For those who are not familiar, I started a series a while back called Turnover Tuesdays. Every Tuesday I like to highlight one item that I have resold. This will include profitable and non profitable sales. I hope that there is always something to learn.
Tuesday, January 12, 2016
Monday, January 11, 2016
Kohl's $60 Gift Card for $50 on eBay
Disclaimer: I receive a referral commission for the following link(s) and I greatly appreciate supporting the site: eBay, Top Cashback
Kohl's is a great place to source for reselling. Great promos, Kohl's cash, great portals, good discounted gift cards, Yes2Rewards. I wish everyone was like Kohl's.
Right now on eBay you can buy a $60 Kohl's Gift Card for $50
.
Kohl's is a great place to source for reselling. Great promos, Kohl's cash, great portals, good discounted gift cards, Yes2Rewards. I wish everyone was like Kohl's.
Right now on eBay you can buy a $60 Kohl's Gift Card for $50
.
Start your purchase at Top Cashback for 1.25%. Not much but every little bit helps.
You will earn 2% in eBay Bucks as well.
As pointed out in the comments, this is a great way to use up eBay Bucks if you haven't used them already.
As pointed out in the comments, this is a great way to use up eBay Bucks if you haven't used them already.
Use Boomerang for Gmail to Track Returns - How to Tell When you Deserve a Reimbursement
Returnuary is in full swing for many. It's been very painful on my margins but it is part of the game.
Returns work as follows: Customers have 30 days from when they receive an item to request a return. Any item purchased from November 1st to December 31st has an extended return window. You can request a return until January 31st.
Once a customer has requested a return you receive an email that says that Amazon has taken your money away for that sale. The customer now has 45 days to actually send the item to an Amazon Fulfillment Center. Hopefully it never makes it back to Amazon in time. If it doesn't make it there, you get a full reimbursement from Amazon as if the return never happened.
Conveniently for Amazon, they don't always pay you back after 45 days and sometimes you need to open a case with Amazon to request reimbursement.
Returns work as follows: Customers have 30 days from when they receive an item to request a return. Any item purchased from November 1st to December 31st has an extended return window. You can request a return until January 31st.
Once a customer has requested a return you receive an email that says that Amazon has taken your money away for that sale. The customer now has 45 days to actually send the item to an Amazon Fulfillment Center. Hopefully it never makes it back to Amazon in time. If it doesn't make it there, you get a full reimbursement from Amazon as if the return never happened.
Conveniently for Amazon, they don't always pay you back after 45 days and sometimes you need to open a case with Amazon to request reimbursement.
Ways to Keep Track of Returns
Friday, January 8, 2016
No More Birds - Let's Focus on Profit Instead of Points!
I'm sure everyone is well aware of this at this point, but just in case you aren't, check out Frequent Miler (or your email inbox). There has been a mass shutdown of Serve/Bluebird/RedBird. To be fair, it seems that not everyone has been shutdown but likely that it is coming. I think it is safe to say that the Birds had a very nice run but their time has passed.
If you are a reader of this blog, the news is upsetting but not catastrophic. I lost my Serve. I loved my Serve. It was free pajama money. Oh well. On to the next thing.
Before I talk about reselling, I want to say one thing. Not every avenue of MS is gone. Every public avenue of MS is gone. Get some MS buddies and you might learn a thing or two but don't expect to learn about it from any blogs.
Another thing, check out Vinh's thoughtful post on Miles Per Day on the subject.
Ok, so what are we going to do? Keep reselling, that's for sure. I will tell you that reselling must change or you will be left buying products with too much competition and very little profit or possibly at a loss. There are a lot of us at this point and competition is already tough. It's only getting tougher.
I won't be frequenting iPads much anymore unless something changes. I don't want points! I want cash. Cold, hard cash!
If you sell items for points trying to breakeven, you won't breakeven, you will lose money. If you sell trying to make 5%. You will probably lose money after fees you didn't realize exist, returns, etc. Not only that, all the other MSers who are willing to breakeven will drop that price real quick on you. Those points will end up being even more expensive than traditional MS. Don't do it, you're smarter than that.
That isn't me hating, it's a fact. You need to be realistic about this. It's not easy and it's not for everyone, but it is very, very available if you are willing to work hard.
If you shoot for 20-30%+, you will make money and trust me, the points will be there. They will be there in oodles. We all know how to leverage shopping portals and credit cards to maximize.
Let's stop reselling for points everybody. We are only hurting each other. Let's resell for profit and just kill it!
If you are a reader of this blog, the news is upsetting but not catastrophic. I lost my Serve. I loved my Serve. It was free pajama money. Oh well. On to the next thing.
