Warning: This isn’t going to be my typical manufactured spending report. The months when I’d earn over 100,000 points are going to be few and far in between. At least for now. Visa gift card churning isn’t viable in my area anymore and I’m mostly sticking to reselling and buying clubs to earn points.
In August, I went in the red to do so. That’s because my Amex Business Platinum Card had a $15,000 spending requirement, and I had $4,000 to spend on my sister’s Chase Sapphire Preferred, which came with a 100,000-point bonus.
I managed to meet about $10,000 in spending requirements for my Amex Business Platinum through my brother’s home renovation expenses. For the rest, I turned to Buy For Me and The Deal Buyer.
Note, if you use my Deal Buyer referral link, I’ll earn $50 after you bring in $5,000.00 in receipts.
There are many other buying clubs out there, but these are the ones I stick with to keep things easy. I don’t want to deal with more than three buying clubs at a time since that would just complicate tracking.
The last thing I want is to lose track of a purchase and end up $1,000 in the hole for a MacBook you essentially gifted to one of these groups. Keeping the operation small helped me avoid that.
Related: My year in manufactured spending: How I earned points, miles + cash back In 2019
What are buying clubs?
Buying clubs are organizations that recruit “buyer” to purchase products for them, often when they go on sale. You see, retailers limit how many Macbooks you can buy when they’re discounted. Savvy resellers tap into buying clubs to procure these discounted products in larger quantities.
The members in these buying clubs get to charge a bunch of products to their credit cards (and get reimbursed after), while the resellers get more items to sell. Most often, they ship these products abroad for maximum return.
It’s kind of like retail arbitrage, except you don’t have to do any of the shipping and handling. You simply place the order, have it shipped to their warehouse and cut you a check when it arrives.
Buying clubs mostly purchase popular electronics, including Apple products, Amazon Echos, Kindles and other items. These products sell for greater amounts abroad, so resellers like to stock up on them via buying clubs.
How many points I earned through buying clubs
- Points earned: $7,900.93
- Reimbursed: $7,755.93
- Total cost: $145
In total, I bought $7,900.93 worth of merchandise for buying clubs and received $7,755.93 back. That’s a loss of $145, which would normally be a terrible return on 7,900 Membership Rewards. However, in this case, it was worth it because I was trying to meet credit card spending requirements without gift cards.
I earned over 157,000 Membership Rewards and got the remaining $2,900 of my sister’s Sapphire spending done. That brings the total to about 257,900 points.
I’ll share a more detailed post later about how I track my purchases and tips on how to keep your order from getting canceled. In the meantime, here’s a link to the spreadsheet I’ve been using to track everything. Feel free to download and use it for your own buying club purchases.
Related: 6 tips for avoiding credit card shutdowns and bad credit while churning gift cards
Justifying the cost
I could have tried to meet more of my spending requirements through organic spending, but I wanted to get this out of the way quickly. Paying $145 out of pocket seemed reasonable for the convenience of checking these two spending requirements off my list.
Plus, I recently racked up $198.99 in Amex Offers savings from my $0-annual-fee card. So I felt those savings offset the extra expense I incurred to earn more Membership Rewards. Maybe that’s a stretch, but in addition to the convenience factor, it played a role in justifying the cost of buying groups.
Related: My low-volume, high-impact manufactured spending strategy
Are buying clubs worth it?
I think buying clubs are definitely worth it, even if you sometimes have to incur a loss. Overall, I’m happy with the turnout for August. I’m relieved I completed the spending requirement for two cards that required a combined $20,000 within 3-6 months. Plus, I did it with minimal time, from the comfort of home.
Outside of meeting large spending requirements, I don’t participate in buying clubs unless I get reimbursed at a break-even rate. Purchasing Amazon gift cards at office supply stores using my Chase Ink Plus card helps make that possible.
Purchasing U.S. Mint coins for buying clubs is also a great way to reduce large amounts of spending. For example, PFS Buyers Club periodically buys U.S. Mint coins at markup. You can usually earn around $100-$200 per coin, which is a nice profit for a fairly simple transaction.
Unfortunately, I’ve had no success getting in on these deals. They tend to sell out fast, or I end up with a page that never loads. Plus, I don’t feel totally comfortable buying coins with an Amex card, considering how vigilant they are about shutting down manufactured spending activity.
Plus, if I ever do get my hands on one these coins, I’d rather resell them myself than pass pass it along to buying clubs. Why give up a large chunk of profit to someone else?
Related: 10 best credit cards for manufactured spending
Alternatives to buying clubs
In addition to buying clubs, I also resold about $300 worth of Dagne Dover merchandise from their refresh sale a few months back. Dagne Dover is a popular brand that sells various functional and stylish bags.
I bought several of their neoprene laptop bags and sleeves at a steep discount and unloaded them via Poshmark at a small profit. But that’s a small drop in the bucket and not part of my August haul, so I left it out of this tally.
It’s just something to be aware of if you’re looking for opportunities to generate extra spending.
Do you use buying clubs for manufactured spending? What are some of your favorite strategies and tips?
Photo credit: Jennifer J Taylor/iStockphoto
I think buying groups are where most of us have turned to since VGC -> MO isn’t viable in most (a lot of?) areas anymore. The only problem is that it isn’t consistent. I buy for 7 groups. I haven’t bought anything this week and less than $1,000 last week because there hasn’t been many new deals. I try to do at least $3,000 per week, and have done over $10,000 occasionally, but that’s a long way from the ~$40,000 per month I was doing in the VGC -> MO days.
BTW, I love the Mint deals. There’s definitely a learning curve on how to get the orders through, but it would help tremendously if the Mint had a decent website that could handle the traffic!
