﻿Alright, everybody, I’m Logan Allec, I’m a CPA, and I want to share with you all something that I
do to make extra money, this particular activity only takes about an hour of my time a month,
and it makes me over a thousand dollars, month in and month out. If you want to get technical here,
it’s a thousand-dollars-an-hour side hustle. What am I talking about? Well, I’ll give you a hint.
It has to do with my credit cards. And no, this has nothing to do with credit card rewards and
points and cash back or anything like that, though of course I love that stuff, I make videos about
that stuff all the time, but this is something completely different. What am I talking about?
I’m talking about selling tradelines or adding essentially strangers to my credit cards as
authorized users every month for extra income to the tune of over fourteen hundred dollars a month,
here’s my actual monthly earnings report from my tradeline broker for a recent month,
I added tradelines on five different credit cards, took me in grand total maybe ten minutes per card,
probably less, actually, but let’s say I spent an hour doing this, which I didn’t, it was less than
that, but even if I spent an hour doing this, that’s over fourteen hundred dollars an hour,
so pretty darn lucrative, and in this video I’m going to explain to you how you can get started
selling tradelines like me for extra income. So how this works is the tradeline buyer, the person
I add to my credit card as an authorized user, gets a quick credit boost, and you — the tradeline
seller — make potentially hundreds of dollars for a few minutes of your time. And by the way,
I don’t have to find these people myself, I have a broker that handles all that stuff for me,
all I have to do is add them to my cards, and if you’re serious about this, and you have credit
cards that you’ve had for at least two years with high credit limits, let’s say at least
seven thousand dollars, then I’d be happy to connect you with my broker, just email me at
tradelines@loganallec.com and I can make that introduction. Also, this is important
because this gets asked a lot, the buyer’s authorized user credit card gets shipped to you,
not to them, meaning that they never have access to your actual credit line, obviously this would
not be a good idea giving strangers access to your credit card, but they never actually
have access to it, all that happens is you add them as an authorized user and this tradeline,
your credit card account, shows up on their credit report and can potentially give them a boost. So
in this video I’m going to cover everything you need to know about selling tradelines,
I’m going to walk you through my process, show you actual screenshots of my earnings and all that,
but first let me tell you how I got started, it was actually my brother-in-law who got me into
this. I had heard about doing this before, but I always thought it was a little shady,
it was risky, but my brother-in-law, who’s a stand-up guy, he’s in the financial world as well,
he told me about this a few years ago kind of at a family Christmas gathering, and I heard him out
and when he showed me how much he was making every month with very little time investment,
I was interested. But of course as a risk-averse CPA, I was very ambivalent about making money
selling tradelines; it sounded risky if not flat-out illegal to earn an income by adding
people I don’t know to my credit cards. But after looking into it, I became comfortable it.
And while there are definitely risks you should be aware of before you sell tradelines — risks
that I will tell you all about later in this video — it’s definitely not illegal and for most
people the rewards outweigh the risks. An extra fourteen hundred bucks in my bank account every
month doesn’t lie. But how much can you make by adding authorized users to your cards? Well, how
much you make selling tradelines on a particular credit card depends on a variety of factors,
but the two most important are the card’s credit limit and the age of the card. This is because the
whole reason why somebody would want to purchase a tradeline, that is, be added as an authorized user
on your credit card, is to improve their own credit. Being added as an authorized
user to a card with a high credit limit can decrease a buyer’s credit utilization,
and being added to an older card can increase their average age of accounts, both of which can
increase their credit score. So in general, the older the card, and the higher the credit limit,
the more valuable your card is from a tradeline perspective. So for example, I have a card with a
thirty-three-thousand-dollar credit limit that I opened in twenty-seventeen. On this card,
I make two hundred and forty dollars per month per authorized user I add. But I also have another
credit card with a twenty-five-thousand-dollar credit limit that I opened in twenty-fifteen. On
this card, I make two hundred and twenty dollars per month per authorized user I add — almost as
much per user as I make on the card with the thirty-three-thousand-dollar credit limit.
