Save $5,000 a Year Using Gift Cards (Here’s How)

00:00:00.000 | Gift cards aren't just for last minute gifting,

00:00:03.000 | they can actually save you thousands

00:00:04.880 | on almost all your everyday spending.

00:00:06.980 | Today, we'll break down how to make the most

00:00:08.880 | of this trillion dollar gift card market

00:00:11.120 | by exploring all the secret strategies

00:00:13.320 | for buying discounted gift cards,

00:00:15.320 | stacking savings with rewards programs,

00:00:17.840 | and even turning gift cards into a lucrative side hustle.

00:00:20.920 | From groceries to Amazon to travel and beyond,

00:00:24.000 | you will learn actionable tips to save big and spend smarter.

00:00:27.520 | And who better to join me than my friend Logan,

00:00:29.620 | who runs one of the biggest gift card brokerages,

00:00:32.240 | Aligned Incentives.

00:00:33.520 | I'm Chris Hutchins.

00:00:34.360 | If you enjoy this episode, please share it with a friend

00:00:36.840 | or leave a comment or a review.

00:00:38.640 | And if you wanna keep upgrading your life, money,

00:00:40.640 | and travel, click follow or subscribe.

00:00:43.680 | Logan, what do you think the biggest misconception is

00:00:46.320 | about the gift card market?

00:00:48.480 | - The biggest misconception is right there in the name.

00:00:51.160 | People think of it as a way to give a gift.

00:00:53.800 | I professionally handle gift cards.

00:00:56.240 | I touch gift cards all the time.

00:00:58.400 | I never give gift cards as gifts.

00:01:00.180 | The best way to use a gift card, the way I use them,

00:01:02.180 | is as a way to save money.

00:01:03.320 | It's a way to get an additional discount

00:01:04.940 | on stuff you're gonna buy anyway.

00:01:06.860 | - So I guess that operates on the assumption

00:01:08.180 | that gift cards should cost less

00:01:10.600 | than the actual value of the gift card?

00:01:12.900 | - Yes.

00:01:13.740 | You should never pay full price for a gift card,

00:01:15.100 | which I think is what most people's experience is.

00:01:17.900 | They go into a Walgreens because they need to get a gift

00:01:20.580 | for a party that they forgot

00:01:22.220 | that they were supposed to bring a gift to,

00:01:24.020 | and then they pay full price for a gift card off the rack

00:01:27.020 | to give to someone else.

00:01:28.420 | - If you looked at all your spending,

00:01:29.940 | forget your mortgage, rent, car,

00:01:32.080 | things that you probably can't play with gift cards,

00:01:34.100 | what percent do you think you're saving

00:01:35.860 | by taking advantage of gift cards

00:01:37.700 | for all your regular spending?

00:01:38.880 | - I think that around 15% is probably a good rule of thumb,

00:01:42.620 | that most stuff is somewhere between 10 and 20% off.

00:01:45.860 | All my purchases that aren't the mortgage,

00:01:48.660 | but my groceries, my Amazon, all that,

00:01:50.780 | that stuff is all at least 10% off.

00:01:52.740 | - Okay, so that's thousands of dollars a year, I assume?

00:01:55.780 | - For sure, yeah.

00:01:57.140 | - So we're starting with gift cards could be a way

00:01:59.460 | for the average person to save thousands of dollars a year,

00:02:01.980 | which is amazing.

00:02:03.260 | Some fun stats I pulled, global gift card market,

00:02:06.800 | almost a trillion dollars within the US,

00:02:09.340 | about a quarter of that, so about $270 billion.

00:02:13.020 | And the other one, fun random stat,

00:02:14.900 | thanks to Capital One for putting together

00:02:16.500 | this big report of gift cards that I'll put in the show notes

00:02:18.900 | with the average value of a gift card is $50.

00:02:21.820 | So these are just fun stats I pulled.

00:02:24.340 | Where I wanna kick us off is,

00:02:26.480 | where are all these deals coming from?

00:02:28.540 | 'Cause you said the average person is looking at this

00:02:31.220 | saying Walgreens $50 gift card to Target costs $50.

00:02:35.940 | What's this other side of the world

00:02:37.420 | where gift cards are cheaper?

00:02:39.480 | - So a lot of stores, brick and mortar and online,

00:02:43.260 | they'll have sales, including even at Walgreens.

00:02:45.460 | Almost every week, Walgreens will have a few brands

00:02:47.900 | that are on sale.

00:02:49.140 | Where if you buy a $50 card or something like that,

00:02:51.340 | you might get $10 of Walgreens bucks,

00:02:53.700 | whatever their reward program is called.

00:02:55.940 | And there's also straight up discounts.

00:02:58.000 | So like Costco, for example,

00:02:59.700 | frequently has Uber and Instacart for 20% off,

00:03:03.660 | just all the time, year round, online, in store.

00:03:08.060 | So if you're looking in the right places,

00:03:10.180 | most of the stuff that you want is available

00:03:12.980 | one way or another at a discount.

00:03:14.740 | And if you don't have the patience

00:03:16.780 | to check the gift card rack,

00:03:18.300 | like every time you're at the store, that's kind of a pain.

00:03:20.740 | There are also secondhand marketplaces.

00:03:22.460 | So we operate on a secondhand marketplace.

00:03:24.620 | So raise.com is one and cardcash.com is the other big one.

00:03:28.660 | Even if you don't wanna like be a deal hunter,

00:03:31.420 | you just, you wanna buy something on Amazon today,

00:03:34.780 | there's also a place to just always get a discounted

00:03:37.020 | Amazon gift card, if that's what you want.

00:03:38.660 | - So we're gonna come back to that.

00:03:39.860 | We're gonna talk about that reselling thing.

00:03:41.820 | We'll talk about the site I built,

00:03:43.580 | but coming back to the source of these, right?

00:03:46.820 | 'Cause all these gift card reselling,

00:03:48.540 | they all are coming somewhere.

00:03:50.180 | And for someone to sell to you

00:03:52.060 | or another platform at a discount,

00:03:54.140 | they have to have gotten a deal.

00:03:55.500 | So we've talked about going to Costco, getting a deal,

00:03:57.940 | promotions at Walgreens, a few others that I found.

00:04:01.140 | If you have restaurants and retailers

00:04:02.700 | that are local in your neighborhood, in your town,

00:04:04.820 | they're mailing lists.

00:04:05.740 | There's a pizza shop that we love.

00:04:07.460 | And around the holidays, they were like,

00:04:08.820 | "Hey, we're giving $60 gift cards for $50."

00:04:12.100 | Now, in this case, we track all of our spending.

00:04:13.980 | So I looked and I was like,

00:04:14.820 | "How much do we spend at this pizza shop in a year?"

00:04:16.780 | And it's like, "Oh, we spent a couple hundred bucks."

00:04:18.180 | "Great, let's buy a couple hundred bucks of gift cards.

00:04:20.300 | "We're saving somewhere $10 for every $60 we spend.

00:04:24.300 | "Why not take it?"

00:04:25.140 | So that was one.

00:04:26.460 | One category that I haven't spent a lot of time on,

00:04:29.460 | but is a lot of the grocery stores

00:04:31.740 | can offer gift cards at either a discount

00:04:34.140 | or partnered with whether it's rewards

00:04:36.740 | or fuel points or that kind of stuff.

00:04:38.060 | Is that a big part of this market?

00:04:39.700 | - For sure, yeah.

00:04:40.740 | If you can make use of those fuel points

00:04:44.860 | or those rewards points at the store, that's a huge way.

00:04:47.700 | So Kroger famously has these fuel points deals

00:04:51.460 | where for every gift card, you get four Kroger fuel points.

00:04:54.860 | It is like something I've told my sister to do

00:04:57.740 | 'cause she goes to Disney every year with the kids,

00:05:00.060 | is buy your Disney gift cards at Kroger.

00:05:03.140 | My sister drives a comically large truck

00:05:05.900 | 'cause she lives out in the burbs.

00:05:08.020 | And so she actually can get those 30 gallon fill-ups

00:05:12.140 | that you need at Kroger to maximize those fuel points.

00:05:14.860 | And I'm like, "You're gonna spend all this money

00:05:16.220 | "at Disney anyway.

00:05:17.140 | "Buy your Disney gift cards at Kroger,

00:05:19.220 | "fill up your truck for free,

00:05:21.020 | "and just do that all year long

00:05:23.940 | "as you're getting ready for the Disney trip

00:05:26.100 | "or the cruise or whatever."

00:05:28.020 | - And some of those, I noticed like the weekly flyers

00:05:30.380 | or things you hear from the grocery store,

00:05:31.780 | sometimes it's like on the weekends,

00:05:33.700 | Safeway seems to always do Forex points

00:05:35.980 | and that kind of stuff.

00:05:36.820 | So those seem to be constantly happening.

00:05:38.980 | Is that the case almost across the country?

00:05:42.100 | - Yeah, so Kroger and its affiliates,

00:05:44.460 | they're the largest grocery chain in the US.

00:05:46.540 | So I think you might have Ralph's out there

00:05:48.220 | on the West Coast.

00:05:49.060 | - Somewhere, but there's not a good Kroger chain near us.

00:05:52.780 | We're a Safeway land.

00:05:54.700 | - Gotcha.

00:05:55.540 | In any event, Kroger runs a fuel points promo

00:05:57.660 | the majority of the time.

00:05:58.780 | So probably three out of four weeks per month,

00:06:00.500 | there's a promotion.

00:06:01.340 | And then Safeway, like you mentioned,

00:06:03.540 | there's usually specific brands that are on sale

00:06:06.460 | roughly every other week.

00:06:07.940 | And then on top of that,

00:06:09.420 | you can usually stack on the weekends.

00:06:11.780 | There's usually a couple extra bonus points.

00:06:13.700 | If you can make use of those points,

00:06:15.140 | then they're incredibly lucrative deals

00:06:16.900 | 'cause you're frequently getting

00:06:19.100 | something like up to 25% value back in those points

00:06:22.260 | if you can use the points.

00:06:23.540 | - Yeah, yeah, I won't go down this rabbit hole

00:06:25.780 | 'cause I don't really understand it,

00:06:27.060 | but I know there is a hack out there

00:06:29.380 | for turning your Safeway points into Alaska miles.

00:06:32.700 | So I'll leave it to you guys listening.

00:06:34.620 | If you're a frequent Safeway shopper

00:06:36.460 | and want to rack up Alaska miles, go find--

00:06:38.700 | - If you live in Alaska, definitely do that.

