1. When applying for a business card, you really need only a colorable claim to having a “business.”
You’ll only ever really discuss your “business” and how much revenue it makes with an actual human at Chase if you’re denied a card and you plead your case with reconsideration. Then you’ll need to have your story straight about what your business is, how long you’ve been doing it, how much your business makes and what the basis is for the revenue you listed on your application.
If you apply, and you’re instantly or automatically (after some time pending) approved by Chase’s application system, it will have been the computer that took all the data on your application, ran it through its algorithm, and determined you’re within the guidelines of approval for that product. You’ll never have to speak to a human until you’ve already been approved, if ever.
You’re injecting a very human reluctance to apply for a business card because of what you perceive as low revenue. Business revenue is just one factor the computer considers. And keep in mind the application is asking about revenue, not profit, so use gross numbers without expenses. There are different ways of estimating revenue, too. You can take last year’s revenue, YTD revenue, or make projections based on past sales. Anecdotally, DW did about $1,500 worth of eBay sales in 2016, but didn’t sell anything last year, but we still use that number for revenue on her business card applications because most of those sales were towards the end of the year and she could easily hit those numbers again with just a little effort.
Besides, it really seems that Chase weighs personal/household income much more heavily than business revenue because we’ve had people get approved for Chase business cards with just $5 to a few hundred dollars of revenue. And because income is likely a major factor in Chase approvals, a related factor is how much total credit Chase has already extended to you relative to your total household income. There’s a growing consensus that for Chase applications, it’s best to keep that credit to income ratio under 50% to increase the odds of automatic approval. I personally think these two factors are huge in deciding whether you’ll be approved or denied a Chase card.
2. When you apply for the CIP, Chase will do a hard pull of your credit report whether you’re ultimately approved or not. Your credit score will probably take a small hit (maybe 2-5 points), but it’ll recover fast enough. If you’re denied, you won’t get a further hit from that. If you’re approved, you won’t take a hit for a new account either because the CIP is a business card and Chase does not report their business cards to your personal credit report. If anything, you may see an uptick in your credit score in the next few months because a corollary of the CIP not showing on your credit reports is that any balance on the CIP also don’t show on your credit report. Charges that go on your personal cards contribute to a balance that is reported and factors into your credit utilization ratio. As you shift these charges to the CIP that is not reported, your credit utilization ratio goes down and your credit score tends to go up.
3. If you don’t go for the CIP and instead go for the CSR first, I’d suggest double dipping the CSR with the CSP then downgrading one of these cards to a Chase Freedom or Freedom Unlimited after the first year. This way you can get around the one Sapphire rule restriction on holding only 1 Sapphire card at a time and getting only 1 Sapphire bonus in a 24 months period. Because of the one Sapphire rule, if you get the CSR without double dipping the CSP, you’re locking yourself out from getting the CSP (and its 50k UR bonus) for 2 years after you get the CSR’s bonus — and you’ll have only gotten 1x 50k UR Sapphire bonus instead of 2x Sapphire bonuses in that time.
The problem with going for the CSR+CSP double dip in your situation is you’re 3/24, so those two cards would put you at 5/24 and preclude you from the CIP (and a lot of other Chase cards) until another card ages past 24 months. That’s why I think most people recommended you go for the CIP first, while you’re still under 5/24, because the CIP is subject to the 5/24 rule for approvals, but won’t add to your 5/24 count, and leave you two open slots for more cards.
I do work from home and have a home office, but I really just don't have my own business. Besides selling ONE thing on eBAY, that's it. I usually donate stuff we don't need anymore. I would prefer the CIP over the CSP, I just don't want to do anything shady. Really racking my brain to see if anything else I have done could be considered a business....
Oh well.
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