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The Power of Shopping Portals

June 8, 2015 By Trevor 10 Comments





Pure MS vs Resale

I’ve written about shopping portals a lot, but, as I wrote the Beginners Guide series, I realized I haven’t explicitly written about how much of a game changer Shopping Portals can be.

Shopping Portals

In my day job, I use a lot of terms not terribly common to the miles and points game. Perhaps the most appropriate is: Key discriminator. This isn’t to exclude. Rather, its to show what the real value of shopping portals:

Disriminator

 

When I talk about shopping portals as a key discriminator, I’m talking about the thing that makes a deal go from–before points–a loss to breakeven, or breakeven to profitable. Of course, I’m looking at the latter situation, but I realize that there are points where folks are happy to break even before points. After all, I don’t know about you, but, I started reselling for the purpose of generating points. So, let me give you an example: A few weeks ago, Ebates had an anniversary special, with 16% cash back on varying stores. Well, on Wednesday 13 May, they had 16% cashback on Staples. I bought a ton. Here’s one product that would have made no sense buying without the 16% shopping portal:

Surface 3-Staples

 

Now here’s Amazon’s price:

Surface 3-Amazon

Same price, I know, blah, right? Except for the fact that the Surface 3 is a top seller on Amazon, and, after all, I really want to focus on the quickest inventory turnover that I can. So lets see what the revenue would be, selling a Surface 3 on Amazon:

Surface 3-FBA Calc

Now, let’s work out the math accounting for the 16% cashback from Ebates:

As you can see – Purchasing and selling a product at the same price, when paired with a great Shopping Portal bonus, can in fact be quite profitable. In this case, more than $50 of profit, plus more than 3,000 Chase Ultimate Rewards points. This is a case where a product that would’ve been a loss, not only becomes breakeven, it rockets past to be a profit (albeit, less than 5% profit, but still profitable!).

The tools of Shopping Portals

My number one go to website is Cashbackmonitor.

CashbackMonitor

Cashback Monitor offers all the info you need for Cashback Portals, Miles and Points portals, Bank Points, and whatever swagbucks is. In fact, you can configure your Cashback Monitor to show you the values of each portal based on your value.

Other tools out there include:

EVReward

You can see that they identify the rewards portals differently than Cashback Monitor:

EVReward-1

Wrapping Up

Regardless of which aggregator you use, do use an aggregator so you know which cashback/miles/points portal will give you the greatest value. And remember: Shopping portals can make the difference between an uninspiring reselling opportunity and a profit maker!

 

 

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Filed Under: Reselling Tagged With: Miles and Points, Reselling, Shopping Portals

Comments

  1. GoodMXguy says

    June 10, 2015 at 11:34 am

    This is a great analysis. Thanks for posting and sharing your magic. One question, how do you deal with taxes? Are you supposed to pay taxes in the profit you make? Up until now I have only sold one item so I am not sure when you become a business or what are the parameters. Hopefully you can bring some light to this matter.

    Reply
    • Trevor says

      June 10, 2015 at 6:21 pm

      So, I do have an S-Corp, and I pay taxes on the profit as if it was income. I am not a tax expert though. I decided to incorporate when I reached Amazon’s threshold for the tax doc, which was, I think $22k, plus or minus.

      Reply

Trackbacks

  1. Why the Law of One Price doesn't exist for mile and point resellers – Tagging Miles says:
    June 11, 2015 at 10:15 am

    […] a whole lot. Rather I’ll check out deals from the comfort of my own home. This is where the Power of Shopping Portals really comes into play. A few weeks ago, there was a 16% cash back promotion from Ebates. You see, […]

    Reply
  2. Brexit, Mileage Plus X App, USG Studies FFP's, All about Costco, AirBNB - Tagging Miles says:
    June 24, 2016 at 6:07 am

    […] Earn 1,000 more United MileagePlus miles with a $250 purchase through the MileagePlus Shopping Portal (and you know how much I love shopping portals!) […]

    Reply
  3. British Airways Gate 365 Shopping Portal - Tagging Miles says:
    June 24, 2016 at 10:01 am

    […] Gate 365 Shopping Portal, but there should be. Long time readers know that I’m a huge fan of shopping portals, because they allow you to get even more value from purchases you are already making. It should […]

    Reply
  4. Get Ebates Cashback In-Store - Tagging Miles says:
    June 30, 2016 at 6:43 pm

    […] a huge fan of shopping portals, because they enhance profitability for resellers, and help save a bunch of money for consumers. […]

    Reply
  5. Increased TopCashback Payout if taken as an AMEX Reward Card - Tagging Miles says:
    August 2, 2016 at 6:19 pm

    […] often talk about how awesome shopping portals are, but I suppose I don’t talk as much about ways to maximize your return once your cashback […]

    Reply
  6. Transfer FatWallet Cashback to Ebates - Get $10 more! - Tagging Miles says:
    August 17, 2016 at 3:38 pm

    […] just got an e-mail from FatWallet informing me that my cashback was at risk! Given that I love Shopping Portals, and I like to maximize everything I can, I had to jump on opportunity to transfer FatWallet […]

    Reply
  7. Ebates-Cartera Link-up, here are my hopes - Tagging Miles says:
    January 28, 2017 at 8:47 am

    […] talked about how powerful shopping portals are, and as such, they are an integral part of my miles and points accumulation […]

    Reply
  8. Earn 8,000 bonus miles from Airline Shopping Portals! - Tagging Miles says:
    July 26, 2017 at 10:06 am

    […] to earn extra miles through airline shopping portals! I’ve written a bunch about the power of shopping portals, and how you can increase your miles and points balances through shopping portals. This […]

    Reply

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