One of the least talked about side hustles is selling tradelines. It’s a quick way to make up to $10,000 a year allowing others to piggyback on your good credit. There is no risk because the authorized users will not be able to spend any of your money or have access to your information.
What is a tradeline?
A tradeline is a fancy term used by credit reporting agencies to describe your credit accounts. Your credit accounts could be your credit card, car loans, home loans, or any other loan you may have.
If you have a credit account, you have a tradeline. It’s as simple as that. When people talk about tradelines, they are usually talking about selling tradelines on their credit card – that is adding authorized users to their credit card. This allows the authorized user to benefit from your good credit history.
How can you make money using your tradeline?
First, you need a “seasoned” tradeline, which is a credit card older than two years. You should not have any late payments on the credit card. Once you meet these two conditions, you can sign up with a reputable tradeline company and start making passive income.
A tradeline company will act as a middleman between you and the authorized user. These companies find the buyers and run credit and fraud checks on the buyers. They also collect money from the buyers and direct deposit your cut after a couple of months.
You can add an authorized user to your credit card for 1-3 months and get paid for it. People with poor credit will pay to be authorized users on your account to get a quick boost in their credit score. They get to piggyback off your good credit and pay you for it.
All you have to do is log in to the tradeline company’s website, get the buyer’s information such as their name and date of birth, and add them as authorized users on your credit card. All this can be done on a computer in about 5 minutes.
Who is buying tradelines and why?
Millions of people have poor credit. These folks have to pay higher rates on credit cards, mortgages, and auto loans. One way to quickly improve credit is to piggyback on someone with good credit.
How to find reputable tradeline companies?
There are a lot of tradeline companies. Find one that is reputable by asking friends who have used them in the past for buying and selling tradelines. A reputable tradeline company will run fraud and background checks on the buyers. It will also pay you fair compensation for selling your tradelines.
I personally use Tradeline Supply to sell tradelines. I have multiple credit cards registered with them. They sell authorized users on my credit card and I get paid $125-$250 per authorized user.
Isn’t selling tradelines risky?
You may think that the authorized user will run up huge bills on your credit card. But that’s not true. In fact, the authorized user may not even know who you are.
The card will be mailed to your home address and you will be in possession of your physical card. In fact, you don’t even have to activate the card. So the chances of misuse are very small.
How much can you make selling tradelines?
How much you can make depends on how “seasoned” your credit cards are (that is how long you have had your credit card) and how many tradelines you are willing to sell.
Many credit cards allow you to add 4 or more authorized users. Let’s say that you have 3 credit cards. You have 12 tradelines to sell (3 credit cards and 4 authorized users on each card).
Each tradeline can be sold 3 to 4 times per year. So continuing our example, you can sell up to 48 tradelines per year.
You can typically make between $150-$250 per tradeline depending on how seasoned your cards are. That’s about $12,000 per year for a minimal amount of work.
Is selling tradelines legal?
Buying and selling tradelines is legal. But there is always a chance that your bank will close your account if they find that you are selling tradelines too often. One way to minimize the risk of your credit card company closing your card is not to add and remove authorized users too often.
Bottom Line
Selling credit lines is a nice side gig and a quick way to make $10,000 a year for very little work. All you have to do is find a reputable tradeline company and start adding authorized users to your card a few times a month. Just be mindful of not adding and removing authorized users too often. Otherwise, you risk having your card closed by your credit card company.
