Originally Posted by Frugal Travel Guy

Upfront I will note:

1. My blog has been purchased by Internet Brands, owners of Flyertalk. As far as I know it is the only blog to date purchased from this niche. I have complete control over content of Frugal Travel Guy and am under no restrictions on the blog content. There are also no restrictions placed on me on what I contribute to Flyertalk.

2. I was interviewed by ABC Nightiline about our travel niche and exposed the niche to 4-5 million viewers in one evening.

3. I started with affiliate links in 2007 so am also probably the longest runner of affiliate links in the niche.

With that being said, I started my blog on October 27, 2007 after reading in USA Today about a lady that monetized her cooking blog with advertising. I immediately knew this was how I was going to spread all the information I had learned in my first six years on Flyertalk to more people than just my friends. My motives were dual. Spread the word and monetize if successful. It took readership to make it worthwhile. In the original days of the blog I earned 40 cents on a Restaurant.com $2 gift certificate. I kept writing and answering reader emails. It lasted that way until 2009 when I was finally approved for my first credit card links by Amex. Two full years of blogging and answering emails. In order to get a credit card company to approve your blog you needed readership and content worthy of their approval. Now, if you join BoardingArea.com you can use their collective readership to get approved right out of the gate. I know. I've have newbie bloggers tell me so.

In September of 2010 as a result of the financial crisis, credit card companies were starving for new applicants with good credit scores. They increased the earnings on credit card links significantly. (they are now moving back down somewhat). In the spring of 2011 I was approached by one independent blogger asking about affiliate links. He had a terrific blog with informative content and I told him where to get the info he needed. There were now two of us with affiliate links.

Not until the fall of 2011 did the other bloggers realize what was happening. The proliferation of blogs running affiliate links broke in one week with Lucky being first follwed by Gary. They were the only two that I knew of that had a readership sufficient to get approval to run affilate ads. That same week I heard the stories; "if I join BoardingArea I can get affiliate links" Now you know why there are so many bloggers running affiliate ads.

Have we ruined Flyertalk, heck no, we just condensed the information into short day to day pieces. Its not Flyertalk that created the frenzy of bloggers, its the company that got all the bloggers approved for running cc ads by joining BoardingArea. And as many of you have suggested, we can't put the genie back in the bottle. And there is only so much news in a given day. You are now reading about 45 newpapers (or blogs) per day on the same topic.

Our collective readership is still less than that of Flyertalk. That information is publicly available. Blogs are monitored by the travel companies and so is Flyertalk. We have gone from a fraternity of 15,000 when I joined in July 2001 to a heathy community with 400,000 members and countless lurkers. It is our size that is killing deals quicker, not just the blogs. We have reached the critcal mass where everything is being watched. The companies that want our business now are the credit card companies. Look at page one of Milebuzz. It is credit cards, credit cards and more credit cards. That and the US Airways Grand Slam are the two biggies left.

Do blogers contribute to the space?

Absolutely. I'll point out my identifying my local branch of Suntrust Bank and there processing of 10 million Delta miles for my our readers. The sample reconsideration letters I've posted and the tricks I learned on churning in bulk from threads I read on Fatwallet looong before card churning became fashionable in this niche. I first churned cards for the interest arbitrage on the days of 0% balance transfers with no transfer fees. Many other bloggers have contributed information as well that was not gleaned from Flyertalk but was original thought and content.

If there was ever an opportunity to potentially ruin the niche it was with the ABC Nightline piece where we were exposed to 4-5 million viewers in one night. In reality, it changed nothing. Everyone of us knows that 99% of the public just doesn't get it. Its taken 11 years to increase of readership to a measily 400,000 when each and every one of the "untaught" would love to see the world the way we do. My readership bumped for two days after the ABC piece and then returned to normal.

My suggestion about bloggers remains the same as it always has: pick the few that provide you with content you want and don't read the rest. Why would you read or even bother to complain about the balance? Seems like a waste of time to me.

Just my personal opinion but I think what is hurting Flyertalk is the tone of some of the posts. My buddy Bikeguy illustrated it best to me with this quote from his Faces of Flyertalk post and I paraphrase:

"Answer other people's posts as if you were standing right in front of them. Would you be that rude in person?"

Hopefully not