00:06:41.500 | - Yeah, I think you have to live in Alaska.

00:06:44.060 | But if you live there, it's great.

00:06:45.620 | A couple other ones, card-linked offers.

00:06:48.060 | How big are the kinds of offers

00:06:50.340 | that you get from your credit card companies

00:06:51.940 | where you log into the website and they say,

00:06:53.460 | "Oh, this month spend 200, get 20 off."

00:06:56.580 | Can you use those offers to buy gift cards?

00:06:59.100 | - Sure, well, so those card-linked offers

00:07:00.980 | can be really lucrative.

00:07:02.180 | We frequently see them for brands

00:07:03.940 | where you can't otherwise get gift cards on sale.

00:07:06.060 | So one example might be like Tory Burch

00:07:08.220 | is like a luxury brand.

00:07:09.500 | Their gift cards are not sold at grocery stores.

00:07:11.820 | The only way you get them is at a Tory Burch store.

00:07:13.940 | But if you have a card-linked offer

00:07:15.260 | that's like spend 200, get 50 back,

00:07:17.860 | that can be really lucrative.

00:07:19.100 | That's an example of a brand.

00:07:20.060 | We might buy it for 10% off.

00:07:21.620 | And so you're gonna make 10% on a 250 or $500 purchase.

00:07:26.060 | I mean, it could be worth the trip to the store for that.

00:07:28.340 | - Yeah, I have this kind of regular process

00:07:31.020 | of just scanning these offers

00:07:32.940 | to see what kind of deals there are.

00:07:35.060 | I personally use the Card Pointers app,

00:07:37.100 | which auto adds all of them to your card.

00:07:39.060 | And every now and then it's like,

00:07:40.020 | "Oh, I just got one, I didn't even know it."

00:07:41.700 | You can set alerts.

00:07:43.180 | So anyone listening, I'll put a link in the show notes

00:07:45.180 | to the deal we have with Card Pointers.

00:07:47.660 | What about apps that sell gift cards?

00:07:50.860 | I know there are a handful of things from Pepper to Flooz

00:07:54.780 | where you can buy discounted gift cards.

00:07:57.260 | - Yeah, that's another great source,

00:07:58.860 | especially we call that like couch spend, right?

00:08:01.140 | It's like you're running your business from your couch.

00:08:03.620 | You don't have to leave the house.

00:08:04.940 | You can buy the stuff and then resell it.

00:08:06.540 | And I guess I should also mention,

00:08:08.020 | 'cause we haven't mentioned this yet,

00:08:09.380 | is when we say gift cards,

00:08:11.620 | when you go into a store,

00:08:12.540 | you're buying a physical gift card.

00:08:13.900 | But when we talk about online deals,

00:08:15.700 | you're not necessarily buying a physical gift card.

00:08:18.700 | So in the case of these apps,

00:08:20.060 | what you're really just getting are numbers and pins.

00:08:22.980 | So if it's something that you can do

00:08:24.460 | just by copying and pasting numbers,

00:08:26.140 | then that's really appealing to people.

00:08:28.500 | So Pepper, as you mentioned, that's been huge.

00:08:31.380 | I sort of hesitate to talk too much about it

00:08:33.980 | just because you have to spend a lot of money

00:08:36.260 | in a short amount of time

00:08:37.340 | to get the really good deals from Pepper.

00:08:39.460 | And also who knows for how long Pepper will continue

00:08:42.580 | to be a really great place to get gift cards.

00:08:45.140 | But yeah, it seems like every year or two,

00:08:46.940 | an app comes around where they're losing money

00:08:50.180 | selling gift cards because they wanna increase revenue,

00:08:52.980 | they wanna increase users, things like that.

00:08:55.460 | And if somebody is willing to subsidize the product,

00:08:58.260 | you should always buy as much of that product as you can.

00:09:01.620 | And if it's a gift card, all the better,

00:09:03.500 | 'cause it's like they're selling dollars for 50 cents.

00:09:06.820 | Yeah, the only reason I'm gonna throw Pepper out right now

00:09:09.740 | is that there is a card-linked offer right now

00:09:12.420 | that I think is spend 75, get 35.

00:09:15.460 | I don't think I have it on any of my cards

00:09:17.000 | 'cause I used the one they had before,

00:09:18.580 | which was spend 50, get 15.

00:09:20.700 | And there is a new user promo,

00:09:23.940 | which is to put in a six-digit code.

00:09:26.140 | Mine's 622811, if you wanna support me or find your friend.

00:09:29.660 | I'll put that in the show notes, which is 20 off 200,

00:09:32.500 | which means you could buy $200 of gift cards on Pepper,

00:09:36.780 | save 20 from the new user code,

00:09:38.780 | save another 35 from your card-linked offer.

00:09:42.780 | Now you're already past 25% off.

00:09:45.740 | And even for new users who haven't unlocked

00:09:48.500 | any of their special rates that sometimes go

00:09:50.700 | for people who really, really use the app,

00:09:53.820 | today, it was like effectively seven, 8% off Amazon,

00:09:59.700 | Nike, Lowe's, four, 5% off Walmart and Sam's Club.

00:10:03.500 | So if you stack all those things together as a new user

00:10:06.700 | and you have these different promos,

00:10:08.460 | I still think it's pretty interesting.

00:10:10.340 | The only caveat I will say is that

00:10:13.460 | you're not actually buying gift cards

00:10:15.300 | on the Pepper app at a discount.

00:10:16.980 | If you buy a $100 Amazon gift card, you're paying $100.

00:10:21.300 | Now, if you have a promo and you're a card-linked offer,

00:10:23.540 | you're maybe you're paying less.

00:10:24.780 | And then they give you these coins 14 days later

00:10:28.340 | that you have to use to buy more gift cards.

00:10:31.340 | And so if you don't need more gift cards

00:10:33.700 | and you were to try to sell them to you,

00:10:35.460 | you wouldn't get full value.

00:10:37.080 | And you're certainly not gonna get a discount on those.

00:10:40.120 | So I did a quick little scenario of,

00:10:42.220 | okay, well, it says you're getting 8% back,

00:10:44.840 | but what that really means is spend 100

00:10:46.820 | and get $108 of value, which is kind of like 7.4% off,

00:10:51.820 | not the full 8% off.

00:10:54.180 | So it's a little confusing.

00:10:56.260 | I think anytime someone turns their discounts

00:10:59.100 | into like a virtual currency,

00:11:01.500 | you should kind of always be a little wary,

00:11:03.740 | but I have gotten deals here.

00:11:05.740 | I'm sure you have as well.

00:11:07.620 | And my only concern is with these companies

00:11:11.220 | that are effectively losing money to grow,

00:11:14.260 | like you don't wanna be on the Pepper owes me

00:11:17.380 | thousands of dollars of coins

00:11:19.100 | when maybe the company stops working.

00:11:21.780 | So I think if you can stack

00:11:24.100 | the right new customer card offers,

00:11:26.140 | it can be a great thing.

00:11:27.420 | If you're not really exposing

00:11:29.060 | and spending tens of thousands of dollars,

00:11:31.420 | it's probably fine also,

00:11:32.900 | but I would not wanna buy $5,000 of gift cards a day

00:11:36.580 | for a year straight right now.

00:11:38.100 | I think it would probably be too much risk for me,

00:11:41.100 | but I've certainly been known

00:11:42.420 | when I see a good deal there to pick one up.

00:11:45.100 | - Yeah, if they don't care about any of this other stuff

00:11:47.420 | and they just wanna save like 50 bucks at Amazon,

00:11:50.420 | what was that six digit code again, Chris?

00:11:52.020 | - Yeah, yeah, 622811 is mine.

00:11:54.820 | So if somebody wanted to sign up with that

00:11:56.460 | and if they had that card linked offer,

00:11:58.660 | as you said, I mean, that's like 25% off Amazon.

00:12:00.740 | If you do nothing else,

00:12:01.660 | like why not take 50 bucks off of 200 at Amazon?

00:12:05.020 | Very easy way that just free money.

00:12:07.180 | - And then there are some other places sometimes,

00:12:10.100 | Flues has an app that you can download

00:12:13.020 | that lets you buy gift cards.

00:12:14.180 | I believe they're actually at a discount

00:12:16.140 | and I can't remember if you earn the discount up front

00:12:18.660 | or if it's more like Pepper.

00:12:19.780 | - Flues is a genuine discount.

00:12:21.140 | You earn cashback, but the cashback is real.

00:12:23.100 | You can cash it out.

00:12:24.060 | - Yeah, the rewards are lower.

00:12:25.700 | I'm looking right now and it says Amazon is 2 1/2% off.

00:12:30.420 | So it might not be as lucrative,

00:12:32.780 | but there's no waiting for coins to deposit and all that.

00:12:36.060 | I'm looking in the app as we speak

00:12:37.660 | and the referral offer is give your friends 25% cashback.

00:12:41.380 | So I'll put the link in the show notes

00:12:42.660 | if someone wants to try it.

00:12:43.900 | It's another source of gift cards.

00:12:45.660 | I'm certain that that 25% back for a new user has a cap

00:12:49.380 | and it's not something where you could just

00:12:51.020 | indefinitely get that deal, but keep your eye out.

00:12:53.420 | And then these are the kinds of things we share

00:12:54.900 | in the newsletter all the time.

00:12:56.300 | So if anyone's not subscribed,

00:12:58.420 | just go allthehacks.com/email.

00:13:00.540 | And if there's a new app like this, we'll share it.

00:13:02.780 | If there's kind of a really lucrative gift card deal,

00:13:04.900 | we'll share it and all that.

00:13:06.140 | I guess the only other one I didn't mention,

00:13:08.940 | and I'm curious if you have any other sources

00:13:10.980 | you're frequenting, but there are some websites

00:13:13.940 | that sell gift cards like giftcards.com

00:13:16.500 | that often have really high affiliate portal things.

00:13:20.300 | So from Rakuten or anything you kind of find,

00:13:23.020 | there might be big options to earn cash back

00:13:26.540 | shopping at online gift card retailers.

00:13:29.740 | - Yeah, giftcards.com had a bunch of great deals

00:13:33.420 | over kind of like the Black Friday period.

00:13:35.220 | I think there were some portal bonuses.

00:13:36.940 | People were getting as high as 10% back.

00:13:38.740 | I mean, you could buy Visa gift cards with that even, right?