Before I talk about reselling, I want to say one thing. Not every avenue of MS is gone. Every public avenue of MS is gone. Get some MS buddies and you might learn a thing or two but don't expect to learn about it from any blogs.
Another thing, check out Vinh's thoughtful post on Miles Per Day on the subject.
Ok, so what are we going to do? Keep reselling, that's for sure. I will tell you that reselling must change or you will be left buying products with too much competition and very little profit or possibly at a loss. There are a lot of us at this point and competition is already tough. It's only getting tougher.
I won't be frequenting iPads much anymore unless something changes. I don't want points! I want cash. Cold, hard cash!
If you sell items for points trying to breakeven, you won't breakeven, you will lose money. If you sell trying to make 5%. You will probably lose money after fees you didn't realize exist, returns, etc. Not only that, all the other MSers who are willing to breakeven will drop that price real quick on you. Those points will end up being even more expensive than traditional MS. Don't do it, you're smarter than that.
That isn't me hating, it's a fact. You need to be realistic about this. It's not easy and it's not for everyone, but it is very, very available if you are willing to work hard.
If you shoot for 20-30%+, you will make money and trust me, the points will be there. They will be there in oodles. We all know how to leverage shopping portals and credit cards to maximize.
Let's stop reselling for points everybody. We are only hurting each other. Let's resell for profit and just kill it!
Raise Extra 5% on Friday Includes Kohl's - Up to 14% off without the Promotion
Thursday, January 7, 2016
Check out the Latest Saverocity Observation Desk Podcast- Special Guest ;)
Check out the latest Saverocity Observation Desk podcast. I was the special guest in what will be a multiple part series. Check it out!
Just in case you can't get enough (a guy can dream, right?), I was also interviewed on Million Mile Secrets as part of their Friday Blogger Series.
Keep in mind that the interview was conducted about 6 months before it was published so some information is outdated. For example, as everyone knows we are much more into reselling merchandise here than we used to. Also, I am now working 2 days a week instead of full time.
I hope you enjoy!
Tuesday, January 5, 2016
Turnover Tuesdays - Target Cartwheel and other Coupons Can Make a Major Impact
For those who are not familiar, I started a series a while back called Turnover Tuesdays. Every Tuesday I like to highlight one item that I have resold. This will include profitable and non profitable sales. I hope that there is always something to learn.
Friday, January 1, 2016
2015 Year in Review - Why Not? Everyone else is Doing it!
I wanted to be the first one to rip off Frequent Miler's post, but unfortunately The Free-quent Flyer beat me to the punch.
2015 was a very interesting year for Oren's Money Saver. At some point, the blog transitioned from a classic Manufactured Spending blog to a blog highly (exclusively?) dedicated to selling on Amazon. How did that happen? Hmm.
For the most part that is Vinh's fault for starting the 20K challenge!
I've changed my MS habits due to reselling. I don't need to earn the points in other ways since I can earn more than I need with just regular spending for reselling. Sign up bonuses are a piece of cake now. I can't remember the last time I bought a Visa Gift Card to liquidate - Yikes! Things have changed so much! I get nostalgic for the old times but then I look at my profits and I forget about that.
I would venture to guess that most people never heard of this blog before April and many more not for a few months after that. April is when Doctor of Credit started quoting this blog regularly. (If you don't follow DoC - you better start now if you like MSing!)
That got a lot more eyes here, then I started sharing reselling ideas. That was great! Readership skyrocketed! Revenue came along too, which still wasn't much but I was beginning to think that maybe I have something here.
Then things got a little too popular. Not popular like Frequent Miler or DoC, but too popular for everyone to be reselling the same thing. I cut down on the deals I posted. Still didn't help for the ones I did post.
In mid November I decided to significantly cut down on the deals I posted (I ended up pretty much not posting any more deals after that)
Here is a picture of page views all time which correlates to this timeline (I included December there to show you where December ended relative to the high in November):
The first thing that's crazy is that I've been blogging since 2011. That's a long time, especially since no one read it before Aprile. (If someone publishes blog posts and no one reads can you call yourself a Blogger?) The big drop after December is because page views end after 8pm for me so it is considered a new month, that's not real but there is a definite drop off since I'm not doling out free money like I used to.
As you can imagine, revenue from the blog decreased as well. That's ok and expected. It came along with reselling revenue and profits going to all time highs! A sad tradeoff for me since I enjoy the reader interaction, but a necessary one. Publicizing deals that no one profits from because of too many sellers is to no one's advantage.
So here are the 10 most popular posts from the year - for the most part, these are posts that were picked up by DoC since that adds many hundreds of views. As you can see my views are nowhere near the numbers of FM and FQF. That's cool, I'm still proud of what we've accomplished here.
