With the holiday season well and truly over there are a lot of people sitting with unwanted gift cards and gift certificates. Perhaps unsurprisingly there are also plenty of places you can go to flog your unwanted prezzies for some good ol’ cash to spend.
Giftcardrescue.com, cardavenue.com, giftcardbuyback.com, and swapagift.com are just a handful of the sites in this market.
The idea is simple enough – you either sell your gift card to the site at a reduced rate (say 70% of the face value) or sell to other site members for a fixed fee per transaction. In the first instance, the site will then sell your gift card on to someone else – still below the face value – and pocket the difference.
Start Your Own Business Trading in Gift Cards
As most of the main sites seem to be US based this could be a great little idea for entrepreneurs in other countries or local markets with local retailers.
You could also take it a step further …
Restaurant.com for example, sells restaurant gift certificates at around 40% of their face value. Restaurants give the gift certificates to restaurant.com in return for promotion and marketing via the website. Restaurant.com sells them, bringing extra trade to the restaurants, making a profit for themselves and ensuring site users get a bargain.
You could easily launch a localized version of this idea – possibly extending it beyond restaurants to cover retail and events.
50 x $25 gift certificates from 50 local businesses could equate to $25,000 gross profit (selling at 40% of face value) – a nice add on for a print or design firm, a perfect student business or an innovative fundraiser for a good cause.
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