Yeah it’s definitely not the same volume as Visa gift cards, but I do like the ease of it.
Definitely! I much prefer sitting in my recliner with my laptop over running all over town going from store to store buying MOs!
Welcome back, you were definitely missed.
Glad to hear it, Patrice!
What a wonderful surprise to find this blog in my email today. Glad you are back.
Glad you think so!
Welcome back. Are you still with TPG? You need to do a review on your buying clubs
I’m no longer at TPG and yes, buying club guide coming soon.
Definitely welcome back!
TY!
Can you explain the loss for the buying club? I have everything shipped to them, so I’m always even or up based on commission.
Some of their deals aren’t break-even. For example, the Macbooks came in at a loss. But because the amount was high ($1k+), I was ok with it since it let me get a large chunk of spending out of the way.
Gotcha. Never done a deal at a loss. Thankfully I’m in a tax free state. Pointsmaker.com is where I’ve done a TON!
Soooo relieved you are indie again! Welcome home!
Thank you Pam! It’s nice to be home.
Welcome back, and so sorry re. Afghanistan, it must be more heart wrenching for you.
I have been staying active only by my old INK card 5-1 fortunately I am in construction and can load up on 500.00 Home depot cards through Staples Other than that I have no other tricks of the trade. I dont know what this club stuff is about
Good to see you post again
Welcome back!!!
So happy to hear of someone admitting they are willing to take a bit of a loss if it’s worth it! Sometimes I feel like I’m failing if I’m not breaking even or coming out ahead.
Wowsas. Didn’t realize you were back freelancing. That’s great. Hope you have more content soon!
Interesting. But I’d be afraid one of these would go belly up like the Plastic Merchant did a few years ago and I’d be out of pocket thousands in gifted merchandise. By the way, welcome back!
Yay!
Glad to see that your are back, Ariana.
You’ll definitely need to do a newbie guide to buyers clubs, as that’s a new one for me.
Hi tAriadna-
Glad you are back, on the mint purchases I do not believe the purchases with @mex or fidelity will count towards points or cashback (I learn the lesson) I use ch@se or citi for those transactions.
I’ve been purchasing MO at regional stores that sells WU MO but it seems that even that gravy train is comig to an stop, there’s reports with pictures of the memos that show blackhawk blocking the transactions over 90 dollars 😉
I went today to get my money orders at the regional store and it work, but I’m sure that it’s just a matter of time until the patch gets implementted across the nations, so yes buying groups it is, I wonder if the goverment will ask for taxes on the “selling” of the goods where there’s a tiny profit….
Any idea how to get people at Buyformeretail to respond to me? I have sent them many emails about 2 packages that have been delivered but not yet confirmed as received, and I am not getting any response. They have had the packages for over 10 days now. I am getting worried.
I’ve always had great response from them. Are you sending emails to deals@buyformeretail.com?
Can you share any insight on how to avoid having my orders canceled? For more than 6 mos. BB, Dell & WM cancel my orders. Thank you
Please do not use BuyForMeRetail. Their communication is terrible and they shirk responsibility when any issue is faced. They claim that an item ‘wasn’t received by their team’ even though it was signed for and sent to the exact address that was given! When asked for help to resolve the issue, they repeatedly have said they won’t help. It is not worth it!
Welcome back. You were missed!
Since you posted this, I subscribed to two buying groups, Pointsmaker and MYS Buying Group (used your link). I have yet to purchase anything, but I have been receiving their emails in an attempt to understand how it works as well as the price points of products being offered.
I notice that Pointsmaker offers a commission, whereas MYS does not. They claim it is to cover taxes, which is something I was questioning. I understand you lost money in August, but there was a cost to the MO strategy as well. I get it. There is also a lot less time invested in using the buying club strategy, which I appreciate and value. The MO strategy was very time consuming!
You mention above that a buying club guide is coming soon. Any update on this? As mentioned above re Pointsmaker, I am concerned that some of these clubs may not be very solvent. How can we learn more about them?
Thanks!
It’s in the works! Sorry, right after I promised this, I got hauled off to Virginia and then Wisconsin for work.
Yea, I find it very suspicious too. Have not scanned in for over 2 weeks for me and payment has been pending for more than a week. I don’t know what’s going on but I’m not sending any more to them. Their communication sucks!
Commission is only good if the place pays timely. Points Maker stopped responding weeks ago and owes me thousands of dollars I requested weeks ago. Their tardiness is very disturbing and is impacting my pocket having to wait so long. When you list a range of days to get payment, keep to it and do not ignore the customers and leave them hanging for weeks at end.
Following your situation because I am right there with you.
Lars, did this ever get resolved? I’m sorry, I just saw your comment.
Just stumbled across this page…
7k a month is peanuts. I’ve done 10k in an hour. I know people doing millions a month on buying groups. As to them not responding, if you were a more frequent/bigger customer you would have contact info I always whatsapp when I have issues I don’t bother with tickets. Pointsmaker has been a bit slow with scanning these days but they are still one of the oldest and most trustworthy groups. They will pay for missing items if you can prove it got delivered
U.S. Mint coin deals are not so hard to get you just gotta keep trying on several devices, there is also a little trick to speed things up but not gonna share it here. The reason the site crashes so much is partly because people are using bots to buy coins and bot traffic slows down a website
Peter, I just saw your comment. Did this ever get resolved?
Been using maxoutdeals much better site and higher payouts
Maxoutdeals is sketchy – not a good sign when you look them up and come across endless forums of people not getting paid and getting screwed over. Not to mention all you see is them shilling everywhere. Wouldn’t be surprised if that’s exactly what your doing.
I sell to a number of groups, maxoutdeals included. I’ve done 7 figures with them, never had an issue.