I'm starting to believe these posts are shilling. Anyone with solid experience will tell you to stay clear of RA/OA. But in these posts, there are always people who claim the opposite and are rich by doing it with with 0 proof. Then the OP's are always interacting with the guru's of RA/OA. RA/OA is long gone. Amazon actions are clear on that. More on reddit.com

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• 1). Find a Product to Sell

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• 3). Launch your Product on Amazon

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Retail and Online Arbitrage can definitely be profitable, but not as profitable as the private label model . Here’s why some sellers call it “fake” or “not worth it”: Time-Intensive & Scaling Issues – Finding profitable products requires constant sourcing, and you don’t own the brand, making long-term scaling harder compared to Private Label or Wholesale. Brand & IP Complaints – Many brands don’t want resellers and may file IP complaints, leading to possible account suspensions or bans . Always check for restrictions before buying. Ungating Challenges – Many profitable categories (like beauty, groceries, or top brands) require ungating , meaning Amazon needs supplier invoices for approval. Tools like SellerAMP help check restrictions before purchasing. Wholesale suppliers can also provide proper invoices for ungating. Limited Inventory & Cash Flow – RA/OA relies on finding products that might not always be available. If you can’t replenish your winners consistently, scaling becomes difficult. That said, your results show that arbitrage works! Many use it as a stepping stone to Private Label, which offer more stability & scalability. 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