Besides going through cashback portals to earn some cash back on online purchases, you can also use airline shopping portals to earn miles. Over time, those miles can add up to a free flight. At the very least, they can help keep your existing miles from expiring. Today, let’s look at a few common airline shopping portals.

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Introduction to Airline Shopping Portals

Airline shopping portals are essentially the “cashback portals” offered by major airlines. You click through these portals to the merchant where you actually want to shop, complete your purchase, and then earn miles as a reward. Compared with cash back, miles are not as straightforward to use, but if you know how to redeem airline miles well, they can often be more valuable than cash. Currently, most airline shopping portals are run by Cartera Commerce, such as:

To use these shopping portals, you need the corresponding airline frequent flyer account. Log in with that account, and the miles you earn from shopping will be deposited directly into it.

These airline shopping portals generally work the same way. The main differences are the earning rates at each merchant and the promotions they run. So below, we won’t distinguish too much between the individual portals.

Common Promotions on Airline Shopping Portals

Compared with cashback portals, airline shopping portals tend to run more promotions, and the earning rates can be much better. So when a good promotion is available, choosing a shopping portal for miles can be a great deal. Here are some common types of promotions:

Bonus Multiplier Promotions

From time to time, shopping portals will increase the miles earned at certain merchants, usually to somewhere between 2x-4x. Sometimes you may even see 12 mile/$, which works out to about 19.2% back if you value 1 mile at 1.6c. That is basically like getting 20% off your purchase, which feels pretty great. Cashback portals rarely offer 20% cash back at a merchant.

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Extra Mileage Bonuses

These portals also often seem to coordinate by launching extra mileage bonus promotions at the same time. For example: during back to school season, spend $200 and earn an extra 1000 mile; during Christmas, spend $1,000 and earn an extra 5000 mile. Don’t forget that these are extra bonuses on top of the miles you already earn from the merchant itself. For merchants that normally offer very little in either cash back or miles, this can be especially attractive. For example, Best Buy is often just 1mile/$, so if there is a promotion offering 5000mile for spending $1,000, that effectively becomes 6mile/$ (roughly 9.6% back), which is far better than the usual 2% cash back.

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These extra mileage promotions now also come with a spending progress tracker, making it easier to see how close you are to completing the requirement.

Subscription Offers That Are “Money Makers” in Miles

These shopping portals also sometimes offer fixed-mileage deals on things like newspaper subscriptions or flower orders. Occasionally, you may only need to spend $1 and get back 1000+ miles (worth about $16), which makes the deal a net gain.

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  • Southwest and 1800flower promotion. If combined with AMEX offer, gift card double dip, and card link offer, you may be able to earn a Southwest Companion Pass at low cost. See: FM Blog analysis
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from FM Blog

JetBlue Offers Amazon 3x

Starting in late 2016, JetBlue’s shopping portal introduced exciting news: all purchases on Amazon would earn 3x JetBlue miles. People paid special attention because most cashback portals only offered rewards on a few limited Amazon categories, while JetBlue was offering 3x on all purchases.

Here are the steps:

  • Register for a JetBlue account: official registration link
  • After logging in, go to the JetBlue partner page: JetBlue partner overview
  • Click Amazon’s Learn More, then on the page that opens, click the Unique Link and complete your Amazon purchase. The miles should post within 2-3 months.

Purchases that can earn miles (based on reader summaries): items sold on Amazon, Amazon physical and electronic gift cards, third-party gift cards, and subscribe and save items; if you pay with an Amazon gift card, you can still earn miles through the portal.

Purchases that cannot earn miles: anything that does not appear under the amazon.com domain, Amazon gift cards, alcohol purchases on Amazon, and Kindle e-book purchases.

UA in store miles back

UA quietly launched in store miles earning. After linking your credit card, you can earn miles by making purchases at participating brick-and-mortar stores. It looks like shopping portals are no longer satisfied with online shopping alone and are moving into in-store purchases too. That said, Ebates in store cashback still seems to do the best job for now, with the largest number of merchants.

