This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
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Is there such a thing as a bad idea? Well, there absolutely is. Of course there are bad ideas, and it's not always your fault when you have a bad idea because the way you find good ideas, the way you discover them, invent them, uncover them under a rock, is by having a lot of ideas, okay? So I'm a big fan of just putting a lot of stuff out there and, or at least in brainstorming mode, writing down a bunch of ideas and considering different possibilities and such. But at a certain point, you wanna really ask yourself, is this the right idea to move forward with?
Is it a good idea, a bad idea, et cetera? And of course, as I've said before, not just a good idea, but a profitable one. That's what we want, a profitable, sustainable one. Now you might be wondering at this point, is this all a setup for a listener question that I might possibly suggest is a bad idea? Well, if so, you are so smart.
As you'll hear, this listener's dad has an extra half a million frequent flyer miles, just kind of sitting around, no real use for them. And the surplus has got them both thinking, or at least our listener, is there a way they can get paid matching discounted miles or at least surplus miles with budget flyers? Can they become in fact a miles and points broker? So this is not actually a good idea. And I'll tell you why in my answer, but I'll also suggest what might be better, all right?
So can I become or should I become a miles and points broker? That's the question, it's coming right up. [Music]
Hi Chris, this is Curtis and I've been following your work for a while. My dad has more than half a million frequent flyer miles that are just sitting in his account. In the past, he's used miles to book trips for family, but he still has plenty.
I noticed that there are brokers that will buy his miles and then use them to book trips for strangers. How does this marketplace work? Can anyone sell their miles or points to a broker and make a profit? And how does someone learn to become one of those brokers? I looked through the show archives, but couldn't find the example of a story like this.
Thanks, I'm looking forward to hearing from you. [Music]
Curtis, okay man, so as mentioned in the introduction, I don't think this is a great idea, but it's not your fault, it's the fault of the airlines. They just kind of make it not a great idea. And it's because you can make money selling off those miles, but there's a great risk to doing so. You run the risk of your account being closed and they do actually audit these accounts.
They do actually close those accounts. It's within their terms and conditions, so they are able to get away with it. And then of course, if you're working as a broker, booking trips for somebody else, then that person's trip could get canceled. So lots of risk all around. When it comes to the business idea of becoming one of these brokers, I think it's not so great, unless you can think of some way to do it differently.
Maybe there's some loophole, but I know this world pretty well. So I don't think there's a loophole in that regard. What is possible is forming an awards booking service. So this is one of those similar but different things. I first wrote about a good friend of mine, Gary Leff, more than a decade ago.
He's got a couple of different businesses, but one of them is called bookyouraward.com. This was one of the very first award booking services. There are now many of them and presumably room for others out there. So the way an awards booking service works is by fielding requests from people who want to travel, usually on these big worldwide trips, often in premium cabins and they have a lot of miles. There are people like Curtis' dad, but they lack the time or the skills to search for the best rewards.
So these award booking services, they basically do that for you. And there's a lot of finesse to the process. So typically the service charges a fee somewhere in the range of $100 to $250 a person to do this research and often actually book the awards. It can really be a good business. So there probably is room for other people just because so many people are in this situation of Curtis' dad of having lots of miles and not time to use them or not time to do the research or trying to do some research and then getting stuck somewhere.
So overall, I think that's a much better idea than being an actual mileage broker, which can get you and the people whose mileage accounts are being debited can get all of you in a lot of trouble. So be careful about that, but let me know how it goes. And listeners, if you've got an idea, if you're wondering about something or you're exploring something, I would love to hear from you, sidehustleschool.com/questions. I am here every single day trying to bring you something useful and interesting in your quest to create additional income and build more options for the future. All right, that's it for now.
My name's Chris Guillebeau. This is "Side Hustle School." [Music]
From the Onward Project.
