The points and miles blog business model
May 12, 2019, 6:09 am
#391
Join Date: Feb 2001
Location: Ann Arbor, Michigan
Programs: Airline Free Agent, Fairmont Lifetime Platinum, Hyatt Globalist, Hilton Honors Diamond
Posts: 3,041
May 12, 2019, 9:27 am
#392
Original Member, Ambassador: External Miles and Points Resources
Original Poster
Join Date: May 1998
Location: Digital Nomad Wandering the Earth - Currently in LIMA, PERU
Posts: 58,574
It took me about 3 hours to set up my digital nomad blog on wordpress. There were some upfront costs but NBD. When I need something done beyond my technical ability (not very often) I hire someone on fiverr to do it for me.
Is there something Randy does around monetization that you feel you could not do on your own? Or SEO.
Genuinely curious.
May 12, 2019, 12:31 pm
#393
Join Date: Jul 2011
Location: DFW
Programs: AA EXP, mid-tier with pretty much everyone else
Posts: 873
It's an assortment of things:
Hope that helps, sorry to leave such an ambiguous comment before.
- TIme - I have a full-time job that takes up about 60 hours/week and a part-time side hustle doing professional headshot photography, which takes up another 20 hours/week
- Ease - Randy and his team have always had one clear vision for me: for me to be able to write about what I wanted to write about, when I wanted to write about it
- Money - I don't make a ton but I make enough that I can write some expenses against it and get a nice new lens or plane ticket a few times a year. I could make much more writing about credit cards but writing about credit cards just isn't very fun and at no point would I ever get close to supplanting my full-time income, so I don't see the point
- IT - I don't have the patience to learn how to self-host or anything like that, I know it doesn't take long to figure out, I just don't want to do it, I deal with computers enough in my full-time job. The BA team takes care of my site, covers the hosting, and makes sure nothing malicious pops up
- Theme - The BA team is phenomenal in helping me translate my vision for what I want my site to look like on my page, for example (hope it's ok to post a link) my blog is decently well-known for travel photography and I do a Picture of the Week post every (ok most every) Sunday. I wanted to see if they could create a gallery where they scrape the images from those posts and put them onto a separate page for people to peruse through and link to the posts from there. Took them like three days and I love it
- SEO - Randy leverages the pageviews of the BA main page to get us exposure to lots of different outlets (Flipboard [yes it's still a thing], Google APIs, etc.)
Hope that helps, sorry to leave such an ambiguous comment before.
May 14, 2019, 1:14 am
#394
Original Member, Ambassador: External Miles and Points Resources
Original Poster
Join Date: May 1998
Location: Digital Nomad Wandering the Earth - Currently in LIMA, PERU
Posts: 58,574
It's an assortment of things:
Hope that helps, sorry to leave such an ambiguous comment before.
- TIme - I have a full-time job that takes up about 60 hours/week and a part-time side hustle doing professional headshot photography, which takes up another 20 hours/week
- Ease - Randy and his team have always had one clear vision for me: for me to be able to write about what I wanted to write about, when I wanted to write about it
- Money - I don't make a ton but I make enough that I can write some expenses against it and get a nice new lens or plane ticket a few times a year. I could make much more writing about credit cards but writing about credit cards just isn't very fun and at no point would I ever get close to supplanting my full-time income, so I don't see the point
- IT - I don't have the patience to learn how to self-host or anything like that, I know it doesn't take long to figure out, I just don't want to do it, I deal with computers enough in my full-time job. The BA team takes care of my site, covers the hosting, and makes sure nothing malicious pops up
- Theme - The BA team is phenomenal in helping me translate my vision for what I want my site to look like on my page, for example (hope it's ok to post a link) my blog is decently well-known for travel photography and I do a Picture of the Week post every (ok most every) Sunday. I wanted to see if they could create a gallery where they scrape the images from those posts and put them onto a separate page for people to peruse through and link to the posts from there. Took them like three days and I love it
- SEO - Randy leverages the pageviews of the BA main page to get us exposure to lots of different outlets (Flipboard [yes it's still a thing], Google APIs, etc.)
