Every once in a while someone mentions the Barclaycard Travel Community and how you can earn points by posting your trip reports. What I’ve never seen anyone post is how ridiculously easy it is. I wanted to share with you today how using my archives as inspiration I’m earning an average of 20,000 points a month. Best of all, they’re risk-free “pajama points”- no MS or reselling required.
What is the Barclaycard Travel Community and who can use it?
The Barclaycard Travel Community is a forum where people can share their travel stories. What makes it good is that they’ll give you 100 miles for a story, 50 miles for a photo and 10 miles for a location pin. Anyone can join and if you’re an Arrival+ cardmember the miles go right to your Arrival account. If you’re not, they’ll cash out as Amazon gift cards- but a much lower rate: 2500 points gets you $25 towards travel spend on an arrival+ card or a $5 Amazon GC. You’ll even get 500 miles just for completing your profile.
You also earn 10 miles if someone gives your story a like. Mine are under “DealMommy”; leave your username below and I’ll try to throw you some love. To find a member just use the search icon on the top right corner.
Here’s what takes the “good” into “no-brainer” territory
There are two features about the Barclaycard Travel Community I’ve found useful and can share with you. They have both cut the time needed to post and have greatly increased how many points I earn with the program.
- You only need 100 words per post. Obviously if you’re a blogger coming up 100 words takes no time at all. However, even if you’re not a blogger you probably have more ready-made content than you realize. How many reviews have you posted on TripAdvisor and Yelp? What about your Facebook and Instagram streams? You’d be amazed how easy it is to get to the 100 mark. I make sure the words are my own, but I’ve pulled ideas from all sorts of places. Note: I recommend editing what you’ve written so it’s not exactly cut and paste. Use your reviews as inspiration and to jog your memory.
- You can add 25 pins per story! That’s up to an extra 250 miles for 10 word snippets about restaurants, hotels, stores, transport tips, whatever. Theoretically you could earn 400 points per story, but I think 25 pins each might be stretching it. I try for 5. You can even cross post your material from one post into snippets for another post.
The Limits
The biggest limit I’ve hit is that you can only post five stories per city, ever. One workaround for this is to make sure you’re posting about a very specific location: IE, instead of “New York City” post to “Manhattan” or even “Times Square”. Their mapping system doesn’t lump them together if Google doesn’t.
Other than that you can post up to 100 stories a month, every single month. Now that I have practice, I can post up to 20 posts with 20 photos and 100 pins per hour: 4000 no-brainer miles earned while watching TV or catching up on the Saverocity podcast.
Are you a Barclaycard Travel Community fan? How many miles have you earned? Please share any tips you’ve learned in the comments.
The Deal Mommy is a proud member of the Saverocity network.
Great review / suggestion. I had used it a little bit before but then decided it wasn’t worth the hassle. Your post has definitely gotten me interested again!
Hi David, the juice is definitely worth the squeeze.
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It has been a while since I have posted to the travel community.
How long does it take for the miles to post?
I get them in an average of 24 hours.
I just started doing this in some spare time, super easy and kinda fun thinking back on stuff. When you say 24 hours to post, you just mean post the points to the travel site, right? How long does it take to actually show up in you Arrival+ account?
I’ve had them show up in my Arrival+ account as soon as 24 hours- usually no more than 3 days or so.
If I don’t have an arrival+ card, but plan to get one, can I get started earning miles? I only have the AA card currently.
Hi Dizzy,
Just don’t get to 2500 as they’ll automatically give you a $5 Amazon card if you do. Better to wait till they’re connected.
The people on the site will report you and they will kick you off and not let you back on.
Thanks for your comment. The rules disallow cut and paste, but if you’re writing actual posts -using your archives as inspiration- you are playing by the rules provided.
I tried breaking it up by Manhattan/Brooklyn/Queens but no dice. It says that i’ve posted 5 stories already.
Thanks for the update. Looks like their mapping software is catching up.
I made close to $5000 off this about 2.5 years ago… eventually got banned but it was a good time.
I saw this post a while back and bookmarked it, and now finally am getting around to writing some trip reports to put on the site. I have no idea how you can write 20 stories an hour though! For me it’s maybe 4 or 5 at the very most, and I find trying to add a bunch of pins to be a hassle as well so I’ve been skipping those. Fortunately I’ve received a few kudos on some of them already so that helps. Thanks for making this post though and explaining the basics. I took a cross country road trip earlier this year and it’s coming in handy for sure in terms of ideas and pictures to post!
Glad to hear- and it’s definitely something that improves with practice. You’ll get faster in no time.
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