How I made $6,821 by doing nothing in Q1

Some insight into my rewards farming strategies

Been a while since I did one of these.

One thing that I occasionally mention in my tweets is the sheer amount of rewards you generate with inventory spend.

Between credit cards, cashback extensions and rewards programs you can stack a lot of cash that if redeemed correctly is not taxable (not tax / financial advice).

Even though I talk about it a lot, I’ve never sat down and done the math on how much I actually make in a quarter outside the P&L in my Amazon business.

For this experiment I will be excluding store rewards programs (Kohl’s cash, Ultamate rewards, Macy’s star money, etc.) since those almost always go back into buying more inventory.

Credit Cards

This is probably the most obvious way you can squeeze extra value out of your Amazon business since pretty much every business credit card offers some kind of rewards / cashback.

The card I use the most in my business is the Capital One Spark, which gives me a flat 2% back on everything.

The great thing about Capital One rewards is that I can redeem my cashback on Amazon.

This allows me to get gift cards for stores / restaurants I frequent without any money entering / leaving my bank account (great for tax purposes).

Combined with another method I’ll talk about later in this post, I almost never pay for food out of pocket.

It’s also just nice to be able to order something off Amazon if I need it for no cost.

The other main card in my setup is the AMEX Gold. There’s nothing special about what it offers, AMEX is just a good company to do business with and you have a lot of options with their rewards points.

This year I also started implementing some methods from BowTiedBum, something I wanted to do for a while but held off on because I was in the process of buying a home.

By getting a new card or two every few months I’ll be able to squeeze out extra cash with signup bonuses that I can easily hit with a day or two of inventory spend - if I do more of these posts in the future expect the credit card rewards to be higher.

One thing I should also note is that I regularly use the AMEX Plum, which does not provide rewards but adds an extra 30 days to your billing cycle.

Although I am not getting the maximum amount of rewards, this allows me to gradually increase my inventory spend without worrying about missing payments.

For simplicity, all points are calculated as 1 cent per point.

The credit card rewards I generated this quarter are as follows:

Capital One: $1,354.29

AMEX: $684.79 (68,479 AMEX points)

Chase: $1,188.38 (118,838 Chase points)

Citi: $371.56 (37,156 Citi points)

Credit Card Total: $3,599.02

Cashback Extensions

Time to talk about my favorite way to earn rewards.

For the last few months on Twitter I’ve been a huge advocate for Topcashback and in this section I’ll explain why.

Cashback extensions are a very easy way to make extra money with selling on Amazon - you activate the extension before checkout, buy your inventory, and then you get paid out (usually in 8-12 weeks).

While the most well known extension is Rakuten, I pretty much only use it when Topcashback isn’t an option.

Topcashback is my preferred extension for 3 reasons:

1. The payouts are higher on average

2. TCB has more redemption options (and I think they’re better too)

3. You can cash out a specific purchase when it’s eligible instead of having to wait once a quarter like with Rakuten

While Rakuten only allows you to get paid out via PayPal, check or wire transfer, Topcashback has way more options.

Most of the variety is in gift cards - and they’ll also give you a bonus multiplier for cashing out this way.

My preferred method of cashing out is to get the virtual Visa card (5% bonus).

You also have the option of paying a $5 fee to have a physical version mailed to you (covered by the 5% bonus).

This is my secret weapon - I call them “bird cards”:

I always have at least 2-3 of these sitting in my office, which is the reason I haven’t paid for groceries in the last 6 months.

Combining the bird cards for groceries and the restaurant gift cards I buy on Amazon with my credit card points, I rarely pay for food out of pocket.

This allows me to save / invest most of the money my business makes outside housing costs, which is a huge mental burden lifted off my shoulders.

The Cashback extension rewards I earned this quarter are as follows:

Topcashback: $2,773.96 ($2,641.87 x 1.05 visa card bonus)

Rakuten: $249.24

Cashback Extension Total: $2,891.11

Shop Cash

I wasn’t sure if I wanted to include this as it’s technically a rewards program, but since so many stores online use Shop Pay I consider it the same as getting a Visa gift card (albeit more limited in usage).

I would say at least 20% of my inventory purchases are through stores that use Shop Pay.

This leads to me racking up a decent amount of Shop Cash, which I can use to buy a bunch of different household essentials.

This includes supplements, kitchen supplies and trying out various products launched by other members of the BowTied community.

This only accounts for a sliver of rewards I earn, but still a decent amount for doing basically nothing.

Shop Cash Rewards: $331.14

Putting It All Together

In total, I earned $6,821.27 for rewards in Q1.

This was generated from zero extra effort on my end, just a bonus for buying inventory for my Amazon business.

While selling on Amazon certainly has its struggles, there’s a lot of perks that come with it as well.

I expect my Q2 rewards to be even higher due to increased inventory spend and more credit cards.

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