An excellent way to earn extra miles and points is by making your purchase through online shopping portals. Over the past week or so, there’s been news of a bunch of Back To School shopping portal bonus offers.

Check them out:

• American Airlines
• Southwest Airlines
• United Airlines

Another great way to earn extra miles (and a great way to extend the expiration on your account) is through airline and hotel dining programs.

While many programs have bonus offers for signing up and completing a dine or two, a couple of these offers stand out, at least for now.

Currently American Airlines’ AAdvantage Dining is offering a bonus of up to 2,000 miles while United’s MileagePlus Dining is offering a bonus of 1,500 miles.

Once you sign up for the programs and register your credit/ debit cards, when you pay the bill (with the registered card) at participating locations, you can earn miles for it.

Let’s take a look at the offers:

AAdvantage Dining:

1. Join the AAdvanage Dining Program by August 31, 2015.
2. Dine at any participating location (within 30 days), spending $30 or more including tax and tip.
3. Complete the post dine survey within 30 days of your visit.
4. Repeat the second and third step two times and earn 2,000 bonus miles.

You’ll need to sign up for AAdvatage Dining and complete your dining profile by August 31, 2015 and complete your dines within 30 days. One dine will earn you 1,000 miles, while a second dine will earn you an additional 1,000 miles.

MileagePlus Dining:

1. Join the MileagePlus Dining Program by July 31, 2015.
2. Dine at any participating location (within 30 days), spending $30 or more including tax and tip.
3. Complete the post dine survey within 30 days of your visit.
4. Earn 1,500 bonus miles.

For this MileagePlus Dining offer, you’ll need to be sure to sign up within the next week. As long as you sign up by July 31, you’ll still have 30 days to complete one dine.

Since AA requires two dines to earn the full 2,000 miles bonus, if I didn’t have accounts with either program, I’d just do one dine with each program to earn a combined total of 2,500 miles.

Do you find value in using the airline dining programs? I find them to be a good option to earn extra miles. The big problem I have is that there aren’t enough participating restaurants that I want to visit, close to home.

If you’re not already a member, sign up for American Airlines AAdvantage Dining here and United Airlines MileagePlus Dining here.