Earning bonus points and miles from online shopping is a pretty heavily discussed topic. I posted about it a few months ago.

What I wish I knew earlier is how to earn bonus miles from in-store, Amazon, and Starbucks spending.

Here are two methods:

1. Mileage Plus X. This free app allows you to pay for in-store, Amazon, or Starbucks purchases with a gift card purchased from the app in the amount you are spending. Sure, they’re United miles (I’m not a United fan), but miles are miles, and these can still get you around the world if you earn enough of them.

Example: Let’s say you are ordering pizzas from Dominos, and your bill is $25. Open the app, select Dominos, and enter the amount you owe using the credit card of your choice to pay. The app will then generate a $25 gift card that you can use to pay online or in the store. Since Dominos earns you 5 miles per dollar spent, you just earned an easy 125 United miles.

The other great thing about the app is you can earn extra miles on Amazon and Starbucks purchases, which is otherwise impossible to do (as far as I know), while also earning the points from whatever credit card you used to purchase the gift card.

The one downside to purchasing Amazon gift cards through the app is you have to purchase in increments, instead of the exact amount of your purchase.

Using the app in-store can be slightly awkward if the employee doesn’t know how to redeem gift cards, but it’s not a big deal.

What if the store you’re shopping at isn’t on the Mileage Plus X app? On to method 2.

2. Hawaiian Miles Marketplace. This portal allows you to register a credit card and earn bonus Hawaiian Airlines miles when you use your registered card to shop in-store. While there aren’t yet a lot of stores to choose from, there is one from a category very difficult to earn bonus miles from: grocery.

It’s only one extra mile per dollar spent at Whole Foods, but when added to the points earned from your credit card of choice, that could start to add up.

As for earning Hawaiian miles otherwise, I recently signed up for their loyalty program, and they sent me a targeted credit card offer in the mail not long after.

The offer is for 50K Hawaiian miles after spending $1K in the first three months, which is 15K more miles than the public offer.

Unfortunately the $89 annual fee is not waived the first year, but this is still a tempting offer if you live somewhere Hawaiian Airlines services.

Please let me know if there are additional options for earning in-store bonus miles that I missed. Thanks!