00:13:42.260 | So you don't even have to resell them to me.

00:13:43.780 | You can probably figure out how to use a Visa gift card

00:13:45.580 | all on your own, but that was great deals.

00:13:47.860 | They'd have their own brand gift card.

00:13:49.620 | So you go through your portal,

00:13:50.900 | you buy your giftcards.com gift card at giftcards.com.

00:13:54.180 | Then you go back through the portal,

00:13:55.340 | you go back to giftcards.com,

00:13:56.660 | you buy something else with that,

00:13:58.620 | and you were earning portal cash back on both transactions.

00:14:01.380 | You got the gift card at a discount.

00:14:03.020 | As you start describing these deals,

00:14:04.420 | you can descend into a lot of complication.

00:14:06.780 | But I would say there are opportunities

00:14:09.060 | that are as simple as what you were saying with Pepper

00:14:12.180 | and just a couple of things.

00:14:13.580 | And then on the more complicated end of the spectrum,

00:14:16.340 | giftcards.com when they're running multiple promotions

00:14:19.020 | on top of each other.

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00:16:44.380 | notion.com/allthehacks,

00:16:46.540 | or find the link in the description.

00:16:47.940 | So I was trying to figure out why

00:16:49.940 | ultimately some of these deals are paid for by the apps,

00:16:54.940 | like the Pepper is losing money, I'm sure,

00:16:57.700 | or at least subsidizing these.

00:17:00.100 | But some of these are paid

00:17:01.340 | because retailers like to offer a discount

00:17:03.860 | to gift card brokers, to the grocery stores,

00:17:05.860 | to run these promos, maybe their own business.

00:17:09.100 | And some of it was to grow,

00:17:11.420 | but on that same report I pulled on stats,

00:17:13.900 | I found it interesting that 61% of consumers

00:17:16.780 | spend more than the gift card value.

00:17:18.580 | So if you're wondering why would retailers

00:17:20.660 | want to discount their product in the form of gift cards,

00:17:23.140 | well, it turns out people spend more than the gift card.

00:17:25.780 | And then 29% of people in this survey

00:17:29.220 | have had a gift card expire,

00:17:31.060 | and 43% have unused gift cards,

00:17:34.340 | and that the total unspent gift card market in the US

00:17:37.260 | is $23 billion.

00:17:38.580 | So I guess there is breakage here.

00:17:40.820 | My experience here is that

00:17:42.180 | many gift cards don't really expire.

00:17:45.180 | Is that kind of a thing of the past,

00:17:46.980 | or how do you think about gift cards and expiration?

00:17:49.260 | - My understanding is that there was a federal law passed.

00:17:51.700 | I believe gift cards aren't allowed

00:17:53.300 | to have inactivity fees or expire.

00:17:56.100 | I want to say for the first five years

00:17:57.780 | or something like that,

00:17:59.420 | but the practical effect of that

00:18:01.340 | was that most companies switched

00:18:02.660 | to having no expiration at all,

00:18:04.860 | just because it was too hard to follow.

00:18:06.860 | Different states have different laws,

00:18:08.300 | and there's federal laws on top of that.

00:18:09.660 | And so rather than deal with

00:18:10.740 | all those individual different laws,

00:18:12.220 | what a lot of companies have done

00:18:13.820 | is they just don't expire.

00:18:15.780 | So it's pretty unusual to have a gift card expire,

00:18:19.260 | except for like a Visa gift card or a MasterCard.

00:18:22.100 | Those do have expiration dates,

00:18:23.460 | but for a closed-loop gift card,

00:18:25.300 | it's unusual for it to expire.

00:18:27.020 | So closed-loop is what we use to refer

00:18:29.620 | to all third-party gift cards,

00:18:31.940 | by which I mean like an Amazon gift card,

00:18:33.700 | like a store gift card.

00:18:34.700 | The alternative to that, an open-loop gift card,

00:18:36.820 | that would be like a Visa gift card,

00:18:38.660 | a MasterCard gift card,

00:18:40.220 | those kinds of like good-as-cash type cards

00:18:43.020 | that you might see at the store.

00:18:44.100 | - And I assume that's because

00:18:45.340 | once you have the Home Depot gift card,

00:18:47.260 | you've got to spend it at Home Depot.

00:18:49.220 | And I'm guessing that you probably

00:18:50.980 | can't use a Home Depot gift card

00:18:52.700 | to buy more gift cards at Home Depot, or?

00:18:54.980 | - Correct, yeah.

00:18:55.820 | If you find a store that lets you

00:18:58.260 | use gift cards to buy gift cards,

00:19:00.100 | you've kind of got a golden goose there.

00:19:02.020 | - Logan's like, "Send me an email."

00:19:03.940 | - Yeah, send me an email.

00:19:05.340 | That's a very good deal if you find a place

00:19:06.780 | that'll let you buy a gift card with a gift card

00:19:08.420 | that opens up all kinds of shenanigans.

00:19:10.740 | And as a result,

00:19:11.780 | most of the places that you could do that,

00:19:13.460 | people did shenanigans there.

00:19:15.380 | Then the store,

00:19:16.300 | an auditor probably asked what was going on

00:19:18.980 | and they shut it down.

00:19:20.020 | - That's kind of the supply

00:19:21.740 | of where all these are coming from.

00:19:23.700 | Where are you monitoring all these deals?

00:19:25.900 | 'Cause you're staying on top of this more than I am.

00:19:28.740 | We met in person twice,

00:19:30.300 | and I feel like you were like,

00:19:31.140 | "Oh, there's an alert, I gotta go post this thing."

00:19:33.300 | How are you staying on top of all this?

00:19:35.340 | - In the case of Pepper,

00:19:36.380 | which has been super busy lately,

00:19:39.260 | that's as simple as opening the app and refreshing it.

00:19:41.860 | There are deal aggregation websites.

00:19:45.300 | So GCAnywhere.com,

00:19:47.340 | they post about gift card deals.

00:19:49.260 | There used to be a place called GCGalore.com

00:19:51.340 | that unfortunately doesn't exist anymore,

00:19:53.220 | but they were an excellent source.

00:19:55.500 | But even places like SlickDeals or DoctorOfCredit.com,

00:19:59.100 | those are good sources as well.

00:20:01.380 | As it is my job professionally to know gift card deals,

00:20:05.060 | we have some tools internally that help find deals

00:20:08.220 | and alert me to their presence

00:20:09.940 | so I can post them for our users.

00:20:11.540 | And one of my friends has never sold

00:20:14.060 | a single gift card to me,

00:20:14.980 | but maintains an account on my website

00:20:17.820 | just because he likes to know about the gift card deals

00:20:19.980 | that we post so that he can go buy gift cards for himself,

00:20:23.100 | which is not really the way the site is intended to be used,

00:20:25.580 | but it doesn't hurt anyone.

00:20:26.780 | Email's pretty cheap, so I'm not upset about it.

00:20:29.340 | But yeah, technically we're also a way

00:20:31.180 | to find gift card deals.

00:20:32.540 | - Yeah, and scanning your card-linked offers

00:20:34.260 | probably regularly, email lists from retailers

00:20:37.420 | that you frequent.

00:20:38.780 | And then are a lot of these deals online

00:20:43.180 | or do you sometimes have to go into the physical store

00:20:46.100 | to get a gift card?

00:20:47.060 | - There are definitely in-store only deals.

00:20:50.060 | We talked about Kroger and Safeway.

00:20:52.740 | Those are examples where the good stuff

00:20:55.300 | is gonna be in store.

00:20:56.540 | From my perspective as a middleman

00:20:58.460 | who's trying to make money on reselling gift cards,

00:21:02.020 | my favorite deals are like hyper-regional

00:21:04.860 | local grocery stores.

00:21:06.140 | We track deals even from individual stores.

00:21:09.700 | There's like five stores in Utah that we track

00:21:11.980 | that occasionally have great deals.

00:21:14.180 | So oftentimes it's these obscure local grocery chains

00:21:16.740 | will sometimes have killer gift card deals.

00:21:18.780 | And you have to go in-person, in-store to get those deals.

00:21:22.260 | That being said, there's plenty of online stuff

00:21:25.300 | as we already talked about with the apps

00:21:26.820 | and giftcards.com and things like that.

00:21:28.420 | There's deals in both places.

00:21:30.460 | But if you think about economics 101 and supply and demand,

00:21:34.420 | if there's a deal that's only available

00:21:36.140 | at five stores in Utah

00:21:37.420 | and you live next to one of those stores,

00:21:39.620 | then the market, if you plan to resell those gift cards,

00:21:42.180 | will be much more favorable

00:21:43.820 | because you'll be the only supplier of them.

00:21:46.020 | So yeah, we definitely encourage people to go in-store

00:21:48.740 | if they start to do this seriously as like a side hustle.

00:21:52.060 | - And before we talk about reselling,

00:21:53.540 | what are some of these great deals you've seen?

00:21:55.300 | Just give people some examples

00:21:56.700 | of maybe over the last couple of years,

00:21:59.260 | what are some recent great gift card deals

00:22:01.660 | outside of the Pepper app, that kind of stuff?

00:22:05.260 | - Sure.

00:22:06.100 | I mean, right as we speak,

00:22:07.260 | the major grocery chain in Central Texas is called HEB.

00:22:10.820 | Right now they have a spend 100, get $30 deal

00:22:14.900 | on dozens and dozens of brands.

00:22:17.100 | There are these new cards called Zift

00:22:18.540 | that you can convert into other brands.

00:22:20.500 | And so we're talking about things like Airbnb,

00:22:23.980 | Bell, Xbox, PlayStation, things like that.

00:22:26.860 | So just dozens of brands

00:22:28.060 | and it's spend 100, get $30 of HEB gift cards for free.

00:22:32.500 | I mean, that's a pretty crazy deal

00:22:34.020 | because if you live in Central Texas,

00:22:36.180 | you're gonna buy groceries one way or the other at HEB.

00:22:39.460 | And then certainly during Black Friday,

00:22:40.820 | there were like countless good deals.

00:22:43.580 | My friend Rob, who was also one of our biggest sellers,

00:22:47.100 | he, when there's a good deal,

00:22:48.740 | he treats it as like a full-time job.

00:22:50.540 | And he was buying,

00:22:52.940 | I think the hot deal that he did the most of,

00:22:55.340 | they had Best Buy, buy 100, get 20,

00:22:58.100 | and they had Home Depot as well, buy 100, get 20.

