For as long as I’ve been at the manufactured spend game, I’ve been literally chasing the points and cash had been an after thought. Like a couple of weeks, there was a great money making Staples gift card offer. My main goal was to earn points and the cash was gravy.
I’ve now amassed a war chest of points and miles, mostly in Ultimate Rewards and there’s too many points for me to use. After I’ve completed the 20kChallenge, I now have more Membership Rewards than I know what to do with them.
Then I went to the #resellingDO.
#ResellingDO
This isn’t quite a formal write up or review on the #ResellingDO. I thought it was a huge success, met with some really awesome people. I also had the opportunity to finally meet Trevor and Big Habitat and also put a face to the name behind @mileswhip as well as a few other folks that I’ve been talking to on Twitter.
In the last month or so, I’ve been preparing myself to begin reselling and I have been reading and immersing myself in all topics. In all, I found all of the topics tremendously valuable.
After meeting with some of the attendees and viewing the presentations, there was a bit of an awakening for me. Like I’ve been this hibernating grizzly bear and the event poked me awake and now I’m upset. It’s like I’m Hulk mad now and I’m on a mission.
New Goal & Mission
My new goal is to now slowly transition from gift card reselling to actually reselling product whereby earning credit card points and miles will be the gravy. For reselling products, you can bet that I will use all the techniques that I’ve used to source gift cards cheaply will be redeemed for these products.
In the last few months, I have become bored and jaded with manufactured spending. Researching on reselling products and learning something new has rejuvenated me in our pursuit for miles and points. It’s quite exciting to be on a different journey.
I’ve literally just gotten to this exact point in my MS career.
2014: $12k MS barely breaking even
2015: $26k YTD at 3% profit margin (including cash back portals)
My goal for 2016 is going to be around revenues/profits first. Trying to double my margin.
I’m done churning, it’s not for me anymore.
Excellent! Let’s compare notes for 2016
Travis what are you using to keep track of your sales.
I’m an excel nerd, so I actually have a pretty robust Google Sheets model that tracks everything.
I input everything onto one tab as I purchase it: where, what kind of product, price, etc. Then track the status and it updates all my reports and charts. I even have a generic budget based on my MS goals for this year; $6k on the Freedom ($1.5k each quarter), $25k on the UA explorer, etc.Haha
My main change will be moving from a “bonus points” model (breaking even on an eBay gift card for 5x or 2x points) vs. profit model (buying a 3% off eBay gift card). Is 5,000 points worth $30? Sure, but $30 in my pocket sounds pretty darn good too.
Sorry I’m dense … what does the DO stand for in ResellingDO ? Thanks
Dorks Online.
ha! funny
For a definition of a DO @saianel just asked the other day:
https://twitter.com/saianel/status/629002033962418176
How will you go about picking what to buy and re-sell? Any great reads on your journey to becoming hulk that you care to share?
I haven’t gotten to that point in my career to switch from GC churning to reselling yet haha. I’m still like your old self, chasing points for the points and any cash is just gravy on top. But I haven’t gotten to the point where I have so many miles/points I don’t know what to do with. I still need a ton of AA miles, I only have 18k right now…so I’ll always be a step behind you I guess! Best of luck with reselling and I look forward to reading your adventures in the space!
You’ll be there soon!
Thanks for a great resource first off. I’m relatively new to all this and I just wanted to clarify something to make sure I’m not missing something basic in the whole process but you said here that you’ve “now amassed a war chest of points and miles, mostly in Ultimate Rewards and there’s too many points for me to use. ” but for example with ultimate rewards how is it possible to ever have too many points? Do you simply mean you aren’t willing to trade them at a rate of 1 cent per point? Since they can be redeemed for statement credit say you had a million points, why not just buy 10k worth of gift cards to resell and pay off the bill with UR points then taking the ~10k in cash as profit? Is it just not worth trading them for a cent each?
That’s right, I have a large amount of UR points that I am unwilling to part at less than 1 cpp.
I feel like the value I could get for an experience is worth it to keep it in UR and not cash out