Need to Use Up Those eBay Bucks? Discounted Staples Gift Cards are One Idea

Disclaimer: I receive a referral commission for the following link(s) and I greatly appreciate supporting the site: eBay


Many of you have eBay Bucks to use which will expire soon.

If you can't think of anything to buy, you can buy Staples eGift Card.  You will pay $100 for $110 of Staples Gift Cards.  These are eGift Cards which are sold by PayPal Digital Gifts.  Keep PayPal limits in mind.


If you are looking to make a purchase at Staples, buy these first with Chase Ink.  You should still get 5x Ultimate Rewards points, 2% in eBay Bucks and a portal.  If you pay with eBay Bucks you won't get portal points if my memory serves me right but I might be wrong.  Always worth a shot.



Any other ideas? Post them in the comments!  Thanks

Today is a Good Day to Source from Kohl's....

Disclaimer: I receive a referral commission for the following link(s) and I greatly appreciate supporting the site: Raise, Ebates, Kohl's



There are a couple of factor that are combing for some extra dipping at Kohl's today.

First of all, check out my post for DoC on sourcing from Kohl's for more background information on these different types of rewards.


Here are the key facts for today:


Some pretty good sales on their own including BOGO 1/2 off a lot of toys.

Earn $10 of Kohl's Cash for every $50 you spend.  Small window for redemption.

Earn $5 in Yes2You Rewards for every $100 you spend.  Small window of redemption.

Use Promo code SMS8112 for 15% of your purchase.  You can use promo code EBATES15 if you are using Ebates.  In practice I found the SMS promo code to work on more items.

Earn 6% cashback from Ebates

Kohl's is part of the weekend sale for Raise.  You can buy Kohl's gift cards for about 17% off after using promo code TAKE5.  Sign up  for Raise from this link (purchase from Raise from this link - thank you!)

That's a lot of percent off.  They are practically asking you to profit off them!  Happy sourcing!

Deciding Whether to Use a Discounted Gift Card or Buy with a Credit Card Straight Up

I used to use a ton of discounted gift cards in my purchases and I still use plenty.  There is a different calculus I have when buying a gift card for a purchase that I will resell than for personal use.

You can see that just from Raise I've saved almost $4,000 buying gift cards and that's just one of the exchanges (and almost all from this year).  The savings really do matter.  I'm also trying to help out all your gift card sellers ;)

3" Wide Tape is So Much Better than 1.88"!

I've bought quite a few different types of tape and most of them have been adequate for my needs.  They have been in different price ranges but they all have been 1.88" wide.

So, when I posted about Reselling Supplies I put in a link for 1.88" tape.

Ken commented (separately, Ken has been killing it in the comments lately - thanks!):

I cannot stress this enough, but using 3" wide tape vs/ the 1.88" wide tape will change your life. You don't need multiple passes, just a single pass with the wide tape. Sometimes I'll use the 1.88" tape to join the two flaps together and keep them from separating when I'm starting the 3" tape, but that's it. I use the Uline tape sold on Amazon, and you can get the Uline 3" dispenser on Amazon too. I buy the tape in 4packs and then rebuy when needed.

I bought the 3" wide tape and it is as good as advertised, it's stronger, makes the job much easier and you use much less tape.

Then I went to the UPS store and of course they use 3" wide tape for all packaging! 

Here are a couple of Amazon Referral links.  I will add them to the Reselling Supplies page as well:

3" x 110 yard Tape - looks like the 110 yards is currently a better deal than the 55 yard version.

Tape Gun Dispenser

Now I just need to figure out to do with all my other rolls of 1.88" tape!

Turnover Tuesdays - Best Buy Gamer's Club

Update: Ken points out in the comments that you can buy the Gamer's club card in store and apply it to your account immediately so that there is no delay.  Normally I hate going into stores but you have to end up in the store anyways so that is not a bad option.

For those who are not familiar, I started a series a while back called Turnover Tuesdays. Every Tuesday I like to highlight one item that I have resold. This will include profitable and non profitable sales. I hope that there is always something to learn.

