$20,000 Reselling Challenge - Week 2 Update

Recently, I joined Miles Per Day's $20,000 spending challenge.  The idea is to spend $20,000 on the American Express Platinum card within 90 days for the greatest amount of profit and the least amount of effort/time.  The full sign up bonus of 150,000 Membership Rewards Points is earned when you spend $20,000 in 90 days.




A couple of notes to start with:

- I only got my new credit card this past Friday (May 15th).  That being said, Miles Per Day got his card on the 4th so the competition started on the 4th.  I have kept good records of my purchases so I pretended all of my purchases from the 4th were on the AMEX Platinum.  This update is from May 4th until May 18th.
- I am not including any purchases that I only made because of the bonus on a different card (ie Office Supply stores with Chase Ink).


Noah from Money Metagame already gave his 2 week breakdown (he killed it!), so I will follow his outline.

The Numbers Breakdown

• Spending Complete: $9,100.17

• Inventory Total: $9,100.17 - I have not actually sold anything yet.  Many items are currently being shipped to me and others are currently checked in at Amazon.  They will be ready for sale soon.  The next update will look very different.

• Pending Earnings Total - $504.96
• Cash from Sales - $0
• Shopping Portal Cash Back (Top Cashback, etc.) - $452.48
• Store Bucks (eBay Bucks, etc.)  - $52.48

• Realized Earning Total: $0
• Cash from Sales: $0

• Total Times Spent: ~5 hours

       

The Deals

$20 off $20 at Sam's Club
16% cashback from Ebates on Lenovo
iPad at Sam's Club
8.5% off Target Gift Cards from Cardcash.com

Thoughts and Looking Forward

I wasn't actually looking for the best deals.  I was interested in creating as much spend as possible with very little effort.  I spend almost half the necessary amount in two weeks so I am not worried that I won't hit the $20,000.  I'm not sure what my profit margin will be, but I hope it will be over 5%. I have some deals that are closer to 15% and some where I will basically break even (let's hope for no returns!).

If I am able to sell all the merchandise at cost (after taxes and fees), I will still gain over 5% from portal cashback and other cash equivalents.  Hopefully, I can sell the actual items for a profit as well.



I'm noticing that the turnover time to resell an item is much longer than gift cards.  If you buy an eGift card and sell it as an eGift Card, the entire transaction can be done in less than an hour.  If you sell merchandise, you need to wait for the merchandise to come, then send to Amazon and then Amazon to send to the next person.  That can take a while.


I decided not to wait until the next big American Express Gift Card payout since I was anxious to get started.  I did buy $10,000 of American Express Business Gift Cards today so that will add to my profit margin by about 2% going forward!  I plan to always have plenty of AMEX gift cards available going forward so that I don't miss out on that extra 2%.