00:23:00.660 | Like if you're building a deck or something,

00:23:02.220 | you're gonna need a lot of Home Depot gift cards.

00:23:04.580 | To be able to get free groceries for the next couple months

00:23:06.660 | because you're making a big Home Depot purchase,

00:23:09.220 | that's a big win.

00:23:10.100 | - Okay.

00:23:12.540 | And was that one where, I remember the Best Buy one

00:23:15.820 | and I was like, well, I have one Best Buy account,

00:23:17.620 | I spend 100, I got 20 back,

00:23:18.980 | but I didn't get much more than that.

00:23:20.900 | Was that one where if you go into Best Buy,

00:23:22.460 | maybe you could take advantage of it multiple times

00:23:24.540 | versus online, it was limited?

00:23:26.860 | - Yeah, so frequently Best Buy will limit you online

00:23:30.140 | to like two or three cards per deal per account.

00:23:33.940 | But often in store, if the deal's available in store,

00:23:37.140 | the limit is, I believe either 2000

00:23:39.620 | or $2,500 per person per day.

00:23:42.300 | And so my loving wife has graciously allowed me

00:23:46.220 | to drag her along to multiple Best Buy stores

00:23:48.980 | so we could each buy the limit

00:23:50.660 | and then drive to the next store and each buy the limit.

00:23:52.780 | But yeah, oftentimes the scalability

00:23:55.180 | really happens in stores.

00:23:56.740 | So if you need a lot of something,

00:23:58.820 | you do often end up needing to go in store.

00:24:00.980 | - Does that mean you and your wife each

00:24:02.540 | are buying $2,000 gift cards?

00:24:05.380 | Is this just one transaction?

00:24:06.980 | And do they ever give any pushback when you try to do it?

00:24:09.500 | - You definitely get pushback.

00:24:10.860 | The limit is either 2000 or 2,500, but let's say it's 2000.

00:24:14.340 | The store manager often knows that.

00:24:15.700 | Oftentimes the cashiers are uncomfortable

00:24:17.620 | running that many transactions.

00:24:20.340 | The other thing is, I believe the register

00:24:22.260 | at Best Buy specifically is limits you

00:24:24.300 | to three or five swipes per transaction.

00:24:26.420 | So it's really multiple transactions

00:24:28.420 | to get to that $2,000 limit.

00:24:30.260 | Some places they'll just refuse to sell you the gift cards.

00:24:33.420 | And I never argue with anyone.

00:24:37.660 | I'll politely suggest that that's not what I've heard

00:24:40.980 | in the past, but ultimately it's usually not worth your time

00:24:44.100 | to get in an argument when you could just drive

00:24:45.940 | to another store.

00:24:46.820 | - That makes sense.

00:24:47.820 | And like Costco limits you online to,

00:24:50.620 | I think like once a week, but in store,

00:24:53.340 | there's a per transaction limit.

00:24:55.260 | But if you were to go to a couple of different Costcos

00:24:57.300 | or come back later or have a partner there,

00:24:59.660 | it's a little easier.

00:25:00.620 | And I don't think there's any kind of hard

00:25:02.500 | system enforcement in the store, so.

00:25:05.100 | - Correct.

00:25:05.940 | - Yeah.

00:25:06.780 | So focusing on kind of the consumer buying gift cards

00:25:09.380 | and then we'll jump to resellers.

00:25:11.100 | What are some of the mistakes people make

00:25:13.220 | trying to save money using gift cards

00:25:15.660 | and how can we help people avoid those mistakes?

00:25:18.340 | - I would say if you're not getting,

00:25:20.660 | if you're buying like a major purchase, like an appliance,

00:25:24.380 | you should also consider that if you put it

00:25:26.500 | on a credit card, your card may or may not have

00:25:28.980 | some kind of extended warranty protection.

00:25:31.540 | And so you need to weigh the value of the discount

00:25:33.780 | that you're getting on the gift cards

00:25:35.900 | versus what you might be giving up

00:25:37.660 | if you value that warranty

00:25:39.180 | or if you value those other things.

00:25:41.620 | Another thing that is a trade-off is

00:25:43.900 | if you're buying these gift cards to make a purchase

00:25:46.060 | that you might return, so clothing comes to mind,

00:25:49.700 | then it can be very annoying if you go back and return this,

00:25:52.980 | they're not gonna give you cash for your return generally,

00:25:55.580 | they're gonna give you gift cards.

00:25:57.780 | And so if you're the type of person who buys

00:26:01.140 | everything in three sizes and you have it shipped

00:26:03.740 | to your house and you try it on

00:26:04.980 | and then you send back the ones you don't want,

00:26:07.020 | then gift cards could be a bigger mess than it's worth

00:26:09.460 | because you're gonna end up with a bunch of gift cards

00:26:11.980 | in weird denominations and you may lose them

00:26:14.260 | over the course of however long

00:26:16.100 | until you shop at that store again.

00:26:18.380 | So there are definitely trade-offs

00:26:19.700 | and you should make sure that the value that you're getting

00:26:23.020 | from the discount is worth those trade-offs.

00:26:25.460 | - So I remember one time we went to the Costco,

00:26:29.220 | I bought some gift cards, I was telling my wife,

00:26:30.660 | "We're gonna save all this money."

00:26:32.060 | And then I couldn't find one of them.

00:26:34.380 | And I was like, my wife pointed out, she goes,

00:26:36.420 | "Well, you spent $600 on gift cards

00:26:39.540 | "and you feel like you might've saved a hundred bucks,

00:26:43.060 | "but a hundred of those dollars of gift cards

00:26:44.580 | "you seem to have lost."

00:26:45.980 | So my one question, obviously don't lose your gift cards,

00:26:49.580 | but if I were to buy a gift card

00:26:53.140 | and it was for a physical retailer,

00:26:54.620 | this was for a restaurant,

00:26:56.300 | do you think I could take a picture of it

00:26:57.780 | and show them that?

00:26:59.580 | Or do I really need the physical gift card

00:27:01.860 | in a lot of these cases?

00:27:02.980 | Obviously, I know with Uber, there's just a code,

00:27:05.380 | you scratch it off, you can redeem it on your account,

00:27:08.140 | but are there any gift cards for restaurants

00:27:10.660 | and retail chains where, if as an insurance policy,

00:27:14.020 | you take a picture of it, that could cause you problems

00:27:16.780 | redeeming it in store?

00:27:18.820 | - I think that most decent stores,

00:27:21.300 | you're their customer and they don't want

00:27:23.140 | to provide bad service and so taking your money

00:27:25.500 | and not giving you what you bought would be bad service.

00:27:28.580 | I think that taking a picture would usually work.

00:27:30.420 | It used to be called Raise, now it's called GCX.

00:27:32.660 | Their app, it's a marketplace,

00:27:34.660 | but they also let you load your own gift cards

00:27:37.140 | into the wallet on their app.

00:27:39.260 | And so, me personally, even gift cards

00:27:42.540 | that I don't buy on there, I load into that app

00:27:44.820 | so that I don't forget about them

00:27:46.500 | and I can just go through my wallet

00:27:47.820 | and then if I, whatever I spend,

00:27:49.900 | you can mark how much you spent

00:27:51.060 | and you can see how much is left

00:27:52.300 | 'cause there's places where,

00:27:53.460 | we have Alamo Drafthouse Cinemas here

00:27:55.540 | and I don't go to the movies every week,

00:27:57.940 | but if there's a good deal on gift cards,

00:27:59.460 | I might buy a bunch and just spend them down over the year.

00:28:01.980 | I don't wanna lose them and I know that I will lose

00:28:03.980 | the ones I buy at Costco if I don't do that.

00:28:06.540 | So I keep everything electronically.

00:28:09.300 | - Yeah.

00:28:10.140 | The other big one for me is just make sure you think about

00:28:12.500 | how much your time is worth, right?

00:28:13.860 | If you're gonna save $20 buying this gift card,

00:28:16.940 | but you have to drive 45 minutes to get it,

00:28:19.620 | was that a good deal?

00:28:20.460 | Like, I'm not gonna tell you what your time's worth.

00:28:22.620 | Now, if you're walking out of Costco

00:28:24.580 | and you spend any money at Uber Eats, Instacart, DoorDash,

00:28:28.540 | and you don't just pick up one of those gift cards

00:28:30.380 | to save 20%, I feel like that's a little bit

00:28:32.780 | of a lost opportunity.

00:28:34.540 | - I agree.

00:28:35.380 | I mean, you're leaving money on the table

00:28:36.740 | if you go in person to Costco,

00:28:38.420 | which is like a two hour ordeal.

00:28:40.020 | If you're gonna do that anyway,

00:28:41.100 | you might as well get some Uber for 20% off.

00:28:43.740 | - Assuming you spend on Uber

00:28:44.860 | or you wanna get into reselling.

00:28:46.980 | So I wanna talk about reselling.

00:28:48.580 | How does this market work?

00:28:50.940 | - It's a lot like eBay.

00:28:52.900 | I mean, in terms of like, if you were to go to Raise,

00:28:56.060 | now it's a subdomain, it's gcx.raise.com.

00:28:58.660 | You're presented with a marketplace

00:28:59.900 | that looks somewhat like eBay,

00:29:01.620 | except that everything is organized by brand

00:29:04.220 | and denomination because all you can sell are gift cards.

00:29:07.100 | You can't sell physical goods.

00:29:09.460 | Also, unlike eBay,

00:29:10.300 | you can't tell who you're buying the gift cards from,

00:29:12.460 | but an advantage is that Raise acts

00:29:14.860 | as a kind of a middleman or like a guarantor

00:29:17.620 | that the cards will be good

00:29:18.860 | and they offer a warranty and things like that.

00:29:20.620 | A lot of the gift cards are supplied professionally

00:29:22.980 | from people that sell gift cards to places like us.

00:29:25.900 | In fact, most of the gift cards on Raise

00:29:28.220 | come from my company.

00:29:29.740 | And it's a similar story with like Card Cash

00:29:31.820 | is another reseller website.

00:29:35.180 | And again, those tend to be professionally supplied.

00:29:39.220 | I think a lot of people might think

00:29:40.740 | that the secondhand gift cards are from people

00:29:43.180 | who got a gift card for Christmas, for Starbucks,

00:29:47.220 | but they don't drink coffee, things like that.

00:29:48.860 | But the vast majority of the market

00:29:50.060 | are people who are buying gift cards

00:29:51.380 | for the purpose of reselling them

00:29:52.740 | because they have a business reselling gift cards.