Week 1 - First attempt at reselling

Week 2 - My second straight fail

Week 3 - My iPad mini collection

Week 4 - Bed Bath and Beyond

Week 5 - An iPad Idea for Your Staples Gift Card Collection

Week 6 - An iPad Idea for Manufactured Spending

Week 7 - The Great iPad Deal that Wasn't

Week 8 - Lenovo Tablets

Week 9 - iPads at Staples

Week 10 - Loving that Groupon iPad Deal

Week 11 - iPads on Sale at Sears

Week 12 - Roombas at Bed Bath and Beyond

Week 13 - My Sam's Club iPad Collection for the $20k Challenge

Week 14 - Best Buy Gift Cards Fail

Week 15 - Staples Ink Recycling and Staples Rewards

Week 16 - What Happened to My Surface Pro 3?

Week 17 - Dell - Love that AmEx Offer

Week 18 - XBox Saves the Day

Week 19 - Using Amazon Chat and the Importance of Organization

Week 20 - The Impact of Returns

Week 21 - Apple Watch is the Best Watch

Week 22 - Headphones, Lots of Headphones

Week 23 - Storage Fees - I Don't Like Heavy Items

Week 24 - Some Companies try to Bully!

Week 25 - An iPhone is not an iPad

Week 26 - Patience vs. A Quick Hit and Fewer Deals Coming!

Week 27 - Competing Against Amazon

Week 28 - Toys and Retail Arbitrage vs. Online Arbitrage

Week 29 - Check Your Listings Carefully - My Big Fail

Week 30 - Killing it at Walgreen's!

Week 31 - Sometimes You Need to Stop, Refocus and Reprice
Week 32 - Target Cartwheel and other Coupons can have a Major Impact
Week 33 - Got a Return?  You Might need to Reprice
Week 34 - Sometimes Returns Can be Very Profitable 

Using Inventory Lab to Track Multiple Purchase Prices

An important feature of accounting software is the ability to track your inventory expenses over time, even when you paid different prices for that inventory.

I don't talk about accounting principle often since I am not an accountant and I don't know too many accounting principles.  If I get something wrong, someone yell at me in the comments.  I give you permission this time ;)

Hopefully if we do accounting posts in small enough chunks, maybe we can learn some of the principles together over time.

There are two ways to handle this situation in your books. One is called First In, First Out (FIFO) and the other is called Last In, First Out (LIFO).

I know this because of Wikipedia

PSA - Amazon FBA Calculator Adds in Referral Links

In the end of December, I recommended Amazon FBA Calculator as a great extension to more quickly figure out fees for particular listings.  The actual tool is great.

A few people have brought up the same problem with the tool.  The extension hijacks your links and adds in a referral link so that they get paid a referral fee whenever you buy something on Amazon.  Not just when you use their tool.

When you go to Amazon.com, you will see that the link changes to http://www.amazon.com/?tag=dailydeal0c6-20

That add on to the end of the link is their referral link.

I don't have a problem with them making money.  They are providing a service. However, I would have liked to have known that.  I don't know what happens when you click on someone else's referral link since both referral IDs seem to be on the link.  Who gets the commission?

Either way, now you know and you can make a decision on what you want to do.

I haven't currently tried out any other similar tools.  If someone knows of a plugin that doesn't have this problem, please leave a comment.

Ways to Support Oren's Money Saver!

Here at Oren's Money Saver I strive to help everyone earn and save money.  Hopefully a lot of it.  If you are still reading, it must be working.  Either that or I'm an awesome writer! Ok, so you are earning and saving money.

Many of you have gone out of your way to use the Blog's links and I really appreciate it.  It makes a nice impact on my bottom line.  I can't come close to living off of it but it definitely gives me motivation to keep putting out good content.

I only recommend using my links when you can't use a portal. but here are all the paid links I have. Please use portals instead of my eBay and Staples links.  However, if you prefer to help me, I won't be upset ;)




Monthly PayPal Subscription

On the right side of the blog there is a subscription button from PayPal.  You can support with a monthly subscription.  

Each dollar you spend in a monthly subscription earns you 1 Oren's Money Saver Loyalty point.  These can be redeemed for Oren's Money Saver gratitude points :)  Unfortunately there are a lot of blackout dates for redemptions.


