Make Money and Earn Points from Staples!

There’s currently an opportunity to earn Ultimate Rewards points for free and make money, or alternatively just make a good amount of money and not earn points if that’s what you’re interested in. This is brought to you by our good friends at Staples. Here’s what you need:

• An Ink Bold/Plus card from Chase.
• A free Swagbucks account – (my referral link – thanks for any support you give me!)

This opportunity has arisen because Staples has made $200 Visa gift cards available for purchase on their website. These gift cards are PIN-enabled and can be liquidated relatively easily.

1. Go to Swagbucks and click through to Staples, which is currently at 6x points (a temporary increase).
2. Buy $200 Visa gift cards from Staples.com. There is a $6.95 fee. This will earn you 1,200+ Swagbucks and 1,000+ Ultimate Rewards points.
3. Go to Walmart and load the $200 onto a Bluebird card, which you can then use to pay off your Ink card.

Here’s what this earns us:

• 1,200 Swagbucks is equal to $12 in PayPal credit (note that it’s only available in denominations of $25, $50, and $100).
• 1,000 Ultimate rewards points, valued at the worst-case scenario value of 1 cent per point, is worth $10.

If you’re going for the “make money” angle, the total of these is $22. Subtracting the $7 original fee gives us a profit of $15. If you’re going for the “earn points and make money” angle, then do $12 (Swagbucks) minus the $7 fee to make $5, plus you’ll earn 1K Ultimate Rewards points.

Note that you can redeem your Swagbucks for other gift cards (including Amazon) at better rates (roughly 1.1 cents per point instead of 1 cent). I would go for PayPal for its flexibility since it’s basically cash that can be transferred directly to your checking account.

You’ll be able to sweeten the deal if you happen to have a Visa Ink Bold/Plus card. Chase previously gave MasterCard versions of these cards but are now providing Visa versions. If you do have a Visa version, I suggest you link your card up to the Visa Savings Edge program. It’s free and gives you cash back – in the example above it would give 1% or $2 back.

Note that the normal Swagbucks rate of 2x would earn only $4 back on the same gift card purchase. While you can still make money by using your Ink card, it wouldn’t be that great of a deal. This method is definitely not for everyone because of the added step of having to go to Walmart to load the Visa onto your Bluebird card, but it’s definitely worth it for others.

Gotta love Staples!