This site focuses a lot on maximizing purchases by choosing the right credit card strategy. Today; however, I want to explore an easy way to add-on (pun intended, as you will see 🙂 ) even more rewards.

Welcome to the world of Shopping Portals!

What is a shopping portal?

A shopping portal is a program set up by an airline, hotel, credit card company, or other group that encourages you to shop at certain stores and websites.

How does it work?

Let’s use American Airlines (AA) as an example here. AA partners with certain websites and retailers who agree to give them a certain percentage of the revenue that is generated in return for AA promoting their services. American will offer you some sort of incentive to shop with them. For example, you might earn 5% back up to $250 or 4x AAdvantage miles for every dollar spent. In theory, this program benefits everyone:

• You make a purchase that you have been waiting on and get a discount or other benefit;
• The retailer gets extra business from you and others that are in the same situation; and
• American gets rewarded with a percentage of the profits from this promotion!

Now that we have the basics out of the way, let’s talk about what this looks like in practice.

Best Shopping Portal Aggregator:

• Your best bet is to check out Cashback Monitor. Cashback Monitor is a shopping portal aggregator– they have more than 15,000 different websites listed and cover numerous portals. You might prefer to earn Delta SkyMiles but there could be an opportunity to earn significantly higher United Mileage Plus Miles (or Chase Ultimate Rewards and AmEx Membership Rewards). In any case, this site is very easy to use and is a great source for ensuring you can maximize rewards on each website you visit.
  • Note: I generally shy away from the cashback portals except for Rakuten, Swagbucks, Capital One Shopping, and TopCashback. Many of them require at least $15 in cashback before you can cash out any rewards and they can be difficult to receive your hard-earned rewards.

Browser Extensions:

Here, I want to discuss the best browser extensions (some call them plugins) to earn more rewards.

What is a Browser Extension?

These operate exactly the same way as a shopping portal: you click through a link that ensures you will earn rewards with a certain company and shop as you normally do. The only difference? Rather than having to navigate to the website or portal aggregator each time, you can install a shortcut (extension) into your browser so that it is available at any time while you are surfing the internet.

*Warning: I am not a security expert, but know that there is risk any time you download something from the internet. It is highly unlikely that your security will be compromised, but you may have data accessed by the portal’s servers.*

Browser Extensions that I currently have and recommend:

• Rakuten
• Capital One Shopping
• AAdvantage (American Airlines)
• TopCashback

• Rakuten is the single best shopping portal. Why? Rakuten allows you to earn cashback or AmEx Membership Rewards Points. Membership Rewards Points are extremely valuable (hello roundtrip business class from the US to anywhere in the world for no more than 100,000 points!) and an extra 1-10x per dollar spent can be a huge benefit!
• Capital One Shopping does not require a Capital One Credit Card in order to gain access to this lucrative cashback source. Anyone can access it and benefit from the frequent offers to have 1-15% cashback on spend a certain websites. Additionally, Capital One Shopping automatically informs you of coupons that could provide savings at checkout and has a price-check feature that informs you if another retailer is selling the same product for less (ex. you are on Amazon, purchasing a $120 toaster oven and Best Buy sells the same one for only $80). The only downside here is that the cashback can only be redeemed for gift cards (excluding Amazon and Target).
• While I think Delta is the best US airline, I have transferable points that could provide unlimited Delta SkyMiles and United Mileage Plus Miles. American AAdvantage Miles are the only one of the three US “legacy” miles that do not have a transfer partner. American just revamped its loyalty program, making it easier than ever to earn lots of miles and qualify for elite status (which will be explained in a future article) and I value their miles quite highly. Many websites offer between 1-4x AAdvantage Miles per dollar spent.
• Finally, I have used TopCashback often when the cashback earned is significantly higher than that of the other choices. Additionally, there are promotions such as an extra $15 in cashback when you earn your first $10. Note that this is only available for redemption via gift cards.

Takeaways:

Now you know about shopping portals and how you can use them to earn even more rewards. Start today– install Rakuten, AAdvantage, Capital One Shopping, and TopCashback browser extensions!

Evan