Shopping

Amazon - My referral rate is determined by the number of items I refer.  Even a $1 item is helpful to increase my overall rate!
eBay
Staples
Paribus - link to learn more about Paribus and here.  We will both earn a 5% decrease in fees.


Shopping Portal Sign Ups

Top Cashback - I earn $10 and random promotions where you cna earn $10
Ebates _ I earn $5 for each referral and there is a bonus for referring more.
Mr. Rebates - I earn a percentage of your portal earnings (you do not lose any of your earnings)
Be Frugal - $10 for each of us
Splender - I earn $10, readers will earn $5 for signing up.  Sorry :( I don't make the rules
Simply Best Coupons - I earn 5% of your earnings (you do not lose any of your earnings)
Extra Bux - We both earn $5
Giving Assistant - $5 for both of us
Sunshine Rewards - we both earn $2


Discounted Gift Cards
Raise - I earn a small percentage which can add up
Gyft - I earn a small percentage which can add up


Inventory Lab - more info here.  I will earn $6 a month for the first 6 months of your paid subscription.

Bought that MacBook on eBay? Be Patient!

For all those who were able to buy that MacBook today in that 10 minute window, congratulations not many got in!  This should do very well on Amazon.

Don't want to miss it next time?  Follow me on Twitter.  I don't post deals often but when I do, I post them immediately to Twitter.

Here is a word of advice on pricing:

You either need to get your MacBook(s) to Amazon before everyone else and sell immediately or you need to be patient.

There will be other sellers selling the same thing.  Prices will definitely fall, you can be sure about that.

Don't panic when the price dips to $880.  Prices will come back as long as there isn't another eBay sale (Seeing how fast this one sold it is possible that the seller will look to procure more - they sold over 2,000 of them).  If you sell at $900 you will still make money but not as much as you can.  Most likely there will be a race to the bottom during the first month.  Many sellers will panic and sell too low.  Since you are smart, you will be left standing to reap the profits!

I am ready to hold onto this for 2, 3 or even 6 months if necessary, paying some storage fees but hopefully avoiding long term storage fees.  Prices will come back on Apple products, they always do.


I hope it goes well for you!

Buy This Now!

Update: Out of Stock!


These are going so fast, I can't even believe it.  Costs $800.  Will net you $880 after fees (10% profit - before shipping fees) and will sell fast.

Less than 50 left

Use eBay Bucks if you got them.  Only buy if you have no Tax

Link on eBay

This is a referral link!

can be sold as new

http://www.amazon.com/Apple-MacBook-i5-3210M-Dual-Core-Notebook/dp/B00BRFO076/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1453395271&sr=8-1&keywords=MD101LL%2FA&tag=dailydeal0c6-20

UPC Scanner is a Game Changer - List in Seconds

Recently I posted about the reselling supplies I use.  One great thing about blogs is that I get really great feedback from readers via email and in comments.

TightFistedMiser commented that he uses a UPC scanner to list items.

To be honest, I thought it wasn't terribly necessary  How long does it take to list?  I figured as a Blog and Business expense, I would give it a shot.

I got it yesterday and I started using it today and it is awesome!


When you are ready to list on Amazon or on Inventory Lab, all you need to do is scan the item like you would at self checkout and it automatically populates the UPC and chooses the correct item to list.

It might have only taken you 1-2 minutes to find the listing but now it will take 3 seconds.  It's just that simple.

Best of all - it's only $20 and doesn't require any software to download.  Just plug into your USB port and you are ready to go!  It took me all of 5 minutes to assemble and fits right on my desk.  I can't believe I didn't have this earlier.

Here is the link for the UPC code I bought.  It is a referral link so I will get a percentage if you buy from the link.







It also works for scanning gift cards instead of manually entering gift cards like a dummy like I was doing.  Thanks to CTP for showing us all about that.

Turnover Tuesdays - Sometimes a Return can be Very Profitable

For those who are not familiar, I started a series a while back called Turnover Tuesdays. Every Tuesday I like to highlight one item that I have resold. This will include profitable and non profitable sales. I hope that there is always something to learn.

