It’s becoming increasingly common for third party sites to offer additional bonuses for using their affiliate links. We thought we’d cover four newish options:
- Credit Karma Best Offer Guarantee. Credit Karma offers a best offer guarantee on some cards. You need to be a Credit Karma member and the offer needs to show the best offer guarantee badge. If you find a higher welcome bonus within 30 days of being approved you’ll receive an Amazon eGiftcard for the dollar value difference. If it’s a miles/points offer then the points/miles are valued at 1¢ each.
- Affinityy portal. Affinityy offers a bonus of up to $50 when you sign up for a credit card through their portal. The downside is you don’t know what additional bonus you’ll get before applying and they don’t have all cards/offers.
- Use a referral links. We often have posts where other readers can share their referral links. This way you can reward readers that make comments you find helpful. In addition if you have a significant other or friend you could use their link (and maybe they will share some of the reward with you). American Express also recently moved to a universal referral system, this might mean you can effectively refer yourself. Some readers have said that it’s been possible to refer yourself in this way in Canada for some time, not sure if it will be the same here or not.
- Slickdeals rebate. Slickdeals have started to offer an additional bonus when you sign up for some American Express cards. So far we’ve only seen the following two offers:
If you like a blog then it can make sense to use their affiliate links to say thankyou, we don’t use credit card or bank account affiliate links to remain unbiased but we do use other affiliate links (e.g eBay/Amazon) and appreciate readers who help us out by using those links. You should be aware of the other alternatives available to you though. As always make sure you’re getting the best offer before signing up for any card and do your research.
View Comments (14)
Slickdeals now shows Platinum $225 offer no longer available. Can you check it, Will?
That deal might have expired now, was more of an example
You can also add a quick search in Chrome, Firefox, or other browsers to support DoC (or someone else's Amazon affiliate link). If you right click on the search bar and Edit Search Engines, you can add one for DoC using this as the URL:
http://smile.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=%s&tag=d09c7-20
That is the format for Chrome. I think Firefox uses the same syntax, but I'm not sure.
Replace the section after tag= if you are supporting someone else (copy it from their affiliate link). I set my keyword to "a", so if I type "a books", I immediately get my results, Amazon Smile, and am supporting DoC or whoever's tag I am using. I never actually come here and click the affiliate link.
Thanks, Andy!
Will be interesting to see if we can use the credit karma guarantee on cards offering low value but high quantity points. e.g. apply for chase IHG and get 80k offer, and use the guaranee against the 100k offer to get $200 Amazon GC.
Yup, hoping for something similar.
Completely forgot to use a P#2 referral for SPG card, SMH.
Spent a while trying to get a 100k Pt to pop or a 50K/$1k PRG so I could app before new card released.
It would satisfy my curiousity to see the results of a self referral for US market.
Looks like new Metal card might be delivered today got tracking from UPS next day last night.
Have we started a collection of data points for how much affinityy pays out? That would be interesting
Nope, we should start! I wonder if it will change over time
When I was new to this game, I used a lot of links from MMS and TPG, like many others did. I don’t use affiliate mi is anymore, but I don’t think it’s necessarily bad that they advertise those links. EXCEPT when their links have a weaker offer than what’s easily available elsewhere. The AMEX Gold Card, for ex, is easily available for 50k but TPG still advertises the 25k offer. That’s crap.
Fondly remember Daraius at MMS and his ole' "mother-in-law rule" -- as in inform readers of the best offer "out there," even if it didn't earn his once venerable site a commission. (That "rule" earned him lots of good will -- and returns) Alas, Daraius and MMS "split" (in more ways than one) and what's left of what he so wonderfully gave birth is now but a dim shadow.
(PS, I've even caught MMS recently publishing click-bait stories that were lifted whole-cloth from other web sites -- without any credit.... no excuse for that.)
MMS and TPG were bought by creditcards dot com, which also owns bankrate
Agreed. And in my eyes that completely disqualifies that blog. You can not trust their advise when you know they are ready to push you for a lower bonus for their own benefit. Hence, no affiliate bonus for them on ANY links anymore... even if it is the same as public.
If they are making money on it, they need to spend time and research other options, and AT LEAST disclose that this is not the best offer now...then people will trust their word.
Not to mention, that when a blog does not make any $$ on it at all (as DoC) = that automatically means trust.
That is why we are here,... I guess :)
^This