jamesinclair

Looks like odds have gone up drastically, as its being bundled with war money.

Will be interesting to see blogs throw everything they can at it under the guise of protecting their readers instead of themselves.

GUWonder

Is there a lobbying group for the card-pushing miles/points blogger industry? I suspect that the card-pushing bloggers are mainly going to be a free-riding, amen choir that plays the tune beloved by the lobbyists of the banking industry kingpins and card network platforms. Their business models are tied together and even if the proposal in a bill manages to pass into law, it's going to be a while before it becomes enforceable as they will try to slow down the process of a law becoming administratively enforceable regulation.

gpapadop

The Points Guy has an article urging readers to write to their Congressmen to oppose this anti consumer initiative...LOL

jamesinclair

My favorite is when proud libertarian Gary writes 5,000 words on why more competition is bad

jamesinclair

Article posted with this absolutely hilarious line:

https://viewfromthewing.com/how-capp...s-the-economy/

He of course is concerned that their marketing budget flows directly into his pocket through referral links.

Raffles

You always know an argument is failing when people fall back on ‘xxxx did this and prices in shops did not fall’.

Firstly because, of course, retailers have multiple other ever-increasing costs except card fees.

Secondly because even someone with the thinnest grasp of economic theory knows that any business making ‘excess’ profits by pocketing cuts in overheads will soon find a competitor attacking them who is prepared to pass that through.

(And even if the retailer DID pocket the savings in card fees, why is that worse than Visa pocketing it? The retailer is more likely to use the money to open more sites and hire more people, creating growth - unlike Visa.)

Adam1222

This argument can be used against every regulation, of course. Yet, regulation exists.
Of course, even someone with the thinnest grasp of economic theory knows that money is fungible, and there are other ways firms can alter their balance. For example, they can spend less money funding blogger sales people.

oliver2002

The interchange fee cap in the EU on personal debit/credit cards (0.2/0.3%) that came into force in the late 2010s was actually devised on the basis to protect the consumer: https://ec.europa.eu/commission/pres...n/MEMO_16_2162

The branded CCs didn't vanish though. Instead the issuers mostly hiked the annual fees to cover some of their costs. Affiliate income for bloggers shilling CCs was never that high though, so its difficult to see the impact it may have had on the shilling industry.

Raffles

Let me tell you a story. At its peak, Head for Points covered 25 UK credit cards which earned miles and points. Only 7-8 actually paid commission to anyone (MBNA never did it, Lloyds Bank never did it, Creation never did it). I would get paid on under 1/3rd of cards that Head for Points discussed.

Post the EU changes, almost all of the cards which DIDN'T pay left the market. The market shrank hugely but the % of that market on which you could earn commissions increased sharply to almost 100%. Because people are still applying for as many cards as before - just from a smaller pool - everyone has done better.

Handily, the newcomers to the market in the last 5 years - Virgin Money and Barclaycard - also decided to pay.

It's all peanuts though. I need to sell 10 Virgin Atlantic credit cards to match the US commission on one high-end Chase card, and I have a target market which is 75% smaller by population and probably 90% smaller in terms of inclination to get a mileage card.

gpapadop

Yeah, definitely noticed lol.

HadesNL

Sitting comfy on my hospital bed doing some informed reading about point.me ....
Easy read to fall asleep....
It all unfolds like a mystery novel by Jessica Fletcher ......

I bumped into:
https://thecode.co/case-study/god-save-the-points/
&
https://www.godsavethepoints.com/gst...-subscription/
https://memberful.com/meet-our-custo...savethepoints/
&
Put into motion with:
https://gstp.memberful.com/join






Besides Point.me being the shared tool where major bloggers (GSTP&OMAAT&VFTW) have all a stake in ......
or are being promoted by their buddies LALF and on BoardingArea

Can we see OMAAT / VFTW going the same way for the future with paid subscriptions?

I surely hope niche HfP & LL won't.....

Raffles

The case study misses the bit where Gib goes back to Boarding Area because the new ad partner can't deliver and his content drops to a handful of articles per week written by third parties because of his point.me commitments :-)

Full credit for getting traffic from Flipboard though because we've been dropping stuff there for years with zero traction.

oliver2002

I suppose collecting '$ 2.00 cents' from 50-100 subscribers a month is more than BAreas ad revenue/payout

kokonutz

If you are serious about getting into blogging even as a side-hustle then I strongly recommend you do some guided training first. You'll want to bake in SEO from the start (and by start I am even talking about what subject niche you choose to write about). There are tons of tools and advice out there and it's easy to drown in the firehose of advice. I started a blog and after 9 months it was a worthless mess. Then I did the Blogging Fast Lane course and wished I had done so before I even started. It took me a couple months to align my blog to the BFL approach and I was finally able to monetize it.

Here's a link to the Blogging Fast Lane course. At least take a look and see what you are getting yourself into and how to do it right from the start.

lsquare

Can you give us an idea of some of the disclaimers and compliance checks that one must go through? What are the other works involved?

​​​​​​​Gotta provide an email address even to take a look at the course? I'm guessing it's not free?