Reselling from slickdeals and fatwallet

livinitup0 · #1 09-11-2006, 11:50 PM

If I had a credit line that could allow me to buy up a lot of merchandise quickly using references like slickdeals and fatwallet, store it over a few months, and then resell 10-15% under average price, what kind of return could I look at if I purchase everything "worthwhile" listed on there for about a month? Nothing specifc, just the basic things you see on there over a month...computers, consumer goods, electorics...ect. Lets say I had $20K in funds to start.

Any help would be appreciated.

Nicholasp27 · #2 09-12-2006, 11:47 AM

quite a bit if ok with doing mail-in-rebates and such

but yeah, if u wait a week or so after the deal to sell it on ebay, u'll get more for it than the week of the deal when the site is flooded with people selling the items

livinitup0 · #3 09-12-2006, 02:15 PM

I thought about doing this the last time there was a Dell coupon for the 2001's. I wonder how many of these, over the long run, are "1 per customer" type deals...

dc_publius · #4 09-12-2006, 02:45 PM

Not alot.

You can't make a business out of mail in rebates. Most are 1 per/household and you are deep in the red if some fulfillment house decides to screw you (as many of them will) Secondly, everyone is already snapping up all the good stuff so unless you refresh FW every minute, you will miss out on the best deals.

Fatwallet isn't what it used to be. The dot com era is over and deals aren't that great. You will be working with very small margins.

Doesn't hurt to try though. Buy some items, ebay, report back on your experience.

wmspringer · #5 09-12-2006, 05:27 PM

[ QUOTE ]

You can't make a business out of mail in rebates. Most are 1 per/household and you are deep in the red if some fulfillment house decides to screw you (as many of them will) Secondly, everyone is already snapping up all the good stuff so unless you refresh FW every minute, you will miss out on the best deals.

Fatwallet isn't what it used to be. The dot com era is over and deals aren't that great. You will be working with very small margins.

[/ QUOTE ]

The trick is to remember to send in the rebates (I always forget!) and to join one of the smaller bargain boards; FW is so big that any good deal gets killed pretty much instantly. (It doesn't help that they have idiots there who try to order 100 of anything)

livinitup0 · #6 09-12-2006, 08:14 PM

[ QUOTE ]

Not alot.

You can't make a business out of mail in rebates. Most are 1 per/household and you are deep in the red if some fulfillment house decides to screw you (as many of them will) Secondly, everyone is already snapping up all the good stuff so unless you refresh FW every minute, you will miss out on the best deals.

Fatwallet isn't what it used to be. The dot com era is over and deals aren't that great. You will be working with very small margins.

Doesn't hurt to try though. Buy some items, ebay, report back on your experience.

[/ QUOTE ]

Back to the drawing board....I'll just keep my eyes open for the 2001's again.

Nicholasp27 · #7 09-13-2006, 12:22 PM

don't give up because of his post

spend a few hours at fatwallet and other deals forums over the course of a few weeks and see what u find; u can definitely find ways to make money; and lots of it; don't let him discourage you; his main point is that it's not as easy as it used to be to find 34323 great profitable deals; but u definitely can still make some good money if u do it right and put the time in

livinitup0 · #8 09-13-2006, 08:42 PM

[ QUOTE ]
don't give up because of his post

spend a few hours at fatwallet and other deals forums over the course of a few weeks and see what u find; u can definitely find ways to make money; and lots of it; don't let him discourage you; his main point is that it's not as easy as it used to be to find 34323 great profitable deals; but u definitely can still make some good money if u do it right and put the time in

[/ QUOTE ]

Thanks...will do.

#9 09-13-2006, 08:58 PM

dc_publius · #10 09-14-2006, 01:15 AM

There's money to be made and I didn't mean to discourage you as much as warn you. My main point is that it's hard to make decent money, especially if you think rebates are the way to go. You can only make a 100 here and a 100 there and that's after months of waiting and staying on top of rebates. So a few hundred/month won't be hard to make, but a few grand/month with be. The good deals that are easy to be resold die almost immediately. The process requires a ton of time investment. I used to hang out on Anandtech (and FW when it took off) during the dotcom boom and made good money, but things are alot harder now. The top guys have scripts written to monitor price changes for some vendors and they know immediately when to jump on a site and buy up everything of some item. I guess I failed to adapt and found the time investment not worth the trouble.

As far as Craig's List, my opinion on selling goods there is negative. You get a ton of flaky buyers who don't come through and low ball you like crazy until the last minute. I have sold event tickets on Craigs List and that works 'OK' in the sense that even after all the flake outs and false interest you will get sales, but unless you're working on very tight margins, I found Ebay much better because you commit buyers to a purchase immediately and lock in the money. In retrospect, I had always wished I listed all my tickets on Ebay to make sure everything gets sold in time.