A year ago, I challenged myself to earn a million points and miles in a month. I called the challenge, “Million Mile Madness”. Between March 1 and March 31, 2013, I did everything I could think of to earn points and miles for as little cost as possible. A rule I set for myself was that my net costs for acquiring those miles should be no more than $1000.
I didn’t think the challenge would be as hard as it was. This was before gift cards had PINs. This was after most 5X opportunities at Office Depot had dried up. This was during a time in which not a single worthwhile new portal promotion appeared. And, there were no hotel or airline promotions of note.
That month, I earned over half of my points through credit card signups and most of the rest through creative buying and selling techniques. I ran into many bumps in the road and sometimes feared that thousands of dollars were lost. It was a painful process that I don’t recommend to others. In the end, though, I not only earned a million points and miles, but I earned a small profit as well! If you’re interested in the full story, read “Million Mile Madness: Final Tally” and follow the links backwards in time. Or, you can wait for the e-book that I’ve been working on in my spare time. Unfortunately, I haven’t made as much progress on that one as I’d hoped!
The next challenge
I thought that I would do another Million Mile Madness challenge this year. But I never wanted to simply repeat the same game. I considered alternatives: could I earn a million points exclusively through travel? Or, could I use my points and miles to actually travel a million miles? When running the numbers, neither of those ideas turned out to be feasible. So, I waited for a a better idea to appear…
The new idea first took form in the comments of a Saverocity post. In that post, MileageUpdate wrote the following comment:
We should have a blog war over who can fund that $5k account 1st by ManuSpend.
And, then, via email conversations, led by Matt at Saverocity, the idea evolved into a manufactured spend competition (manufactured spend is where you spend money with reward earning credit cards in such a way that you will get most or all of the money back). All contestants will begin with a $5000 bankroll (of their own) and week by week throughout March, they will try to grow that bankroll into additional cash, points, and miles.
Rather than participate in this challenge directly, I’ve signed up to be the contest judge. Each contestant will be judged not only on how much profit they generate, but also on their efficacy and artistry. We will look to reward profitability, creativity, scalability, repeatability, and ethicality.
Matt at Saverocity, will continue his roll as contest organizer, facilitator, and master of ceremonies, so to speak.
Next steps
If you’d like to know more, or would consider competing yourself, head over to Saverocity to read more about this challenge. See: The Manufactured Spending Tournament.
As we go forward, I’ll setup a space on this blog to post current results. And, I’ll report in via blog posts now and then to keep you up to date with the latest action. I hope that this contest will benefit all of us by showing us new techniques to use and to warn us away from unexpected pitfalls.
As always, I will use my judgment to decide what things to post explicitly, what should be veiled, and what shouldn’t be mentioned at all (see “Blogging the line“). Other bloggers participating in this challenge can, of course, decide for themselves what to post and what not to.
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[…] The next mad challenge […]
[…] The next mad challenge […]
[…] The next mad challenge […]
This could be interesting! I’m going to be watching this one closely.
Ah, the smell of greedy fear in the morning.
All these people screaming that you’ll singlehandedly shut down THEIR favorite way of collecting money and or miles make me laugh.
They tell you that YOU are greedy, when it’s them. I am going to go out on a limb and assume that they don’t make a living off their MS, whereas it’s likely that several bloggers do.
If you get more hits and CC app payments for this, good for you.
And, if some people are willing to start doing a little more work to create MS, based on what they learn here, good for them.
I work in network marketing. I work with a reputable company, with awesome products, and good, ethical leadership. They tell us, all of us, about new methods to create new end users. And guess what? Some people get rich from applying those new methods. Some make a little more money. But the VAST VAST majority of distributors, with access to exactly the same information, make nothing. Because they do nothing.
The same will happen with this promotion. How many of you who are screaming followed the example last year, and earned a million points and miles in a month?
The Mint didn’t shut down because of a handful of people bragging. It shut down because of a handful of people buying and cashing in hundreds of thousands of dollars in coins in one month.
Even if they’d never said a word, it was their own cupidity that did them in.
A million will not buy you much at United, and many other places
Life is not fair….
The sad thing is the Million Miles will not buy you much at United, or anyplace else.
Life is just not fair,
Sounds like fun but I would NOT publish updates or results on a public forum. The less press this idea gets the better.
The greed and blind stupidity of bloggers knows no bounds.
[…] The next mad challenge […]
I am amazed people think that banks will suddenly shut you down when they figure outt you are buying VR cards on your credit card……….please folks bankers know what they are doing in this arena and manufactured spend is not on their hit list when it generates them profits………me thinks the lady doth protest too much………..they can audit/review me any day they want…….MS and all………
There are numerous cases of MS shutdowns after mainstream exposure: mint, OD, HIGC, GW. This is not paranoia, the concern from MSers is fully warranted based on past events.
All, please calm down about this. We’re not planning to publish instruction guides.
this is true. But this contest is likely call major attention to several tricks, and more broadly to travel hacking. In turn, we’ll have fewer opportunities. Maybe the powers that be will pull the plug on awesome tricks or maybe we’ll see more devaluations?
not saying that this contest is right or wrong.. that’s a whole different debate.
and certainly, either way, some commentators need to cool down a bit! FM has been good about using appropriate discretion, i’m sure nothing will change.
This is your blog–write and do what you want. There are bloggers that I believe would do this for all the wrong reasons. You and Saverocity have never been on that list.
“do this for all the wrong reasons”
To increase traffic volume?
fm, please consider not giving front page updates on your blog. The other blogs are obscure enough that this may fly under the radar, but yours is mainstream.
I’ll add one more point to how dumb this is…you do realize when (yes when) this MS angle gets shut down, your profit margins are going to take a tremendous hit. If you don’t give a damn about us fine, but your wallet is going to feel a lot lighter when banks start to shut this down.