinking people should be able to make voluntary transactions. If someone is willing to give up their ticket for $X and someone else is willing to buy the ticket for $X then it is a pareto improvement for them to trade, since they both get something they value more than what they have.
        YeGoblynQueenne 9y ago
        As an extreme example of why market rationality is useless outside of academic debates, people who buy heroin are making a voluntary transaction - so it's a pareto improvement for them to trade their dosh for junk. That's assuming that "making a voluntary transaction" is really and uncontroversially a "pareto improvement". Personally, I have no idea what that means, but you can replace it with any term: If someone is willing to give up their ticket for $X and someone else is willing to buy the ticket for $X then it is a <gobbledegook gobledegook> for them to trade, since they both get something they value more than what they have. People who buy heroin are making a voluntary transaction so it's a <gobbledegook gobledegook> for them to trade their dosh for junk.
- paulcole 9y ago
  As Canada Bill Jones said, it’s immoral to let a sucker keep his money.
- nothrabannosir 9y ago
  If concert halls / theatres actually cared about scalping they’d require ID on admission. But they don’t, so they don’t. They care about concerts selling out, and they want to outsource the risk management of optimising the price to the market. It’s like a futures market they can hedge in. All the crocodile tears in the world won’t change that. I will maybe, maybe accept that ID’ing is a barrier in the states, but in Europe everybody and their dog has id. Yet: scalping persists. I don’t blame the resellers anymore, frankly.
  - YeGoblynQueenne 9y ago
    I think amelius is more concerned about the prices concert-goers have to pay for tickets, rather than about venues' profits.
    - nothrabannosir 9y ago
      Yes, that’s my point. Event organisers cry incessantly about scalpers and all their purported anti-scalping rules. “Oh no, scalpers! They make it so expensive for the fans to get our reasonably priced, accessible tickets! Which we totally priced that way because we want you to have cheap access—not because we want to exchange potential profits for the guarantee of selling out!” /s. Print a name on the ticket, check ID at entry. Zero scalpers, “problem” solved. They know that. Yet here we are. Why oh why? Edit: to clarify, I’m trying to say that an event organiser has value from the concept of “selling out” beyond simply ticket revenue. It looks good, it’s a label that evokes exclusivity and popularity in audiences , which is important for future events. Big festivals are in the news every year with a new “sell out record time! Five femtoseconds omg! We are electrolytes, you are plants! Crave us!” Conveniently glossing over the fact that scalpers now own half the tickets. When pressed, “oh no, we hate scalpers! Boo. If we catch you, ho boy! We’ll give you a heck of a diddly talking to! Bad scalpers.” — “will you do anything to stop them?” — “yes, we all spend five minutes each day farting in their general direction.” Give me a break.
      - YeGoblynQueenne 9y ago
        I get what you're saying- but that's not absolving the scalpers, it's just apportioning some of the blame for the exploitation of concert-goers to concert organisers and venues. It's like having a mafia and a corrupt police force, both. It's not like because the cops are corrupt, the mafia gets away scott free. They're both to blame that things are going down the drain. In fact they're the same kind of people, following the same kind of tactics, just from different positions in society, like.

by ikeboy 9y ago

amelius 9y ago

I appreciate the frankness, but this is a lot like the usurious trade of concert tickets: not a very noble thing to do, to make an understatement.