But the other card has a credit limit over thirty percent more than this second card, so why is the
payout of this second card almost as much as the payout of the first card card? The reason is the
age — that second card is two years older. So my point is, there are two major variables here, card
age and credit limit so I can’t tell you exactly how much you’ll make with your credit cards. That
depends on the card as well as how many authorized users you’re comfortable adding per card per
month. I limit myself to two authorized users per month per card, and I’ll tell you why later
in this video. Like I said, if you’re curious how much you could make with your credit cards, email
me at tradelines@loganallec.com and I’ll introduce you to my broker who can give you a free quote for
your cards. So now I’m going to break down for you exactly how this works, basically give you
a step-by-step guide on how to sell tradelines. Step one, find your tradeline buyers or work with
a broker like I do. So there are two ways you can go about finding tradeline buyers, people
who want to be added as an authorized user to your credit card. One way is to find buyers yourself.
This involves marketing, setting prices, taking payment, managing clients, hiring an attorney to
make sure you are protected legally, dealing with refunds — all the things involved in running a
service business. While you keep all the profits this way, you also give up your most valuable
resource, time. The other way to find tradeline buyers is to go through a broker who does all
the legwork of finding the buyers, gathering their information, and collecting payments. And a broker
will give you a piece of the action by giving you a commission for every successful authorized user
that posts to the buyer’s credit report. Step two is to gather your tradeline buyers’ information.
Obviously your tradeline broker will give you all this information about your buyers, but if
you’re finding buyers yourself, you’ll need to gather this information for each of your buyers,
here’s the list of information you need for each tradeline buyer, you’ll need their full name
including middle initial, you’ll need their social security number, you’ll need their date of birth,
you’ll need their home address, and you’ll need their maiden name (if any). Like I said, if you go
through a broker, they will handle gathering this information for you. Every month, my broker sends
me a spreadsheet containing the information I need to add each card’s authorized users for that
month, so like I said, if you work with a broker, they make it really easy for you. Now, step three,
after you’ve gathered your buyers’ information, step three is to add your tradeline buyers as
authorized users on your credit cards by the statement date for that credit card.
Again, if you go through a broker, they’ll tell you exactly when you need to add the buyers for
that card for that month to your card. Here’s an example email from my broker, you can see
they tell me which card they’re talking about, at the end of the email subject line there’s a date,
in this case the 12th, meaning that the 12th is my statement date for that card, so I need to add the
authorized users for this month for this card by midnight Eastern Time on the night of my statement
date. How do you know your statement date? Well, your statement date is the date on which
your credit card statement is generated every month. For example, the statement date for my
Citi Double Cash card is the seventeenth of each month, here’s a screenshot from a recent statement
of mine for that card, you can see the billing period ends on the seventeenth, and that
Citi Double Cash is a great card by the way, I did a full review on that card,
link to my review is at the top of the screen and in the description below, anyway,
how do you add authorized users to your card? Well, it’s actually very easy. You can do it by
calling the number on the back of your card, being connected to somebody, and saying, “Hey, I want to
add an authorized user.” Some banks make it easy to do online as well, for example Wells Fargo,
Chase, Discover, a few others as well. The thing to note here is that depending on the bank even if
you can add authorized users both over the phone and online for a given bank, sometimes it’s better
to use one method or the other, and the reason is the more information you provide the bank about
your authorized user the better a chance that your tradeline will actually post to your tradeline
buyer’s credit report because if it doesn’t post then you probably won’t get paid. So for example,
some banks over the phone they’ll ask for the authorized user’s social but if you add online
they don’t ask for the authorized user’s social, so in that case it’s probably better to add your
authorized user over the phone by calling the number on the back of your credit card so you can
give the bank the user’s social security number which will increase the odds of the tradeline
posting on the buyer’s credit report. And if you go through a broker they’ll give you information
on the best way to add authorized users depending on your credit card issuer. Alright,
step four is to remove your tradeline buyers after one or two months. Depending on the arrangement,
your authorized user will either remain on your card for one month or for two months, obviously if
it’s for two months rather than one month you’ll make more money, and if you go through a broker,
they’ll give you instructions for all your tradeline buyers. But after that point, whenever
it is, you should remove the authorized user from your card to make room for new ones. Like adding
authorized users, removing authorized users is generally very easy to do both over the phone
and online. And then finally the last step is to get paid. Now, if you went out and found buyers on
your own, they may have already paid you upfront depending on how you want to run your business.
But if you go through a broker like I do, then you will have to wait for the broker to pay you.