Week 1 - First attempt at reselling

Week 2 - My second straight fail

Week 3 - My iPad mini collection

Week 4 - Bed Bath and Beyond

Week 5 - An iPad Idea for Your Staples Gift Card Collection

Week 6 - An iPad Idea for Manufactured Spending

Week 7 - The Great iPad Deal that Wasn't

Week 8 - Lenovo Tablets

Week 9 - iPads at Staples

Week 10 - Loving that Groupon iPad Deal

Week 11 - iPads on Sale at Sears

Week 12 - Roombas at Bed Bath and Beyond

Week 13 - My Sam's Club iPad Collection for the $20k Challenge

Week 14 - Best Buy Gift Cards Fail

Week 15 - Staples Ink Recycling and Staples Rewards

Week 16 - What Happened to My Surface Pro 3?

Week 17 - Dell - Love that AmEx Offer

Week 18 - XBox Saves the Day

Week 19 - Using Amazon Chat and the Importance of Organization

Week 20 - The Impact of Returns

Week 21 - Apple Watch is the Best Watch

Week 22 - Headphones, Lots of Headphones

Week 23 - Storage Fees - I Don't Like Heavy Items

Week 24 - Some Companies try to Bully!

Week 25 - An iPhone is not an iPad

Week 26 - Patience vs. A Quick Hit and Fewer Deals Coming!

Week 27 - Competing Against Amazon

Week 28 - Toys and Retail Arbitrage vs. Online Arbitrage

Week 29 - Check Your Listings Carefully - My Big Fail

Week 30 - Killing it at Walgreen's!

Week 31 - Sometimes You Need to Stop, Refocus and Reprice
Week 32 - Target Cartwheel and other Coupons can have a Major Impact
Week 33 - Got a Return?  You Might need to Reprice

Inventory Placement Service (IPS) - Convenient but can get very Expensive

I've wrote before about using Inventory Lab to track your profit and loss.  I have found that the most significant benefit for myself was that Inventory Lab showed me how significant some of the Amazon fees can be.


Inventory Lab has pushed me to go for much higher margins to combat those fees.  I should be going for as high a margin as possible anyways but when you see how much the fees really eat into your profit, you begin to realize that something has to change.


In fact, in 3 out of my first 4 months reselling after accounting for all fees I made a whopping $117.35 on $34,813 of sales!  That's a rockign .3% profit margin :( .  Obviously that's not very good.  I probably should revise my 20k challenge numbers way down.

If you went to my excel spreadsheet, it would have looked much different.  For the most part, that is because of returns.  I wasn't tracking returns carefully enough.  But that's the point for me.  Returns do matter and if you don't account for them you may think you are making a lot more than you are truly making.  Not only are you fooling yourself and your bank account but you would end up paying higher taxes for no reason!



Inventory Placement Service is a great example of a fee I was paying that got real expensive on me quickly and I didn't even know it.  I didn't account for it in excel but it showed up in Inventory Lab and I was floored with much I was paying.

Inventory Placement Service

Staples 25% in Staples Rewards and 9.5% off at Raise

Disclaimer: I receive a referral commission for the following link(s) and I greatly appreciate supporting the site: Raise, Splender

Staples is offering 25% off in Staples Rewards for in Store purchases

Coupon code is 31502.  You can find all the Staples Coupons for this week here.  What's nice about this one is that it doesn't exclude items on sale.

Terms and conditions (ie - not on any good products)

Reselling Supplies

I use a lot of supplies when reselling on Amazon.  Many of these are one time purchases and I will tell you that I am very happy I made these small investments.

These are all links to Amazon and I will earn a percentage as a referral fee if you buy anything.  Please keep that in mind.  I make no promises on prices as this is meant to be a permanent page.  These are product recommendations.  Please research prices on your own.

Kudos to Trevor of Tagging Miles for the idea!

I used to use 1.88" wide tape, but I started using 3" wide tape and it blew my mind!

3" x 110 yard Tape

3" Tape Gun Dispenser

If you still want to use the 1.88", here are some links for that as well:


Packing Tape 1.88" Wide - You can never use too much tape, right?



Tape Gun for 1.88" Wide Tape - You might end up using more tape with a tape gun but they are awesome.








Product Labels - This is especially important if you are not commingled, but you still have to do it even if you are commingled.  This is for Ink Jet and this is for Laser printers (don't purchase the wrong one for you!)





