Background
Loops in churning are powerful because you can stack earnings as a dollar flows from a credit card, to a FinTech, to another, to yet another, and eventually (hopefully) back to your bank account to pay off your credit card. Instead of earning 3x on a single purchase, a loop might push the net earnings on that purchase well above 3x.
But if it’s good once, isn’t it better multiple times? Yes, but as you scale those loops across multiple cards, multiple players, and multiple charges in flight, tracking becomes a non-trivial load. Imagine keeping track of the following every day, knowing that any step in the chain might have a failure that needs manual intervention:
- Buy a $499.51 sportsbook gift card
- Load the sportsbook gift card into a FinTech account intermediary
- Load the FinTech account’s funds into a sportsbook
- Play through at least $499.51 in funds
- Withdraw the $499.51±(profit/loss) into a FinTech’s rewards account
- Use the FinTech’s platform to pay your credit card
Great! Now do that again 10 times per player, for 15 players, each with different initial gift card amounts for tracking, every day. Also, don’t forget to run your other plays that aren’t sportsbook related for the day too. Finally make sure you haven’t lost something along the way; I hope you’re good at Excel, Beancount, SQL, or something else to track it.
The Brick Wall
Some of the best churners I’ve met eventually take a few months or more off because tracking takes time, dealing with sludge when something goes wrong takes time, frozen accounts take time, and in net the mental load can push them to hit a brick wall and burnout.
Once you’ve burned out and stop manufactured spend, you earn exactly $0 per day, $0 per week, and since America Loves Math™, $0 per month too.
The Lesson
A loop can turn 3x earning into 6x, but too much looping and tracking can eventually turn into burnout which earns 0x. So, don’t forget simplicity and don’t be afraid to skip most of the steps in a loop to keep yourself sane when the world comes running at you.
Happy Wednesday!
Counterpoint: Sometimes brick walls are fake.