yerffej201

I would think award booking services were in their prime before 2012 and the credit cards.
And not necessarily. Just look at tpg and his link farm. So much more junk nowadays.

jammanxc

well, if affiliate marketing dies out, there's always network marketing! Multi Level Marketing opportunities!

jspira

The barriers to entry are well known: a computer and an Internet connection. That is pretty low.

tjbrooks

I don't think it's that simple anymore. The barriers to entry appear to be quite high now, IF you're talking about being approved to become a credit card affiliate. There appears to only be one company offering enticing incentives to market credit card referrals, FlexOffers. From what I've read, they only want established bloggers with high visibility and a high page rank.
So if you want to get into the world of credit card affiliates as a travel blogger, you're looking at a serious investment of time and effort (and most likely money) to be even considered by FlexOffers. And even then it's a fairly opaque process for getting approved for individual banks.
Add to that the agreements that FlexOffers have with bloggers that prevent disclosure of compensation, and prevent any kickbacks from being offered. In any form.
And First2Board formed with a no-credit-card-referrals policy. But they're using FlexOffers for regular ads.
It doesn't seem like an open market to me, but I'm an engineer, not an economist.

Astrophsx

A limiting factor on the number of sign ups has to be the ability to show people how to meet the spending requirement for the bonus. It would make sense to me that a majority of sign ups would come from repeat business. That is to say, if you can show someone how to churn cards and meet the required spending... they will be more likely to use more than one of your links.. and probably account for a large % of your overall cc sign ups.

If you removed all manufactured spending methods I think it would be more like it was before 2010. There is an area of travel blogging that puts more focus on trip reports. Usually bloggers that are interviewed on millionmilesecrets that don't have enough traffic to get into the referral business.

yerffej201

Become your own bentoffers or wait, your own cashback portals!

Most of the bloggers today have been interviewed by MMS. The barrier[s] to entry are how well you can write and how popular you can become so you can get links.

fishdance

This is why I love browsing TPG link farm

http://thepointsguy.com/2013/03/sr-c...return-flight/

Todays question comes from Dixie Reckt out of S. Carolina - "Can You Buy A Roundtrip Ticket And Not Take The Return Flight?". Right, you think finally today is the day when I can click on this and find something useful without 12 links to credit card offers and/or explanations on how to buy gift cards with Ink Bold card. I mean its about not flying return leg of my flight. Not this time!


PS: Oh, and the complex answer to your question Dixie is - Yes. But by the time you get to paragraph three of today's post no-one really cares about that any longer.

belfordrocks

Reminds me of the Big Bang Theory episode where Sheldon and Leonard hypothesise that Howard can link any topic back to the fact that he was up in space. Replace Howard with TPG and space with Chase Bolded Ultimate Sapphire Freedom Liberty Card, and ta-da.

hsilman

This is one of the worst responses to criticism I've ever seen by a so-called professional writer.

Would you like to try again?

ferrari_fan

Read elsewhere on a blog today ....

jspira

Actually neither is a barrier to entry for a blogger. They are barriers to success but not barriers to entry and that is what we are currently discussing.

jspira

Those are barriers to making money with a website, not barriers to entry.

jspira

I'm not sure I even understand what the first party meant by "poverty bus" but it doesn't sound good.

kokonutz

Or Rainman: 'Credit card link. Definitely credit card link. 'Course it's 10 minutes to credit card link.'

JSteele

Regarding the whole Masada trip and the back and forth there: I think everyone is confusing two distinct types of blogging and travel writing in general. There are destination travel pieces that are designed to help you plan your trip, learn more about a destination, or just live vicariously through the author as he/she experiences somewhere that you may not be able to visit. There is nothing wrong with that. I have been to Israel many times, but I read that blog post series so I can learn more about the Le Meridian Dead Sea, that I will visit for the first time later this year. Good stuff for my purposes, but Conde Nast it was not.

On the other hand, the point/mile bloggers write what are called service pieces. These focus less on the destination (or not at all), and teach people about the "how to" of travel. It is easy to forget that most leisure travelers leave home less than once or twice a year, and don't know most of the stuff we write about.

If you think there are a lot of point/mile bloggers, than you have no idea how many people write about just destinations and barely know a thing about points and miles. There are probably 100 destination writers for every service writer, both online and especially in print. Destination people are all about going to the ends of the earth for adventure, culture, food, photography, language, etc. In contrast, point/mile bloggers and writers tend to stick to the major cities and stay at a western chain hotel.

To make matters more confusing, a lot of point/mile bloggers will feature destinations, but usually just short photo essays of the hotel and business lounge.

So there you have it; don't jump on a point/mile blogger for an inadequate destination piece any more than you would criticize a Nat. Geo. writer for not explaining how to go to Borneo with points and miles.