One of my favorites is now a UPC scanner.  It costs $20 and allows you to list in seconds from Amazon or Inventory Lab.  Just scan the UPC and it finds the product for you.  Also useful for gift cards with bar codes.  Here is the link for the one I have.









Dymo Printer - To be honest, I don't have one of these, but I will likely get one.  Lets you print out individual labels so you don't have to use up your 30 up labels in one shot if only a couple of items needs labels in your shipment.




Large Boxes  - I try to have a healthy supply of Lowe's Large and Home Depot Large and X Large boxes.  Remember, the first pound in any box is the most expensive pound to ship. Think big shipments!





Heat Gun 

I recently bought a heat gun and I absolutely love it!  If you ever need to return something from Amazon, you know it will come back with a label on it, often over the UPC.  Ever try to remove the label and damage the scannable UPC? I have.  Never again!

Also, if you ever have stickers from any stores that you need to remove (a price tag or a clearance sticker), the heat gun will remove it in seconds!  Wave it over for a few seconds and you can peel off the sticker in one clean piece with little residue.




Scotty Peeler - great for removing the sticker once you have used the heat gun.  Gets you started cleanly.













Bubble Wrap - for bubble wrapping things





Poly Bags with a suffocation label on them - some items like plush dolls need poly bags for their preparation.  Also helpful when you are creating multipacks.







This is a Set, Do Not Separate Labels - So Amazon knows you are sending in a multipack




Digital Scale - A little expensive but lets you see the weights while the box is on the scale.





Box Cutter - Any box cutter will work for opening packages or breaking down boxes  Buy the cheapest one you can find that lets you safety the razor when you are done




What do you use?  Am I missing anything?  Let me know in the comments

Extra 4% off Target, Exxon, Toys R Us and others from CardCash

Save an extra 4% off Target, Toys R Us, Exxon Mobile, Cole Haan and Nordstrom gift cards with gift card Grabdeals.

I was able to get a target gift card at almost 8% off, which is nice.

20% off Living Social Today - Stack with $25 Living Social DoC Vouchers and 9% Mr. Rebates!

Disclaimer: I receive a referral commission for the following link(s) and I greatly appreciate supporting the site: Mr. Rebates, Living Social


Chuck of Doctor of Credit posted in mid December about a way to earn a $25 Living Social voucher for a $1 purchase.

I just found out that there is a coupon code for 20% off for today only.  Coupon code is POP.  Unfortunately there isn't too much time to still use it but hopefully someone gets a chance.

The nice part is that it takes 20% off from the full price, not the reduced price after the $25 voucher.

I bought a $75 voucher for dinner for two to a nice restaurant in NYC for my wife's birthday (Shhhh!  Don't tell her I bought in on Living Social!).  The voucher brought it down to $50 and the coupon code took another $15 off so it ended up only costing $35!

Stack that with 9% from Mr. Rebates and you will save even more!  I am practically paying burger joint prices for a steakhouse.

Now, if three others want to buy to the same steakhouse (Talia's), you can use my link and my meal will be free!

I'm sure there are tons of other deals available so start looking!

If you don't have a Living Social account, I would definitely appreciate it if you signed up from this link!  We will both earn $10 in Living Social dollars.

Trying to Figure Out Which Items Sold Today on Amazon? There is a Simple Solution

Update:  A couple of people have noted that you can use the App to do the same thing.  Change the settings on orders to pending and you can see your sales.  Thanks everyone!

HT: @tgere79 

One of the more frustrating things about the standard setting in Amazon is that it is tough to figure out what you have sold today.  You can check your "reserved" inventory but that is a combination of items reserved for sale and items reserved for fulfillment center processing (moving items from FC to another).

The FBA app will tell you how many sales you have that day and for how much money but it won't tell you what sold.

In addition, if you sell many items, it can be hard to remember which items had been reserved from the day before and which items are newly reserved.

I find it very important to know what has sold since I may need to adjust my price higher.  For example, if I sell something for $30 and the next lowest seller is $35, you can bet I'm changing my price to $34.  If it has been only one day and a few items have sold, I am increasing my price tremendously (10-20%+ higher sometimes)



Luckily, there is an easy workaround:

Turnover Tuesdays - Got a Return? You Might Need to Reprice

For those who are not familiar, I started a series a while back called Turnover Tuesdays. Every Tuesday I like to highlight one item that I have resold. This will include profitable and non profitable sales. I hope that there is always something to learn.

