Buy Keepa immediately. Learn how to use filters on Keepa’s product finder. Understand what the trend of offers vs buy box on a product is telling you & how to spot product IP issues based on significant drops in the number of offers. Go in the data tab on a product and get comfortable looking at onhand values, sales in last 30 days, etc. You have to get great at Keepa. Keep in mind just because Amazon or SellerAmp indicates you are eligible to sell something doesn’t really mean you are (ie, you might get cease/desist selling letters from law firms or IP complaints from brand owners or 3rd parties who represent brand owners). More on reddit.com

When I did RA/OA I did the long hold, clearance, discontinued items only just for this reason. As you said, if you're finding the deals with TA or other scraping tools, everyone else using them is too. It took a while for me to build up the capital from Amazon profits, but I spent roughly 5k a month only on clearance, preferably discontinued items, mostly toys, as there is no expiration date, but some consumables with long expiration dates, and just waited until the other sellers exhausted their supply. Otherwise, I found that everyone sent their stuff in at once and the race to the bottom began. With clearance (at least 70% off), if I just sold at the original retail price the profit was enormous. Popular discontinued items? Could get multiples depending. The challenge of course is that clearance and discontinued items are not replenishable. Also having to wait to sell your items. It's the primary reason I moved away from the model, which was right before Amazon's seeming crackdown on it. Unless it's changed, Amazon's TOS does not say RA/OA is forbidden, but when sellers are asked for proof of purchase, receipts aren't being accepted. Of course you will only read about it on the seller forums when people need help. You'll not hear from people who aren't having issues showing proof of purchase with receipts so who knows. More on reddit.com

Around here, most arbitrage occurs in crate stores. Shops that buy pallets of store returns and markdowns and sell them to the public. Walmart thought it would be a good idea to keep markdown prices high to prevent arbitrage, however, when it doesn't sell, it just goes to an intermediate third party who sells to resellers for pennies on the dollar. Big box store are trying to keep resellers from tearing them down, but it is one step forward, one step back. They took out all the mom and pop shops when they came into town, and will eventually go out the same way. Who ever would have thought Sears could go under? They only made some of the best hand tools in the world. More on reddit.com

They all tank . Make your quick buck on that ASIN and move on to the next one . There is no long term plan with OA More on reddit.com