Shopping Portals : Free Travel Basics

February 10, 2014 by

Do you ever buy things? How about shopping online? If you answered yes to either or both of those questions, and you are not using shopping portals, then you are leaving miles & points and/or cold hard cash on the table.  After you have signed up for your frequent traveler programs like I told you to do here, then this is your next step in earning miles & points for doing things that you would normally do anyway.

What are Shopping Portals?

Pretend you are shopping for a

very special Monster High doll that your daughter just has to have for Christmas.  You know about stores like Toys R Us and Target because, well, who doesn’t?  So you go to one of those websites and start shopping.  You buy the creepy doll for $24.99.  Done. If you added in just one simple step, you would get rewarded for making that same exact purchase.  This works with almost everything you can buy online!

Shopping Portals are websites that are kind of like online shopping malls.  They have lists of most online stores & you just have to click on the link to the store to get your reward.  The rewards can be, for example,  5 miles per $1 spent or 5% cash back.  You can search by categories in most of these Shopping Portals as well.  So if I am looking for a doll, I can look for “Toy Stores” and will be given a list of several to choose from.  The payout to you will vary from store to store and from portal to portal (a tip to help you with that is below).  The payouts also change frequently.  Sometimes there are amazing deals, like 30 miles per $1, which can add up to a lot depending on how much you are spending.

The Shopping Portals that we like to use give bonus airline points, reward travel points, or hotel points.  I also often use those that give cash rewards.  In fact, I just got an email yesterday saying my “Big Fat Check” for $18.56 from Ebates is on its way to me!  Hey, free money, I’ll take it!  So you go to whichever portal you will be using, find your store, click, and it takes you right to the store’s website.  You must be signed in to your portal (so you will sign up, just like you did for the frequent traveler programs – you just need an email address, mailing address, name) to get your reward.

Here are some of the portals that I use on a regular basis. They have all worked for me & I have successfully gotten my points/miles/cash from them:

Shopping Portals For Travel Miles & Points:

American Airlines:  Aadvantageeshopping

Amtrak : Amtrak Shopping Mall

Southwest: Rapid Rewards Shopping

United: Mileage Plus Shopping

USAirways: Diviend Miles Storefront

Shopping Portals For Cold Hard Cash:

Mr. Rebates: My Link

Big Crumbs: My Link

Ebates: My Link

TopCashBack: My Link

The cash back sites send your money to you in various ways.  Some pay out quarterly by sending you a check in the mail for your amount for that certain period of time & others will send money to your PayPal account.  I have successfully used all of these, some for several years, and have been getting paid (or rewarded with points) for almost every single purchase I make online.

TIP: If you don’t mind adding one more click to your online shopping spree, you should check EvReward first to see which Shopping Portal has the highest payout for each store.  For example, if I wanted to shop at Target I would go to EvReward and type in “Target” in the search box.  It will tell me (at the time of this writing…these things change) that Target is offering 3% cash back from Big Crumbs, 2.5% cash back from Ebates, 3% cash back from Mr. Rebates, 2 miles per $1 from American Airlines, 4 miles per $1 from Amtrak, etc, etc.  Then I can make my choice about which Shopping Portal to use by clicking on it.

Happy Shopping!