Week 1 - First attempt at reselling

Week 2 - My second straight fail

Week 3 - My iPad mini collection

Week 4 - Bed Bath and Beyond

Week 5 - An iPad Idea for Your Staples Gift Card Collection

Week 6 - An iPad Idea for Manufactured Spending

Week 7 - The Great iPad Deal that Wasn't

Week 8 - Lenovo Tablets

Week 9 - iPads at Staples

Week 10 - Loving that Groupon iPad Deal

Week 11 - iPads on Sale at Sears

Week 12 - Roombas at Bed Bath and Beyond

Week 13 - My Sam's Club iPad Collection for the $20k Challenge

Week 14 - Best Buy Gift Cards Fail

Week 15 - Staples Ink Recycling and Staples Rewards

Week 16 - What Happened to My Surface Pro 3?

Week 17 - Dell - Love that AmEx Offer

Week 18 - XBox Saves the Day

Week 19 - Using Amazon Chat and the Importance of Organization

Week 20 - The Impact of Returns

Week 21 - Apple Watch is the Best Watch

Week 22 - Headphones, Lots of Headphones

Week 23 - Storage Fees - I Don't Like Heavy Items

Week 24 - Some Companies try to Bully!

Week 25 - An iPhone is not an iPad

Week 26 - Patience vs. A Quick Hit and Fewer Deals Coming!

Week 27 - Competing Against Amazon

Week 28 - Toys and Retail Arbitrage vs. Online Arbitrage

Week 29 - Check Your Listings Carefully - My Big Fail

Week 30 - Killing it at Walgreen's!

Week 31 - Sometimes You Need to Stop, Refocus and Reprice
Week 32 - Target Cartwheel and other Coupons can have a Major Impact

Kohl's $60 Gift Card for $50 on eBay

Disclaimer: I receive a referral commission for the following link(s) and I greatly appreciate supporting the site: eBay, Top Cashback


Kohl's is a great place to source for reselling.  Great promos, Kohl's cash, great portals, good discounted gift cards, Yes2Rewards.  I wish everyone was like Kohl's.

Right now on eBay you can buy a $60 Kohl's Gift Card for $50.

Start your purchase at Top Cashback for 1.25%.  Not much but every little bit helps.  

You will earn 2% in eBay Bucks as well.

As pointed out in the comments, this is a great way to use up eBay Bucks if you haven't used them already.

Use Boomerang for Gmail to Track Returns - How to Tell When you Deserve a Reimbursement

Returnuary is in full swing for many.  It's been very painful on my margins but it is part of the game.

Returns work as follows:  Customers have 30 days from when they receive an item to request a return.  Any item purchased from November 1st to December 31st has an extended return window.  You can request a return until January 31st.

Once a customer has requested a return you receive an email that says that Amazon has taken your money away for that sale.  The customer now has 45 days to actually send the item to an Amazon Fulfillment Center.  Hopefully it never makes it back to Amazon in time.  If it doesn't make it there, you get a full reimbursement from Amazon as if the return never happened.


Conveniently for Amazon, they don't always pay you back after 45 days and sometimes you need to open a case with Amazon to request reimbursement.

Ways to Keep Track of Returns

No More Birds - Let's Focus on Profit Instead of Points!

I'm sure everyone is well aware of this at this point, but just in case you aren't, check out Frequent Miler (or your email inbox).  There has been a mass shutdown of Serve/Bluebird/RedBird.  To be fair, it seems that not everyone has been shutdown but likely that it is coming.  I think it is safe to say that the Birds had a very nice run but their time has passed.

If you are a reader of this blog, the news is upsetting but not catastrophic.  I lost my Serve.  I loved my Serve.  It was free pajama money.  Oh well.  On to the next thing.

Before I talk about reselling, I want to say one thing.  Not every avenue of MS is gone.  Every public avenue of MS is gone.  Get some MS buddies and you might learn a thing or two but don't expect to learn about it from any blogs.

Another thing, check out Vinh's thoughtful post on Miles Per Day on the subject.





