My Beginner’s Guide to Travel Hacking – Part 5: How to Earn Points Other then Credit Card Bonuses:
1. Dining Programs
Most airlines have their own individual dining programs which allow you to earn anywhere from 1 to 8 points or miles per dollar per dollar you spend . You can sign up for these in less than 5 minutes. First you need to create a membership with the hotel or airline that you want to earn miles for. Once you have done that, look on the website for the section, earn miles, and navigate to their dining section. Once there you will need to enter your name, frequent flyer number, and email address.
Sign-up for their email lists since they will usually give you extra points per dollar you spend for doing so. Then you will need to enter in your credit card information. You can have as many credit cards associated with your dining program as you want.
Pay attention to the sign up for bonuses because they often offer 1,000 to 2,500 bonus points if you spend $25 or $30 on your first dining purchase. Or sometimes they offer a bonus for spending $100 in the first 30 days so make sure to read the fine print. They usually will offer more miles per dollar after 8 or 10 visits as well.
Check the website to see which restaurants in your area are enrolled in the Dining Program. This list tends to include more local restaurants as opposed to chains. When I checked the list for Chicago, I realized that Athena was on the list and it was a place that I had frequented for Happy Hour. I don’t know how many miles I missed out on by not signing up sooner! My former boss, Candace, loves that place – so sign up Candace if you haven’t already! In Dallas, Ellen’s which is my favorite brunch place and directly across the street from me was on the list.
2. Shopping Portals
I have made the switch to online shopping online to earn as many points/miles as possible. Typically these shopping portals will offer anywhere between 1-10 points or miles/dollar. It may not be a ton but it can quickly add up over time.
Steps:
Sign up: I would encourage you to sign up for all of the shopping portals that are associated with any travel memberships that you have. They are fairly quick and easy to enroll in on the websites.
Pay attention to any sign-up bonuses: Sometimes they will offer bonus points in you spend X dollars in your first 30 days or around the holidays they may make similar offers.
Favorite your favorite stores and sign up for email alerts: Most of these shopping portals will allow you to sign up for email alerts when your favorite stores increases the number of miles. So you may want to wait to make a big purchase and time it with the offers for additional miles. For example when I purchased my MacBook from Apple, I waited until the miles per dollar was increased to 7 miles/dollar instead of 1 miles/dollar Since MacBooks rarely go on sale, this was a great way to get additional money back for my purchase.
Figure out the highest reward possible for your purchase: If you know that you need to make a purchase at Gap.com, first check https://www.cashbackmonitor.com . This website shows you all of the different cash back and travel points per dollar options that you will receive on that date for any given store. So if I see that American is offering 1 mile/dollar but United is offering 4/dollar then I know to shop through United for that purchase.
Log in to the shopping portal and start shopping:
Now that I know that I want to shop through United for my Gap purchase for that day, I simply go to United Website, go to earn miles, go to MileagePlus Shopping, enter Gap in the search field, and click on Shop Now by the Gap store and shop as normal. Since I went to the Gap website through the United Shopping Portal, I will automatically earn United miles on my purchase. It took me less than 1 minute to check cash back monitor and to go to the United website before making my purchase.
3. Surveys
Most airlines and hotel programs will have their options for completing surveys for points. These surveys can last anywhere from 5 minutes to an hour. Generally when you start the survey, it will show you the estimated time for completion and how many points you will earn for completing the entire survey. If you stop halfway through, you will not receive the points. The surveys come in a variety of topics and you can choose topics that fit your interests.
To be honest, I haven’t had the best of luck with surveys. I swear that surveys have it out for me! It seems like they always reject me saying they have enough people in my demographic or I don’t fit into the demographic that they are targeting. I have found this super frustrating especially since I may spend 5 or 10 minutes completing the survey before it tells me this. I tried dozens of times but mainly unsuccessfully and felt like it was just a time suck for me. I have probably earned 500-1000 points on them but I find the frustration I have gotten from it just isn’t worth it for me personally. Now don’t let my bad experiences completely scare you off. I have friends that earn quite a few miles or gift cards completing surveys. I just feel like I am cursed in this department. Give it a try and see what you think for yourself.
Now that you have learned how to earn points/miles, let’s go to Part 6 focused on redeeming Airline Miles!
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