Earlier in the week, I wrote about the math that makes Kohls work for reselling. I got some great comments, which, I think, highlight the need to write about some of the websites and tools I use to evaluate deals.

This won’t be all encompassing, because I am certain I don’t know all the tools out there in the space. But hopefully this is at least a start.

The FBA Calculator

This is perhaps the most important tool when selling on Amazon (either shipping yourself or using Fulfillment by Amazon). The key is finding the ASIN from the product you want to sell. You can usually find this under Amazon’s “Product Details” section. You want to be familiar with this number because its easiest to list a product with it. The Product Details section is also where you’ll see whether its on a “best seller” list.

Anyway, this is what you get once you enter the ASIN in (no circles and arrows, sorry):

FBA Calculator output

You can tweak the sale price and see the margin impact, and all that fun stuff.

CamelCamelCamel

Remember that ASIN that I mentioned was so important for the FBA Calculator? Well keep it handy, because it works just as well here. This is pretty handy, because it ensures that you are working with the same product without having to compare URLs or other such things. I learned about CamelCamelCamel from BigHabitat. Essentially what this provides is a price history. You can sort by Amazon (green line) 3rd Party (blue line) and used (red line). For the example below, I left the “used” off.

CamelCamelCamel offers price history for Amazon Items     Tip: If a product looks like the chart above – skip it.

Of course, the shortcoming here is that it doesn’t separate out whether the 3rd party sellers are FBA or not, which is often a difference maker.

Cashbackmonitor and FrequentMiler’s Portal Alerts

My primary reason for reselling is for the miles and points, so cashbackmonitor is often my first stop. As you can see here, it offers a good view of what portals are offering what, before you even start.

Kohls Shopping Portal bonuses via Cashbackmonitor.com

Well, FrequentMiler seems to seen the dilemma that many of us face with having to manually check daily to see for any great portal bonuses, alas, he recently unveiled FrequentMiler’s Portal Alerts. This is particularly useful because the daily alerts compare what a store had for a multiple from one day to the next.

Screenshot from FrequentMiler’s Portal Alert – 30 September

Of course, I prefer seeing green any day, but it looks like yesterday wasn’t a particularly good day for shopping portals (other than perhaps Bloomingdales).

Wrapping Up

As I said – this isn’t an exhaustive list. There are a handful of paid services out there as well. If you use other tools that you’d like to share, I encourage you to share them in the comments.