[If you sign up for SwagBucks using my link I’ll earn 10% of whatever you earn. This doesn’t affect your earning capability at all. We appreciate you using our links, but you don’t have to. We also give a portion of our blog income to charity]
Update: It looks as if Staples will stop paying cash back portals on gift card purchases. As such the portals will most likely stop paying their users for these purchase. You can read more here.
One commentator stated that SwagBucks might not pay out on gift card purchases. My purchase has now gone to pending and my purchases are shipping currently. I’m confident that I’ll earn SwagBucks on these purchases, I’ll update this post when my points do post.
Here are some data points below for other cash back portals (note: all of these data points are from before Staples sent out an e-mail saying they will not be paying the portals for gift card purchases):
- Alaska portal will pay: 1Â (May 4th),
- Chase UR will pay: 1
- Upromise will pay (usually takes 10-12 days, can take up to 3-4 weeks): 1, 2, 3Â (only credited 0.5%: 1)
- Topcashback will pay: 1, 2Â (May 4th)
- Shopdiscover will pay: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5Â (May 1st), 6 (May 3rd), 7 (April 26-28th)
- Staples rewards will not pay: 1, 2
- Swagbucks currently pending: myself, 2, 3
- Swagbucks will pay: 1, 2
On May 5th Swagbucks has also updated the page to say that Gift Cards and Gift Wrapping are not eligible for Swag Bucks. We will see if this is the case or not.
This is another post in our manufactured Monday series where we discuss popular manufactured spending techniques. Staples has just added $200 Visa Gift cards to their online store, previously the highest gift card they had available was $100 visa gift cards. This is excellent news as it’s now profitable to purchase these gift cards, these cards come with a $6.95 fee which means we need to earn at least 3.5% cash back to offset this fee. Below we look at the best methods for doing so:
- Shop through SwagBucks and get 6 swagbucks (6-6.6% cash back) here are the best redemptons:
- $5 amazon gift card: 450 swagbucks (1.11¢)
- $25 paypal credit: 2,500 swagbucks (1¢)
- Purchase a $200 visa gift card with a rewards credit card, you’re best options are going to be as follows:
- Chase Ink Cards (Ink Bold/Ink Plus): 1,000 Chase UR Points (usually valued at 1.8¢ each, which works out to be another 9% back).
- Enroll in Visa Savings Edge and get another 1% cash back
- American Express Simply Cash: 5% cash back
- Chase Ink Cards (Ink Bold/Ink Plus): 1,000 Chase UR Points (usually valued at 1.8¢ each, which works out to be another 9% back).
- Use your Visa gift cards & Walmart to load them onto your Bluebird account which can then be used as a regular checking account
Let’s have a look at how profitable this is using the best case scenario first.
- -$6.95 fee
- 1,200 Swagbucks ($12 cash or $13.30 in amazon credit)
- $18 from using your Chase Ink card
- $2 from visa savings edge
This gives you profit of $25.05 ($13.05 without swagbucks) in cash (assuming a point value of 1.8¢ per Chase UR Point) or $26.35 ($13.05 without swagbucks)if you count the amazon credit at it’s full value. I’ll definitely be taking advantage of this while it lasts, because it’s not going to last long. If you liked this post, consider signing up using my swagbucks link, make sure you also use the sign up code “FreeGiftCards” to get a bonus 50 SwagBucks when you sign up.
Orders over $2,000 are being cancelled by staples due “federal regulations”. It also seems if you make orders totaling $10,000 or more per day all of them will also be cancelled (even if you use multiple cards, but ship to the same address). Start slow and build up.
Hat tip to Chasing the Points for letting us know about the Visa Gift Cards & slickdeals for letting us know about the swagbucks promotion