Ok, so what are we going to do?  Keep reselling, that's for sure.  I will tell you that reselling must change or you will be left buying products with too much competition and very little profit or possibly at a loss.  There are a lot of us at this point and competition is already tough.  It's only getting tougher.



I won't be frequenting iPads much anymore unless something changes.  I don't want points!  I want cash.  Cold, hard cash!



If you sell items for points trying to breakeven, you won't breakeven, you will lose money.  If you sell trying to make 5%.  You will probably lose money after fees you didn't realize exist, returns, etc.  Not only that, all the other MSers who are willing to breakeven will drop that price real quick on you.  Those points will end up being even more expensive than traditional MS.  Don't do it, you're smarter than that.


That isn't me hating, it's a fact.  You need to be realistic about this.  It's not easy and it's not for everyone, but it is very, very available if you are willing to work hard.


If you shoot for 20-30%+, you will make money and trust me, the points will be there.  They will be there in oodles.  We all know how to leverage shopping portals and credit cards to maximize.


Let's stop reselling for points everybody. We are only hurting each other.  Let's resell for profit and just kill it!

Raise Extra 5% on Friday Includes Kohl's - Up to 14% off without the Promotion

Disclaimer: I receive a referral commission for the following link(s) and I greatly appreciate supporting the site:  Raise and Top Cashback

Check out the Latest Saverocity Observation Desk Podcast- Special Guest ;)

Check out the latest Saverocity Observation Desk podcast.  I was the special guest in what will be a multiple part series.  Check it out!

Just in case you can't get enough (a guy can dream, right?), I was also interviewed on Million Mile Secrets as part of their Friday Blogger Series.  

Keep in mind that the interview was conducted about 6 months before it was published so some information is outdated.  For example, as everyone knows we are much more into reselling merchandise here than we used to.  Also, I am now working 2 days a week instead of full time.

I hope you enjoy!

Turnover Tuesdays - Target Cartwheel and other Coupons Can Make a Major Impact

For those who are not familiar, I started a series a while back called Turnover Tuesdays. Every Tuesday I like to highlight one item that I have resold. This will include profitable and non profitable sales. I hope that there is always something to learn.

Week 1 - First attempt at reselling

Week 2 - My second straight fail

Week 3 - My iPad mini collection

Week 4 - Bed Bath and Beyond

Week 5 - An iPad Idea for Your Staples Gift Card Collection

Week 6 - An iPad Idea for Manufactured Spending

Week 7 - The Great iPad Deal that Wasn't

Week 8 - Lenovo Tablets

Week 9 - iPads at Staples

Week 10 - Loving that Groupon iPad Deal

Week 11 - iPads on Sale at Sears

Week 12 - Roombas at Bed Bath and Beyond

Week 13 - My Sam's Club iPad Collection for the $20k Challenge

Week 14 - Best Buy Gift Cards Fail

Week 15 - Staples Ink Recycling and Staples Rewards

Week 16 - What Happened to My Surface Pro 3?

Week 17 - Dell - Love that AmEx Offer

Week 18 - XBox Saves the Day

Week 19 - Using Amazon Chat and the Importance of Organization

Week 20 - The Impact of Returns

Week 21 - Apple Watch is the Best Watch

Week 22 - Headphones, Lots of Headphones

Week 23 - Storage Fees - I Don't Like Heavy Items

Week 24 - Some Companies try to Bully!

Week 25 - An iPhone is not an iPad

Week 26 - Patience vs. A Quick Hit and Fewer Deals Coming!

Week 27 - Competing Against Amazon

Week 28 - Toys and Retail Arbitrage vs. Online Arbitrage

Week 29 - Check Your Listings Carefully - My Big Fail

Week 30 - Killing it at Walgreen's!

Week 31 - Sometimes You Need to Stop, Refocus and Reprice

2015 Year in Review - Why Not? Everyone else is Doing it!

I wanted to be the first one to rip off Frequent Miler's post, but unfortunately The Free-quent Flyer beat me to the punch.

2015 was a very interesting year for Oren's Money Saver.  At some point, the blog transitioned from a classic Manufactured Spending blog to a blog highly (exclusively?) dedicated to selling on Amazon.  How did that happen?  Hmm.

