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I’ve been meaning to write about this for a while, but it kept slipping my mind. Remember when Barnes & Noble was 10 points per dollar in the Ultimate Rewards Mall? During that time, I did a little experiment. As a B&N member, I had received a coupon for $50 off a Nook Color. We are a Kindle household, so rather than buy a Nook I thought I could turn this opportunity into points. Here’s what I did:
- I listed the Nook on EBay before buying it.
- Once the Nook sold, I went through the Ultimate Rewards Mall to buy a B&N e-gift card for myself for just a little bit less than the Nook was going to cost me. The reason for buying the gift card was that the Barnes & Noble terms & conditions made it unclear whether I’d receive points when using a coupon. However, I knew from experience that I’d receive points for buying the gift card.
- To buy the gift card, I used an American Express business card in order to get 5% cash back from the OPEN Savings program.
- I went through the Ultimate Rewards Mall again to buy the Nook. I knew they wouldn’t give me points for the part of the purchase using the gift card, but I hoped to get points for the extra amount above the gift card value.
- I picked out the Nook and applied the $50 coupon.
- I addressed the shipment to my EBay buyer. Thanks to my B&N membership, shipping was free.
- When it came time to pay, I used up my gift card and had a remaining charge of a few dollars. By total coincidence, B&N and MasterCard were running a promotion that day in which you would get a $25 gift card for buying a Nook with a MasterCard. Well, why not? So, I used my Ink Old MasterCard to pay the remaining few dollars.
Results:
- My EBay customer was happy.
- I received the full 10X points for buying the gift card (as expected).
- I received 5% back from Amex OPEN Savings (as expected).
- I saved $50 thanks to the Nook coupon (as expected).
- I received 10X points for the little bit of the Nook that was paid for with the Mastercard.
- I received the $25 gift card! I didn’t expect that!
After factoring in EBay seller costs, I made a little bit of money on the deal and received the full 10X points. Not bad! Sure, it’s not quite as good as Amazon paying me for collecting BA miles, but I’ll take it!
Now to drop ship stuff from Office Depot for 15X…
NOTE: PLEASE SEE WARNINGs ABOUT DANGERS OF DROP SHIPPING IN THE COMMENTS SECTION OF THIS POST
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Also, many retailers frown upon on dropshipping. If you abuse it, you’ll get banned. Google “ban” and “dropship,” and you’ll find plenty of people getting banned from various merchants for dropshipping.
Fascinating stuff (that makes my head spin), as always! Have not personally tried any of your tricks, yet. Just feel that there is not enough time to do everything.
I don’t get why drop shipping is an issue for eBay or Paypal. Can anyone clarify that?
Mark
How is drop-shipping different than sending someone a gift from these sites?
Yeah, I was wondering when you’d get around to drop shipping. It seems so much lower in risk than some of your other ideas.
I once made great money drop-shipping from overstock by way of eBay, before they went mainstream.
Genius! Well done.
Yup same as Arthur – careful with eBay. And the rules are getting worse and worse with them. Maybe Amazon is better but have no idea.
Inspirational either way. Need to study what you do and think the way you do more and more. Love this! Txs.
I would be careful drop shipping on ebay. They will close your account if they find out, and PayPal will freeze your funds. It’s happened to me more than once (drop shipping from dell)