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Giftly was a way to manufacture spending at 1% cost. A blog post went up about Giftly and Giftly cancelled all its new $999 manufactured spending orders just over two hours later.
Giftly is designed as a way to send a “gift card to anywhere” to someone. Of course, “a gift card to anywhere” is money, so you basically send the person money and a suggestion on how to use it.
The opportunity is dead, but I’ll share it, so you can see what manufactured spending opportunities look like going forward.
- How was Giftly an opportunity to manufacture spending?
Giftly lets you send money to anyone with a credit card, and if you send the maximum $999, you can pay only $10 in fees or 1%.
If the person to whom you send the money withdraws the money via PayPal and returns the money to you, you have manufactured $1,009 in spending for $10.
Sending amounts less than $999 would have resulted in a much higher fee percentage, so $999 was the sweet spot.
Yes, there are cheaper ways to manufacture spending if you have access to gift cards you can buy with credit cards, Amazon Payments, or Kiva.
No, I don’t know for sure whether any banks coded Giftly as a cash advance, but you can always call up and set your cash advance limit to $0 to avoid that risk.
What other opportunities are out there? Beyond the ones widely discussed on blogs and in forums, there are other ones discussed only in private forums or among friends. Then there are other ones that someone has found and not shared with anyone.
The general rule is that the more people know about an opportunity, the more people will benefit in the short term, but the less time an opportunity lasts.
Post that killed Giftly: Buy Miles For Under A Penny A Piece With Giftly! on Dan’s Deals
I’m not moralizing on Giftly or what should be shared. I’m only sharing the story, so people can see what a manufactured spending opportunity looks like. Comments are off.
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