10) - 1,554 views
An attempt to figure out some information on different exchanges
9) - 1,582 views
After Discover started second guessing everyone's transactions and saying they were made with gift cards, I called them out saying they had no idea. I still think I'm right.
6) - 1,714 views
A nice gift card reselling post. Only made it since it got picked up by DoC. Nothing super special.
5) - 1,780 view
Another nice gift card reselling post. Once again, picked up by DoC. This one a little better than the last.
4) - 1,844 views
The first post in my weekly fun series on reselling tips and education. not surprising this has the most since it gets requoted every week and everyone starts at the beginning but not everyone reads all of them.
3) Turnover Tuesdays - Killing it at Walgreen's! - 1,869 views
I don't know that this Turnover Tuesdays was so much better than the rest but once again picked up by DoC and M2M so it did much better.
2) - 2,254 views
This was as interesting post for sure. This is where I explained why I couldn't post as many deals anymore.
1) 5% cashback on All Your Amazon Purchases through Giving Assistant Shopping Portal 2,624 views
5% cashback on Amazon purchases. Everyone loves that. Not surprised that this was #1. Unfortunately this one is dead.
I hope you enjoyed these posts from 2015!
Happy New Year!
2015 was a very interesting year for Oren's Money Saver. At some point, the blog transitioned from a classic Manufactured Spending blog to a blog highly (exclusively?) dedicated to selling on Amazon. How did that happen? Hmm.
For the most part that is Vinh's fault for starting the 20K challenge!
I've changed my MS habits due to reselling. I don't need to earn the points in other ways since I can earn more than I need with just regular spending for reselling. Sign up bonuses are a piece of cake now. I can't remember the last time I bought a Visa Gift Card to liquidate - Yikes! Things have changed so much! I get nostalgic for the old times but then I look at my profits and I forget about that.
I would venture to guess that most people never heard of this blog before April and many more not for a few months after that. April is when Doctor of Credit started quoting this blog regularly. (If you don't follow DoC - you better start now if you like MSing!)
That got a lot more eyes here, then I started sharing reselling ideas. That was great! Readership skyrocketed! Revenue came along too, which still wasn't much but I was beginning to think that maybe I have something here.
Then things got a little too popular. Not popular like Frequent Miler or DoC, but too popular for everyone to be reselling the same thing. I cut down on the deals I posted. Still didn't help for the ones I did post.
In mid November I decided to significantly cut down on the deals I posted (I ended up pretty much not posting any more deals after that)
Here is a picture of page views all time which correlates to this timeline (I included December there to show you where December ended relative to the high in November):
As you can imagine, revenue from the blog decreased as well. That's ok and expected. It came along with reselling revenue and profits going to all time highs! A sad tradeoff for me since I enjoy the reader interaction, but a necessary one. Publicizing deals that no one profits from because of too many sellers is to no one's advantage.
So here are the 10 most popular posts from the year - for the most part, these are posts that were picked up by DoC since that adds many hundreds of views. As you can see my views are nowhere near the numbers of FM and FQF. That's cool, I'm still proud of what we've accomplished here.
10) - 1,554 views
An attempt to figure out some information on different exchanges
9) - 1,582 views
After Discover started second guessing everyone's transactions and saying they were made with gift cards, I called them out saying they had no idea. I still think I'm right.
8) - 1,590 views
One of the first Turnover Tuesdays posts that had an actionable deal - one of my first actionable reselling deals!
7) eBay Coupon Code for 15% off (up to $100) is Back - CMXDAY3 (DEAD) - 1,647 views
This was awesome. $100 off anything on eBay. Only last a few hours but it got picked up in a hurry!
|
A nice gift card reselling post. Only made it since it got picked up by DoC. Nothing super special.
5) - 1,780 view
Another nice gift card reselling post. Once again, picked up by DoC. This one a little better than the last.
4) - 1,844 views
The first post in my weekly fun series on reselling tips and education. not surprising this has the most since it gets requoted every week and everyone starts at the beginning but not everyone reads all of them.
3) Turnover Tuesdays - Killing it at Walgreen's! - 1,869 views
I don't know that this Turnover Tuesdays was so much better than the rest but once again picked up by DoC and M2M so it did much better.
2) - 2,254 views
This was as interesting post for sure. This is where I explained why I couldn't post as many deals anymore.
1) 5% cashback on All Your Amazon Purchases through Giving Assistant Shopping Portal 2,624 views
5% cashback on Amazon purchases. Everyone loves that. Not surprised that this was #1. Unfortunately this one is dead.
I hope you enjoyed these posts from 2015!
Happy New Year!
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