A world without a GC aggregator

If you’ve been following the blogosphere and Twitter feed yesterday, you know that a certain GC aggregator has been bouncing checks left and right.  I’m not going to speculate or say more about the issue since I don’t know anything and it’s not my place.  So today’s post will be about – so what happens now?

If you were a casual GC flipper (let’s say <$1K a month), then it may be hard for you to get good rates going forward.  There are other aggregators out there, but before you go that route, read the rest of the post.

Let’s say you were doing $5K+ or so a month, then I suggest you start up your own Raise account and try to get BULK SELLER status.  You’ll learn it’s not that hard to get bulk rates.  This way, you control your destiny and float.  You could also try selling to the bulk exchanges, but let me just say the path of least resistance is Raise.

Now let’s go back to the casual flipper.  What I suggest you do is NETWORK and/or get your friends to flip GCs with you.  THAT MEANS YOU ARE NOW AN AGGREGATOR YOURSELF!  Which means you can get bulk rates on Raise.

You may now wonder – well my rates won’t be as good as the big boys, so I’ll have to float the money for a while.  WHAT BIG BOY?!?  Kidding aside, yes you are right.  You will have to discount a littler heavier to beat out the big boys or float a little longer.  The key here is EXPERIENCE and knowing what brands to buy.  You’ll have to do your homework and watch what happens when say Staples has a sale on Gap.  Watch what happens to the inventory level and the rates.  See how long it takes for the waters to recede.  I used to track on my whiteboard how many Gap cards were listed on Raise every morning at 9AM.  Yes, this was very non-scientific, but it at least gave me some idea on how fast Gap moved.  The downside of all this is the bookkeeping of course.   But if you live in an MS wasteland, what’s your other alternative?  Flipping concert tickets for a loss?

I’ve overly simplified this entire process, but trust me, it’s easier than starting up FBA.  I actually think without the huge inventory dump of one large aggregator, we’ll see resell rates rise since most people will want to at least break even and can hold out longer vs one person dumping a massive amount at a huge rate just so they can clear up inventory and regain float.  It’s going to be interesting to see how all this plays out.  Get your popcorn ready!