Honestly, and if you read his blog regularly, Ben's quite straightforward about how he pays for his trips -- both on a trip-by-trip basis and with an annual "year in review" summary. He recently noted, for example, that of his 400,000 BIS annual miles, roughly half are fully paid tickets and half are on miles & points.
His regular readers, such as some of us, also know that the 200,000 paid miles are a little complicated: mistake fares, ex-Cairo and ex-Colombo fares, and low-season promotional fares all enter the mix.
He also regularly mentions his high CC spending throughput, given both that he travels 24/7 and that he runs a small business.
That having been said, there's still no denying that the F and luxury hotel "fantasy" thing plays an important part in the internet marketing thing here. We travel mostly in Y, and so none of that does much for me.
As for "destination" blogging, Ben has said on several occasions that that's simply not what his blog is about for at least a couple of reasons. First, his hotel and airline F reviews really are (so far as I can tell) just about the best out there. That's what he's good at. And second, end-destination blogging has lots of bloggers and other writers that are good at that end of things. The art-history oriented Blue Guides and Rick Steves come to mind.
Now that CC churning (which I've never done) seems to be slowing down, it'll be interesting to see where all this goes. I do know one thing for sure: when markets contract, the weakest competitors bite the dust first . . . . That's assuming that the market is even contracting at all . . . which may not be happening.
Last edited by FallenPlat; Aug 5, 2015 at 2:46 pm
Reason: typo fix