Reminder: Delta SkyMiles Membership Bonus Offer Up to 40,000 Miles

Update: Some offers mentioned below are no longer available. View the current offers here – Gold Delta SkyMiles® Credit Card from American Express

We've gotten a lot of new readers over the past few months, so I wanted to write a quick basics post for beginners that is also a good reminder for those of you who have been on the site for a while now about a lucrative Delta promotion that's a great opportunity to rake in thousands of bonus Delta SkyMiles.

Basically, if you are new to SkyMiles (you can create a new account here) you can get up to 40,000 bonus SkyMiles for completing a number of actions, similar to the US Airways Grand Slam promotion. You must register for the promo here within 30 days of creating your SkyMiles account, so don't forget!

Key Details: "To qualify for this offer, members must maintain a valid email address and remain opted in to receive (via email) Fare Sales and Last Minute Deals, your SkyMiles Statement, Delta Partner Offers, SkyMiles Promotions, and Travel & SkyMiles Info. Email preferences may be updated by going to delta.com/profile. Qualifying activities must take place after enrollment and be completed within 12 months from enrollment date. Activity prior to enrollment will not qualify for bonus miles."

Low Hanging Fruit: 30,000 Miles

1. 15,000 miles: You get up to 15,000 SkyMiles for taking round-trip Delta flights. 5,000 bonus miles on your first Delta flight and an additional 2,500 bonus miles for each of your next four subsequent round-trip flights.

2. 5,000 miles: When you redeem 10,000 miles on anything - flights, hotels, cars, etc. - and you get 5,000 miles back, essentially a 50% rebate.

3. 5,000 miles: When you do things like like transferring hotel points into SkyMiles (note: a stay at a hotel with miles credited to Delta such as with Hilton HHonors Double Dipping counts the same as transferring in points from that partner) or buying/transferring miles, you get 500 bonus miles per partner or transaction up to a total of 5,000 bonus miles. The buying/transferring miles transactions are usually pretty expensive, though, so I'd focus on hotel transfers if you've got a few hotel stays coming up, or transferring points from Amex Membership Rewards or even earning miles through Delta's dining program (Plus there's a 1,500 mile bonus for new SkyMiles dining members), which all count.

Just for reference, Delta's hotel partners include: A Club (Accor), Choice, Club Carlson, Hilton, Hyatt, Marriott, Priority Club, Melisa, Starwood (Platinum members can transfer as few as 1 point to 1 SkyMile), Taj, Wyndham.

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4. 5,000 miles: In addition to the current offer of 30,000 bonus miles toward award travel when you sign up for the Gold Delta American Express card and spend $500 on the card in the first three months from account opening, new SkyMiles members who sign up for the promo and get the card will earn an additional 5,000 bonus miles. The $95 annual fee is waived the first year.

More Expensive: 10,000 Miles
To earn those final 10,000 SkyMiles, you have to join the Delta Skyclub with a 1 or 3-year membership, which will cost you $450 or $1,215 respectively (since you will be a new member, you won't be getting any discounts from Medallion status) plus a $50 initiation fee.

Although some of the actions required to earn the full bonus amounts are expensive (SkyClub membership) or time-consuming (racking up roundtrip flights) than others, there are plenty of easy ways to earn thousands of bonus miles through this promotion.

This promo is for new members only, so if you have an existing account, it won't work, unfortunately. However if you might have had a SkyMiles account in the past but you haven't been active for a while, you could try creating a new one from scratch and seeing if that works, though I'm not sure if Delta will be able to match up addresses or other personal information on their back end. If you're a new SkyMiles member, though, there's no reason not to sign up for this one and it doesn't look targeted.