RTW1

No need to duck.... but I guess why most of us expect blogging content to be free is that most bloggers expect the same. That's how most content here ends up on the blogs eventually.

And (random) adds on a blog is quite a difference than including them in your text..... which can really taint your content.

belfordrocks

Exactly. UPGRD has plenty of credit card ads, but they're clear that they're ads. Blatant advertising disguised as helpful content is where things start to go wrong.

The Deal Mommy

Fair enough. Please keep in mind the FT crowd is but 1% of 1% of the traveling public. The vast majority of folks just want info: quickly referenced, fairly presented, and easily understood. I think most users (as in the ones who are not on FT and use blogs as a resource and or hobby) view embedded links as useful and as long as the blogger has earned the trust of the reader it's a win-win. IMHO, it's on the blogger to present the best info available, and on the reader to chose which blogs to read and which bloggers to support.

belfordrocks

That's a pretty fair assessment

hobo13

Nicely put.

These bloggers don't understand that (for the most part), it's not their content. The fact that it's user-generated content on FT shouldn't change that. Many of these bloggers have <500 posts. Some <100! That implies to me that they've never contributed a single deal to the community!

Think about it this way -- say I want to start a sports blog. Can I just rip every story off of ESPN and repost it on my site?

belfordrocks

^

And those who do have a number of posts are from likely before they started blogging.

hobo13

Makes sense to me. As it is, there's at least two layers, right? There's the affiliate company (cardoffers) and then the bank. If these bloggers are making 6 figures a year from affiliate links, it seems like the affiliate company could capture some of that by cutting out the bloggers and coming straight to FT. Maybe cut a volume deal with IB directly.

I think there's a lot of shakeout to happen in this industry. The stuff happening now is unsustainable.

And as a good friend put it to me once, 'you never want your career to compete with a stay-at-home mom. They value their time at near $0 / hour and will run you right out of business!' He was referencing the boom in amateur photography due to the proliferation of DSLR's, but it seems just as applicable to travel blogging.

hobo13

Very true. We should start a thread to track such matters. Identify each blogger in a simple list and link to their blog. Show their post count on FT at the time that the blog started, and then what it is now. And other stats.

I've suggested numerous times before, but I do believe that an entire forum on FT devoted to the blogs would be appropriate. I would like to see a thread devoted to each blogger (or maybe a sub-forum), such that the FT community can discuss a blog's content, without doing so on the blog. The reason for this is that a.) I can EDIT, b.) I like to discuss topics with 'friends', not a bunch of anons, c.) I like to discuss in a neutrally-moderated environment.

IB should be all over it -- FT activity has to be going down due to blogs, and they should be fighting tooth-and-nail to keep the eyeballs right here. But of course, this is a big corporation, so things move at a snails pace.

Instead, we get this one silly thread to discuss ALL blogs under the guise of 'which one is most useful?'. It's laughable.

And I'm sure my PM box will start filling up with nastygrams with bloggers telling me why we can't do this. Heck, I've already got one this morning! I will promise you that there are a few bloggers who PM more than they post..... too funny.

kokonutz

Neat idea.

Why not post the suggestion here: http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/talkboard-topics-382/

timmy83

Agreed - I think there is a clear line that needs to be drawn. Great for bloggers that have a large enough audience to be successful with affiliate links, but dishonestly should not be tolerated by the community.

I completely agree - see my comment above. There have been examples of bloggers misleading their readers into bad deals.

I don't know if this is really the intent of the CC companies. I think they would prefer we didn't churn - or rather that some blogger teaches you how to churn, and you muck it up either not reaching minimum spend and/or carrying a balance. Sure, the more experienced (or slightly more experienced - such as myself) users can sniff out a better deal. What is missed here is that your average Kettle who just saw an ABC story about flying for free will probably go to a blogger to learn the strategy. They probably won't think twice about clicking an affiliate link unless someone expressly explains that this may not be the best offer out there.

Every CC churn I have done has involved a mix of affiliate links and FT-derived links. If I can get the same deal through an affiliate link, then I will because I feel grateful to those who have taught me how to fly for free. That said, I don't feel so indebted to them to shoot myself in the foot and take an inferior offer.

hobo13

Done.

I don't visit that forum much, so if you like the idea, I'm happy to see you run with it.

OK, now I need to go put on my flame-retardant suit, as I can only imagine that every blogger and their brother (who is likely also a blogger) will be telling me how awful this idea is!

Scottrick

Or else that the blogger created a new handle after starting his/her blog. My old handle had many more comments than the current one. I didn't want people linking my new blog to comments I made before I started it.

I'm not sure what you mean by this. A person could copy and paste the story from ESPN verbatim. This is clear plagiarism. In fact, it happens to lots of bloggers, too. Often it's run through a translator or thesaurus to replace a few words, but it's clear they just steal it from the RSS feed. They even leave the links to my site at the bottom!

Another possibility is that someone reads the story on ESPN and writes a new one using essentially the same facts and opinion. But this is not as easy as it sounds. Often creating a plausible copy of someone else's content is almost as hard as just creating your own from scratch.

Finally, it's possible that someone watched the same football game as the ESPN reporter, has a similar interest in sports, and has similar background knowledge. ESPN doesn't have a monopoly on sports commentary, and it's unfair to assume that just because the blogger writes something similar that he or she necessarily copied it from ESPN.

At one point someone complained on my blog about a post written by AKold, saying that he had copied it from GLeff on View from the Wing. It was a story about the AAdvantage Explorer award. I didn't find any evidence that it was copied. AKold had his own unique text describing an award that lots of people know about. He had his own pictures describing the award. Other than the general topic, nothing was copied, but this one reader still believed it was a case of plagiarism. It just goes to show that you can't please everyone.

mia

Search will reveal more than a dozen threads on this topic in MilesBuzz! in the last 18 months. Most of these threads are open, but inactive because the discussion ran its course. The others are closed for reasons which will be apparent when you look at them.

None were closed at the request of any blogger or Internet Brands.

hobo13

Isn't it against FT ToS to have more than one handle?

Your comment about plagiarism is valid. What I was trying to say (but didn't), is that most of these bloggers aren't coming up with new ideas. They just rip them from FT. I know that Frequent Miler is usually regarded as coming up with new material (which then gets stolen, LOL). If you have new material that you can claim, I'd be happy to add you to the list of bloggers who have come up with something innovative.

I'm more or less an academic. Academics's reputations are at stake, and it's often a matter of who came up with something first. That's the point of publishing and their is a community of other academics who do peer reviews. The same idea could apply here. Just as the FT community generally seems to accept that FM came up with a lot of new ideas (and as such he escapes a lot of wrath around here), other bloggers could claim to be have new ideas as well. And if that is proven out over the course of discussion, so be it. (That's the point of my new forum proposal -- we need a place to discuss this stuff.)

hobo13

Perhaps that problem was that they were put in MilesBuzz amid a lot of CC and manufactured spend chatter (which has now been cleaned up, thankfully.) I'm proposing a new forum for these to live. Sort of like Travel News, but call it 'Blogger News'.

Plus, 18 months is an eternity. It seems a new blog starts up everyday. Just look at the activity in this thread!