Cash back at Amazon.com

First of all, check out my spiffy new disclosure policy which should now be found at the top of each blog post when you visit my website. It reads:

"Disclosure: to the best of my knowledge, I receive no third-party affiliate revenue for any of the content on this site. I do occasionally include my own personal referral links for products and services, many of which you can find on my Support the Site! page. I am also theoretically paid for clicks through the Google Adsense ad found in the righthand sidebar (theoretically since I haven't actually hit a payment threshold yet) and for purchases made through my Amazon Associates referral link."

I don't know if there's anything else anyone has any questions about, but obviously it's a work in progress so do let me know if there's any ambiguity or anything like that.

HawaiianMiles for shopping at Amazon.com

All the way back in the day, Hawaiian Airlines was the only shopping portal that awarded miles for shopping at Amazon.com through their HawaiianMiles shopping portal (the "online eMarket"). I earned a whole 982 HawaiianMiles which, I noticed while researching this post, expired back in July:

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This is obviously fairly embarrassing, since I could have redeemed them for something exciting like a subscription to All You magazine.

After HawaiianMiles cut Amazon.com from their shopping portal, I pretty much gave up on cash back while shopping there, and focused other ways to maximize my purchases, like rotating credit card categories with Chase Freedom or Discover it, or the "bookstore" 5% bonus category with the US Bank Cash+ card.

It's worth using cashback portals to shop at Amazon.com

For some reason I was recently clicking around TopCashBack and discovered that the "limited" departments TopCashBack pays out on are actually the very categories I do most of my Amazon.com shopping in!

TopCashBack pays 8% cash back for purchases in the following departments:

• Home & Kitchen;
• Women's Fashion;
• Men's Fashion;
• Kid's & Baby Fashion.

That's an incredibly generous range, and includes virtually everything I buy from Amazon.com. If you're combining it with a card that pays 5% cash back (or gift cards purchases at a bonused merchant), you'll increase your savings even more.

Conclusion

My Amazon Associates referral link pays me much less than 8% for purchases made by my readers, so if you're shopping in one of the 8% cash back categories you have my blessing to collect portal cash back instead!

Update: Support the Site!

I got a lot of great feedback in the comments to my post a few weeks back announcing I was going to be leaving my current lightly-employed position to start writing, blogging, and travel hacking full time.

I even got some friendly advice from Delta Points.

While I'm still thinking about how to implement some of the great suggestions readers made, one change was easy and long overdue: putting all my referral links in one place!

When I write about a specific cash back portal like BeFrugal, or tool like Plink, I usually include a signup link that gives me a dollar or two in referral credit. But I didn't have one site with all those signup links together in the same place.

Now I do!

In the very top-right corner of the website, there's now a link that reads "Support the Site!" That's where you'll find all my signup links, so when you're about to sign up for a new cash back portal, car service like Uber, or anything else, you can pop up there to see if there's a way to support the site while you sign up.

If readers have any suggestions for other sites or services that belong on that page, please let me know!

Also, Amazon!

Since my new home is in a state where the Amazon "Associates" program is allowed, I was finally able to sign up for that, as well. At the top of the sidebar on each page you should now see a little Amazon-y box that will take you straight to Amazon.

My understanding is that you can also just bookmark my Amazon Associates link and use that bookmark whenever you want to go to Amazon.com.

Conclusion and next steps

Today's changes are focused on making it as easy as possible to support the site, for those readers who like it and want to support the work that I do here.

Many readers expressed an interest in a regular, weekly e-mailed update that included all the relevant news and changes in the world of travel hacking, and would be willing to pay more for access to a premium service like that.

That service wouldn't replace this blog, but would supplement it for those who didn't want to wade through all the blogs and forum threads that are necessary to stay on top of this ever-changing hobby. That's something I'm strongly considering, and I may be announcing something along those lines later this summer.

In the meantime, keep reading, commenting, tweeting, and e-mailing! My readers, as always, are the best.

Do this now: Amazon.com credit from American Express

Hot on the heels of Small Business Saturday, American Express is offering another deal that you'd be crazy not to take advantage of: a $25 statement credit when you spend $75 or more by December 31, 2013, at Amazon.com on each American Express card you carry.

There are lots of ways to enroll in the promotion, including "syncing" your cards through Twitter or "adding the offer" to your card through your online banking account. The easiest, however, is to go to this page and enter your information for each unique American Express number you have.

Unfortunately it isn't possible to register for the promotion through multiple channels and earn more than 1 $25 statement credit: after "adding the offer" to my account online I wasn't able to then register through the promotion site.

On the plus side, while most of American Express's prepaid cards (like Bluebird) are not eligible for the promotion, Serve (the Bluebird-lite prepaid card product) is eligible. So if you or someone you know still has a Serve account, be sure to register that as well.

Bonus points at Amazon with US Bank Cash+

While Amazon.com as a rule doesn't participate in shopping portals (their partnership with Hawaiian Airlines' online mall ended earlier this year, but purchases only earned 1 Hawaiian mile per dollar, so it was no great loss), it's long been known that the Citi Forward card, which offers 5 ThankYou points per dollar spent at bookstores, would also bonus purchases made with Amazon.

Last quarter I selected bookstores (along with charity)  as one of my bonus categories with the US Bank Cash+ card, which gives 5% cash back in two categories of your choice each quarter, and made a little over $100 in purchases at Amazon to see if US Bank would treat these purchases the same as Citi. And sure enough when my statement closed today, I saw that for $126.95 in Amazon purchases, I had earned $6.35 in cash back:

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Although both the Discover More/it and Chase Freedom are bonusing Amazon.com purchases this calendar quarter, this is a great option to earn 5% cash back at Amazon during the rest of the year. And if you spend less than $1,500 on Amazon purchases, you can earn the rest of your cash back through bonused Kiva loans.