Any way to get credit card affiliate referral kickback for yourself (or for FT)?
 

I brought this up here maybe 6 months ago but it quickly got buried in another thread. I'm curious if there is a way for us to cut out the middlemen and get our own affiliate referral signup kickbacks for credit cards? Supposedly these kickbacks are between $50-$300 per approved application, so I figure in aggregate the travel bloggers are probably getting $1M+ from us readers. I see no reason why we don't try to get this money back for ourselves rather than blindly giving it to the bloggers.

If we can't at least get it for ourselves, is there possibly a way for Flyertalk to get it's own set of affiliate referral links that we can apply thru so the money goes to Flyertalk? I bring this up again cuz yet again I'm recently frustrated by bloggers and their lack of common sense in sharing deals that are unsustainable and getting them killed. In the past week or so no fewer than 4 deals were plugged by bloggers (and then hat-tipped by all their blogger friends), causing far too much overexposure and effectively killing the deals almost immediately. I have to assume the bloggers don't care one bit about wasting our time sending us on wild goose chases on deals that they very well should know will not be honored. In the past I have always applied thru their links, but I no longer want to give them any of my referral kickback money if all it does is encourage them to waste my time on wild goose chases for mythical great deals.

I would much prefer I get the CC application kickback money in my own pocket. If that isn't possible, I would prefer FT get the money, since after all FT is where I get most of my info. So anybody know any ways to get the money into my (or FT's) pockets? BTW, I don't want this thread to turn into a blogger rant thread. While I don't mind that personally as I'm not a big fan of bloggers, the powers that be here at FT don't seem to appreciate it, so keep it friendly please.

If this is such a big source of money, I'm surprised we are all letting it go so easily without a fight. So please list any ideas you might have to reroute that money back to ourselves (or at least to FT). Thx.

At the top of this very page, I see an add for a Chase UA card. Looks like FT is already in the affiliate business.

Perhaps another partial solution would be for Boardingarea to be more selective in how many blogs they host. Might also help with the annoying database error crashes.

I definitely prefer my 2-3 favorite bloggers/tweeters getting affiliate money over flyertalk since I assume the latter already makes more than all the main bloggers combined.

Whoops, I paid for the long term ad-free Premium version of FT a couple years ago when it was offered. I guess that is why I can't see the CC ads mentioned above. Guess if I want to give FT my money, then I will try to find their links without logging in.

Ideally though, I'd obviously like to figure out a way for this referral money to come back into our own pockets...................................I'd just want a 10% finder's fee cut of all kickbacks FTers get from now on. :) :D

If less competition would actually slow down all the obnoxious credit card pumping posts by bloggers, then I would agree with you. However I fear now that they've gotten a taste from the crackpipe, even the 2-3 remaining blogs are already addicted and unfortunately won't be able to stop themselves from pumping CCs incessantly.

First, it's my understanding that they won't work with you unless you're a blooger or a website and have some following. Second, good credit card offers with very rare exceptions like Sapphire and SPG do not pay affiliate fees--why would they? And the third point that makes everything else moot is that Flyertalk is, as has been mentioned before, already in affiliate business.

Most of the offers are brokered through various affiliate networks - most, if not all bloggers pushing affiliate links are not working directly with the advertiser.

Although you could use your own affiliate link to get commission from a CC application, in my opinion it wouldn't be worth the trouble to sign up for a network, get approved and set up with them, etc only to use it for a couple of applications for yourself. If you mentioned this to the network during the application process, you would be denied. If you were to apply for two cards from the same advertiser (Chase, Amex, etc), they would possibly detect it as fraud/duplicate and not pay you anything.

There are affiliate offers for just about every financial product - but they are not all in one place. Premium credit card offers like Sapphire and the like offer higher commissions than the average offer.



(I have made a living from affiliate marketing in various forms for almost 10 years).

