Episode 55: August Recap - What's Left in Churning?

0:00Hey guys, welcome back. This is Episode 55 and I didn't really do that much this month. So the main topic for this episode is going to be just to talk about more generally what's left for churning. What kind of plays are still out there? There's a lot of stuff has died in the past couple of years that was really lucrative. And every now and then I still do keep getting the question of where do I start with churning and how do I get from that beginner to intermediate level? Because I think most everyone that is listening to this podcast is at a beginner level at least. And what I say that is, I mean, you know about what sign up bonuses are and the vehicle and Reddit are slash churning and doctor of credit and those kinds of things or maybe you just get a few credit cards per year like that. So you get to the point where you kind of run out of sign up bonuses to churn through.

1:03You've gotten through all of the low hanging fruit, you know, like chase ink sign up bonuses and $700 US bank bonus or $300 checking bonus. And you start looking for more of a recurring source of revenue. Something that is a bit more sustainable and not just a one off thing. So I'll start off with buying groups and yeah, buying groups have really changed a lot in the last year. I know I keep saying this, but things really peaked last year, prime day. And then before that, we had the echo dots. So after prime day and black Friday, I got into Pokemon and specifically with Walmart. And it's looking like Walmart might just be completely dead at this point. They've started doing these raffles for Pokemon products. And yeah, I mean, if you have been around botting with like sneakers or whatever, then you know that raffles are pretty much the end of things best by did the same thing for Pokemon about six to nine months ago, where now they only do raffles or release stuff in store.

2:06And for the people that don't know, raffles for retail products are not what you might think. It's not the same thing as a raffle for like the lottery or something. There is a random element to it, but most of it is not random. So what they're doing is something called filtering where they filter out entries that look like their resellers. So you can't just put 10,000 accounts into the raffle. The same way you would be able to put 10,000 accounts into their queue every Wednesday and at at 6 p.m. Because with the raffle, you know, suppose they have 100,000 stock, they're going to distribute that among all of the entries that don't look like their resellers. So they're going to limit it to one per address and restricted to only accounts that look like their real Walmart customers. Maybe they limit it to only accounts that have been purchasing household items. They can set whatever criteria they want for the raffle and they don't have to tell anyone. So the nice thing about for them is that if there's real customers that are getting filtered

3:10out, they're never going to know about it. They're just going to assume that they didn't get lucky that time. It's also a way for them to make sure that they still sell all of their product because you might also be thinking, well, why don't they just go out and cancel all the reseller orders after a drop? Well, then they still have to sell that product. So we don't know if Walmart is doing their own filtering or if they're hiring a third party company. There's this company called EQL that everyone hates because that's what killed the sneaker botting, but it also wouldn't be that hard for them to do it themselves. I'm sure any AI tool could go through all the entries in like five minutes and select the winners. So, yeah, so far they've just done it for the prismatic ETB and I don't know. We'll see what other products that decide to do the raffle for. I think maybe for the lower margin stuff, they might still do the Q, but I don't really know. Yeah, even before they started implementing this raffle thing, the drops have been pretty dry. And I'm sure there's a lot of people that did not break even with all of their botting

4:14costs this month. I haven't really looked at my numbers yet, but I'm pretty sure for the stuff that I bought in August that the profit I made on those items is less than my overhead. And that's just talking about the recurring expenses, you know, like the $50 a month for the bot and $60 a month for the server. So that's not even considering if you're trying to scale and you're spending $1,000 per instance, then yeah, I don't think that that is even close to being profitable right now. So it's not worth getting into Pokemon at Walmart, but there is still target, which I haven't really gone into yet, but I think that that is going to be the next big thing. There are people out there that have figured out how to scale it. So that's it for Pokemon. And then if we're talking about just the more traditional buying group for electronics, there are still opportunities out there. I was just doing some experiments with the Roku sticks and laptops from Walmart and going

5:14through the shopping portals and that has been working out for me. It's not like that scalable though, because yeah, even Walmart for laptops seems to be getting a lot more competitive, but there are occasionally pretty good laptop deals. And then there's always best buy, which has not been very good lately. With the exception of Prime Day, there's been hardly any deals in the past five months, but there is always Black Friday. I think we can count on there being pretty good sale then. So a good strategy there would just be to scale as hard as you can on Black Friday. Just save up all your business goals and just get as much money as you can. It's not the best from a risk perspective because you're risking a lot at once, but as long as you spread things out a bit between different warehouses, different buying groups like that, I think that is the way to go and really just consolidating everything into a few sales per year and just only do the best things because that's better from a time management perspective

