For many years, I’ve been writing about the best ways to earn frequent flyer points. But people often ask me how I earn my own points.

In this article, I thought I’d give you a bit of insight into how I personally earn points with Qantas Frequent Flyer and Virgin Australia’s Velocity program during a typical year. For the purpose of this case study, I’ll show you exactly where I earned my points during the last financial year, between July 2022 and June 2023.

All up, over the last 12 months, I earned 614,220 points between my Qantas and Velocity accounts. I earned slightly more of those points through Qantas Frequent Flyer.

How I earn Qantas Frequent Flyer points

I generally find that there are more ways to earn Qantas points than Velocity points, and over the last year I’ve earned Qantas points in a wider variety of ways.

Less than half of Qantas points overall are earned from flying, and that’s consistent with how I earn my points.

My largest source of Qantas points was Qantas Wine offers, where you can regularly get as many as 30,000 bonus Qantas points for buying a case of wine.

I also earned a decent chunk of points by spending money on my Qantas points-earning credit card and through my Bankwest Qantas Transaction account. That said, I’m now using the Bankwest Qantas Transaction account a lot less because interest rates on other bank accounts are now a lot more competitive than they were 1-2 years ago.

I earned a one-off bonus of 60,000 Qantas points last year by taking advantage of a limited-time offer with Optus. (Unfortunately, a few months later, I then had to deal with the fallout from the Optus data breach – but that wasn’t related to the Qantas promotion.)

The 10,000 Qantas points that I earned from a credit card sign-up offer was the second instalment of a two-year offer. I received 40,000 bonus Qantas points last year after signing up for a Bankwest Qantas Platinum credit card, then got another 10,000 points this year for renewing the card.

Full breakdown of Qantas points

Here’s the full breakdown of ways that I earned Qantas points last year:

And here’s an overview of the points earned in different categories:

Unfortunately, I didn’t quite earn enough Qantas points last year to reach Points Club Plus. This requires you to earn at least 350,000 Qantas points during your membership year, with at least 330,000 of those points coming from non-flying activities. That said, I’m happy with the benefits of Points Club (which requires an earn of at least 150,000 points annually).

How I earn Velocity Frequent Flyer points

The majority of the Velocity points that I earned in the last year came from just two Velocity credit card sign-up offers.

One was a recent Westpac Altitude Velocity Platinum offer that came with 70,000 bonus Velocity points. The other was a Virgin Money Velocity card offer that came with 100,000 Velocity points. Those points credited in instalments of 25,000 points/month for each of the first four months when I reached the minimum spend target.

Note that sign-up bonus offers change over time, and those particular ones may have since expired. But you can always find some good current offers in our dedicated guide.

I also earned around 100,000 Flybuys points last year – largely from targeted bonus offers for shopping at Coles. Since I’ve opted in to Velocity Auto Transfer, these automatically converted into Velocity points.

Full breakdown of Velocity points

Here’s a full breakdown of the Velocity points that I’ve earned during the last 12 months:

And here’s an overview of the different categories that I earned Velocity points with:

The main reason that I earned far fewer Velocity points from wine purchases is that Qantas Wine simply has better bonus point offers. So, I purchase most of my wine through Qantas Wine.

Points earned through other loyalty programs

Over the last year, I’ve also earned United MileagePlus miles by crediting Star Alliance flights to that program. And I earned quite a lot of points with IHG One Rewards and Accor ALL from hotel stays.

I earned a few points here and there with various other international frequent flyer and hotel programs as well, in order to prevent the points in my different loyalty program accounts from expiring.

I don’t generally engage with programs that have time-stamping expiration policies. These are programs where your points expire after a fixed period of time, regardless of your account activity. An exception is Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer – but I don’t leave miles sitting in my KrisFlyer account for long periods. Instead, I transfer points into KrisFlyer from Velocity or elsewhere, as needed, then immediately redeem them.

Opportunities to earn more points

I realise that I probably could have earned even more points by pushing the credit card sign-up bonuses a bit harder. If I’m a bit short on points in the future, that would be an easy opportunity to increase my Qantas or Velocity balance quickly.

I also probably could have earned a lot more Everyday Rewards points (which I convert to Qantas points) by making better use of Woolworths’ bonus point offers on gift cards.

That said, I’m pretty comfortable with my current earn rate as it roughly matches the rate at which I redeem points.

Frequent flyer programs can devalue at any time, so I don’t like to accumulate too many points. I try to spend the points just as quickly as I earn them. After all, points aren’t worth anything until you use them. 😉

Admittedly, I did spend a bit of money along the way when accumulating those points. For example, I did need to pay a few credit card annual fees. But I earned most of my points by buying things that I would have bought anyway. (The ability to earn points may have swayed my decision to buy from one company over another, though.)

I’m not afraid to take advantage of good promotions where the value of the points earned is higher than the cost incurred. Last year’s Optus promotion where I spent just under $400 to earn 60,000 Qantas points is one example of that. (As it happens, I did actually need a new phone plan at the time anyway – so the money I spent on that Optus plan was not wasted.)

For many people, credit cards are the fastest way to accumulate frequent flyer points. But as you can see, I earned a combined total of 348,861 points between Qantas and Velocity last year – more than half – from methods other than credit cards.

How do you earn your frequent flyer points?

I hope that sharing my personal points-earning strategies gives you some ideas on how you could earn more frequent flyer points!

Of course, everyone’s strategy is different and everyone’s circumstances are different. If you don’t travel much, or you don’t spend much on credit cards, then earning over 600,000 points per year may not be a realistic goal for you.

That said, if you have large business expenses that you can put through a business credit card, your earning potential may be significantly higher.

I’d be interested to know how many points you earn in a typical year, and how you do it. Feel free to share your own story – and your best points-earning tips – on the Australian Frequent Flyer forum!

Matt Graham

The editor of Australian Frequent Flyer, Matt's passion for travel has taken him to over 90 countries… with the help of frequent flyer points, of course!
Matt's favourite destinations (so far) are Germany, Brazil & Kazakhstan. His interests include aviation, economics & foreign languages, and he has a soft spot for good food and red wine.

You can connect with Matt by posting on the Australian Frequent Flyer community forum and tagging @AFF Editor.