00:29:56.020 | - Which means that if you go to Costco

00:29:58.300 | and you see there was that sale

00:30:00.460 | where the Uber gift cards were actually $75.

00:30:02.660 | So 25% off.

00:30:04.180 | And if you're like, well, I never take Uber,

00:30:06.540 | there might be an opportunity to buy that gift card

00:30:08.540 | and sell it and make money.

00:30:10.100 | That for people that don't know,

00:30:11.380 | that's kind of the premise of your business

00:30:13.660 | is you create a place for people who want to buy gift cards

00:30:17.420 | either as an amateur or professional

00:30:19.780 | to find a place to sell those gift cards.

00:30:21.900 | And it's not really for the person

00:30:23.380 | who got a $25 Starbucks gift card and doesn't want it.

00:30:27.100 | Though I assume if you're buying Starbucks gift cards,

00:30:29.660 | they could sell you one of those as well.

00:30:31.340 | But how does that work for people who maybe are thinking,

00:30:34.900 | gosh, should I start buying gift cards when I see a deal?

00:30:38.020 | - That's how I got started.

00:30:39.060 | I saw some discounted gift cards.

00:30:40.780 | I saw there might be an opportunity to flip them.

00:30:43.820 | I probably saw it on Slick Deals or something like that.

00:30:46.660 | And I got some for myself and then thought,

00:30:48.220 | well, this is such a good deal.

00:30:49.180 | I bet I could resell these and make some profit.

00:30:51.540 | So there's definitely an opportunity there.

00:30:54.380 | And we have several members on our site

00:30:57.140 | who have made a full-time job out of it, more or less.

00:30:59.900 | There's at least one guy who flies around the country

00:31:02.060 | to wherever the best deal is that week

00:31:03.740 | and just professionally buys gift cards,

00:31:06.780 | driving around the stores all day long.

00:31:08.500 | Obviously, that's not what most of our users are doing.

00:31:10.540 | That's like a handful of people.

00:31:12.020 | But yeah, I mean, there's every range of people

00:31:14.740 | who are hobbyists, who are grabbing a couple Uber

00:31:17.300 | when they walk out of Costco, as you described,

00:31:20.180 | all the way up to people who treat it as a full-time job.

00:31:22.700 | - If someone were to say, I'm committed,

00:31:24.500 | this is gonna be my full-time job,

00:31:26.380 | what would you guess the annual kind of profit

00:31:29.460 | from that full-time job could be?

00:31:31.100 | - I do know some firm numbers

00:31:32.460 | because I asked my friend Rob, who also resells to us.

00:31:36.420 | He has a bunch of little side hustles.

00:31:38.140 | And when there's a good deal, he goes all in on this,

00:31:41.060 | which there's not a good deal

00:31:42.700 | in your specific location every week.

00:31:45.100 | But when there's a good deal, he goes all in.

00:31:47.300 | And so for the week around Thanksgiving,

00:31:50.100 | he bought $67,000 of gift cards all at HEB.

00:31:55.140 | He made almost $5,000 in cash profit.

00:31:57.500 | And then he bought it with credit cards.

00:32:00.020 | And so he earned points and cash back

00:32:02.260 | from his credit cards as well,

00:32:03.420 | around $2,000 or so from that.

00:32:05.300 | This is a professional who did it full-time

00:32:07.380 | during the best week of the year to do it.

00:32:08.900 | He made $7,000 that week.

00:32:10.940 | That's pretty substantial.

00:32:11.900 | But I also don't want people to think

00:32:13.180 | that they're gonna buy two Uber gift cards at Costco

00:32:16.260 | every day and now they're making $7,000 a week.

00:32:19.500 | That's an exceptional example,

00:32:21.220 | but that's kind of the ceiling.

00:32:22.340 | - And what are the kind of general margins in this world?

00:32:25.180 | If we take that Uber 25% off,

00:32:28.820 | how many hands does it pass from the person who buys it

00:32:33.020 | with the intent to resell it

00:32:34.940 | before it makes it to the consumer

00:32:37.340 | who's gonna actually use it?

00:32:38.980 | - Sure, so in our case,

00:32:40.820 | if you were to go to Costco and buy the gift card,

00:32:44.900 | Costco touched it, and then you touched it,

00:32:48.180 | and then you sell it to our site.

00:32:50.500 | Now we're at three people.

00:32:51.660 | We would put it on like Raise probably.

00:32:54.100 | So that's a fourth person.

00:32:55.500 | And then somebody would buy it from Raise.

00:32:57.180 | So that's a fifth person.

00:32:58.420 | So if you're buying something on Raise,

00:33:00.020 | quite likely you're the fifth person

00:33:01.860 | to handle the gift card.

00:33:03.460 | - And should that be risky to consumers?

00:33:05.500 | Should I be worried if I'm buying gift cards

00:33:07.820 | from someone like Raise?

00:33:09.780 | Or we'll talk about the site I built

00:33:11.380 | that we kind of, I've worked with you a little bit

00:33:14.220 | to get your feedback on.

00:33:15.260 | And should I be worried if I'm buying these gift cards

00:33:17.980 | that five other people might have seen the code?

00:33:20.580 | And is there a lot of fraud in this industry?

00:33:23.060 | - The amount of fraud that we experience

00:33:24.900 | among our members is very low

00:33:26.580 | because our members tend to be somewhat professional.

00:33:30.660 | They're doing this as some kind of business.

00:33:32.540 | And we have know your customer requirements.

00:33:35.220 | There's a delay to get paid.

00:33:36.740 | So that creates some security

00:33:38.820 | that if people upload completely bunk card information,

00:33:42.180 | they won't get paid.

00:33:43.020 | The user gets a refund.

00:33:44.100 | I think that the risk is similar

00:33:45.420 | to if you were to buy one in a store

00:33:46.780 | because there's also fraud that can take place

00:33:50.180 | with physical cards where people will swap out a card,

00:33:54.460 | they'll write down the card information,

00:33:56.420 | the card you activated,

00:33:57.260 | the register won't be the one that you're actually buying

00:33:59.180 | 'cause they've done a swap.

00:34:00.460 | There is a risk of fraud.

00:34:01.540 | I don't think the risk is substantial though.

00:34:03.060 | And I think that if you buy from a reputable place,

00:34:05.300 | they'll make you whole.

00:34:06.340 | And so it's just not a major worry, I don't think.

00:34:09.580 | - Yeah, I mean, I think you said it in a more casual way,

00:34:12.340 | but you have a policy with the people you sell to

00:34:14.820 | as do a lot of these resellers,

00:34:16.180 | like you will guarantee those cards.

00:34:17.740 | I'm looking at Uber gift cards.

00:34:19.180 | And if you wanted to buy 20 or 30 $50 Uber gift cards,

00:34:23.300 | you're probably getting somewhere between 10 and 12% off,

00:34:27.740 | even though at the source,

00:34:29.860 | someone might've gotten 25, 20% off.

00:34:32.820 | And so, you do a service, you take a little,

00:34:36.260 | raise takes a little.

00:34:37.380 | Is that kind of split evenly or how does that work?

00:34:41.420 | Like, is there a way to get a better deal

00:34:43.500 | going directly to you or going directly to people?

00:34:46.660 | - Yeah, I mean, the more middlemen you can cut out,

00:34:49.220 | the better a deal you're gonna get.

00:34:50.620 | So the best deal that you're gonna get

00:34:52.060 | on an Uber gift card is to go to Costco

00:34:54.460 | when they have a 25% off sale.

00:34:56.140 | And so if you've got a time machine,

00:34:58.460 | perhaps one of the least economical uses

00:35:00.700 | of that time machine would be to go back in time

00:35:02.820 | and get Uber gift cards for 25% off, right?

00:35:04.980 | The worst option probably would be

00:35:06.260 | like a marketplace like Raise.

00:35:07.180 | They take a pretty hefty commission.

00:35:09.260 | I can tell you it's many times larger

00:35:11.180 | than the amount of margin that we make on something.

00:35:15.100 | So, if each person is making at least a couple percent,

00:35:18.260 | then obviously the more people you can cut out, the better.

00:35:20.500 | And Raise has bigger fraud concerns

00:35:23.980 | being more open to the public,

00:35:25.700 | but more private marketplaces,

00:35:27.340 | like the one that you're building,

00:35:28.940 | there's lower fraud risk, it's touching fewer hands.

00:35:32.460 | And so the rates should be better there.

00:35:34.300 | - Yeah, I've compared it.

00:35:35.140 | I approached you and I said,

00:35:35.980 | "Why don't you sell gift cards to the public?"

00:35:37.740 | And you were like, "I don't wanna get into the world

00:35:40.620 | of opening this website

00:35:41.940 | and having all of these potential bad actors

00:35:44.300 | and everyone seeing it."

00:35:45.580 | And I realized that the thing I had that you didn't have

00:35:49.500 | and Raise in some ways probably is a private audience,

00:35:52.540 | an audience that isn't just on the internet

00:35:54.260 | where I'm not marketing to random people

00:35:55.780 | trying to attract customers.

00:35:57.380 | So I said, "Oh, what if I bought gift cards from you?

00:36:00.020 | Could we resell them to our audience?

00:36:03.020 | Benefit from the fact that you are standing behind them

00:36:06.100 | with a guarantee for a period of time

00:36:08.380 | that is more than enough to use them.

00:36:11.060 | So people shouldn't be worried

00:36:12.220 | about that kind of fraud concern.

00:36:14.460 | And what if we just didn't really make it

00:36:16.700 | to the public all the time?

00:36:17.820 | What if we opened it for windows of time

00:36:20.140 | and made it available?"

00:36:21.580 | And so I've shared it in the newsletter,

00:36:23.820 | but I was waiting for our conversation

00:36:25.860 | to put it in the podcast.

00:36:26.860 | So if you go to allthehacks.com/giftcards,

00:36:30.740 | it'll redirect to it.

00:36:32.060 | I'm not gonna keep it alive all the time

00:36:34.100 | 'cause I don't wanna get in the business of this.

00:36:36.020 | And I think one of the fun things I'll share,

00:36:38.380 | which I kind of hinted at with you,

00:36:40.820 | is I'm experiencing some

00:36:43.500 | of why you probably aren't doing this.

00:36:46.700 | Like fulfilling orders,

00:36:48.340 | just taking a batch of codes for Amazon

00:36:52.100 | and getting them to people

00:36:53.300 | and responding to emails and questions

00:36:55.620 | and payment issues and all that stuff.

