Welcome to my review of Profit Bandit a mobile app that will allow you to source products from popular retails stores and resell them on Amazon.
So, I have been checking out a lot of apps and online services related to selling on Amazon, mainly because selling on Amazon was how I started this whole running an online business venture. Although it wasn’t successful and I moved on to affiliate marketing, I always planned to have another crack at it. In this article I will be reviewing a very popular scouting app called Profit Bandit, this is a very useful app for people who want to sell on Amazon via the arbitrage model.
Retail arbitrage is a very popular way to start selling on Amazon (or eBay), however, it is hard and there is a lot of work involved, especially finding products that well sell and give a good profit margin. Doing this manually is probably not worth the hassle but fortunately, there are a lot of apps and services that will automate a lot of the process of finding profitable products to resell on Amazon.
I have already reviewed a couple of these software applications, however, online software tools like Zen Arbitrage and Tactical Arbitrage are best suited for people who do most of their sourcing online. If you are someone who likes to source offline (meaning looking around retail shops), then an app like Profit Bandit is a must and will help you immensely.
Profit Bandit Review
Profit Bandit is part of the Seller Engine product range, Seller Engine also provides a few other apps and services for Amazon sellers, they started off mainly as an Amazon repricing software but now provide other services.
Profit Bandit is probably their most popular product and is it is very simple to use.
It is a mobile app that is compatible with both Android and iOs devices and comes with many features that have been developed to help you analyse products and determine quickly if it is worth reselling or not.
The app has a barcode scanner and all you are required to do is scan the barcode of any product and it will provide you with a host of easy to analyse data that will tell you the following:
Product Details – Get a brief overview of the items price, category, sales rank and its trade-in value. If you click on the title, you get are presented with a host of links to different sites that sell the product and links to Keepa and CamelCamelCamel which show you sales and price history of the product.
No. of Amazon sellers – Get a good idea of the no. of others who are selling the same product. This will give you a good idea of what the competition is like. You also get data on the condition the products are in, if Amazon is selling the product and who has the buy box.
Profit margin – This is the little box at the bottom if it’s in green, it means it is a profitable product to sell but if it is red, you will lose money if you sell at the current buy box price. The profit calculation takes into account the Amazon fees, shipping rates, cost of the product, storage fees & FBA fees.
Restricted item – If the product is in a restricted category, it will be highlighted in yellow, this means that you will not be able to sell it, unless you apply to become ungated in that category. This is a useful feature as it will save you time and money in avoiding and purchasing, prepping and shipping items that you cannot sell.
That is pretty much it, the app is easy to use and there are some helpful tutorials on the Seller Engine website.
This is a good app, but it does have its issues, there are complaints that it is slow to scan, it crashes often and some of the newer features do not work. However, for the majority of those who use it, the app does do what is advertised and that is to help you analyse products to resell on Amazon.
Profit Bandit Pricing
Profit bandit costs $9.99pm, although you do get 20 free scans before the payment plan is activated.
Alternatives to Profit Bandit
BuyBot Pro – This is a Chrome Extension that will allow you to quickly analyse deals, you get a lot more data than what Profit Bandit provides and you can use it with multiple Amazon marketplaces. It also comes with way more features and has a very clean and easy to use interface. They recently released a beta version of the software for Android devices and hope to release an iOS one soon. It is much more expensive and has two pricing plans both of which you can pay either monthly or yearly.
Scoutly (Formerly FBAScan) – This is a mobile app just like Profit Bandit, however, it is more feature-rich and scanning products is made much quicker as the entire local Amazon pricing database will be downloaded onto your phone. It has three pricing plans with the cheapest starting at $9.95pm.
I am not a huge fan of going around shops and scanning items, its time consuming, tiring and if you don’t a lot of products to resell, it can be frustrating. Both these online applications will allow you to easily source profitable products to resell on Amazon. This is why I prefer online arbitrage, and this is why I would recommend web-based sourcing tools like Tactical Arbitrage or Zen Arbitrage over any other Amazon arbitrage software.
You can just sit at home, in front of your PC and let the software source products for you from hundreds of online sites for a couple of hours, it’s much easier and more relaxing. Plus both these products come with fantastic support and training.
Final Thoughts
Profit Bandit is a decent scouting app that will allow you to analyse arbitrage deals for your Amazon FBA business. It’s easy to use and the data is easy to digest, it does have its issues and sometimes the scanner is a bit slow and there have been reports that the app has a tendency to crash frequently. If you like doing retail arbitrage, I would recommend you check out Scoutly, BuyBot Pro or BookScouter.