Making money with your good credit

Many of you have now heard of this - it has gotten a lot of press recently, but I got involved with this back in April, before most people had heard about it.

The subject is "seasoned tradelines" or "piggybacking" - companies help people improve their credit (for a fee of course) by adding them as authorized users on credit cards of people that have good credit. This improves the credit of the new authorized users and does not affect the credit of the primary cardholder.

The company helping people improve their credit gets paid for playing "matchmaker" (and their knowledge and expertise of how to best improve someone's credit). The get paid by the person with bad credit and pay part of that to the person with good credit in order to use their authorized user spot.

The Industry

The recent press on the subject has stimulated demand (from people with bad credit) as well as supply (of people with good credit). I am worried that there are a number of questionable companies out there taking advantage of the situation - possibly outright fraud, but more likely charging large amount for questionable results.

The industry does not have storefronts - most companies are a handful or less of employees (probably located all over the U.S.) and then additional independent contractors acting as remote agents. Everything can be handled over the phone or electronically, so it is very important to make sure you are working with a company that is not going to disappear into the night.

The Criteria

In order to be able to sell authorized user spots, you have to have credit scores of 700 or better. You also have to have "qualifying" cards: preferably at least 2 years old, at least $5,000 credit line, perfect payment history, and keep balances below 20% of the credit line.

And only certain cards report the authorized users. As examples Citibank, Bank of America, and American Express are best, Washington Mutual also works, but Chase does not work.

Any decent company will have to pull your credit before being able to quote you rates they will pay for authorized user spots. Rates typically range from $50-$150 per spot (I most often see $80-100), and number of authorized users per card ranges from 2 to 10.

I believe most companies pay after the cards report (the only way they can verify you added an authorized user) at 30-45 days after adding the person, then remove the person at 90 days (after having enough time to positively impact their credit). If anyplace promises a better time frame than that, then are probably doing the person trying to improve their credit a disservice.

Citibank and Bank of America cards allow 9-10 authorized users, so if you have several of these cards, you can rake in a decent amount - $2,000-$5,000 every 3 month is not unreasonable.

Is it Safe?

One of the main questions people ask is can these authorized users actually make charges on the account? The answer is no. When you add authorized users to your account (typically online), the company sends a card to you (they don't even have an address for the authorized user). Because you have the card, they never have enough information to be able to use a

In addition, they cannot call up the credit card company to make changes because the card company has security measures (often your mother's maiden name and your social security number) to prevent others from accessing your account.

In the 3 years that Seasoned Tradelines has been doing this with thousands and thousands of authorized users, they have never had an incident with any of the primary users' cards.

The Company I Chose

When I was looking back in April, I chose to work with Seasoned Tradelines because they have been around longer than the others I saw (since 2004), they responded promptly, had a referral program (to make extra money), paid the same as other companies, and I now know that they are also working on other ways to use your credit to make money without much work.

I also saw some contracts from other companies that had a non-compete agreement for years after working with them, and I knew I did not want that.

Once this concept started getting a lot of press and Seasoned Tradelines started getting overwhelmed with calls, I was offered what I considered to be a great opportunity. They said if I would call people back and answer questions, I would get the referral fees for anyone who decided to come on board.

Upcoming Changes?

Now FICO is threatening to change how authorized users get reported (presumably removing the benefit that authorized users can now get). My understanding is that they are going to start with one credit reporting agency in September and then do the same thing with the other two agencies over the next year.

I am still not convinced that this will happen in September (there are a lot of people - in this industry and outside it - that are very opposed to these changes). Even if it does, it will happen slowly, and I like the fact that Seasoned Tradelines has other ways to help people improve their credit and let people with good credit use it to make money.

How to Participate

If you are interested in participating yourself and believe you meet the criteria discussed above, you can give me a call (cell - 816-896-6566) or email (sfweller@yahoo.com). As I said, I work as a remote agent for the company, and my job is getting people's information so that we can provide a proposal based upon the specific cards you have.

It usually takes a day (or two) to get a proposal, then you just fax back the paperwork if you are interested. From there, you slowly get requests to add people to your cards and ultimately make money!

Like I said, they also have several other ways of making money with good credit that they are working on, so even if you don't have many (or any) qualifying cards right now, it is good to get your name on their list for future opportunities.

PS - If you want to improve your credit, I just need your name and phone number to have someone from the company who is knowledgeable about that side of things get in touch with you.