AlohaDaveKennedy

The other group that self promotes are the FTers with signature referral links. Again, nothing against making a buck, but the refer links were a part of what lead to the promotion of the bigcrumbs/AMEX gift card deal which really got AMEX up in arms and lead to the gift cards no longer being accepted. Our bird beaked AMEX friends were not happy about the gold rush of GCs going to buy coins at all. Or so said Cardinal Fangette.

Tiki

The worst thing is that while we more experienced FTers know them for what they are, the newbies they rope in from other sources have no clue that their main skill is copy-pasting and actually THINK these bloggers are bona-fide travel experts.

FAllWay

Agree. Do NOT use any credit card referral links. Its so annoying when they keep talking about a credit card over and over again. I posted few weeks ago about how these bloggers were posting that the new BA CARD Was so great which is totally ........! Wat was it? Spend $25k or $30k in 1 year to get 100k bonus??? ...???
Also, i think someone mentioned that The Points Guy was good??? Hes one of the horrible guys. I think almost all of the Boardingarea bloggers suck. Only 2 or 3 of them are good.

DO NOT USE THEIR REFERRALS

GUWonder

Even as they won't get rich from this, there's enough money and other benefits in it for the bloggers that turning back the hand of time won't happen.

I expect a lot more copycats, but that will just lead to tipping the hat to the better bloggers who will grow their audience and highlight deals for the chopping block even as the graveyard gets populated by copycat blogs.

HansGolden

My apologies. You were last on the list for a reason; I wasn't sure. What is your primary company?

The Frequent Miler blogged that that was the case a few days ago and The Points Guy did so some months ago.

I'm under the impression that TravelSort is a full-time business, but I don't know for sure; it's certainly presented as such.

I was under the impression from my interactions with sbm12 that TWA was full-time, but apparently I was mistaken.

Wow, now there's a massive strawman for ya. I haven't seen any of my co-workers financials, but I'm pretty sure that they work at a travel agency full-time.

flymonthly

This is exactly the kind of post that drives me to rely on certain bloggers for credit card evaluations. You don't even know the correct terms of the BA card that you're railing against. It may not be the be all and end all of cc deals, but it's not nearly as bad as you're saying. So I will continue to support some bloggers by using their referrals.

HansGolden

Exactly. I reward the ones that utilize the proper level of discretion with mega-deals and the ones that are honest/even-handed with better CC offers that are not affiliate links.

TTnC4me

It's astonishing and sad to see the number of personal referral links that are permitted on this board.

Funny, just recently I privately commented to another FTer that I thought a formerly underground deal would be copy/pasted to a blog based on a single post, and it was done within 24 hours!
The problem is that the blogs simply disseminate information and take the credit (and benefit) for (and from) the community behind it.

GUWonder

I may be wrong about the following, but it was my view that jpdx wasn't necessarily saying those referenced deals of the past were killed by bloggers. Rather it is increasingly the case that such kinds of deals won't be discussed as well on FT and things that could make a good deal even sweeter gets undermined with the "brain-drain" and knowledge segmentation/diffusion.

The blogs are helping some people get into some kind of useful action, but they aren't doing FT any favor over the long-haul. If anything, the driving of discussions underground and away from FT has real potential to actually make things worse in the aggregate for FTers.

Spoon-feeding babies doesn't help with the maturing process, and spoon-feeding is what the blogs do in the main.

Getiton

I thoroughly enjoyed all the commentary that has been expressed in this thread but I must go beddy by now as soon it will be morning and my first purpose of a new day is to immediately go to all my many Blogger sites.If time permits I'll check Flyertalk just to see what it may offer in any new ways to assist me in building my cache of Miles and Points.Long live the Blogger.

Tiki

I forgot about tax breaks. Bloggers who quit their day jobs and blog full time (not sure about part time) are not only getting referral and Google ad revenue but they are writing off personal travel as job expenses so essentially they are travelling free.

Or do they file tax returns? Most of them use pseudonyms, does the IRS have any way of tracking stuff like that? I certainly hope so!

iflyjetz

Wow. Interesting topic. Popular thread.

It is impossible to stop the bloggers from posting the deals. You can't turn back time. I understand the frustration but I don't see any viable solutions.

As far as the sudden popularity of money-saving/deal blogs, I think it's due to the poor economy. People are spending some of their free time in order to save a few bucks. (Edit: in many ways, the current economy reminds me of the mid/late 70s. I remember many families clipping coupons when the economy got tough. Many stopped clipping coupons once the economy improved)
And I think that the poor economy is the reason why some of these deals are out there. Companies are trying to find revenue streams.

I don't see a way to stop the spread of this information but I suspect that as the economy improves, the popularity of these blogs will wane. Many of those currently scouring for deals will stop spending free time to find these deals once their personal finances have improved.

explore1234

I am often amused by the questions I see on some of the bloggers comment sections. It's often obvious that they don't understand how the deal works even after being spoonfed. Recently, I saw something along the lines of this: I don't understand gift cards. If I have an Amazon gift card, can I only use it at Amazon or can I use it at the gas station?

Though the information is being spread very widely, I can relax knowing people like this are too stupid to kill the deals.

benzemalyonnais

Right, just look at how bad the MR Deals thread has gotten over the past year.

I'm afraid to post anything decent I find there unless I won't use it, and I really don't do it out of selfishness. As someone who does dedicate a lot of time into finding these 'deals', and isn't a 56-year-old millionaire (or whereabouts) with a lot of extra cash to make up for a lack of available deals, I really find these things (potentially, not quite yet ) taking a toll on my travel life. When I posted a really good KL deal last fall, I got really mad when blogworld wrote about it, didn't give me credit, and then it disappeared quickly. Thankfully, I'd booked 3 of them before posting on FT, but that's just one personal example of how they can destroy our community!

allanfan

If everyone on this board unites to stop using blogger credit card referral links, I wouldn't say we can turn back time, but definitely can have an impact over the long run.

Please, let's united to stop using blogger referral links!