She Says, He Says: 500+ Arrival Miles With Barclaycard Travel Community Sign-Up
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Update: One or more card offers in this post are no longer available. Check our Hot Deals for the latest offers. Update: The Barclaycard Travel Community will be deactivated on April 27, 2016. He Says: Did you know you can get free miles by writing short stories and posting them on the Barclaycard Travel Community?You earn miles by posting your stories, adding details, and getting kudos from other readers. And you can transfer the miles to your Barclaycard Arrival Plus account, so you can use them as cash back for travel redemptions!
But a Barclaycard Arrival Plus card isn’t required to earn rewards!
She Says: This sounds like a lot of work! But I like that you get 500 miles just for signing-up. It isn’t as much as the 40,000 point (~$440) sign-up bonus on the Barclaycard Arrival Plus Card, but I’ll take points for signing up!
What’s the Barclaycard Travel Community?
Link: Barclaycard Travel Community
Link: Barclaycard Arrival Plus® World Elite Mastercard®
He Says: The Barclaycard Travel Community is an online community, much like a social network, that allows members to share their travel photos and stories with other travel enthusiasts. Once you sign-up and create a profile, you can write and post stories of your own, and read stories written by others.
There’s also a travel blog and a discussion board within the site, where members can ask questions, share information and travel tips, and talk about all things travel-related!
You can also search for stories about specific destinations or attractions, which makes this a really neat tool for researching a destination or planning a trip!
She Says: I dunno, I looked around and it seems like a disorganized version of Yelp to me. I searched for Chicago and all sorts of random travel stories came up without headlines that tell me what they’ll be about.I searched for the Empire State Building and even those weren’t that helpful to me. Some were copy and paste jobs obviously done to earn miles.
Maybe I’m missing something, but there are many established sites for planning a trip from WikiTravel to Rick Steves guidebooks.
He Says: But the best part of this community is being able to earn free Barclaycard Arrival Plus miles just for posting your travel stories and photos. There’s no limit to the number of miles you can earn.So if the travel writer in you is just itching for a creative outlet, this could be a good way to earn some easy miles!
She Says: I already have a creative outlet for my travel writing! 😉How Do You Sign-Up?
He Says: I wanted to check this out, so we registered for an account. You’ll need to create a username, password, and submit your email address.
Barclaycard will email asking you to confirm your account. And you’ll need to add a few details to your profile, like location, travel interests, and a few facts about yourself. You can also add places you’ve visited to a map, so others can see where you’ve traveled.
You’ll earn 500 miles once your profile includes:
- At least 1 travel interest
- At least 1 travel companion
- At least 1 travel style
- Adding at least 5 places you’ve visited to your travel map
If you don’t link an account, you’ll get a $5 Amazon gift certificate for every 2,500 miles you earn.
She Says: If you don’t have a Barclaycard Arrival Plus card yet, you can still register and post stories. But here are some good reasons to get the card!How Do You Earn Miles for Stories?
He Says: Once you’ve signed-up, you can post travel stories with photos. Some ideas for stories might include mini-trip reports, travel tips and tricks, attractions, or restaurant reviews. They’re looking for anything travel-related that can help others in the community!
When you post a story (minimum 50 words or ~3 to 4 sentences and 1 photo…that’s not much!), you’ll earn:
- 150 miles per story, worth $1.65 in travel (150 miles x 1.1 cents per mile)
- 10 miles for every detail you add using an interactive map (no limit to how many you can add)
- 10 miles for every “kudos” you get on your story from other community members
You can write a maximum of 5 stories for a particular destination or locale. But there’s no limit to the total number of stories you can write! Here are some tips for writing a good Barclaycard Travel Community story.
She Says: I don’t know. $1.65 or so for what could be a lot of work for some people doesn’t seem like a very good return on investment to me!Plus, Barclaycard is looking for legitimate stories that can help or inspire others with their travels. They review your content and will kick you off the site if you flood it with useless or irrelevant material.
So while this is an easy way to earn miles, you’ll have to put some thought and effort into your posts! That takes time.
How Can This Add Up?
He Says: If you like writing and helping others, the free miles could add up very quickly. Suppose you submit just 1 story and photo a day and add 5 details. That’s 200 miles, worth $2.20 in travel (200 miles x 1.1 cents per mile).Say you write 20 stories a month. That’s 4,000 miles, or $44 in travel (4,000 miles x 1.1 cents per mile).
That’s not bad at all for just spending a few minutes each day writing travel stories! And if you’re a really prolific writer, you could earn unlimited miles!
She Says: I think most folks would find it difficult to write a post with an original photo (they don’t want you to steal photos) and tagged details in less than 20 minutes. So that’s 400 minutes, which doesn’t including digging up photos and the time it takes to think of 20 travel stories!That’s ~7 hours to earn $44. That’s less than $7 per hour and they’d have to crank out 20 posts. That’s why I think this is great for specific groups of people but not most.
He Says: Retirees, people with lots of free time, stay-at-home parents, and people who already spend hours on sites like Facebook or Yelp might like this. It could be fun and you’ll get some miles in the process. I think it’s an interesting idea!Think about all of our Facebook friends who post photos every day with long comments. Lots of people have time for that!
She Says: Ok, granted. This really isn’t for busy folks, though. I’d sign-up for the easy points. Posting for miles isn’t worth your time but maybe you’ll have fun. Just don’t post lots of personal information!And remember, miles can only be redeemed for what’s considered travel by Barclaycard. But with recent changes to the Barclaycard Arrival Plus card, they’ve expanded their travel categories considerably.
You can read about my experiments to see which airline miles and gift cards got coded as travel, and also my post about which hotel points and gift cards count, too.
You could redeem the miles for non-travel expenses, but you’d only get 0.5 cents per mile, which isn’t good at all.
He Says: I think some of our readers will really get a kick out of this!Bottom Line
He Says: You can earn free miles by writing travel stories and posting photos on the Barclaycard Travel Community.Just for signing-up and completing your profile, you’ll get 500 miles (worth $5.50 in travel). And you’ll earn at least 150 miles for every story you post. There’s no limit to the number of miles you can earn.
By sharing your travel stories, you’ll be helping other readers. And you might learn a few things from their adventures, too!
I see this as a great opportunity. Especially when you’re sharing stories from getting Big Travel with Small Money!
She Says: As you can see, Daraius and I have different opinions about the Barclaycard Travel Community. What do YOU think?Editorial Note: We're the Million Mile Secrets team. And we're proud of our content, opinions and analysis, and of our reader's comments. These haven’t been reviewed, approved or endorsed by any of the airlines, hotels, or credit card issuers which we often write about. And that’s just how we like it! :)
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