| Sorry, this deal has ended. |
Update 8/1/22: The Sam’s Club affiliate program sent out an email today advising that they’ll be continuing to pay commission on gift card purchases. That should mean that clicking through from a shopping portal should continue to offer cashback/rewards. Provided that is indeed the case, that could be another quick and easy way to hit the spending thresholds for the various airline shopping portal bonuses right now.
Good news! The affiliate program for Sam’s Club has emailed affiliates advising that from July 10-15 they’ll be paying out commissions on a wider selection of items that are normally excluded. That includes:
- Electronics
- Laptops
- Gift cards
- Video games
- Consumables
The inclusion of gift cards is particularly pleasing because Sam’s Club already offers discounts on a wide range of gift cards. There’ll likely be even better deals from July 10-15 as Sam’s Club is going to run a Super Saver event, presumably in competition with Amazon’s Prime Day event which is being held from July 12-13 this year.
The reason this matters is because it means that buying gift cards from Sam’s Club after clicking through from a shopping portal should track and pay out. The affiliate program has also announced that the commission rate for purchases will increase, so hopefully that means shopping portals will offer increased rates this coming week.
If we’re lucky, airline shopping portals will also run some kind of bonus points/miles promotions when spending $x; if so, that’ll boost your portal earnings even further.
What’s not clear is if buying Sam’s Club gift cards themselves will earn via shopping portals or if only third party gift cards will. From what I can remember in the past, Sam’s Club gift cards were eligible during similar past periods like this, but there’s no guarantee that would happen again.
When it comes to buying gift cards from Sam’s Club online, a couple of good options are the Cash App debit card with the 5% Sam’s Club Boost applied, or personal Citi cards with the 5% Sam’s Club Citi Merchant Offer loaded to them.
Helps to have your own affiliate accounts to bypass the middle man. Got 9% for my Sam’s Club private offer but I bring in more sales than most.
If you are placing large $$ orders, Sam’s might still not pay out, especially if the rebate website doesn’t specifically state that gift cards will get cash back. Last December, swagbucks had a 10% offer, and I placed an order for $1350 (3x $500 Southwest gift cards with a 10% discount). It tracked, but never credited, and the entry just disappeared entirely. Same thing happened with ordering using the JetBlue portal. I did have some <$250 orders pay out.
Looks like the terms of the 5% Sam’s Club Citi merchant offer excludes gift cards:
I’d be surprised if that gets enforced, but perhaps they’ve got some way of filtering out third party gift card purchases.
Third party gift cards worked fine for me a few weeks ago. Posted pretty quick too. Didn’t try any open-loop cards
The AA portal is still explicitly saying that gift cards are excluded from receiving miles. Would you just ignore that statement and hope it credits?
I’d probably ignore it, but there wouldn’t be any recourse if it didn’t track.
When did Sam’s Club say it is going to STOP paying out on these categories like gift cards once more?
There wasn’t an end date listed unfortunately.
Any updates? Are GCs at Sam’s still tracking?