6:18as well. I mean, if you're only working two or three weeks out of the year, then that frees up the rest of your year basically to do whatever you want. So I think the main challenge there is just getting scaled up with limits with Amix, or if you can't get limits with Amix, then just coming up with the capital to spend during Black Friday, it is possible to pre-pay Amix so that you can have more limit. So if you have extra money lying around or you can access money like with the margin line of credit or pledged asset line or even raising money like regular businesses do, that could be an option, but you definitely shouldn't wait until Black Friday to start scaling. I mean, you do need to practice and get things set up throughout the year. I don't think that Best Buy is that hard to figure out, but it does take some time to get things going. But it is one of those things where it's a pretty big up front investment of your time. So if you can't see yourself really scaling it and being able to hammer these deals when

7:23you see a good one, then it may not be worth it for you. But even though the deals aren't that good right now, if you just go for below cost stuff, you know, just try to break even and get familiar with how things work. iPads at $3.99 or AirPods for $99. So yeah, I think Best Buy is still viable. And moving on to talk about Amazon, which I never really talk about. The main issue with Amazon right now is that Chase has been really tough on people scaling the Amazon Prime card that gets the 5% or 6% cash back. So unless you have enough players to where you can sort of spread things out enough to where you're not spending too much on each card, then I just don't think that Amazon is worth it. And it's also not really that scalable from an account perspective because you have to have really well seasoned accounts to be able to buy anything. So if you already have an Amazon account and you just want to get a feel for how buying

8:25groups work, then I think that could be like a jumping off point, but it's not really that lucrative long term. So I've talked about Prime Day and Black Friday and there's one other seasonal buying group opportunity and that is iPhones, which come around every year. Every year is different, but there's almost always demand for the newest Pro Max model. And yeah, there's people who their only hustle is reselling iPhones and it's possible to do it with pretty good volume when one phone is already $1,200 or $1,400. So iPhone season is coming. It's usually like the third weekend in September. So look out for like September 18th. I think that Friday morning should be the release day and then pre-orders will be one week before that. That is not guaranteed, but that's just how it's been the past several years. So the main question is how scalable is shipped to home going to be because in Q1 this year,

9:27they were being really tough on people buying too many phones and it was really tough to get orders through. So last September for pre-order day, I was able to get about 70 phones to my house and then the year before that, 2024, it was pretty much unlimited. And then the year before that, 2023, that was limited as well. That when I was only able to get about 25 phones between two addresses. So yeah, I wouldn't mind if it was 70-ish phones per address, but I think it is more likely that it'll just be really tough and Apple will be limiting us again. I am also curious about the new flip iPhone, but it's rumored that that one is going to release later, like after the main release of the iPhone 18 Pro Max. So I don't know if that's true or not, but I will be curious to see if there's a reselling opportunity with that phone too. Last year we had the iPhone Air, which did not do very well.

10:28So I don't know if we'll see that one again. I don't know anyone that actually has an iPhone Air for personal use. Most people don't really know about that. So as far as what my strategy is going to be this year, I think it is going to be very tough from a bottom perspective and especially in Portland. I really do think that Portland is the most competitive as far as in store. I just don't know that there's that many people that are going to New Hampshire, although I would assume that Delaware would also be fairly competitive. So yeah, I'm not really sure if I want to share what I'm going to be doing, but I do think that in store is going to be the most scalable. So I'll just leave it at that. So moving on to talk about Costco and buying gold. I think that gold from Costco right now is one of the most sustainable plays that there is, especially now that a lot of people have been shut down from Bake of America. So there's not as much competition. And I really do think that figuring out how to scale multiple memberships is the way to

11:34go. I know that's a controversial opinion, but I just think that getting that extra 2% is very much worth it. It can be a bit tricky to get the multiple accounts set up, but once you figure it out, then it's not that hard to just keep it rolling because if you're not getting that 2% rebate, then that's just really going to be limiting as far as when you can buy gold at a profitable price. Most of the time, it's going to be 2 to 3% below cost before factoring the rebate. Maybe sometimes it'll get 1.5. So the best card for doing that is going to be the 2.65% Bake of America card. That's the one that is the most scalable. I know people that can get limits up to 100K. And there's also the Synchrony Venmo card, which gives you 3% cashback, but that's just not as scalable because you can't cycle it. Or at least Synchrony doesn't like it when you do that. They'll probably shut you down after a few months. So the last thing I'm going to talk about reselling wise is going to be gift cards.