For the most part that is Vinh's fault for starting the 20K challenge!

I've changed my MS habits due to reselling.  I don't need to earn the points in other ways since I can earn more than I need with just regular spending for reselling.  Sign up bonuses are a piece of cake now.  I can't remember the last time I bought a Visa Gift Card to liquidate - Yikes!  Things have changed so much!  I get nostalgic for the old times but then I look at my profits and I forget about that.


I would venture to guess that most people never heard of this blog before April and many more not for a few months after that.  April is when Doctor of Credit started quoting this blog regularly.  (If you don't follow DoC - you better start now if you like MSing!)

That got a lot more eyes here, then I started sharing reselling ideas.  That was great! Readership skyrocketed!  Revenue came along too, which still wasn't much but I was beginning to think that maybe I have something here.


Then things got a little too popular.  Not popular like Frequent Miler or DoC, but too popular for everyone to be reselling the same thing.  I cut down on the deals I posted.  Still didn't help for the ones I did post.

In mid November I decided to significantly cut down on the deals I posted (I ended up pretty much not posting any more deals after that)

Here is a picture of page views all time which correlates to this timeline (I included December there to show you where December ended relative to the high in November):

The first thing that's crazy is that I've been blogging since 2011.  That's a long time, especially since no one read it before Aprile.  (If someone publishes blog posts and no one reads can you call yourself a Blogger?) The big drop after December is because page views end after 8pm for me so it is considered a new month, that's not real but there is a definite drop off since I'm not doling out free money like I used to.


As you can imagine, revenue from the blog decreased as well.  That's ok and expected.  It came along with reselling revenue and profits going to all time highs!  A sad tradeoff for me since I enjoy the reader interaction, but a necessary one.  Publicizing deals that no one profits from because of too many sellers is to no one's advantage.

So here are the 10 most popular posts from the year - for the most part, these are posts that were picked up by DoC since that adds many hundreds of views.  As you can see my views are nowhere near the numbers of FM and FQF. That's cool, I'm still proud of what we've accomplished here.



10)  Which Gift Card Resellers Allow American Express Gift Cards? eGift Card Delivery Speed? Scanable Barcode for in Store Use? I Need Your Help Please!- 1,554 views

An attempt to figure out some information on different exchanges

9)  I Think Discover is Just Guessing - Brilliant but Bad Customer Service - 1,582 views

After Discover started second guessing everyone's transactions and saying they were made with gift cards, I called them out saying they had no idea.  I still think I'm right.

8) Turnover Tuesdays - iPads on Sale at Sears - 1,590 views One of the first Turnover Tuesdays posts that had an actionable deal - one of my first actionable reselling deals! 7) eBay Coupon Code for 15% off (up to $100) is Back - CMXDAY3 (DEAD) - 1,647 views This was awesome.  $100 off anything on eBay.  Only last a few hours but it got picked up in a hurry!

6) Petco and American Express - $7.00 per AmEx Card - Approach with Caution - 1,714 views
A nice gift card reselling post.  Only made it since it got picked up by DoC.  Nothing super special.


5) Allen Edmonds Gift Cards and AMEX Offers for You - $10 per AMEX Card - Pajama Money - 1,780 view

Another nice gift card reselling post.  Once again, picked up by DoC. This one a little better than the last.

4) Turnover Tuesdays - My First Attempt at Reselling - Fail! - 1,844 views

The first post in my weekly fun series on reselling tips and education.  not surprising this has the most since it gets requoted every week and everyone starts at the beginning but not everyone reads all of them.

3) Turnover Tuesdays - Killing it at Walgreen's! - 1,869 views

I don't know that this Turnover Tuesdays was so much better than the rest but once again picked up by DoC and M2M so it did much better.

2) Turnover Tuesdays - Patience vs. A Quick HIt - Some Poor Posts and Where this Blog is Headed?  - 2,254 views

This was as interesting post for sure.  This is where I explained why I couldn't post as many deals anymore.

1) 5% cashback on All Your Amazon Purchases through Giving Assistant Shopping Portal 2,624 views

5% cashback on Amazon purchases. Everyone loves that.  Not surprised that this was #1.  Unfortunately this one is dead.



I hope you enjoyed these posts from 2015!

Happy New Year!