00:36:56.980 | It's a lot of work.

00:36:58.300 | And we discussed the pricing here, right?

00:37:01.500 | If from Costco, giving some of that profit

00:37:04.540 | to the person who buys it,

00:37:05.740 | some of it to the person who aggregates it in the middle,

00:37:08.180 | what you're doing,

00:37:09.300 | and then some to the person who's selling it.

00:37:11.620 | And you mentioned that Raise takes even more.

00:37:14.580 | And I'm looking at the cheapest gift card.

00:37:16.220 | It's 13% off.

00:37:17.300 | Like that's only 7% split amongst three parties.

00:37:20.620 | One of which Raise is taking a bigger chunk

00:37:23.580 | and I'm trying to offer something lower.

00:37:25.660 | So we're talking about one to two to 3% max

00:37:29.780 | that could kind of go to any party in the middle.

00:37:32.220 | So it's a bit of a volume game.

00:37:34.420 | But I've found that if I can do it

00:37:36.540 | for short windows of time,

00:37:38.180 | I can kind of aggregate the work,

00:37:40.620 | increase the volume

00:37:42.020 | and make it not a complete waste of time.

00:37:44.220 | And so it's been fun to learn how this operates,

00:37:47.580 | but the idea of working with dozens and dozens of brands

00:37:52.060 | or hundreds of brands feels like it can get overwhelming.

00:37:54.500 | And so, you know, when I've been talking to you,

00:37:57.100 | I'm like, let's specialize in five, 10 brands.

00:37:59.780 | You don't think you're gonna pack up the podcasting empire

00:38:03.780 | and just become a full-time gift card salesman?

00:38:06.060 | I do think it's interesting because when you go to Raise,

00:38:09.100 | like the deals are not as good as they could be.

00:38:11.300 | And that was why I started this site.

00:38:13.500 | I said, "Hey, Logan, what would it cost me

00:38:15.460 | to buy gift cards from you?"

00:38:16.660 | And the answer you gave me was,

00:38:18.300 | "It will be cheaper than you could buy online,

00:38:20.860 | but to make it worth my time,

00:38:22.860 | you need to spend at least five figures with me."

00:38:25.060 | Because like I've learned,

00:38:27.660 | there's just a lot of fulfillment issues.

00:38:29.060 | And I said, "God, five figures?

00:38:30.940 | There's not a lot of retailers

00:38:32.620 | that I'm spending five figures at."

00:38:34.500 | And so, if you wanna save up,

00:38:37.300 | I'm sure if someone's all ready to go and says,

00:38:39.180 | "Logan, I wanna spend $30,000 on gift cards.

00:38:41.460 | Can I make a one-time purchase from you?"

00:38:43.380 | Maybe they could email you, maybe you'd wanna do it.

00:38:45.140 | But you're looking for people you can sell five to six,

00:38:48.700 | maybe even seven figures of gift cards to

00:38:50.820 | in the course of a year.

00:38:52.380 | And so if I can be that channel

00:38:54.860 | to directly engage with our audience,

00:38:57.780 | maybe a week or two every quarter,

00:39:00.580 | then I can fulfill the needs you have for volume

00:39:03.780 | to get the rates, add on enough to make it worth my time

00:39:06.380 | and still beat the deals at raise.

00:39:08.060 | And I think everyone wins.

00:39:09.820 | - Yeah, for sure.

00:39:11.260 | - So, if you're interested, go check that site out.

00:39:13.740 | We'll see what's there.

00:39:14.580 | If you want to spend a lot of money

00:39:16.860 | on a retailer that's not there, shoot me an email

00:39:19.820 | because I'm intentionally not putting

00:39:21.940 | every retailer that you have.

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00:41:52.580 | How many different brands of gift cards

00:41:55.300 | in a given period of time do you have in your inventory?

00:41:58.940 | - We think about things in terms of like SKUs,

00:42:01.700 | which would be like a brand plus a denomination.

00:42:04.280 | And we have over 200 SKUs in stock typically.

00:42:07.260 | Our inventory is like, I guess, eight figures.

00:42:08.920 | It's a huge inventory, amount of inventory to manage,

00:42:12.620 | which is also why it's very hard if somebody is like,

00:42:14.480 | I want to buy a $100 Starbucks gift card.

00:42:16.860 | I don't wanna be rude, but it's also like,

00:42:18.620 | yeah, I'm gonna make like $2 on that

00:42:20.460 | and it's gonna take like 20 minutes to do the accounting.

00:42:23.560 | So like it's just the economics don't make sense for that.

00:42:26.980 | - I mean, I found the same thing,

00:42:28.340 | which is why I kind of told everyone

00:42:29.900 | that the minimum order was $1,000 worth of gift card value

00:42:33.620 | to make it worth my time, which still depends

00:42:38.140 | because I'm not holding inventory.

00:42:39.860 | My risk is on the positive,

00:42:42.540 | my benefit is I'm not holding inventory.

00:42:44.140 | You've learned how to manage that.

00:42:45.220 | I'm not ready for that.

00:42:46.140 | The downside is this market changes a lot.

00:42:48.700 | And so I imagine that the week that Uber is 25% off at Costco

00:42:52.960 | I could probably get better deal on Uber gift cards

00:42:54.940 | than the week that Costco takes it off

00:42:56.980 | and it hasn't been there.

00:42:58.200 | And so when I'm doing this, I'm taking on some risk.

00:43:02.740 | And there was one right now that I'm looking at

00:43:05.020 | where I sold some gift cards in a brand

00:43:07.380 | and those gift cards are now not available

00:43:10.380 | for the price that they were.

00:43:11.980 | And so I might lose a little bit, but that's okay.

00:43:14.540 | I made the commitment that I would do that sale

00:43:16.420 | and that's okay, that's my risk.

00:43:18.620 | But for you, how often are these prices changing

00:43:21.540 | and how much fluctuation from Black Friday

00:43:24.300 | when there's all these deals throughout the year

00:43:26.820 | is the range of a Amazon gift card?

00:43:29.620 | How much swing is there?

00:43:30.980 | - That's a good example of a fairly

00:43:33.180 | like long-term volatile brand

00:43:35.580 | in that it was unheard of to see Amazon on raise

00:43:38.900 | for even 1% off.

00:43:41.200 | And we're talking like really almost no discount.

00:43:44.660 | But then the pepper effect of them entering the marketplace,

00:43:47.980 | selling tons of Amazon gift cards at a huge discount

00:43:50.980 | is that at the time of recording, if you went to raise,

00:43:53.680 | it would be like 8.5% off for Amazon.

00:43:55.980 | That's a crazy discount for a place

00:43:57.900 | that just sells everything.

00:43:58.740 | Like my personal Amazon account is like loaded

00:44:01.100 | to the gills with gift cards.

00:44:02.340 | It's never been that cheap before.

00:44:04.780 | For other brands that are lower volume,

00:44:07.780 | you can see a lot more volatility even in the short term.

00:44:11.020 | So Chipotle, for example, is one where like

00:44:15.820 | it can fluctuate between,

00:44:17.460 | in terms of the deals that you could buy at a store,

00:44:20.620 | it'll fluctuate between like 10 and 20% off.

00:44:22.860 | So markets can move fairly quickly.

00:44:26.820 | I'm a huge economics nerd.

00:44:28.280 | Most markets in the world that you can access in the US

00:44:31.700 | are like mature and well-developed.

00:44:33.380 | So like the stock market, the commodities

00:44:35.420 | and futures exchange, things like that.

00:44:37.340 | People much smarter than me

00:44:38.380 | with much faster computers than me,

00:44:40.140 | those problems are all solved.

00:44:41.780 | This is like a market where it is like the wild west

00:44:44.220 | and like, you know, things happen, things move quickly

00:44:47.860 | and it's a really undeveloped market.

00:44:51.380 | And so it's very exciting and very fun for me,

00:44:53.460 | like on the economic side of things,

00:44:55.020 | 'cause we've been in business for over five years now.

00:44:57.060 | So we have all this data about how prices move,

00:44:59.820 | how price affects daily sales, things like that.

00:45:02.420 | So we're able to make educated guesses

00:45:04.180 | as to where the market's gonna go

00:45:05.460 | based on what effect the sale is gonna have.

00:45:09.060 | And so the part of this job that's really exciting to me

00:45:11.700 | is less like delivering gift cards to someone

00:45:15.020 | and more of that market stuff

00:45:17.140 | and like trying to guess the volatility,

00:45:19.420 | trying to not get in trouble

00:45:21.100 | when you bought a bunch of Southwest gift cards

00:45:23.460 | and now they're 5% cheaper.

00:45:24.700 | So yeah, I mean, things can definitely move,

00:45:26.860 | you know, things can move 5% overnight, no problem.

00:45:29.780 | And so it's important that you size your bets appropriately

00:45:33.140 | to account for that kind of volatility.

00:45:35.220 | - Yeah, the data you have is something that,

00:45:37.100 | you know, I wish I had,

00:45:38.020 | because every now and then I'll see a wild deal

00:45:41.300 | and I'm like, how much of this should I buy?

00:45:44.060 | And when it's just for me, you know, my wife and I,

00:45:46.980 | when Costco had Southwest gift cards

00:45:49.660 | and they, you know, increased the bonus

00:45:51.100 | and it was like 50, I can't remember what,

00:45:52.380 | maybe it got up to 16%.

00:45:54.340 | I was like, well, how much are we gonna spend in Southwest?

00:45:56.860 | They don't expire.

00:45:57.860 | Like how much do we spend flying Southwest

00:45:59.580 | over the next three or four years?

00:46:01.260 | And I guess one alternative thing to keep in mind is

00:46:04.140 | while gift cards probably do fluctuate in value,

00:46:07.700 | they're definitely not earning interest.

00:46:09.220 | So if you're gonna buy 25 years

00:46:10.860 | of your Southwest Airlines budget, you know,

00:46:13.700 | there's some window at which you probably

00:46:15.260 | would have been better off putting that money to work,

00:46:17.340 | whether it's a savings account or some type of investment

00:46:20.460 | and not investing in gift cards,

00:46:22.300 | even if, you know, those prices do fluctuate.

00:46:25.300 | But like you, I realized at some point,

00:46:28.260 | I was like, oh, wow, sometimes these are a lot cheaper.

00:46:30.060 | And there are definitely a few gift cards that I bought

00:46:32.620 | and then realized, oh, I could have gotten

00:46:34.700 | an even better deal and I kind of lost a little.

