Welcome back to Seller Snacks, your weekly buffet of everything online arbitrage.
🍔 On the menu today:
🔍 OA Sourcing Tip: How to Read Keepa’s Monthly Sales Volume Line
🗞️ Peak Season Shipping Costs Are Going Up
⚡ Quick Clicks — Worth a Glance
Let’s eat!
🛒 October Deal Week Is Coming
Amazon’s October Prime Big Deal Days are set for October 6–7, 2026.
Not to be outdone, Target and Walmart are also holding their counter-sales events that week:
- Target Circle Deal Days – October 6-7, 2026
- Walmart Deals and More – October 5-11, 2026
Smaller retailers are also planning to run their own fall clearances, promos, and early holiday previews.
This week holds great potential for sourcing, and here are two things worth working on right now:
1. Keep pushing your ungating efforts
Do not wait until the sales begin to find out you are restricted from selling the products everyone else is buying.
Keep working through brands and categories you want access to, and continue building a larger pool of products you can realistically source. Remember, eligibility varies by seller account, so what works for one seller may not work for another.
2. Make sure your inventory capital is ready
October Deal Week can create a lot of buying opportunities in a short period of time. That is great, assuming you have the cash to take advantage of them.
Look at your available capital, upcoming Amazon payouts, bills, and the amount you can safely put back into inventory. You do not want to spend everything on discounted products and then run out of cash before those products sell.
💰 If Amazon’s payout schedule is limiting how quickly you can reinvest your revenue into inventory, Payabilitymay be worth looking into. Payability gives eligible Amazon sellers access to their daily earnings, giving them more flexibility to keep buying inventory during peak sourcing periods.
No lengthy application process. Get approved quickly.
Get access to daily Amazon payouts
The sales events are still a few weeks away, which gives you time to prepare.
Work on your approvals, review your capital, and decide how you want to source before the discounts go live.
🔍 OA Sourcing Tip: How to Read Keepa’s Monthly Sales Volume Line
Keepa gives you a lot of information. The trick is knowing which signals to look at first.
One useful data point is the Monthly Sales Volume line, shown in yellow-gold on the Keepa chart.
This line estimates how many units a product sold during the previous 30 days. It can help you see whether demand is growing, slowing down, or staying relatively consistent.
👉 Read our guide to Keepa’s Monthly Sales Volume line
But the yellow-gold line should not make the buying decision by itself.
Here’s how we used the Monthly Sales Volume line, along with other Keepa and listing data on this lead we recently put on a Mars 44 list:
The lead had good numbers:
- Buy price: $29.25
- Amazon selling price: $53.80
- Estimated profit after fees:$12.12
- ROI: 41.44%
- Category: Health and Household
- Eligibility: Ungated on our test account
The chart helped us understand whether the product had enough movement to deserve a closer look.
Three demand signals stood out:
1. Monthly sales volume was increasing
The yellow-gold line showed that monthly sales volume was rising. At the time of posting, the product was selling around 100 units per month.
2. Sales rank was dropping consistently
The green Sales Rank line showed regular drops instead of one isolated spike. The product had a BSR of around 52K, placing it near the top 1% of its category.
3. Competition was manageable
There were 14 FBA sellers on the listing, which initially looked crowded. But after a closer look, we found that most had very little inventory available.
That changed the picture. The seller count was not the only thing that mattered. Stock levels and offer behavior gave us a better idea of the immediate competition.
Other sourcing notes:
- The lead was a consumable, and is a great replens candidate. Plus, the listing has shown relatively steady pricing over the last 90 days.
Verdict:Top OA lead. Ungated. Good numbers, and demand confirms that the lead can you back fast with good profit and ROI. Great candidate for replens (consumable + steady pricing over the last 90 days), so lead isn’t just a one-time purchase and can keep paying you.
Main Takeaway:
A rising Monthly Sales Volume line becomes much more useful when it appears alongside:
- Regular sales-rank drops
- Stable pricing
- Reasonable FBA competition
- A product you are eligible to sell
- Enough margin after fees and other costs
📬 Build a Better Inventory Pipeline With Mars 44
If you want a faster path to finding OA inventory, Mars 44 gives you a researched starting point every weekday.
