
How many HNers have dabbled in arbitrage? - md1515
I'm kind of curious to know how many HNers have spent some time making money / learning arbitrage and other revenue generation schemes similar. Obviously hacking isn't always in the sense of creating something great for people to use..
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patio11
Kinda a cross between arbitrage and outright windfall, but it is a fun story:

Does anyone remember Battletech? Due to a catastrophic error in a logistics
system somewhere, a bookstore in Ogaki City once received a shipment of
English Battletech CCG cards. Battletech is originally an off-brand knock-off
of a Japanese series, the license was never very popular in Japan, this
particular product had recently died due to lack of demand in the US, and
geeky English products are not hot sellers in semi-rural Japanese
agricultural/manufacturing communities. So the bookstore tried to liquidate
their stock, and put the sign "100 yen" (then about $0.80) on the box.
Battletech packs of cards retailed for about $3 each prior to going out of
print. Score, right?

On investigation, the unopened box was not a box of $3 booster packs. It was a
package of $10 starter packs. And they were first edition. And the store, not
having been able to move even their Japanese CCG cards, was _not interested in
opening the retail box_ so they were selling _all the packs in the box meant
to be opened by the retailer_ for 100 yen.

I told the cashier that this was likely a pricing error. He either didn't
understand what I was saying or just didn't care. So I bought a few boxes of
boxes, for 100 yen apiece. Then I found a Yahoo mailing list for fans of the
trading card game... and promptly send them an offer which was about one step
less unlikely than that from my forgotten grandfather from Nigeria.

A few spirited rounds of negotiation later, I went to the Post Office, dropped
approximately half the profits on shipping (I was irrationally worried about
being perceived as being a scammer, so I went for the expensive option), and
cleared about a student loan payment.

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md1515
Great story! A little bit of common sense can go a long way.

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adrianwaj
I spoke to some guy in (I think) about 2003-2004 who was selling SEO services
by taking existing sites, having them built on top of Mambo CMS which he'd
outsource using elance for $2000-3000 and sell them back over $60,000 - he
used some form on his site like "how much money do you think you'd make if
your site came up around 1-2 vs where it is now?" and he'd price accordingly.
He had very little IT skills if any. Part of his secret he was reluctant to
give up: submitting to DMOZ.

He lived in Queensland and has probably retired there too long ago. Shifty
bastard.

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dangrossman
I paid my way through my first college degree with a site where I repackaged
another company's services at a markup. People were willing to pay much more
than they were asking if only the service were marketed differently, and this
company was happy to have the business with me doing the advertising work. My
markup was almost 40% and I was pulling in 20-30 customers a day from Google
AdWords alone.

Growing my web apps to the same income level as that site was much harder and
took much longer.

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creativeone
Did you change the company's name/logo as well?

Can you elaborate please?

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dangrossman
I operated under my own name/logo, the customers did not know someone else was
filling the orders, they only communicated with me.

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md1515
OP here. I actually haven't done any until recently. I just sold a musician FB
likes at 100%+ cost I paid to get them. Might pay the bills..

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paulhauggis
This is how I've been paying my bills while I'm working on my startup (it's
much better than consulting/freelancing). It's not as easy as it sounds. It
took me almost a year to figure out the whole process (it's more than just
software development), but I now just need to maintain my site and process
orders. It takes about 2 hours of work a day.

You also need some sort of cash flow (or credit cards) to do any sort of
arbitrage and you have to learn to not worry about the unknowns.

As an example, if you are arbitraging services and your service provider does
a bad job, you are responsible for cleaning up. This may mean returning the
customer's money (and getting your money back). But, after doing it for
awhile, you can find good people to work with and reduce your risks.

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freshfey
I know that there is probably a reason for not doing that, but could you
elaborate on your business a little?

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paulhauggis
I resell services. I found a couple of good providers after months of testing
(and failing) and advertise on many sites like Craigslist. It pays the bills,
but it's something I don't want to do forever.

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profitbaron
I have actually done this a few times in several different markets. For
instance, I used to buy domains in the GoDaddy Auctions for $x and resell them
for $xxx+ instantly to other webmasters/domainers. I actually ended up giving
the method out for free including the core details and the services used to
find the domains which would give the biggest ROI. The method still works
today.