00:46:36.980 | Now these weren't major bets, but with that data,

00:46:40.140 | it would be interesting to say, gosh,

00:46:41.860 | if Amazon's at an all-time high discount,

00:46:44.740 | should I just buy a ton of Amazon and hold onto it?

00:46:47.260 | And I think that's a little bit

00:46:48.380 | of what you're doing right now

00:46:49.220 | because it's never been this good.

00:46:52.220 | - Yeah, it was the day after Christmas, maybe.

00:46:55.060 | Pepper, I wanna say had it for 20% back in coins.

00:46:59.300 | And I'm not proud of it 'cause I was like hanging out

00:47:03.420 | with my family and my nieces and nephews and stuff,

00:47:05.740 | but I was like, I mean, I gotta buy some of this.

00:47:09.420 | 'Cause like, that's a crazy deal.

00:47:12.060 | Like when's Amazon gonna be 20% back?

00:47:14.380 | But fortunately, it only takes a couple minutes

00:47:16.740 | to buy something on Pepper, but.

00:47:18.900 | - Yeah, and that deal did not last.

00:47:20.260 | I haven't seen it at that price.

00:47:21.980 | And just for people who are looking at their Pepper app

00:47:24.620 | seeing, you know, 5% or 8% or nothing,

00:47:27.180 | it seems that, you know, some of the people

00:47:29.420 | who are doing a lot of spending on that app

00:47:31.260 | are seeing different deals than other people.

00:47:33.340 | And a lot of those have come down.

00:47:35.060 | And by the time this gets published,

00:47:36.380 | who knows if any of those deals are around

00:47:38.740 | and the fate of Pepper is very unclear.

00:47:41.220 | But it sounds like things are kind of pretty volatile.

00:47:44.460 | Between now, let's say this comes out

00:47:46.460 | at end of January, early February,

00:47:48.820 | are there periods of time over the next two or three months

00:47:51.420 | that, you know, are for whatever reason

00:47:54.020 | often filled with great deals?

00:47:56.220 | - Not really.

00:47:58.580 | So we're kind of in a slow part of the year.

00:48:00.500 | Everyone kind of has a hangover after Christmas

00:48:02.620 | in terms of retail.

00:48:04.460 | People spend a ton of money buying Christmas presents

00:48:07.540 | and then, you know, maybe they get gift cards for Christmas

00:48:09.980 | and then they buy stuff right after Christmas.

00:48:12.340 | And then everything is really slow

00:48:13.820 | until more or less Mother's Day.

00:48:15.420 | Things have been busier than usual this year for January.

00:48:18.460 | But one reason I just got back from vacation yesterday,

00:48:20.900 | I always book a vacation in January

00:48:22.540 | because I'm working nonstop October through Christmas.

00:48:26.260 | So usually I finally get to take a break,

00:48:28.940 | but things have actually been surprisingly busy.

00:48:31.420 | We're kind of in uncharted waters

00:48:33.180 | in terms of how busy it is now.

00:48:34.500 | So I hesitate to speculate what February would look like.

00:48:38.060 | - And one thing I didn't ask,

00:48:39.020 | are there some retailers that are just never on sale?

00:48:41.340 | You can never get a deal?

00:48:42.460 | And maybe never say never

00:48:44.100 | 'cause you thought that way about Amazon.

00:48:45.660 | But, you know, I tend to think

00:48:47.980 | that almost everywhere you can buy an Apple laptop

00:48:51.740 | seems to never go 20% off.

00:48:53.580 | It was kind of my mental radar,

00:48:55.620 | but things like Target and Best Buy and Home Depot,

00:48:59.940 | I never really see crazy deals for those gift cards.

00:49:02.980 | - In terms of a place that is never on sale,

00:49:05.660 | the one that comes to mind is Costco.

00:49:09.180 | Costco cards are treated same as cash.

00:49:13.020 | In fact, if you don't have a membership

00:49:14.940 | and you use a Costco card,

00:49:16.060 | I believe they cash the card out at the register.

00:49:18.660 | So obviously it would be a real coot

00:49:20.300 | if you could buy Costco gift cards at a discount.

00:49:23.620 | You also, as an exception to what we discussed earlier,

00:49:27.380 | you can use Costco cash gift cards to buy other gift cards.

00:49:31.540 | But because they're effectively the same as cash,

00:49:34.900 | I think that's why I've never seen them on sale

00:49:36.700 | anywhere other than Costco.

00:49:38.260 | I've never seen them on sale at a discount.

00:49:39.980 | They're kind of unique in that way.

00:49:41.300 | I mean, even Amazon,

00:49:42.820 | even before Pepper started going crazy with Amazon,

00:49:47.180 | we could still get it from Kroger

00:49:49.220 | from the fuel point steals.

00:49:51.060 | So basically if a place sells their gift cards

00:49:54.220 | in a store that other than their own,

00:49:56.660 | there's usually an angle

00:49:58.220 | to get those gift cards at a discount.

00:50:00.740 | And that may even be in the form of card linked offers.

00:50:03.100 | So I mentioned Tory Burch.

00:50:04.100 | You're never gonna see a Tory Burch gift card on sale,

00:50:07.420 | even at full price at your grocery store.

00:50:09.460 | But with a card linked offer, you can make it work.

00:50:12.580 | And then also if you see a card linked offer

00:50:14.300 | at a place like a Lowe's Home Improvement,

00:50:17.220 | they sell third-party gift cards.

00:50:18.700 | And so anything that's on their rack,

00:50:20.100 | if you've got an offer that's like spend 200, say 50,

00:50:23.660 | you could buy Apple gift cards at Lowe's.

00:50:26.220 | And that would be an angle to do that as well.

00:50:29.220 | - Okay, I just asked 'cause I never seemed

00:50:31.740 | to see Apple gift cards at a major discount.

00:50:34.500 | It seems like that's one of the retailers

00:50:36.860 | that always is selling at or close to face value.

00:50:41.420 | - Yeah, Apple and Best Buy,

00:50:43.460 | on like the wholesale side of things,

00:50:45.660 | they tend to not dip below like 90%.

00:50:48.260 | And so the discount that you would see as a customer,

00:50:50.500 | if you're buying it with a credit card,

00:50:51.860 | is gonna be pretty close to full price.

00:50:53.940 | - So I'm curious,

00:50:54.820 | how do a lot of these brands feel about this?

00:50:57.500 | Are there brands that get mad

00:50:59.380 | if their gift cards are listed on Raise?

00:51:01.340 | And are they upset

00:51:02.660 | if people are selling their cards at a discount?

00:51:05.100 | Obviously, Amazon's not intending

00:51:07.580 | for Amazon gift cards to be available.

00:51:09.540 | I don't wanna promise anything,

00:51:10.900 | but as of now, the gift card site I set up,

00:51:13.700 | we're able to sell Amazon at 10% off.

00:51:15.700 | And there's probably a reason

00:51:17.420 | that that's been 80% of all the order volume

00:51:21.900 | for the gift card site I set up

00:51:23.380 | has been through Amazon getting 10% off.

00:51:25.620 | Is Amazon unhappy about that?

00:51:27.100 | Like, should I worry that they're gonna be like

00:51:29.820 | angry at me for doing this?

00:51:31.540 | - I think that the general retailer approach

00:51:35.500 | ranges from indifference to outright hostility.

00:51:38.700 | The places that are really hostile,

00:51:40.380 | you'll see their gift cards can't be purchased on Raise.

00:51:43.060 | So Fanatix comes to mind.

00:51:45.660 | We never buy Fanatix

00:51:46.820 | because nobody wants to buy Fanatix

00:51:48.780 | because you can't resell Fanatix.

00:51:50.540 | Amazon is not thrilled

00:51:55.020 | if people are using the gift cards to like drop ship.

00:51:58.060 | They're not thrilled about that.

00:52:00.460 | And so they view that as an angle for that to occur,

00:52:03.380 | but they're not so mad about it

00:52:04.660 | that they banned them from Raise.

00:52:06.300 | And so a good rule of thumb is if you go to raise.com

00:52:09.380 | and it's a brand you've heard of before

00:52:10.940 | and the page doesn't exist

00:52:12.660 | or there's no gift cards for sale,

00:52:14.700 | that likely means that they sent an angry letter to Raise.

00:52:18.700 | - So before you buy a gift card

00:52:20.140 | thinking you're gonna profit off its resale,

00:52:22.620 | just check if Raise is selling it.

00:52:24.180 | And if not, it might be a lot harder

00:52:26.020 | than you think to flip that gift card.

00:52:28.940 | - For sure, yeah.

00:52:29.780 | And if you're planning to do this as a business,

00:52:32.380 | definitely don't buy a gift card

00:52:34.020 | until you know that you've got a buyer lined up for it.

00:52:37.180 | Unless it's at a place where you're comfortable

00:52:40.540 | consuming whatever it is that they sell.

00:52:42.620 | But yeah, if you buy a bunch of Fanatix

00:52:45.500 | and you're not a sports fan,

00:52:46.620 | like you're gonna have a tough time

00:52:48.340 | 'cause nobody's gonna want that.

00:52:50.580 | - Yeah.

00:52:51.420 | And as an amateur person thinking of this as a side hustle,

00:52:54.740 | obviously they can come to you to sell gift cards.

00:52:57.780 | I know you can sell gift cards on Raise,

00:52:59.580 | but is that kind of a losing proposition for the seller

00:53:03.180 | if they're doing it at small volume?

00:53:05.740 | - Yeah, I think the commission that Raise charges,

00:53:07.860 | obviously the more that you sell, the higher volume,

00:53:11.620 | the better the rates get.

00:53:14.180 | And so we have better rates

00:53:16.660 | than you would get coming in off the street for sure.

00:53:19.300 | I think that you would have a hard time

00:53:21.180 | just with the rack rate,

00:53:22.260 | making money selling a couple of gift cards a month.

00:53:24.500 | If what you have is that Starbucks gift card

00:53:26.220 | that you didn't want,

00:53:27.420 | well, getting something is better than nothing.

00:53:29.940 | And so if Raise's commission

00:53:31.660 | is like 12 and a half percent or something like that,

00:53:33.780 | if you're coming in off the street,

00:53:35.820 | then maybe that's better than having a gift card

00:53:37.740 | that you're not gonna use,

00:53:39.140 | but you're gonna have a hard time making a profit

00:53:42.020 | reselling stuff on Raise.