I agree with Zanzibar. When I plan to apply for a credit card I choose to go through the person (blog) that I feel has given me the most information over time. They do put in a LOT of work and I have no problem rewarding them for it. Many bloggers like Darius at Million Mile Secrets will tell you to NOT use their link because it isn't the best offer... so it's not like he is all about the money. I hope that one day I can have my blog to the level that he is at. For now... I don't think we should criticize or punish them just for making a few extra bucks by helping the majority of us get great deals/offers. If you don't like it then go directly through Chase, Citi, Amex, etc...

A few alternatives to using non-paying pushy blog links ...

I have been paid by check several times using cardselection.com for using their affiliate links. Be careful to review the T&C of the cc offer since a lot of their promo bonuses aren't nearly as good as using a direct link to the issuer. In all, my experience has been very positive with this site but I haven't used them in years.

Other similar sites exist. Cardoffers used to be a popular choice on fatwallet some time ago but no insight or experience using them.

Amazon offers gift cards for using their links. There is a FW discussion about it here. I cannot vouch for this service but ostensibly some folks on FW have reported getting GC's.

Try PER blogger (at least the top 5 or so).

Based on what? I'm pretty lukewarm about Gary and View from the Wing, but I'm sure he's a top five, he runs an award booking service, and he's got a stake in a competing forum, but he's holding onto a full-time job that I'm sure he'd quit if he were pulling in that kind of money. Until recently, Ben at One Mile at a Time and also running an award booking service, lived at home with his parents, not the kind of thing you do if you're pulling in a million. I'm sure that most top bloggers are pulling in enough money to make for a comfortable but not luxurious lifestyle. I understand the distaste towards bloggers, but let's at least base some of it on facts.

Of course, given the history, you should just go to the source and beat on Randy Petersen (for those unfamiliar, the founder of FT and the owner of Boarding Area). You know he's getting a cut of every Boarding Area blog, including the money from affiliate referrals.

That's probably because he took a couple of risks, like founding this forum and the other forum as well as Boarding Area. I'm not an entrepeneur, and I don't take risks, but I generally don't begrudge somebody else who has found a way to earn an income.

And, before we talk about poaching information from FT, keep in mind that this is the Internet--anybody can get this information freely. You don't need to join. Information aggregation is done all over the Internet.

Go scream at Google. . .

+1

Although they aren't suppose to, I get kickbacks for signing up for Cards via blogs. It is usually a $50 amazon giftcard. It isn't a ton but when you throw that in on top of the miles I get, it isn't a bad deal. PM if you are interested, and I'll send you the bloggers email.

I usually use Credit Karma's links when they have the one I want, otherwise I just use the one on the airline's website or email they sent me. If a registered charity had links, I would use those too.

I have Firefox ....... so it would be good if Flyertalk could list their links on a separate page, I wouldn't mind using them as I know the hosting charges must be huge for a site this size.

I don't know why other banks don't do like Amex and give people their own links.

BoardingArea's crash yesterday was related to Amazon EC2's Virginia Data Center having a meltdown. That's Amazon's least reliable data center because it's also shouldering a huge load and many big internet companies had an outage yesterday.

Is this number just a guesstimate? Or do you have any reason to believe the top 5 or so bloggers would make $1M via their affiliate links? It would certainly explain why some previously very decent bloggers turned into CC pimping whores, but even I can't believe they come close to making $1M from this. There'd be way more people trying to become bloggers if this was the case..........................hmmm, wait a sec, maybe that explains it. @:-)

I fully agree. The SPG Amex 5k referrals are huge for us peon non-bloggers. I have referred every single family member as well as truckloads of friends and coworkers to the SPG Amex. Just give me an incentive and I can pimp these CCs to my friends/family/coworkers even better than the blogger pimps. You certainly wouldn't see me getting all my family/friends/coworkers to sign up for only halfway decent CCs though the bloggers still pimp. Maybe someday the other banks will copy Amex and go this route. Fingers crossed.

Until then, I have received a couple PMs pointing me in the direction of (hopefully) some possible methods to get CC affiliate referral kickbacks for a simple little peon like myself. I'll dig into those suggestions and if they end up working and it won't kill the deal, I'll come back here and post with any success I have. ^ Thanks all for all the comments & suggestions!!!