Over the past several months I have had to clarify to people the differences between BOLOs and finds from an email list or VA group. Why certain items are listed with ROI or ranks outside of their personal criteria. This seems to be confusion for many newer or less experienced sellers. They believe that when they sign up for a service they are going to get this magic list from the service of all the good stuff to buy, when in reality that is not the case. Let me explain.
First off, a BOLO (Be On the Look Out) item is generally one that people have found in the past, have sold and know it sells well. It’s usually a hard to find item when doing RA (Retail Arbitrage). People will generally share these when they can no longer get any more in their area. Once their supply has been exhausted they share the info to help others that may be able to take advantage of the item in their area.
Items that get posted in emails or VA groups are not quite the same. These are items that are given to you to show you the potential of an item with a snapshot of what that item is buying and selling for at that moment. With these you have to do some research for yourself to see if that item fits your buying profile and is the right item for you.
VA groups and email services provide various opportunities for all buying profiles, they have various types of resellers in their groups and have to accommodate everyone. So some items may seem too high in rank for you, but they get posted because other sellers might be comfortable with that rank. Some items may not have the ROI that you desire while other resellers with larger budgets snap them right up. When the VAs look over a website they post all the finds they come across because they never know who will be interested in what items. Even low dollar items are posted with 50% ROI and $2 profit because someone may need another $5 to get to the free shipping breakpoint for that website. Nothing more frustrating than needing to get to $150 for free shipping and having a limit of 3 on a $49.95 item, it saves time from having to search for that low dollar fill in that you need. So even if it’s not an item that you yourself would buy alone it makes sense to post it just in case someone else may be looking for just such an item.
Things you can do to research an item include checking price history, checking to see if Amazon was on the listing, checking to see if a low price was driving that rank. You can check CCC for the ranking history. Check keepa graphs to see if Amazon has been selling on the listing and the recent selling history. Check other websites to see if this is an abundantly available product, a popular product, a discontinued product, etc. For example, those that sell Lego sets can attest that being discontinued makes a big difference in strategy for pricing. There are a lot of different factors in determining if an item is right for you.
You may ask “Then why am I paying this person to find items for me if I have to research everything myself?” That’s a fair question. My answer would be for the expanded opportunities that the VA group or email service provides. Without their help would you have found this item? Maybe that item leads you down a rabbit trail to another item that you wouldn’t have found yourself. Each time you get a list of 5 items, 10 items, or whatever the number there are always going to be some that do not fit your buying/selling profile and some that do, it’s your job to determine which ones do. The service provides opportunities that you may not have ever found by yourself. New websites that you have never heard of. VA groups often have interactive members to discuss and answer questions without having to expose an item to thousands of other sellers. There are many benefits to belonging to these types of groups.
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