Originally Posted by
belfordrocks
^^^
Plus I wouldn't even call it well established... definitely not to the point of Gary or even Ben's blog I think... It's at this moment one giant advertising farm, trying to rope in as many marks as possible through tons of advertising deceptively dressed up as content. Too bad people still fall for it and give these people money to keep pulling the same sort of garbage on us.
Those people who have a real passion for flying and blogged about the joy of air travel (Gary, Ben etc) have earned the right to use affiliate links when they came along IMO. Otherwise those in the "boom" of bloggers entering the market post-introduction of affiliate links are just trying to milk as much money out of it as possible under the pretense of helping and deserve nothing but contempt.
Looking at the blogoshpere from the outside in, having just learned a lot more about affiliate links in this thread, it seems pretty clear that there are lots and lots of folks who are more interested in making money than pursuing their travel/points and miles passion. It would be interesting to see what would happen if affiliate programs disappeared tomorrow....how many of the hundreds of points and miles blogs would simply disappear? I suspect most.
I know I am naively anachronistic, but I do find the money-motivation aspect of what used to be a pure altruistic sharing of information to be depressing. I guess that just proves that I am turning into a cranky old man...HEY! GET OFF MY LAWN! Sadder still that it was Randy, that good old hippie, who sold our commune to evil corporate developers. Not that I blame him, mind you. To the contrary. But that certainly drove a lot of the notion that there was gold to be mined from providing services to the points and miles community.
I also blame Tim Ferris...obviously a lot of the current crop of bloggers picked up his book at the airport and are trying to put it to practice.
Oh well, FlyerTalk is still here for those of us who don't care for free information being re-packaged and sold for a price.
For the rest, did you know that INK Bold has no foreign transaction fee!? Sign up TODAY! Or at least pay to come to my seminar so I can tell you more about how you should use my affiliate program!
Step right up! Get 'em while they're hot!