12:38And I know times are tough right now for Kroger, but I do think that it is going to stay around for at least another few more years. That's the way that they've been handling the shutdowns. It seems very sporadic. And more like there's just one employee at Kroger that doesn't like what people are doing, so they just want to take some money from them. If they really wanted to limit things, then they would do something in a more automated way. And it wouldn't be that hard to get an intern to put something together in a few days or a few weeks that could flag these high volume gift card purchases. And it's not like they don't have limits either. I mean, Kroger, they have store limits. They have limits on how many gift cards you can buy per transaction. Certain brands have their own limits. So the easiest thing for them to do would have just been to lower those limits, or they could even cap the amount of few points that you could earn per month or week or per day. There's lots of ways that they could just nerf the program, but keep it alive for the

13:4199% of people that are just buying a $20 Starbucks gift card to get 10 cents off per gallon on gas. So I think this is one of those things where if you are a person that is okay with handling risk and just sort of factoring the chance of your account getting shut down into your overall profit margin, if you're someone that doesn't mind grinding out in store deals like that, some people are really good at it, but it does take a certain skill set. Yeah, it's just like doing buying groups. So if you are trying to get into that next level of turning, then it is good to kind of think about what kind of skills you have, what things are you good at, and what do you enjoy doing? Like do you want to be driving all across town to hit up a bunch of different Kroger's? Are you organized enough to be able to manage thousands of retail accounts? Or do you like to be someone that is always probing new things, you know, going online and looking for different fintechs or credit unions or just looking for any kind of angle to swipe your card and earn some money back?

14:44It has gotten harder for more traditional MS, but there's still plenty of opportunities out there. And I think the most important thing is to just be to keep probing and keep hitting different plays, even if it's only 2000, 3000 a month. I think a big part of MS and churning in general is just to have experience so that when a really big deal comes around, you'll be able to notice it and be able to hit it harder. And yeah, I think there's a lot of people listening to this podcast that have seen certain really big opportunities come and go and be wishing that you hit them harder because a lot of time you don't realize how big something is until it's gone. And off of the top of my head, I can think of at least three different MS plays over the last few years that have made people millions. And they were all plays that a lot of people knew about, but most people were not really hitting them that hard or really thinking about what kind of potential that they had.

15:48Stuff like having more than one paybell account or thinking of scheduling multiple recurring payments instead of just one and then just scaling things in general, just having the capital and the, I guess, risk tolerance of putting a lot of money towards certain things. And then as far as the more traditional MS like charging your card to deposit money somewhere and doing sort of cash like transactions, I never really got that into doing that kind of stuff. But as far as cred unions go, I did do a fair amount of that two years ago. And I think most of those opportunities are now dead. I would say at least 80% of credit unions have already been hit by a churner and have sort of caught on to what we were doing and put an end to it. So hopefully that helps if you are looking to get into something like buying groups or gift card reselling or other types of MS. And then I will say that there are still some churnable sign up bonuses out there for credit

16:50cards. There is a particular set of cards that you can get every 90 days that most everyone has been doing that knows about that. So I do also want to talk briefly about the current state of award travel because if you hadn't heard the news, there was a recent pretty big devaluation of the flying blue program. I think that one has already sort of been on its last legs ever since they started charging like $400 fees. And what they're doing is they're going to be introducing a light fair which is going to be completely non-refundable which is unprecedented in terms of award travel. I think the only other program I can think of that has something like that is Etihad where if you cancel, you lose a percentage of the amount of miles that you paid depending on how far away it is from your departure date. But yeah, it sounds like the standard tier which is what you get now.

17:52It's refundable for a $75 fee that is going to start costing an extra 15,000 miles. So this is pretty tough for me because I canceled two tickets that were 174K each that we're supposed to go to Madagascar. And those were in different accounts. So right now I actually have three different flying blue accounts. I did spend some of the miles on our way back from Italy but I do still have at least 200,000 miles spread out between the three accounts. So that's just going to be a bit annoying to use. So on a more positive note, I really do think that both the Alaska and the American mileage programs are in a really good spot still. I remember when I first started turning back in 2018 or 2019, it was still 57.5K American miles from USA to Europe. And that's when it is now as long as you have at least one partner segment in it. If you're flying all on American metal, then the prices are a bit higher.

18:56And then I also remember back then it was 60,000 American miles for Japan Airlines to get to Japan. And now it is 70K. I think that's right. And so it's only 10,000 miles more. And you also have the added flexibility, right? But now it's completely refundable. Whereas back then you had to pay $150 if you wanted to cancel. And people like me, I'm booking and canceling tickets all the time because there's no reason not to as long as you have miles in your account. So I would almost argue that American miles are in a better state than they were seven years ago. And then for Alaska, I know they did devalue them a little bit, but it doesn't seem that bad compared to other programs. If you look at Delta, that program has been long gone for flights to Europe. Although lately there have been a few little sweet spots that they've been giving to us. But still nowadays, I think 130K is what people consider a good deal for Delta.

