Did you know you can sell coupons—the kind of stuff that comes in junkmail—at online sites? Saturday’s PlayNooz reported on a New York postal carrier who was arrested for the sale of coupons he’d ripped off from residents’ mailboxes and peddled on eBay. A commenter observed that some coupons, such as the ones that come from Penny’s, are worth ten or fifteen bucks. Or more…one shoe store here routinely sends out 30%-off coupons, and all its stock is in the $100-plus range.
Turns out this enterprise is not very difficult. You simply collect coupons, organize them in some intelligible way (such as by category or by likely frequency of purchase), and advertise your stashes on eBay or Craigslist. You can even consider collecting coupons that are listed online. I have found that you can go here for Amazon coupons and a ton other top retailers. Apparently you can get as much as 50% to 75% of the coupons’ savings.
There’s actually a site that will let you resell coupons from sites like Groupon, Living Social, or Tippr. How exactly you’d make a profit on coupons you have to pay for is unclear, unless you could charge a premium the ones that sell out fast.
What a hoot! Talk about your passive income…just let that junk mail roll in!
Image: Ticket for a free glass of Coca-Cola, ca. 1888; believed to be the first coupon ever. Scanned by uploader from Wired (Nov 2010), Vol. 18, No. 11, p. 104. Public Domain.
I think it’s illegal to sell coupons. You can charge for your labor. One coupon site reported that someone was selling Walgreens coupons on ebay–the coupons that are in the free booklets at the front of the store. People were buying too!
I have the same understanding as frugalscholar. You can’t charge for the coupon. There are hundreds of coupon clipping services that charge for their labor but I’m not sure that even that is legit considering that most of them charge more for the higher value coupons although it presumably involves the same amount of labor.
Hm, that’s an interesting development. It’s hard to see how they could ban sale of a commodity that doesn’t hurt anyone.
LOL! See, the more the coupon is worth, the heavier the paper stock, right? So it’s really HARD WORK to cut out those high-value numbers! Whew!
It is not illegal to sell coupons. Its just not smart to buy coupons from stores that give them away for free at the entrance.
Not much of a scholar
Not sure what you base your opinion on when you say it is not illegal to sell coupons. Pretty much every coupon I have ever seen says that it is void if transferred. If you charge me money for something that you know is void how is that not illegal?
@ Weston: Good grief! If it’s not fraud, it’s certainly caveat emptor.
On the other hand, if the coupon isn’t actually made out to an individual, who’s to know whether it’s been transferred? I’ve never seen a check-out clerk ask a coupon-clipper for a driver’s license.
Funny
Agreed that it is next to impossible to track and prosecute. However, just because you are not likely to get caught doesn’t make it any less illegal.