Clueless Blogger Blogging Coin Deal and Why it is Problematic

The title of this post is somewhat click bait but it isn’t a lie. The recent blog posts on mint coin deal that appeared across all miles and points community seemed like a great idea until it wasn’t. I bet every blogger blogging about this thought they were breaking a story or doing their readers a service by giving them an opportunity to manufacture spend plus earn commission, while the blogs themselves earn some referral bonuses.

One small hurdle was the referral terms and condition of the buyers club every blog was promoting.

We will also not pay referral fees for referrals obtained via blogs, generic message board posts or the like (dansdeals et al). We are not looking for spam emails or tons of board blasts to obtain members. These referral codes should be shared to real family / friends / acquaintances that you know and feel would be interested in what we have to offer.

I am guiltily of not knowing about it myself when I shared my own referral link earlier this year. But maybe they were willing to overlook that (or maybe I never fell under their radar) because all I made was ~ $20 bucks through referral . But sites who get much much more views than mine probably should have been more thorough.

Another issue arises from the lack of personal commitment from various bloggers. Several bloggers who shared the FPS deal had never actually participated in their deal. This is quite different than promoting or reviewing a credit card that you’ve never owned. To some, promoting a club  that requires you to ship merchandise first may seem a bit weird, especially if the promoter has never participated in said clubs deals. Admitting, this shouldn’t be that big of a deal since you can lookup blog posts on FPS dating several years back…maybe that is a valid excuse for not digging any further.

I first dealt with FPS back in December of 2017 where I sold them two iPhone X. The process went smooth and I was happy enough to blog about it. I am guilty of being quick to jump on their coin deal back in July and I wrote about said deal here.  I know several of my readers followed up on the deal, got paid, and they were happy, and I was happy that they were happy. Unfortunately for me, due to unexpected work related changes I wasn’t able to get on the computer and secure the deal and that resulted in not very pleasant email from said club. Some would say it is my fault for committing to a deal and not being able to buy in but things happened the way they did and it is what it is.

This time around I chose to skip blogging said clubs deal partially because of my previous experience with them but more importantly because there were other groups out there that were paying at least twice as much. I talked about the latter in this blog post and will talk about this more a little bit later.

The other issue bloggers did not foresee is the repercussion that may arise from buyers, including their novice readers, backing out of a deal. If saying you will buy and not buying gets you an angry email, then what does backing out after confirming a buy (i.e. providing an order #  to a buying group after successful purchase) earn?

Apparently backing out of a confirmed deal earns you a threat of collection of $500 in damages. This Reddit user’s case isn’t the first one I heard of. There were chatters of this happening to other people in my telegram group yesterday. Most people would feel shameful enough to not post about it publicly but eventually some helpless guy was about to seek advice in a public platform.

Sooooo… why is this a bloggers fault? Because we’re the one promoting coin deals to our readers. 99% of the time bloggers play the expert while readers, who are mostly novice, get to absorb the information. However,  this was a hilarious case of clueless bloggers (which includes me by the way) blogging about things they don’t understand to more clueless people. We essentially promoted coin deals that we had 0 idea of to our readers who had 0 idea, but the readers probably committed to it thinking we were experts on it like we are supposed to be in miles and points stuff.

If the repercussion of backing out of a deal was known, I know many bloggers would be hesitant to promote these deals while some would bold that portion in big fat red letter. I realize that there likely isn’t any legal repercussion to this but a threat is a threat and it isn’t going to make any reader happy which in turn makes us bloggers unhappy.

The last bit I want to touch on is how clueless we were about the price market. I don’t recall a single blogger, including me, suggesting flipping these coins on their own. As I myself learned yesterday through the telegram chat, some of the sold ebay listing for these coins were at $1900-2000 bucks. That is release day selling before anyone has received a coin! Yes, you could argue that it is unsafe to sell such high valued product on ebay but nevertheless those sold listing give you an idea of the money that is on the table.

It took me a while to realize that when buying groups, which are notorious for not giving any commission or giving low commission, are giving $50, $100, etc commission, then there is good deal of money to be made.

I wanted to see the potential of flipping these locally but unfortunately I did not have much success in 2 local shops. Maybe I could have had more success had I called more shops but the immediate feeling I got was that these local shops were clueless of the deal.

Next, I dug through a collectors.com forum, a discussion board for buying and selling coins, and landed on $225 commission deal that was expiring on 4 PM EST of that day (said deal was blogged up by maximizing money). I challenged myself to find a better deal few hours before 4 PM EST and I eventually landed on a $400 deal with a long time poster of said forum who happened to be a PCGS authorized dealers in Michigan.  I was skeptic at first but after digging through several resources I decided to give him my order # and lock in a deal with him. I shared those info with my readers in telegram chat and some have decided to accompany me in this journey. For obvious reasons I chose to not blog about it.

Closing Thoughts

This was a weird but cool learning experience.

The crucial lesson for bloggers, including me, is to thoroughly research before blogging content that is outside one’s expertise, otherwise you’re we’re not looking in the best interest of our readers.  I know I thought I did great by posting a deal with $100 commission but few hours worth of research proved me very wrong. Hopefully this experience prepares me better for future deals…and I can’t wait to do more coin deals!

Oh and, if you, the reader, see a blogger blog outside of his expertise then don’t rely only on the information provided through the blog post. Dig it yourself. Be vigilant and have fun learning something new.