If you like the information here, could you join the
programs through my links, or send me an email to refer you? It won’t
cost you a thing and I get some points or cash for my effort. Thanks!
You don’t get a lot of something for nothing (and it isn’t really nothing, it’s
your time) but it can add up. When you’re clicking, turn down your sound to
avoid ads with animation or noise, hit the “Shift” key while clicking to
open the window in a new browser so you can do something else, and sign up for
any offers from a subsidiary email (I suggest making one just for this purpose)
in case of Spam.
Value your time. I love doing this as a hobby. The rate of return
won’t be high enough for some people to justify the work. All the same,
in 2006 I redeemed a business class ticket from NYC to Saint Petersburg on
British Airways, a coach ticket to Toronto on a reduced miles award, 4
nights at the Radisson and two at the Renaissance in St. Petersburg, $125 in
Marriott gift certificates, in 2007 a coach ticket to Southern California on
jetBlue, and so far in 2008 a business class ticket to London and Barcelona on
British Airways and tickets to Palm Springs, San Francisco and Toronto, as
well as money for rebates, surveys and cash back. Not a bad hobby.
To really work the system, compound your offers: You might want to buy an
airline ticket on Delta. A few portals have Delta as a reward.
So a $500 ticket on Delta nets you whatever miles you get for the Delta flight,
plus the 500 Starpoints for the purchase and a $15 discount (or 1000 Skymiles
if you had the Delta business card), plus whatever you got for purchasing
through the portal. It adds up.
A while back, I received an offer from Hilton for 5,000 Skymiles to join
Delta’s program. A little research turned up a Delta offer running at the same
time to get up to a 25,000 mile bonus for using Delta’s miles partners – and I
could get 5,000 for using 5 of them. So I got a Delta
Final reminders - Points, miles and cashback credits are very unstable
currencies. They can be devalued with little or no notice or even
rendered worthless by a company going out of business suddenly. Also, miles are
only good if you can use them. I value Delta and Continental miles less
than American’s and certainly Starwood Starpoints, because Delta and
Continental are much stingier with reward inventory. Keep that in mind –
I won’t make a large cash outlay (say, for an annual fee credit card) to
accumulate Delta miles, but I probably would for Starpoints.
There’s a new wrinkle in rewards programs where you earn points that are used to buy airline tickets (or other merchandise, but in those cases it seems that straight cash back is a better deal.). The advantage is that inventory is far more available than actual award tickets and you can “double dip” the ticket; it still earns miles and importantly status in the program of the airline you fly. The disadvantage is these programs are not a good deal for the holy grail of reward travel, long haul business class flights. But worked properly with the right cards, I am managing to get an effective return on the Citi PremierPass Elite and the Citi Professional card of around 5%. Don’t give up entirely on airline frequent flier programs. I use the Thank You program to buy domestic economy tickets and the airlines programs for either high-value long haul or cost-effective short flight awards such as cross-border US-Canada flights that are disproportionately expensive.
Page last updated June 28, 2008