I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but brick and mortar retail stores are fighting for your business. What does mean for you as an online seller? TONS of opportunity to purchase products at discounted prices and turn them into profits on your selling venues such as eBay and Amazon!
One of the things I love to do at the holidays is to stack discounts. Kohls Stores are famous for doing this, as you can read about in The Ultimate Guide to Savings by Store. You sign up for their birthday club online, they will send you special promotions such as 10,20 or even 30% off! Now you take these shopping, buy some clearance already marked down 50%, stack this with a Good for Cash coupon which they sound out frequently for $10 off your purchase, you’ve just scored big and bought at wholesale prices!
Be sure and join stores club card memberships. I’m a big thrift shopper and Savers Thrift Stores has a Super Saver Club. They constantly run promotions which can cause you to score big on already low prices. For instance, they ran a special that if you purchased $30 worth of their retail priced Halloween products you could come back and shop any time between Nov. 15 – Dec. 31 and get 50% off your entire purchase. I went and shopped on the last qualifying day which was Oct 31st, what this meant was that Halloween merchandise was marked down 25%, so I purchased resalable goods at a discount and now will get to go on any day of my choosing for that 50% off, no crowd fighting!
Think outside the box when it comes to your product sourcing. Stores such as Walgreens and CVS carry many products good for resale, believe it or not! Grocery stores have seasonal products that a lot of people don’t have access to other than shopping online. It is amazing what people will spend for the convenience of buying online. Just ask Kathy Simpson of ThatKat.com - she finds the most amazing things to send into Amazon for resale from these types of stores.
Also remember many stores such as Toys ‘R’ Us give points for your purchases. While you may not see the huge savings upon initial buying, those points really add up and are like free money later on! That counts into your profit margins and your bottom line. I recently discovered that by shopping at Vons I earn rewards points which get me a substantial discount when I buy their gasoline, to the tune of .50 off per gallon! This is money back in my pocket! Since I am keeping track of my gas used on my sourcing trips (you are also doing that right?) this savings goes right back into my overall profit margins at the end of the year.
No need to wait for Black Friday to find deals and discounts to make you money. The stores are battling it out right now, just look in your mail box at all the ads. They are getting more creative on how they retain your loyalty, which means huge savings for you! Don’t leave any money on the table. Happy Selling!
Danni Ackerman is the founder of The Danni App where she’s putting the fun into eBay. She is also the author of The Ultimate Guide to Savings by Store, Storage Lockers for Fun and Profit and organizer of the Las Vegas Online Sellers Meetup Group . Known as Udderly Good Stuff online, she’s been on eBay since 1998 and has grown up in the world of antiques and collectibles and reselling “stuff.” She hosts her own weekly podcast called Ask the Danni App and regularly appears on eBay Radio and is a speaker at eBay events and more. She is the mother of 4 including two youngsters she calls her shipping supervisors, and makes a lifestyle out of juggling business and family. Find her on Facebook and Twitter @theDanniApp.
