How LazyPoints Makes Money (and How You Can Support It)
Tl;dr: We want to sustain the blog and my coffee addiction while always pointing you to the best ways to maximize your points lazily.
[Why LazyPoints Exists]
I think LazyPoints is the finest sloth-themed travel hacking website on the Internet. Our goal? Help you earn more points, travel better (and more), and make it free—without spending more or trying too hard.
This blog was born from me bugging my wife. I had never paid much attention to credit cards or points, but one day the dam broke. I was an early adopter of the Bilt Mastercard–free points just for paying rent? Can it really be that easy? Yes it can, it turned out. Then I kept coming back with new discoveries. Extra points at some of our favorite restaurants? On our Starbucks orders? Airbnb bookings? Gas? All just link-and-forget or a single click? Mind. Blown.
She asked me to channel it. (Into a blog, away from her.) ((She retains her title as LazyPoints Chief Design Officer.))
In the past few years since then, I’ve signed up for five or six credit cards, paid maybe a few hundred dollars in net annual fees, and flown with my wife to Europe twice and Japan twice. We only used her points on one ticket to Japan. I currently have my points invested in refundable tickets for two to both Europe and Japan (we’re nothing if not consistent). I still have several hundred thousand points left from sign up bonuses and our regular spending–even with an unspectacular income, millennial dining-out habits and Bay Area rents add up to a lot of Bilt points (3x on dining, 1x on rent).
It’s astonishing to me how much more we have traveled recently, and how much better, while actually spending less on our trips. And it has been easy. And I’ve enjoyed talking about these tips and tricks in the blog. But at a certain point, I need to make the site somewhat sustainable, so today I want to talk about our plans for monetization.
[[What Running LazyPoints Costs Us]]
We sprang for a custom domain and a sloth-mascot generator (I hope you like “LP”--I’ve had a lot more fun since we introduced him to the site). I also spend a decent amount of time blogging in coffee shops, so there’s time and coffee expense… though to be honest I was probably going to be drinking a lot of coffee and talking about credit cards to anyone who would listen anyway. And then sometimes I use the blog as an excuse to try something “for science” 🧪and maybe write about in the blog. That’s how I ended up with a Hilton Aspire (report on my “free” luxury stay to come).
[[How we make money]]
We don’t! Our Thrifty Traveler Review is quite popular, so I think I have a lifetime supply of that service thanks to referrals. We also got $30 from a Rakuten referral–and I felt terrible! That person must have found the link at the wrong time; if they had waited, they probably could have gotten $40 instead of $30. Rakuten is great, I’m going to write a post in the future about waiting to make sure you get the best bonus.
But we do have a couple pathways for revenue, and I’m hoping we can set up a pathway to make a little income without having a reader lose out again. So I’m focusing on three main pathways: referrals, direct support, and affiliate links.
[Referrals]
We have referral links to a variety of our favorite products when they are available and make sense. These allow us to earn some extra points if you sign up for the referred card (usually $25-100 worth of points per referral). As I wrote about in the LazyPoints Method series, I can refer the Bilt Mastercard and the Capital One Venture X (both links referrals!) because they are genuinely the two best cards on the market in my opinion and, as far as I know, using my referral link would have gotten you the best offer available on both cards for the entire time I have been blogging. So if you think those cards might work for you, we’d really appreciate you using those links to apply (after a quick search to make sure I haven’t overlooked some other pathway to even more points).
But most other cards don’t work this way. For instance, I love the IHG Premier, and I have a referral link. When the card is offering its base 140,000-point offer, my referral link does the same, but when the card has an increased offer, my link offers less. So I don’t include the link in my post about how you should wait for a max offer before getting that card. But I do include it in my card review–the one that says you should wait to get 165k points or more. If you decide you need it now, I’d appreciate you using our link if it won’t cost you anything, but I’d really prefer you hold out for more points if you can.
[Buy me a coffee]
Because I can’t currently get a referral or affiliate bonus on some of the best cards, or could only get one by sending you a bad deal, most of the links on my site are not referrals (they’ll say so if they are). The LazyPoints Method is all about maximizing bonuses, so if the site helps you do that, consider buying me a coffee. ☕
Buy Me a Coffee is a platform for tipping creators—think Venmo, but with more caffeine. You can go to our Buy Me a Coffee site and make a contribution–my default “coffee” is $3. If you follow my advice, time a max bonus, and get 175k points for your IHG Premier instead of 140k, that’s about $175 in added points value. Please grab those points. Skip my link. But if you want to subsidize the ube latte I drank writing the newsletter, we’d be grateful.
[Affiliate links]
We are experimenting with affiliate links, starting out with Amazon. I don’t love this, because it’s a little salesy and awkward (especially because the FTC and Amazon rightly require us to announce we’re getting compensated if you make a purchase).
At the same time, though, there are a handful of products that have genuinely improved my travel experiences (like the Flight Flap) that I can enthusiastically recommend with a clean conscience. So I’m going to sprinkle in a little bit of this content to see if anyone is interested.
[Where we’re headed and how you can help]
This is a passion project, but I'd love to make back my costs. Maybe get some coffee money for all the hours writing posts in cafes. Long term? Some people turn these types of blogs into full-time jobs–we’d love to join them. But there are some lines I don't want to cross to get there.
If you’re not inclined to use our links or subsidize my caffeine addiction, that’s totally okay. There are plenty of great, free ways to support the site like:
Signing up for our newsletter, LazyPoints Weekly
Sharing our site with friends
Sharing content on social media (I’m too lazy to manage that myself)
Thanks for reading! 🦥💳✈️