When I shop online for whatever we need in our household—dog food, new shoes, shampoo, whatever—I’ve settled on using Rakuten to make sure I’m bringing in whatever extra points I can when I do it. And I say “settled”—in the “OMG, finally, I can relax now” sense, not in the “I guess this will have to do” sense—because I used to do so much more comparison work to see which online shopping portal offered the most points or miles per dollar spent, and now I don’t have to. I’ve finally figured out that Rakuten is the method of least resistance that also gets the most reliably solid return. You can always count on me to find the absolute laziest way to earn the most miles! (If I wanted it to sound nicer, I’d say it’s a deep commitment to efficiency, but let’s call it what it is.) So here’s what you need to know about why using Rakuten can be a really smart choice for online shopping.

Shopping-portal basics. Each airline has their own shopping portal, and Chase Ultimate Rewards has its own portal, too. If you haven’t ever used one before, all you need to know is that when you go to a portal (which is just a website you log into with your frequent-flyer info) and click through to the store you want to shop from, once you click into the store through the portal, the portal leaves cookies that track your purchase and earn you points or miles based on how much you spent. So if I needed to buy something at PetSmart, instead of navigating straight to the PetSmart website, I’d go to a portal, log in, and click through to PetSmart through the portal. Then my PetSmart purchase would earn me points or miles. The products you buy are the same, the prices are the same, and the only difference is that you also earn points or miles for buying something you needed anyway.

An ancient, convoluted process. In the olden days, when I somehow had more free time (????) and I needed to buy something online, my first step would be to look up the store I wanted to buy something from on a cash-back/coupon site to get a rough idea how many points per dollar each portal was giving for that store that day. (Each portal tends to offer different numbers of points per dollar, and it varies a lot day to day.) Because those sites weren’t always 100% accurate, I’d next end up double-checking with the top contenders’ portals. And then once I figured out the real winner, I’d log into that shopping portal, buy the item, and then earn that portal’s points or miles. It was fairly tedious and I actually stopped even bothering with portals for a while because it was taking more time than it was worth to me.

A new era of efficiency. A couple of years ago, two good friends told me to just use Rakuten. And I did, because when you have friends with good judgment, you do what they say! And I was totally won over. Using Rakuten instead of comparing all the portals has been worth it for me because I’ve found that Rakuten usually has the highest or near-highest payouts per dollar and I can just install their browser extension and shop without even thinking about portals. The browser extension just magically pops up to tell me when a store I’m shopping at offers rewards (and it also searches for discount codes). If I need something from PetSmart, I just go to the PetSmart site and then the little purple Rakuten alert pops up to tell me to activate my shopping bonus. And that’s it! There is no more first step of going to a portal. You just shop and it’s easy.

There may be random occasions where other portals might offer slightly higher payouts, but overall I’m pretty confident that the tradeoff I’m making with Rakuten being so much easier and faster has benefitted me more over the long run. I’d rather know I’m getting a good deal 90% of the time and save a bunch of hassle than try for that extra 10% with extra work, or worse yet, refuse to even bother with the extra hassle and not earn any extra points at all.

Membership Rewards (MR) points. The really cool thing I like the most about Rakuten that makes their system my favorite is that instead of getting airline-specific points or cash back, you can select the option to have your “cash-back” points converted into Membership Rewards points and deposited into to your American Express MR account. If you don’t have an American Express card, Rakuten’s cash back is still a great option, but given the choice, I’d choose MR points. (My go-to AmEx card is usually the Gold card because it earns 4x on groceries and restaurants, but the Platinum card has also recently won me over because of the huge sign-up bonus and lounge benefits.)

Linking your Rakuten account and your American Express account isn’t complicated, and once you’ve done it, all your purchases from that point will earn MR points instead of cash back.

My recommended strategy:

1. Sign up for a Rakuten account through a referral link from someone you know. If you just sign up for an account on your own right on their website, you’ll earn a small bonus after your first purchase (e.g., $10 bonus after you spend $25), but if you use a friend’s referral link, the friend earns a larger bonus and you do, too (e.g., $40 each after you spend $40). (If you don’t know anyone who can send you a referral link, you can use mine.)
2. After you’ve signed up, if you have an American Express card and you want to earn MR points, follow the instructions outlined on Rakuten’s website and link your two accounts. From that point forward, your purchases will earn MR points, not cash back. If you don’t have an American Express card, cash back is still pretty great!
3. Once you’ve linked the accounts, any purchases you make will earn MR points, and if you make the initial purchases to earn that bonus from the referral, you’ll be getting at least 4,000 MR points just from that alone.

If you have time and don’t mind comparing the different shopping portals’ payouts whenever you need to buy things online, that can be a great way to earn a few extra hundred or thousand miles here and there. Sometimes that’s all you need to top up your account enough to book a trip. But whatever you do, pick some kind of shopping portal so you’re not buying things without also helping earn yourself more travel!