When you can earn air miles for things you are buying anyway, why not?!
To earn air miles for your online shopping you first need to log into your chosen shopping portal and click through to the store from there and complete your purchase. Cookies know that you went to the online store from the shopping portal and then you earn air miles for that purchase.
You can earn anywhere from 1 – 20 miles per $1 spent. The shopping portal sends you an email to let you know when your miles have posted – it usually takes a few weeks.
There are no fees or costs to you to buy online this way. Prices for the things you are buying are the same as if you went directly to that stores website.
All the big airlines have online shopping portals. You’ll need to belong to the airlines frequent flyer program first before signing up to the airlines shopping portal.
Here are links to each of the airline shopping portals:
Alaska https://www.alaskaair.com/MileagePlanShopping/SignIn
American https://www.aadvantageeshopping.com/
Delta http://www.skymilesshopping.com/
Hawaiian https://onlinemall.hawaiianairlines.com/featured
Jet Blue https://shoptrue.jetblue.com/
Southwest https://rapidrewardsshopping.southwest.com/
United https://shopping.mileageplus.com/
Not all online stores participate, but most of the big ones do. This is a list of all those that participate in the Southwest shopping portal as an example https://rapidrewardsshopping.southwest.com/b____.htm
If you want to check if a specific store participates with any online shopping portal just type the store name in here http://evreward.com/
You can be dedicated to just one portal if you want to build up your miles with one airline, or you can shop around to see who is offering the most miles for a store. The site http://evreward.com/ shows you what each portal is offering.
There are often shopping bonus periods, where if you spend $X (usually $150, $300 or $500) within a certain time frame you can earn a lump sum bonus number of miles like 300, 500 or 1000 on top of the usual miles you get from the actual purchases. These bonuses are great and they usually appear around all the holidays, so keep an eye out.
There can be exclusions when earning miles with the store, and when you click through from the online shopping portal a box appears for a few seconds – read this box as that’s where the exclusions are listed.
Here's a pro tip: check the United MileagePlus X App to see if they partner with the store you are about to buy from. If they do, you can purchase a gift voucher through the MileagePlus X app and earn United miles for the gift card purchase. Then use that gift card to pay for your purchase. You'll be earning miles twice! Plus (of course) you're going to be buying the gift card with a miles or points earning credit card, so you're really earning miles three times for one purchase!
You can earn thousands of air miles each year by using online shopping portals. We recommend taking advantage!