If you drool all over yourself when thinking about the deals you'll score this coming Cyber Monday, Citi has yet another deal for you to help kick off the holiday shopping season. $200 cash back, in the form of a statement credit, for spending just $500 online within the first 3 months on the new Citi Diamond Preferred Card. That's a 40% return on your initial $500 spend, which is an awesome deal for a no annual fee credit card. Most other card offers will require at least a $1,000 spend during the first 3 months to qualify for signup bonuses, so this is especially great if you plan to spend less this year on your shopping but still want to enjoy an attractive cash back bonus. While it's not entirely clear how purchases will be categorized as online or not, any shopping you do on sites like Amazon or Etsy should obviously count as online purchases. However, If you do purchase something from a store that has brick-and-mortar locations as well, I would make sure you check your statements closely to verify that all the transactions are properly categorized as "online" purchases.  There are bound to be mistakes.

*Update* Oct. 24th, 2011: This card offer is no longer available.  Check out the current details of the Citi ThankYou Preferred Card instead. For those of you that have absolutely no interest in shelling out a $125 annual fee for the Citi ThankYou Premier Card, Citi just launched a new credit card offer last week that you probably won't find in your mailbox or many other places online.  Here's a quick overview of the card if you happen to be in the right financial place to take advantage of a great signup bonus this Fall. The Citi ThankYou Preferred Card provides new cardholders with the opportunity to earn up to 50,000 bonus ThankYou points during the first year of use.  That's worth up to $500 in gift cards via the ThankYou network or perhaps even more if you redeem the 50,000 points for travel.  In order to get the full 50,000 bonus points, you'll have to meet the following two requirements:

(Update: This offer is no longer available. Check out the current listings of available Citibank credit cards on Creditnet.com.)

I've been reviewing (and personally using) the Citi ThankYou Premier Card since 2008 when it was originally called the Citi PremierPass Elite Card.  I loved it back then, and I still "like" it a lot today. While there's no doubt Citi has watered down this card offer quite a bit over the years, the fact is it continues to rank among the top tier of travel rewards credit cards. Feel free to read my previous review for all the details about why the "Citi ThankYou Premier Card Still Makes Me Smile".

One of the most common questions I receive from Creditnet readers is "How can I rebuild my bad credit?"  My responses generally include several suggestions, but the first recommendation I give is always the same- you need to build positive payment history. Sure, there are quite a few other tricks you can try that may provide short-term credit score boosts, but building positive payment history will have more of a lasting effect on your FICO scores than anything else.