Advantages of Airline Shopping Portals

High Value of Miles

For the same merchant, say Best Buy, if a cashback portal offers 1% or a shopping portal offers 1mile, I would choose the mileage portal. That’s because I personally value 1mile=1.6cent>1cent. The value of miles really depends on how you redeem them. If you fit the situations below, then using airline shopping portals may make sense:

  • First and business class: If you redeem lots of miles for international business- and first-class flights, then 1mile may be worth around 2.6cent to you, and in that case you can almost use these shopping portals without thinking twice.
  • Need a stopover/open jaw: One of the biggest advantages of award tickets is that you can often build in a stopover or open jaw, letting you visit an extra destination along the way. For example, Alaska Airlines allows a stopover even on a one-way award. These tickets are usually very expensive if purchased with cash, while the mileage cost can be the same as a simple one-way award. That makes this type of redemption extremely valuable. For an introduction to Alaska miles, see: Using AS Miles
  • Southwest Companion Pass: If you have a Southwest Companion Pass, then 1 mile is effectively worth 2 miles. Southwest points are generally worth about 1.5c each, so with the Companion Pass multiplier, 1 mile = 3c in value. So you may also want to focus on Southwest mileage shopping portals. For an introduction to and analysis of the Companion Pass, see: Guide to Using the Southwest Companion Pass

In short, whether to use a cash back portal or a mileage portal depends entirely on your needs. If you have no miles at all, or you do not know how to use award sweet spots, then a cash back portal is probably the more convenient choice.

The qualitative leap of miles

Another reason to choose a mileage portal is that miles can go through a "quantitative to qualitative" transformation as they accumulate. Think about it this way: there is no fundamental difference between having $100 and $200 in cash for general use, but miles are different. For example, if you have 34,000 UA miles, that is still not enough for a one-way economy award between China and the US. But if you earn another 1,000 UA miles through a shopping portal, then suddenly you have enough to book it. Those 1,000 UA miles effectively unlock the value of your original 34,000 miles. So if you are just a little short of the miles needed for a ticket, using a mileage portal to top off your balance can be a great strategy.

Preventing miles from expiring

We often see people let their miles expire and then have to spend $200 to buy them back. Miles earned through these shopping portals can extend the expiration date of the miles already in your account. That way, you no longer have to worry about your miles expiring just because you have not flown that airline for a long time. Using a mileage portal once a year can solve that problem. Note that posting times vary by merchant, usually anywhere from 5-15 days. So try to use it at least a month before your miles expire.

Other advantages

  • Less sensitive to promo codes: With some cash back portals, if you use a promo code that is not listed on the portal, you may not receive cash back. Airline mileage portals generally do not have this issue.
  • Apply the same logic elsewhere: If you happen to discover that buying gift cards through one mileage portal to another website can still earn rewards, then other mileage portals often work the same way. In that case, you can buy gift cards first to earn rewards, then use those gift cards for shopping and achieve a double dip. The reason is that these portals often use the same backend system provider.

A few examples of clever mileage-portal uses

After all that explanation, a few examples may make the value easier to see.

Using leftover miles in family members' accounts

When family members make a round trip to the US, they often end up with 7,000-8,000 miles. But what can you do with those miles? For example, AA and UA do not have family pooling, and those balances are nowhere near enough for an award ticket. You do not want them to expire for nothing. In that case, you can use the mileage portal linked to that family member's account, log in to their portal account, and earn miles through regular spending. Once the balance reaches 12,500 miles, it can be used for a domestic US award ticket.

Using gift cards to complete a bonus-miles challenge

Suppose you receive an offer to spend $200 and earn an extra 1,000 miles, but you do not have any online shopping planned. How can you complete the task and earn the miles? Here are a few gift-card-related methods:

  • Buy gift cards with an AMEX Offer, then resell them: Sometimes certain merchants will still award miles on gift card purchases. If you combine that with an AMEX Offer discount such as $50-$10, then resell those gift cards to gift card exchange sites or to someone else who needs them, you may even come out ahead if the buyback rate is better than the discounted purchase price.
  • Some merchants allow you to buy gift cards with gift cards and still earn miles: I have heard of a few cases, but will not share them publicly here.

The ultimate stack

I once did a Sears deal like this, combining several deals together (the exact figures may be slightly off):

  • UA shopping portal: spend $1,000 for an extra 5,000 miles, plus Sears at 12 miles/$, with gift card purchases also earning miles
  • Sears: buy a $50 gift card and get a $10 promo gift card
  • Discover card: 5% cash back at Sears, and I had enrolled in a double cash back promotion
  • Sears gift cards could be used in-store to buy Visa gift cards

Altogether, it worked out to buying Visa gift cards at roughly 50% off.

China region

UA's mileage portal now has a China version. Spending at merchants such as Apple China, JD, Dangdang, and Decathlon can earn rewards at the listed rates. You can check through the link below. Although the earning rates are not very high, making a purchase to earn miles and keep your miles from expiring can still be worthwhile.

Conclusion

Whether you should use a cash back portal or a mileage portal depends entirely on your own needs. Of course, when mileage portal promotions spike to unusually high rates, they are definitely worth a look.

Finally, a small humblebrag of the miles I have earned—small amounts really do add up to something impressive:

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