Amazon Fire TV – 400 miles and $50 profit each

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Almost everyone in the miles and points game has a Chase Ink card.  The reason for that is because the card gives you 5X at office supply stores.  Most people, including myself, buy $200 Visa gift cards there for $7 a piece to build up their Ultimate Rewards points, which they then transfer to United, BA, Korean Air, Singapore Air, or Hyatt.  The gift card earns you 1,000 points at a cost of $7.  However, because I love reselling, I look for deals like these when they pop up.  This week, Staples is selling these Fire TV devices for $80 + tax.

About a month ago, I bought these Fire TV’s for about $70 a piece from Staples (there was a coupon then.)  Before I buy anything, I look on Ebay to see how much things go for.  I noticed that these Fire TV’s could be rooted (similar to an iPad or Apple TV jailbreak), and they were selling for over $100 on Ebay.  I went ahead and bought 4 of these (3 to resell and 1 for myself to use [to replace my jailbroken ATV2] since these are faster than the ATV2.

Once I got the Fire TV, I went to http://www.aftvnews.com/ to learn how to root the thing. I later learned that newer versions were no longer rootable; luckily, Staples shipped me older versions.  It took me about an hour to root the thing.  Then I needed to remove my Amazon account, but when I did a factory reset, the Fire TV’s root broke.  I had to then re-root the thing.  I couldn’t figure out how these people were selling these FTV’s on Ebay with their Amazon account still loaded to the FTV.  At this point, I was questioning this whole deal; I was 2 hours in and was barely going to make a profit on these things, and it took too much time to root to be really scalable.  After a little Google research, it turns out you can ‘disassociate’ your FTV from your Amazon account page.  Once I removed my FTV from my account, the system magically rebooted and the root stayed.  Score!

I posted the 3 FTV’s to Ebay, and after a week, I was able to sell them for $140 each.  Ebay, Paypal, and shipping fees came out to be about $18.  My cost was $70 not counting the 6% Savingstar portal rebate.  My net profit for each one was a little over $50 each.  

I didn’t think they would sell for $140; I think it’s because you just can’t find rootable ones anymore.  I haven’t done any research since to see if they are shipping with rootable ones anymore.  The prices seem to fluctuate between $130 and $170 on Ebay right now.  If they are rootable again, and you can streamline the rooting process, this may not be a bad option.  The 400 miles you get is nothing compared to the $50 in profit you’re making on each FTV.

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