a_t48 9y ago
On the other hand, isn’t the alternative the product being impossible to find? Storage ain’t free.
ikeboy 9y ago
It's fairly simple to show that trading in concert tickets is Kaldor-Hicks improving given reasonable assumptions. I've made the argument in the past. In this situation, it's arbitrage across time, and provides a benefit to customers buying later. It's meeting demand, which is good. It's only a tiny minority of my business, because it's a lot easier to buy in bulk from wholesale in many cases. I have talked to people that do millions just using this model, there's nothing wrong with it. Generally when Amazon has a sale they strictly limit how many you can buy to 3 or 27 or something, so it's not like you're buying out the market - just taking savings from when it's on sale and meeting demand at a different time.
- Retric 9y ago
  You can't increase tickets for a popular event, but an optimal strategy will not sell out every ticket to every concert. Thus ticket resellers are a net loss of sales.
  - ikeboy 9y ago
    Ticket resellers only exist when the people selling the tickets directly price them below the market clearing price. Ticket resellers move tickets to people willing to pay more, which means they have a higher utility. If there were enough tickets for everyone that wanted to pay the set price there would be no room for profit for resellers. Oh and in general you can increase tickets by booking a larger place or doing whatever it is on multiple dates.
    - leereeves 9y ago
      Measuring utility of luxury goods by price is saying that rich people enjoy the concert more than poor people, which is clearly untrue. Rich people pay more not because the concert offers more utility but because the same number of dollars offers less utility.
      - ikeboy 9y ago
        Well, it's an extension of thinking people should be able to make voluntary transactions. If someone is willing to give up their ticket for $X and someone else is willing to buy the ticket for $X then it is a pareto improvement for them to trade, since they both get something they value more than what they have.
        YeGoblynQueenne 9y ago
        As an extreme example of why market rationality is useless outside of academic debates, people who buy heroin are making a voluntary transaction - so it's a pareto improvement for them to trade their dosh for junk. That's assuming that "making a voluntary transaction" is really and uncontroversially a "pareto improvement". Personally, I have no idea what that means, but you can replace it with any term: If someone is willing to give up their ticket for $X and someone else is willing to buy the ticket for $X then it is a <gobbledegook gobledegook> for them to trade, since they both get something they value more than what they have. People who buy heroin are making a voluntary transaction so it's a <gobbledegook gobledegook> for them to trade their dosh for junk.
paulcole 9y ago
As Canada Bill Jones said, it’s immoral to let a sucker keep his money.
nothrabannosir 9y ago
If concert halls / theatres actually cared about scalping they’d require ID on admission. But they don’t, so they don’t. They care about concerts selling out, and they want to outsource the risk management of optimising the price to the market. It’s like a futures market they can hedge in. All the crocodile tears in the world won’t change that. I will maybe, maybe accept that ID’ing is a barrier in the states, but in Europe everybody and their dog has id. Yet: scalping persists. I don’t blame the resellers anymore, frankly.
- YeGoblynQueenne 9y ago
  I think amelius is more concerned about the prices concert-goers have to pay for tickets, rather than about venues' profits.
  - nothrabannosir 9y ago
    Yes, that’s my point. Event organisers cry incessantly about scalpers and all their purported anti-scalping rules. “Oh no, scalpers! They make it so expensive for the fans to get our reasonably priced, accessible tickets! Which we totally priced that way because we want you to have cheap access—not because we want to exchange potential profits for the guarantee of selling out!” /s. Print a name on the ticket, check ID at entry. Zero scalpers, “problem” solved. They know that. Yet here we are. Why oh why? Edit: to clarify, I’m trying to say that an event organiser has value from the concept of “selling out” beyond simply ticket revenue. It looks good, it’s a label that evokes exclusivity and popularity in audiences , which is important for future events. Big festivals are in the news every year with a new “sell out record time! Five femtoseconds omg! We are electrolytes, you are plants! Crave us!” Conveniently glossing over the fact that scalpers now own half the tickets. When pressed, “oh no, we hate scalpers! Boo. If we catch you, ho boy! We’ll give you a heck of a diddly talking to! Bad scalpers.” — “will you do anything to stop them?” — “yes, we all spend five minutes each day farting in their general direction.” Give me a break.
    - YeGoblynQueenne 9y ago
      I get what you're saying- but that's not absolving the scalpers, it's just apportioning some of the blame for the exploitation of concert-goers to concert organisers and venues. It's like having a mafia and a corrupt police force, both. It's not like because the cops are corrupt, the mafia gets away scott free. They're both to blame that things are going down the drain. In fact they're the same kind of people, following the same kind of tactics, just from different positions in society, like.