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How to earn points hand over fist shopping online
Are you struggling to earn points to make those dream vacays possible? This simple method will help you stack loads of points.
Loyalty programs have their own online shopping portals that will code your order to earn points in their program. It’s a super easy way to earn tons of bonus points for items you’d purchase anyways. All you have to do is log into the shopping portal and then click a link to be redirected to retailer’s normal site.
Another cool aspect is you’ll be earning points on your credit card as well as points/miles via the shopping portal.
Etihad just announced they’re bringing back the apartment on their London to Abu Dhabi route. Pretty awesome redemption for 62.5k American miles or 65k Aeroplan miles. Using shopping portals help you earn those points more quickly.
Here’s a list of Shopping Portals
This is a pretty extensive list of airline and hotel portals with a couple cashback portals included. Personally, I don’t really use cashback portals unless the discrepancy is massive since I’d rather earn points/miles to use for aspirational travel redemptions.
Airlines:
- Aeromexico
- Air Canada Aeroplan
- Air France Flying Blue
- Alaska Airlines
- ANA
- American Airlines
- British Airways
- Cathay Pacific
- Delta
- Etihad
- Finnair
- Hawaiian
- Japan Airlines
- JetBlue
- KLM
- Lufthansa
- Qantas
- Singapore Airlines
- South African Airwaysf
- Southwest
- United
- Virgin Atlantic
- Virgin Australia
Hotels
Cashback
Other
How do you know which one is best?
My favorite way to see which portal is offering the biggest bonus is CashBackMonitor
Rakuten to earn Amex points
If you have an American Express that earns Membership Rewards then you can opt to earn those instead of Cashback via the Rakuten shopping portal. How does it work? Once you’ve selected that you’d prefer to earn Amex points vs cashback, you’ll start earning points on every purchase. If you see 15% cashback, they will pay you 15x points.
It’s a really great way to earn extra Amex points and since I value Amex points between 1.5 and 2 cents, you’re getting a bigger return back on your purchases than you’d otherwise get. Here’s an example of my Black Friday purchases ( bought a year’s supply of contacts and made use of my Amex Business Platinum Dell credits ). I spent about $1500 and earned 25k points.
Overall
One of the easiest ways to earn extra points on the purchases you’d already be making is via a shopping portal!
Opinions, reviews, analyses & recommendations are the author’s alone, and have not been reviewed, endorsed or approved by any of these entities.
Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card
Welcome Offer
60k Points after $4k spend in 3 months
Annual Fee
$95
Points Earned
Transferrable Chase Ultimate Rewards
- 60k points after $4k spend in 3 months
- Worth $750 in Chase Travel℠ and way more if you maximize transfer partners
- 5x on all travel purchased through Chase Travel℠
- 3x on dining, including eligible delivery services for takeout & dining out
- 3x on select streaming services
- 3x on online grocery purchases
- (excluding Target, Walmart and wholesale clubs)
- $50 Annual Chase Travel Hotel Credit via Chase Travel℠
- The begins immediately for new cardmembers and after your account anniversary for existing cardmembers
- 2x on all other travel
- 10% Anniversary Bonus
- Every year you keep the card, your total spend will yield a 10% points bonus. If you spend $10k in a year, you’ll get 1k bonus points
- Chase Sapphire Preferred continues to redeem at 1.25c in the Chase Travel℠ and the slew of other benefits remain in tact including Auto Rental Collision Damage Waiver ( primary ), purchase protections, etc.
- Points are transferrable to 14 Ultimate Rewards partners
- Redeem in Chase Travel℠ for 1.25 cents per point
- No foreign transaction fees
- Suite of Travel and Purchase Coverage
- Auto Rental Collision Damage Waiver is my favorite
- Get complimentary access to DashPass which unlocks $0 delivery fees and lower service fees for a minimum of one year when you activate by December 31, 2024
- $95 Annual Fee
We keep an up to date spreadsheet that lists the best ever offers: You can find that spreadsheet here.
Historically 80k is a very, very good offer and hit in both 2022 and 2023. In 2021, we saw the offer hit an all time high of 100k. Who knows if that will ever come back.
Main Cast:
Cards that earn flexible points and should be used on the bulk of your purchases.
Supporting Cast:
Cards that earn fixed points in the currency of the airline/hotel and can not be transferred at attractive rates. These cards yield benefits that make it worth keeping, but not necessarily worth putting a lot of your everyday spend on.
The Chase Sapphire Preferred® is exceptional starter card and offers transferrable Ultimate Rewards, and pairs well with other Chase cards.
If you carry this card alongside Chase’s cashback cards like the Chase Freedom Flex℠and Chase Freedom Unlimited® or the business versions: Ink Business Cash® , Ink Business Unlimited® you can combine the points into Preferred account and transfer into hotel and airline partners
Annual fee is quite low at $95 a year + you get a 10% anniversary bonus on points + $50 hotel credit in Chase travel.
The responses below are not provided or commissioned by the bank advertiser. Responses have not been reviewed, approved, or otherwise endorsed by the bank advertiser. It is not the bank advertiser's responsibility to ensure all posts and/or questions are answered.