You receive 10+ mostly ungated or lightly gated OA leads that have already been reviewed for:
- Eligibility
- Profit and ROI
- Sales velocity
- Price stability
- FBA competition
- Amazon presence
- Account-health risk
You still decide which leads fit your own account, budget, and buying criteria. But instead of burning hours sourcing random sites, you can start with a shorter list of opportunities worth reviewing.
4 weeks on Mars 44 puts your OA business in a better position by helping you find more viable inventory opportunities, build a stronger lead pipeline, and spend less time reviewing risky leads with mediocre numbers.
Start your 4-week run with Mars 44
🗞️ Peak Season Shipping Costs Are Going Up
There are no major Amazon announcements to cover this week, so here is a useful Q4 planning reminder: shipping costs are increasing across Amazon, UPS, FedEx, and USPS.
If you sell through FBA, these costs may show up through Amazon’s fulfillment fees. If you ship FBM, they may appear directly on your carrier invoices.
Here is the current schedule:
Amazon FBA
Amazon’s holiday fulfillment charges will apply from October 15, 2026, through January 14, 2027. Amazon’s existing 3.5% fuel and logistics surcharge will also continue to apply on top of the holiday fee increase, which is expected to be around $0.32 per unit.
UPS
UPS peak surcharges begin as early as September 27 and continue through January 16, 2027.
Depending on the package and service, the announced surcharges include:
- Additional handling: $8.75–$11.90
- Large package: $96.25–$117.50
- Over maximum limits: $530–$590
- Demand surcharges: $0.50–$9.35
The highest rates generally apply during the busiest period, from November 22 through December 26.
FedEx
FedEx’s peak season fees begin as early as September 28 and run through January 17, 2027.
Some announced ranges include:
- Additional handling: $8.80–$11.85
- Oversize charge: $95.75–$117.25
- Unauthorized package charge: $535–$595
- Ground residential demand surcharge: $0.50–$0.80
- Ground Economy demand surcharge: $2.55–$4.05
FedEx’s highest peak pricing runs from approximately November 23 through December 27.
USPS
USPS plans to apply an average 6% temporary rate increase to services including Ground Advantage, Priority Mail, Priority Mail Express, and Parcel Select.
The increase is scheduled for October 4, 2026, through January 17, 2027. The exact increase will depend on the service, package weight, and shipping distance.
The action here is simple: include these increases in your Q4 calculations.
For FBA, review updated fulfillment fees before buying seasonal inventory. For FBM, update your shipping assumptions and check whether your margins still work for heavier, oversized, or low-profit products.
A deal that looks profitable before peak season may look very different after fulfillment, shipping, and surcharge costs are included.
⚡ Quick Clicks — Worth a Glance
🔍 The 10-step Keepa workflow to run before you buy
A strong ROI number is not enough. Before you buy an OA lead, you need to check demand, price stability, competition, eligibility, listing accuracy, and potential risk.
This 10-step Keepa workflow walks through the checks that help you avoid buying inventory that looks profitable on paper but turns into a cash-flow trap.
👉 Read the 10-step Keepa workflow
💸 Why Your OA Business Feels Busy But Broke
Q4 can bring more sourcing opportunities, but it can also expose cash-flow problems.
This guide helps address the inventory cash-flow issues that can leave OA sellers working constantly without having enough money available for the next opportunity.
Heading into Q4, knowing where your cash is going is not optional. It is part of your sourcing strategy.
👉 Read: Why Your OA Business Feels Busy But Broke
🔄 Supercharge Your OA Lead Pipeline With ArbiSource
Save your old lead lists. Leads you previously passed on may become great buys today.
Import your old leads in ArbiSource, set your target profit and ROI, and be notified when your old leads have become profitable and are now in stock with a retailer.
Instead of letting old spreadsheets collect dust, turn them into a sourcing pipeline that keeps working after the original lead was delivered.
FBA Lead List audience get 30% off code their first month with code: FBALEADLIST30
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