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The Easy Way To Earn thousands Of Avios Without Flying

Today I will share with you the easiest way to earn Avios without flying anywhere. 

Many people believe that earning Avios comes only from flying. However, this is not the case and for me personally, even using my British Airways American Express card doesn’t yield as many points as my other “trick”. 

It is much more manageable and straightforward than many people think, and I also find it cheaper. 

I have a loyalty program guide on how you can start with loyalty programs, but I also received a lot of questions about how you can collect Avios without flying. 

Let’s be honest flying only get you so many points, especially if you are flying on a cheap sale ticket and have no status. It won’t get you faster enough to a dream business class seat. 

I have written before about upgrading from British Airways premium economy to business class on Avios, and this article was once again inspired due to it. 

Here is what I do for collecting the most amount of Avios points without flying or spending on things I don’t need—all just by living your life.

For pretty much EVERYTHING I can collect points via BA e-shop I will.

What is BA e-shop

British Airways has a shopping portal, like a referral site where you can shop pretty much any retailer via their link and instead of cashback which you would typically receive with Topcashback, you receive Avios. 

The best thing about this is that pretty much anything you need to buy online from a retailer is on the e-shop portal.  

Also, you can earn points on hotels as well, so even if you don’t have a loyalty status with any brand, you can use it, for example, to earn extra Avios when booking with Hotels.com. My favourite hotel program for those without status as you receive a free night after a 10-night stay in the form of credit. 

You can also find pretty much anything else you need.

Why is it worth it?

Many times retailers will have extra Avios offer for spending with them. 

ba shopping portal

For example:

  • ASOS offers at the moment 9 Avios for £1 spend. 
  • Lego UK offers up to 15 Avios for £1 spend, which is excellent if you are shopping for Christmas or Eid. 
  • Booking.com is offering 6 Avios for £1 spend
  • Hotels.com is offering 4 Avios for £1 spend (all at the time of writing this article) 

Offers do change, but you do get my point. With January sales I am sure there will be great deals. And you can rank up the Avios much faster.

Here is the portal link

How I British Airways E-shop and earn Avios

Example 1: 

During the Black Friday sale, I needed to buy a few things for my daughter mini MTG, and since I was buying online, I went via the BA e-shop. 

Two weeks later I received 1500 Avios for just spending £100 on baby clothes. 

Example 2: 

My husband needed a new Mac computer, so what did I do? 

I went on BA shopping ordered via the Apple link and received 9 Avios per £1. In total, I think we received about 6,500 Avios for this. 

Then we headed to the store to collect the said Mac. 

I also shop my beauty products online and anything else we might need that I can find online. Even if I go into the store and see it, I will order it online. 

a snapshot of my ba shopping portal
my recent BA shopping portal avios

Example 3: 

Since I am currently in Dubai, I was looking for hotels, I found the Barcelo brand, which is Spanish and didn’t think much of it since it is not a major brand. 

However, knowing BA e-shopping, I decided to check out if they have it. Low and behold, they were there. Offering 6 Avios per £1 spend. 

So my almost £2,000 hotel spend earned me a very lovely 11,364 Avios for doing nothing more than finding myself a Black Friday hotel deal. 

Over the years, I have managed to rank up many more points but living my life and shopping without having to fly a lot. 

I always get asked how I can afford travelling, but I have also covered this here

I won’t normally shop just for the sake of it, but if we need things and I am going to use ASOS to buy clothes or Selfridges has an offer then I will use them. 

Within a year you can earn a decent amount of points you can use to upgrade your travel experience as I have mentioned here. 

The good news is also that even if you don’t live in the UK, you can still earn Avios if you have a goal of using them either on a British Airways flight or a One World alliance flight. 

I used a lot of them on Qatar Airways when living in Qatar and saved myself thousands of pounds.

flying with a baby while earning avios via ba shopping portal
three months old mini MTG on Qatar flight booked with Avios

How can you multiply your Avios rewards? 

I have mentioned before about Amex Gold card and how you can earn Avios or points for other loyalty programs. The card is not a charge card anymore sadly but credit card however still a great starter card. 

I also have in my wallet the Amex British Airways premium card which comes with a yearly fee, but it gives you a voucher for 2 for 1 on Avios flight redemption after spending £10,000 on it. 

For example, a flight to Dubai in business class is 100,000 Avios return per person plus £500 approx taxes. If you were a couple, you would have to pay 200,000 Avios a £1000 in taxes. When using the voucher, you reduce the Avios component, and you only pay 100,000 for two though you still need to pay the taxes. 

However, the BA Avios also gives you 1,5 Avios on £1 spend, so you know which is the primary card I use when purchasing things. 

I can stack up the BA e-shop offers with my credit card, and if I have an offer within the Amex portal, it is where I get the happiest. 

Of course, the amount of Avios you can collect depends significantly on the shopping you do, but I would say on average a year with clothes shopping and gifts etc. you can easily save 20,000 or more. 

I usually shop on sale, and when the BA shopping portal has extra Avios, so this makes it more lucrative, and I think I have collected about 50,000 Avios this way.

earning avios with ba e shop
my daughter never sitting still

Is it worth the effort?

When playing any loyalty game, a great question is to know what is worth it to you. 

You have to be motivated to learn and go that extra step you need, but also keep it simple enough, so it becomes second nature. 

It requires a little effort, but I think the benefit outweighs the one extra click you need.

For example, if your dream is to fly business class, then you are motivated to find ways and go that extra mile when you cannot afford the price tag of the flight outright. 

For me, this is worth it as Avios has improved my experience of flying especially after my daughter was born. I had to fly with her at four weeks old, and having space more privacy to feed her was worth everything. 

Now that is a toddler and won’t sit still, having the extra space to relax and play and keep her occupied is worth it even more. (I am sure all toddler mamas know what I mean)

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