And keep in mind that buyers will only pay you and brokers will only pay you if the end buyer
is satisfied with the service, that is, if your tradeline actually “posts,” that is,
it actually appears on the tradeline buyer’s credit report. Now, if you add your authorized
users promptly before the statement date using the best method for that particular bank, phone
or online, chances are great that the tradeline will post, just looking at my earnings report
that I showed you previously, you can see that I added two tradelines for each card for this month,
and for most of my cards, both tradelines posted, there was one card where for whatever reason only
one tradeline posted, so it’s not like it’s a fifty-fifty thing, in my case here,
ninety percent of the authorized users I added to my cards actually posted to their credit report,
so that’s pretty sweet. And I get the money direct deposited from my broker the next month,
so I get paid in August for authorized users I added to my cards in July, so it’s pretty
prompt. Now I’ve talked up selling tradelines because I do it myself and I make money from it,
and I think it’s wonderful, but it’s not without its downsides. So now I do want to talk about
the risks of selling tradelines, and the biggest risk of selling tradelines is that the bank will
shut down your credit card because they don’t like you adding too many authorized users. This
actually happened to me before, and I believe that the reason why the bank shut down my card in
that instance is that I got greedy and added too many authorized users to that particular card,
I was adding like three or four a month, which in retrospect was just a dumb, greedy idea. This
amount of volume seems to have raised a red flag, and the bank cancelled my card. Nowadays, I only
add up to two authorized users per card per month, I haven’t had any trouble since I implemented that
policy personally, not to say I won’t, there’s no guarantees with this, but if you start selling
tradelines I would recommend that you stick to that rule as well. Like I said, if you want
to be connected to my tradelines broker, shoot me a quick email at tradelines@loganallec.com,
and I will personally make an introduction. Now at this point I just want to go over some frequently
asked questions about selling tradelines, question number one, is can I use the credit cards that I’m
using to make money selling tradelines? And the answer is yes, you should definitely use them,
in fact it’s suspicious to banks for you to add authorized users to these credit cards
and not use them, so I definitely use all the cards that I use to sell tradelines,
the one caveat here is you don’t want to exceed fifteen percent utilization, meaning that if your
credit card has a ten thousand dollar limit, you don’t want to have a balance of fifteen
hundred dollars or more on that card at any time. Question number two, speaking of credit limits,
do I need to have a certain credit limit on my cards to be eligible to use them to sell
tradelines? And the answer to this question is yes, at least seven or eight thousand dollars,
otherwise it’s probably not going to be worth it to an end buyer or a broker, and obviously
the higher the limit, the better, but at a minimum, say seven or eight thousand dollars.
Also, before you get a quote, if you want to use the broker I use, before you get a quote, one
thing you might want to do is see if your credit card will increase your credit limit, that’s
typically very easy to do these days, you can call them up or in some cases even just request a limit
increase online, I might make a video on that in the future, but that’s something to think about.
Question number three, is the money you make by selling tradelines taxable? And as a CPA,
I must be the bearer of bad news here and let you know that yes, the income you earn from selling
tradelines is taxable. If you sell tradelines through a broker, they will send you a 1099
after the end of the year reporting the payments you received. The question, of course,
becomes whether you should report this income as miscellaneous income on your tax return or on
Schedule C as self-employment income, which would subject you to self-employment tax). You would
want to reach out to a qualified tax professional about your particular situation, but in general if
you are just selling a couple tradelines a month through a broker, and this is not tax advice, I
don’t know your specific situation, but in general if you’re just selling a couple tradelines,
a few tradelines a month through a broker, you’re probably OK reporting your tradelines income as
miscellaneous income. However, if you are more engaged in your tradeline selling business,
you’re actively seeking clients, you’re more involved in the transaction, then it’s possible
you should report your selling tradelines income as self-employment income. I’m going to leave this
discussion here, if you want actual tax advice on your individual tax situation, please reach out to
a qualified tax professional. Next question, can the authorized users on my cards use my cards to
make purchases? I kind of mentioned this earlier, but the answer to that question is no because
you will have their cards shipped to your address, not their address, so they never actually have
access to the cards. Alright, folks, that just about covers it, like I said, if you want to
be introduced to my tradelines broker, this is the one I use every month, shoot me an email
at tradelines@loganallec.com, and I will hook you up, I look forward to y’all’s emails, buh-bye.