Credit card bonuses are one of the easiest ways to rack up free flights, free hotel stays and even cash or gift cards. Often credit card companies will have multiple offers with different sign up bonuses. You should always check multiple places to ensure you’re getting the highest bonus.
Below are a few resources that can be used to ensure that you know of all of the sign up bonuses available.
- Targeted offers: Often credit card companies will send out higher than advertised offers to encourage you to sign up to their card. Don’t worry if you chuck those offers directly into the bin, you can check your offers out online.
- FlyerTalk: FlyerTalk is by far the biggest forum in this space and usually has the best offers listed. I usually check this master list for higher than normal sign up bonuses. I’ll also do a google search of “sitename:flyertalk.com <card name>” this should bring up the dedicated thread for that specific card. Check the wiki for the current best offer, it’s also worth checking the last page or two to see if there are any new posts which haven’t been added to the wiki. Fat Wallet Finance can be equally useful for cards that offer a cash reward.
- Freequent Flyer Miles: Usually has the highest sign up bonus listed. His “What’s new” section is particularly useful.
- Frequent Miler: Doesn’t have all cards listed, but is usually quick to update the cards he does have listed.
- Doctor of Credit: We have a master list for both personal & business cards. We keep this page as update to date as possible, if you see any errors or a better offer listed elsewhere please contact us.
Once you’ve found the best offer for the card you want to apply for, you need to decide who’s link to use. Credit card companies pay bloggers to promote their cards, the affiliate commissions are high which is how some of these blogs manage to have multiple staff.
When you use an affiliate link, think of it as giving a tip. Choose your favorite blogger and as long as their affiliate link is the best offer available, use it. If it’s not the best offer available ask yourself why the blogger is promoting a link that isn’t the best. Contact them to notify them of a better offer, if they don’t change their link to the better offer then chances are they care more about their bottom line than they do about their readers. I also like to keep other things in mind when using an affiliate link (e.g, is it clearly labeled as such? does the blogger mention other credit cards which might be a better deal for their readers? Do they ever promote non affiliate links?).
We only receive commission on Barclay products at the moment, we appreciate you using our Barclay links where possible but we derive 97.5%+ of this blog’s income from non-credit card sources, by not focusing on credit card revenue we’re able to promote the best offer to our readers instead (it also helps that I have a full time job as well). We also give a portion of this blogs income to charity every month.
How do you find the best credit card offer for a specific card? Who’s affiliate links do you use when applying for a credit card?
this post needs a update the FT thread does not seem to be active anymore
Yeah we don’t update all posts unfortunately, this one is six years old