The Miles Guide to Innovating

Earlier I wrote a post on how The Gold Mine of Points Earning is Promotions. That is a post on how innovating earns more miles than anything else. While I won’t be blowing any gold mines here today, I wanted to go over the thought process.

Baby steps though. If you’re new to this, chill… start with the low hanging fruit.

Here I’ll be giving some tips on how I think innovation is made more likely, and we’ll apply this strategy to an example.

Combining what you know.

I met a guy at the DC FTU who knows coins. He could easily make a profit buying and selling coins by buying off of eBay and selling locally. Or something like that… Either way, because he knows his coin stuff, he can make a miles profit too. In this case he combined a way to earn miles from spending on your credit card with coin collecting.

One example anyone could have done: Recently, via the AAdvantage shopping portal, anyone could have gotten 35 AA miles per dollar at eBags.

Unfortunately, I don’t know anything about bags, ebags, or watches, or anything else they sold. But what I first did is looked for gift cards. Hotel gift cards, gift cards to return, whatever. Well, I didn’t buy (mostly because I don’t buy new things period).

However, if there was a product you had a knowledge for you could have flipped that sucker.

For example lets say you understand ebay or watches really well. Or both. You log on, buy the watches you think are the best deal with the aim to sell them on ebay.

Scale

The best promotions are scalable. In the above example, we could buy not just one watch but multiple watches. If this was an on going promotion I would start with one, but it’s not, so I would go as big as one can go with confidence.

If you’re confident in your watch/ebay skills and can get $1,000 for a watch costing $100… that would be great. You’d be earning 35,000 points for $100. Of course this is some ideal hypothetical situation, but I’ve heard better and have done worse. The point is, in such a good situation I would go big.

The Big 3 of Anything

Lower the cost of points. Increase the amount of points. Increase the profit.

Lower the cost of points.

In this case, I’d think about saving money on each watch. Coupon codes for eBags, I already assume there is free shipping on such an order, picking out the most flippable watch in the first place etc.

On the other end, you could try to find the best place to sell the watch whether it’s on ebay, or in a store.

Selling somewhere other than ebay may cut down costs but also remember it’s about profit.

Increase the points

Pick a credit card that gives the most miles, having the AA credit card gives 10% of miles redeemed back.

Does Ebag have rewards you could take advantage of?

Increase the Profit

What else can you get out of this? Does one card give status or extra perks? This may also have some overlap with lowering the cost as it’s about efficiency. Even spending 1 hour instead of 20 on a project, to me, counts towards efficiency.

I know I’ve mentioned those things before, but it is honestly how I think.

Brainstorming

I can’t list the things you know or understand but we can list ways to earn miles.

Ways to earn miles:
Flying, credit card spends, shopping portals, banking, diner programs, buying points/miles, subscription partners (wine, internet, etc…), surveys (which aren’t scalable or profitable), and lastly, promotions, promotions, promotions.

Skills:
Skills I have that have turned out to be profitable in the miles game happen to be business skills. This isn’t the only way to earn but notice some of these are financial anyways. Even turning and selling something you know has a financial element to it.

What are things you know well?

What do I know? Well, I can book flights for cheap. Flying is a way to earn miles and people pay for flights… Then I can start thinking about how to mix my skill with the earning.

I’ll try to give the basics of a little something that has been good to us in the next newsletter. (Carrie says a lot of people are asking about the statistic on Sept. 6 of “buying miles”, 150,000 or something for about $300.) These things are hard work and I’m sure most people won’t do it…

You might have to veer outside of the box, but surely there are ways to earn miles by thinking outside the box. And it does not really have to be two combined skills. Sometimes it’s just deal prowling.

Frequent Miler probably wasn’t the world’s expert on gift cards. Right? He just bought gift cards, and it earned him miles. Then he went through the same process I talked about above.

He used the right card at the right place to get more miles, he found the cheapest ways to cash it out, etc…

In which case, I think the key is knowing how to earn miles. The entire point of talking about “what you know”, is to spur thinking outside the box.

Some people feel they are not born creative but I think you can learn to be (or unlearn the assembly line thinking). Brainstorming. Allowing yourself to come up with bad ideas is the only way to come up with good ideas.

Testing ideas vs going big

Starting small is my biggest advice for newbies. If you have an idea, test it.

On the other hand, if you’re an old pro and have discovered a scalable way to earn lots of miles really cheaply, hit it really hard, before it’s gone. With some of the biggest promotions of the last few years, I find myself saying, “why didn’t I go all the way?” Again, the only way to be confident that it is a good deal is to, well, not be a newb. You have to know your stuff.

At this point it feels like a bit of a rant. I planned for it to be informative… but there’s no 5 step thing, like: Go get this credit card, go to this store, etc… The truth is, you just have to think for yourself. Instead of just saying, “here’s the deal, go get it” 5 times a day, I try to encourage this kind of thinking.

I have to be honest too, my thinking has shifted away from earning miles for perhaps too long. Partly because I simply don’t have the time to do the things that have worked well for me.