00:53:44.380 | Another challenge is you're gonna be competing

00:53:46.060 | against people like me who are professionally doing this,

00:53:49.540 | who have the data and the software needed

00:53:51.460 | to genuinely compete on the market.

00:53:53.500 | It would be a little naive to go in

00:53:55.300 | with just a few gift cards

00:53:56.860 | and think that you're gonna come out ahead, right?

00:53:59.900 | - You are the place that I've sold the most gift cards,

00:54:02.820 | the place I've bought the most gift cards from.

00:54:04.820 | If someone's looking to get into this,

00:54:06.380 | obviously Raise might not be the best

00:54:08.380 | as you're just getting started outside of you guys.

00:54:11.780 | If you guys aren't buying a card

00:54:13.380 | that someone's looking to buy,

00:54:14.820 | are there any other places that you'd throw out there

00:54:16.940 | for them to look at?

00:54:18.660 | - Well, if we don't buy the card,

00:54:20.780 | the odds are quite good that no one wants the card.

00:54:24.340 | We'll flip anything that we can find.

00:54:26.660 | We're even hoping to flip some things

00:54:28.140 | that aren't gift cards in the near future.

00:54:29.660 | Like if we can make a market, we'll make a market for it.

00:54:32.260 | And so it's unusual for there to be a brand

00:54:34.620 | that we won't buy, but that other people will buy.

00:54:36.980 | That said, we do have competitors.

00:54:39.220 | You could list directly on Raise.

00:54:42.820 | There are other middlemen like us.

00:54:44.340 | So Card Center is one.

00:54:47.180 | Now, bear in mind that I do this professionally.

00:54:49.620 | So like I haven't sold to Card Center,

00:54:51.820 | so I'm not super familiar with how their website works.

00:54:54.420 | You're probably more of an expert than I am

00:54:56.900 | in terms of like what the experience is like.

00:54:59.380 | Gift Card Wiki is another competitor, as is The Card Bay.

00:55:03.300 | I've used Gift Card Wiki.

00:55:05.380 | That's actually like kind of what got me

00:55:07.500 | into this hobby a decade ago.

00:55:09.420 | And we built our site because we wanted to solve

00:55:11.580 | a lot of the pain points,

00:55:12.620 | a lot of the things that we didn't like selling

00:55:14.140 | to other people.

00:55:14.980 | And I genuinely like our product.

00:55:17.500 | I think that we have an excellent product.

00:55:19.580 | I'm proud of our product.

00:55:20.620 | And we care a lot about constantly improving the experience.

00:55:23.380 | So if someone else comes out with a feature

00:55:24.980 | that we didn't think of,

00:55:26.180 | we will shamelessly copy that feature

00:55:27.940 | because we wanna be the best place to sell gift cards.

00:55:31.660 | - Since you guys are doing seven, eight figures

00:55:34.340 | of gift card transactions, I'm curious,

00:55:36.900 | what do you think really separates the top sellers

00:55:40.780 | from the average person looking for deals

00:55:42.900 | and trying to start up a side hustle in gift card reselling?

00:55:46.780 | - In most industries, and ours is no exception,

00:55:49.180 | a small percentage of people provide us

00:55:51.700 | the vast majority of our inventory, right?

00:55:53.740 | So like kind of like an 80/20 thing, right?

00:55:55.780 | Where it's like fifth of our users

00:55:57.300 | provide four fifths of the cards.

00:55:59.860 | So the thing that separates those people

00:56:02.300 | is those people tend to work full time on it

00:56:05.500 | when there's a good deal.

00:56:06.340 | There's the make hay while the sun shines,

00:56:08.420 | like when there's a good deal.

00:56:09.820 | Those tend to be people who can,

00:56:11.860 | they either have flexible work

00:56:13.900 | or like they don't work full time.

00:56:16.100 | They can work full time when there's a great gift card deal.

00:56:19.700 | So I mentioned how Rob was able to do so much in one week.

00:56:24.100 | That's because Rob is a professional poker player

00:56:27.060 | and his job is playing poker at night here in Texas

00:56:32.060 | where it's legal to do so.

00:56:33.860 | And when there's a good gift card deal

00:56:36.500 | that will pay him more per hour than that work,

00:56:38.580 | then he's able, he's flexible.

00:56:40.740 | No, he doesn't have to clock in at the poker room, right?

00:56:42.900 | He can just not play poker for a week, that's no problem.

00:56:45.780 | So the people that are really delivering tons of cards

00:56:48.500 | tend to be people that have more flexible work like that.

00:56:51.860 | I mean, we have plenty of people who are top quartile

00:56:54.780 | who have full-time jobs on top of it.

00:56:57.300 | Those people are just willing to do a lot of work, I guess.

00:57:00.220 | - So obviously not everyone's gonna get

00:57:01.660 | to Rob's level right away.

00:57:02.940 | So for someone who's just getting started

00:57:05.060 | and thinking this is interesting,

00:57:07.380 | what do you think the best way to get started is?

00:57:09.260 | Is it to sign up and sell their first gift card to you?

00:57:12.860 | - Sure, we talked about Costco earlier.

00:57:14.860 | If I had to pick one place to start that is easy and safe

00:57:19.860 | and you should make a profit outright from the get-go,

00:57:24.260 | it would be Costco and even Costco.com.

00:57:26.780 | I believe that we're paying,

00:57:29.100 | I think you can make a profit on both Instacart

00:57:30.940 | and Uber gift cards, selling them to us right now.

00:57:34.060 | If you buy them from Costco.com,

00:57:35.500 | you're not even leaving your house,

00:57:36.580 | you're just getting an email, you're copying a number,

00:57:39.180 | pasting it onto our site.

00:57:40.500 | So yeah, if you're looking to get started,

00:57:42.740 | I would start there.

00:57:43.580 | And if something goes wrong,

00:57:44.420 | Costco famously has terrific customer support.

00:57:47.060 | That or whether you're gonna keep it or sell it,

00:57:49.260 | I mean, what you mentioned with Pepper

00:57:50.500 | is another great place to start.

00:57:51.700 | - I do think that Pepper would probably be a good place

00:57:55.660 | to start to get a deal for yourself,

00:57:58.220 | but, and maybe a good place to start

00:58:00.780 | using a card-linked offer and a new user promo.

00:58:04.260 | I'll throw caution to anyone who's never signed up

00:58:07.380 | to get the rates that are gonna make

00:58:09.220 | a profitable reselling business.

00:58:11.340 | You're not gonna see those out the gate.

00:58:12.700 | And so if you look in there and say,

00:58:14.060 | "Gosh, I could buy this on Pepper.

00:58:15.260 | How much can I sell it to Aligned Incentives for?"

00:58:17.860 | You're probably not gonna make money there.

00:58:19.500 | But for some of these grocery store deals,

00:58:21.700 | these card-linked offer deals,

00:58:23.380 | the deals you talked about at Costco,

00:58:25.380 | like those might make a profit from a get-go.

00:58:28.060 | And that's just the profit of the business.

00:58:30.420 | We didn't talk at all about the fact

00:58:31.900 | that you get your 2% for executive rewards,

00:58:34.420 | if you have executive rewards at Costco.

00:58:36.540 | And depending on your payment method,

00:58:38.300 | if you're paying with a credit card,

00:58:39.300 | you might get rewards there.

00:58:40.980 | And so you can decide based on all the different factors,

00:58:44.500 | what kind of margin you need from reselling.

00:58:46.940 | But I've been very surprised

00:58:49.380 | that this can be a profitable business,

00:58:51.540 | buying and selling gift cards,

00:58:52.940 | buying them when there's deals.

00:58:54.260 | I haven't been a rob yet.

00:58:55.180 | I haven't flown around.

00:58:56.100 | I haven't hit the in-store stuff hard,

00:58:58.900 | but you guys do a lot of alerts on the site

00:59:01.700 | in the Telegram channel and that kind of stuff.

00:59:03.780 | And I think if people stay on top of those,

00:59:05.940 | when there's a deal, it's pretty clear there's a deal

00:59:08.060 | and you can jump on it and make money.

00:59:10.140 | - Yeah, and we take all types.

00:59:11.820 | I mean, there's tons of people who've never,

00:59:14.380 | never gotten a check from us for more than $1,000.

00:59:17.620 | And that's fine too.

00:59:18.460 | And they're just like doing little bits every week,

00:59:20.260 | whenever they have time.

00:59:21.500 | You don't have to be at Rob's level

00:59:23.140 | to get something out of this.

00:59:24.380 | And even if you're like my friend,

00:59:25.500 | who's never sold me any gift cards,

00:59:27.380 | and he just uses the gift cards himself, that's great too.

00:59:30.220 | The main takeaway here is that,

00:59:32.220 | gift cards are not just for gifting.

00:59:34.500 | Like they are a way to save money on stuff.

00:59:36.540 | And whether that is saving money for yourself

00:59:38.380 | or even reselling them and making a profit,

00:59:40.260 | they're more than just a type of payment rail.

00:59:42.980 | - To go back to where we started,

00:59:45.020 | if I were listening to this

00:59:46.180 | and I haven't gone through the process

00:59:47.940 | of looking at where I spend money

00:59:49.660 | and looking at how much impact it would have

00:59:51.660 | to save 10 to 20% on it like you,

00:59:54.500 | that'd be a fun place to start.

00:59:55.820 | Go look at where you spent your money last year.

00:59:57.660 | And for every one of those, look it up on Raise,

01:00:00.180 | look and get a sense of what the scope is.

01:00:02.780 | Now, do I think if you come to the site I built,

01:00:05.020 | you can beat what Raise is offering?

01:00:06.740 | Yeah, I think that.

01:00:07.820 | Do I think if you put in the work

01:00:08.820 | to go find those gift cards yourself during deal times,

01:00:11.980 | you can even beat rates on my site, rates on Raise?

01:00:15.740 | Yeah, so I think there's a lot of opportunity to save money

01:00:18.580 | if you know where you spend money

01:00:20.460 | and you could turn this into a business as well.

01:00:22.620 | I'll put links to Aligned Incentives in the show notes

01:00:25.300 | and we'll put links to everything we talked about.

01:00:27.620 | Logan, thanks for doing business with me.

01:00:29.220 | I've enjoyed working together.

01:00:31.020 | - I've enjoyed working together.

01:00:32.020 | - Thanks for having me on, man.

Save $5,000 a Year Using Gift Cards (Here’s How)

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