Earn 10% Back on EVERYTHING or NGMI (Not Gonna Make It)
There’s been a lot of chatter on Twitter/X recently about crypto credit cards.
I have not seen a single crypto card that makes sense.
If you’re on this side of the internet and want extra money to invest in crypto, stocks, or your biz, you’re doing yourself an extreme disservice by not playing this credit card game.
Read the whole thing for 10%+ back cashback ALFA
Brief Credit Card Churning Intro
I’ll try to keep this post brief and to the point.
There are 3 types of credit card spending:
Organic Spending: This is your everyday spending at bars, restaurants, grocery stores, etc…
This will not move the needle as much as manufactured spending or business spending, but still helps to optimize.
Manufactured Spending: This is spending money on cash equivalents, in some manner where you can get the money right back in your bank account. Think gift card reselling, buying groups, or any other purchases that can quickly be converted into cash and used to pay off your credit card balance.
Business Spending: Simply put, spending money on your biz. $50K/m on ads, inventory, etc. People who own real businesses can absolutely print in this game, but those who don’t can do equally as well with manufactured spending, even if they don’t have a business
Personal vs Business Cards
Business cards generally tend to have more lucrative signup bonuses than personal cards…
But anyone can apply for a business card!
Have you sold anything on craigslist, Facebook marketplace, or did you do anything in exchange for money? Congrats! You have a sole proprietorship, and are eligible for business cards. You can simply use your SSN for the EIN and your First/Last name for the name of the business.
I recommend loosely following this guide for applying to biz cards with a sole prop.
Sign Up Bonuses
Sign up bonuses are the most lucrative ways to print money in this game.
Banks and card issuers offer a large bonus that requires you to reach a minimum spending threshold in a certain time period (usually 3 months).
In the picture below, we can see Amex is offering 300,000 Membership Rewards points (worth $3,000+) after spending $20,000 in 3 months.
So over 10% cash back!
Most people would be spooked out by the large spending requirement, but this is achievable by anyone with a few tricks.
Even if you don’t have a business, simply read the “Personal vs Business Cards” section above and you can see how easy it is for anyone to get approved.
If you’re spending large amounts per month on your biz, you can simply play it straight and dump all your biz spending on this card to hit the $20K+ threshold…
For everyone else, you’ll want to put all of your organic spending on this card (groceries, restaurants, bills, etc) and fill the rest with manufactured spending (more on this in section below)
Manufactured Spending
Ah now we’re getting to the fun part!
Buying Groups: Buying Groups are companies that have you ship items to their warehouses (in tax free states) where they can accumulate lots of in-demand products and then resell them to downstream distributors who can move them internationally or to other markets.
Think iPads, Apple Watches, Amazon Kindles, and other items that often have individual quantity limits from stores like Amazon or Best Buy.
Essentially:
You buy products → the group pays you back → you keep any credit card rewards or cash-back → they keep the physical product and profit from resale.
Some deals even have commission, so you can rack up a ton of credit cards spending an even earn a bit on the side.
Popular buying groups include Buy For Me Retail and BuyingGroup.com
Gift Card Reselling: Gift card reselling works a lot like buying groups, except you’ll simply be providing the group you work with, with the gift card number, pin, etc.
I recommend Aligned Incentives but there are other options as well.
You simply sign up, get notified via email of gift card deals…
And then you buy gift cards (either digital cards online or physical in store) and input the info to your portal.
You get paid out shortly after and earn credit card points at the same time.
These are two very simple examples…
But with a combination of a few simple manufactured spending tactics, you can easily hit any signup bonus you want.
10%+ Back ALFA
Here’s how you get 10%+ on all of your spending.
Every dollar you spend should be going towards a new signup bonus.
Amex and Chase are generally the most lucrative issuers (for biz and personal)…
But to keep things simple, we’ll stick to Amex in this example.
Again, most people don’t know that ANYONE can get a biz card, but you can also get additional signup bonuses for the same type of card multiple times (every 90 days).
Here’s how to do this with Amex:
First, find a link with the highest SUB you can find.
(Amex Business Platinum for example)
Go through the application and click apply.
You’ll likely get a popup button if you’ve had the bonus before that says you won’t be eligible for the signup bonus again.
Leave that page open and open up a new tab.
Start a second application for the same card in a new tab.
You won’t get a popup for this app towards the end.
Complete this second app and submit.
You should get a message that says “we can’t approve your application” or something to that extent.
This is good, this is what we want.
You’ll get an email from Amex that will contain a reference number for this second application.
Make note of it and keep it handy.
Call Amex recon (1-800-567-1083).
Here’s an important step.
Amex will very likely have two applications on file for you. The original one that got the popup and the second one that got auto cancelled.
You need to make sure Amex is only processing the second app (the one in which they sent you an email with that reference number)…
Make sure Amex is crystal clear that you only want them to process the second app and have them confirm via the reference number.
“Just to be clear, can you confirm you’re submitting the app that contains reference number XX-XXXXX-XXX-XXXXX”.
Amex will then process the second app over the phone, and you should get approved, and should be eligible for the SUB.
Note - you’ll have to keep the new card open a full year to not have Amex clawback your SUB
But you can always cancel after a full year and have them reimburse you for the second annual fee.
Specific Examples
Quick Pro Tip: If you can get a Player 2 (wife/husband/significant other/mother/father,etc) you can double your reward earning capability
Day 1:
You get:
-Amex Business Platinum card that gives you 300K MR after $20,000 spending
-Amex Business Gold card that gives you 200K MR after $15,000 spending.
You’ll earn over 10% back on spending up to $35,000 over the course of the next 90 days.
If your husband/wife gets involved and gets the same cards, you’ll get 10%+ back on spending up to $70,000 over the course of the next 90 days.
If you’re spending over $70,000 in 90 days you can simply include cards from other issuers like Chase/Citi/Capital One,etc and get sign up bonuses from them.
Day 91:
Simply get the highest offers for Amex cards again, using the strategies in the 10%+ Back ALFA section above.
To be clear, everyone should be able to easily hit the minimum spending requirements through their business spend or their organic + manufactured spend.
Historical Crypto Returns
If you’re playing this game at very basic level you can earn $20K+ per year with the example above.
It comes out to $5K per quarter if you’re playing by yourself, $10K if you’re including your wife/husband.
Here’s what that would have looked like over the course of the last 5 years:
If you’re playing the game with a Player 2 you double this, so either BTC or ETH DCA’ing would have gotten you to a $1M+ portfolio by just clicking a few buttons and playing this game.
Conclusion
There’s a lot of people that think this will be too much effort or it can’t be done.
This is good! Let them think that. If everyone played this game well it would die overnight.
While I agree DCA’ing into crypto definitely is a good idea, there’s not a single credit card that will offer the same value as the methods above.
10%+ will blow any 4% crypto card out of the water.
While I barely scratched the surface in this post, I have a Substack and Slack community where we dive deeper into this game.
Everything you need to succeed is in the Substack and Slack Group and you can feel free to ask any questions there.
If you prefer to fast track your success and work with me 1-on-1, I also offer coaching.
Best of luck and I’ll be monitoring the comment section to answer any questions!
Disclaimer: None of this is to be deemed legal or financial advice of any kind.