19:57And then United is 80 or 88,000 points to get to Europe. So yeah, American and Alaska, I think they are kind of competing with each other. So that helps keep their prices down and their award programs are in really good spots. And then also of course that you can't transfer points to them as easily. Most people are not earning millions and millions of city thank you points in the same way as people are earning chase and amics points. So yeah, I'm trying to think if there's any other award programs that are worth mentioning that haven't heavily devalued over the past several years. I guess United with their expanded award space for card holders and now you just need to have the debit card. So if your chase shut down, then that helps. For me, it is not that easy to be earning tons of chase points, but I guess it works for some people. And yeah, I've just been doing a lot of award searches lately and the availability is just

20:59looking very sparse. I think if you can book a year in advance, then Japan Airlines and Catholic Pacific Asia miles are good options. And then also EVA has a really good mileage program. If you know how to get points over to there and use their program, it can be kind of finicky. And yeah, just thinking about in the past two to three years, there has just been a lot of award programs that have just completely died like Virgin Atlantic. I think is mostly dead now. It's like a thousand pounds for the fees. And then Lathansa used to be a pretty good airline to be able to find space with, but it just looks like it's really hard to find that these days. And especially their first class award inventory, they stopped releasing that to partners over the summer. I don't know if that's going to come back or not, but it used to be way easier to book that product. And unfortunately, I've never done it. It just never really worked out. And it's also a lot less availability to the West Coast.

22:00But if you're in like Boston, JFK, Dois, I've seen times when it used to be wide open like a few years ago. And let's see Turkish Airlines. I haven't seen anything in their award program in a while. I mean, I could keep going on with this. Oh, yeah, Emirates is another dead program. And then one that is still at least okay is Qatar airways. And yeah, just because their product is so good, I don't mind. Paying a little bit extra for those tickets. I think now it's like 85,000 can get you pretty much anywhere. 85,000 plus $400. And they usually release pretty good inventory at the end of schedule. I don't know what it's like right now, but not too long ago, it was good. Oh, yeah. And what's going on with Quantis? I haven't seen any award inventory from them in a while. I remember they used to have some drops for their award space where they would release four or five months at a time, but I haven't seen them do that in over a year because I do want to go to Australia someday. I've never been there before. So yeah, that's all I got for the current state of award travel.

23:03As Amics keeps increasing their signup bonuses and these award search programs become more widespread. It's only natural that there's going to be less availability and for worse prices. But the more advanced turners are usually able to figure it out, especially if it's a trip that you know you're going to do at least a year in advance. And you have an entire year to work on getting good flights for those dates. And you can book a ticket and then keep optimizing it, cancel it and book something else. And I was talking to the sky the other day who he knows every single loophole that has to do with airlines, like with schedule changes and just sort of social engineering your way into better flights. And I was actually reading this thread on flyer talk the other day about the American flat tire policy. And there's this internal rule where as long as you show up to the gate within, I think 15 minutes after the departure time, then American will have the power

24:07to rebook you onto a confirmed ticket to a better routing. So if originally you had booked a one stop a tinerary because it was cheaper, then you could intentionally miss that flight and then get them to rebook you on the nonstop. So I've never done this and I don't want to recommend people do that. But I was just curious to see that that was a thing. And also people were actually complaining that the American same day change policy is actually a worse benefit than if you just miss your flight because for same day change, you know, like I said in another episode, that's to be a certain fair bucket that's available. And then also you can't same day change from a connecting flight to a direct flight. You have to keep the original routing. So if American is willing to give better benefits to just random people that missed their flight, then their highest elites, that's just kind of funny to me. So yeah, there's all sorts of games and angles that you can play with airline tickets

25:10that most people probably don't even know about. So yeah, that's pretty much all I got for this episode. I hope you enjoyed my rambling of dead plays and maybe you did get some good information out of it. And one of the thing is that it is also good to keep an eye on dead plays to see if they get resurrected. Like Delta, for example, for years, they didn't have any award tickets under 300k. And then now they have started doing some more promotional deals, which are like 130k, but then if you have the credit card, then it's 15% off of that. And then lately I just went into check in on one of my credit union accounts. And I saw that there was this really nice looking button that I hadn't seen in a few years and one that I've clicked several hundred times. So that was nice to see. And yeah, a lot of the times with these smaller institutions, they'll see what you're doing and then they'll go and ask their tech guy to stop you from using that feature. So that guy will probably take five minutes to write one line of code,

26:10get the problem solved and then he can go back to browsing Reddit. And then a couple of years later, they might do some system update and no one remembers what that one line of code was for. So it can be easily forgotten when moving to a new system. I've seen this happen more than once credit unions and banks merge all the time too. So that could also open up other opportunities and get you unblocked from what you're doing before. When capital one acquired discover everyone is wondering what was going to happen to the people that were banned from capital one, but have a discover card. So yeah, I think I'll leave it there. I'm leaving for Italy tomorrow, which is great timing because here in Oregon, summer is over. We just had our first rain a couple of days ago and it's just been pouring. So I'm excited to get back out into the sunny weather. As usual, if you have any questions or comments about the show, you can always email me or message me in the Slack and don't hesitate to reach out. Thanks for listening and until next time.