Hope that helps, sorry to leave such an ambiguous comment before.
So so you are not responsible for monetization at all. You just do content and BA inserts native ads, affiliate links, etc?
I find that Monetization and SEO are definitely huge time-sucks. At least as much as writing.
May 14, 2019, 3:12 am
#395
Join Date: Jun 2012
Location: New England
Programs: American Gold, Marriott Gold, Hilton Silver
Posts: 5,634
So, if I understand this correctly, BA is a useful platform for those who blog on the side. That's reasonable. I don't see it as any different than the YouTube Partner program, where they do the same thing, provide a platform, and insert ads, and the creator/writer gets a cut of the revenue.
It's a shame that the ones that blog full time and need to sell credit cards for their main source of income are putting the platform in poor light. Until I read this explanation, every time I saw a <something>.boardingarea.com link, I would immediately think, oh boy, break out the salt, because it's probably a credit card ad masquerading as content.
It's a shame that the ones that blog full time and need to sell credit cards for their main source of income are putting the platform in poor light. Until I read this explanation, every time I saw a <something>.boardingarea.com link, I would immediately think, oh boy, break out the salt, because it's probably a credit card ad masquerading as content.
May 14, 2019, 5:08 am
#396
Join Date: Feb 2001
Location: Ann Arbor, Michigan
Programs: Airline Free Agent, Fairmont Lifetime Platinum, Hyatt Globalist, Hilton Honors Diamond
Posts: 3,041
"it's all about conversions" - Ingy (founder of Frugal Travel Guy who showed the way to the credit card salesmen and sold way too early)
And the beat goes on...
And the beat goes on...
May 14, 2019, 5:14 am
#397
Moderator: Lufthansa Miles & More, India based airlines, India, External Miles & Points Resources
Join Date: Dec 2002
Location: MUC
Programs: LH SEN
Posts: 48,097
Being part of a platform takes care of a few infrastructure things like spam and some revenue thru syndicated ad services who would otherwiese not touch you as you have no decent traffic worth their attention. The other side of the coin is that you don't get the full revenue and when things are not performing as they should you have no recourse either. The gang of bloggers that left BArea in the early 2010s to set up their own platform found that out the hard way.
May 14, 2019, 6:45 am
#398
Moderator: Hilton Honors forums
Join Date: Dec 2002
Location: Marietta, Georgia, United States
Posts: 24,996
May 14, 2019, 2:29 pm
#399
Join Date: May 2009
Location: South Park, CO
Programs: Tegridy Elite
Posts: 5,678
So, if I understand this correctly, BA is a useful platform for those who blog on the side. That's reasonable. I don't see it as any different than the YouTube Partner program, where they do the same thing, provide a platform, and insert ads, and the creator/writer gets a cut of the revenue.
It's a shame that the ones that blog full time and need to sell credit cards for their main source of income are putting the platform in poor light. Until I read this explanation, every time I saw a <something>.boardingarea.com link, I would immediately think, oh boy, break out the salt, because it's probably a credit card ad masquerading as content.
It's a shame that the ones that blog full time and need to sell credit cards for their main source of income are putting the platform in poor light. Until I read this explanation, every time I saw a <something>.boardingarea.com link, I would immediately think, oh boy, break out the salt, because it's probably a credit card ad masquerading as content.
May 15, 2019, 3:49 am
#400
FlyerTalk Evangelist
Join Date: Feb 2004
Location: London
Programs: BA, VS, HH, IHG, MB, MR
Posts: 26,869
The thing with BA is that you are on their platform and people come to you for a story then click back.
As Randy tweeted these numbers recently I am happy to quote them. God Save The Points has an average dwell time of 49 seconds. Our is over 2 mins 30 secs. That must make a huge difference to revenue generation.
When Facebook suddenly demoted news in feeds, media owners learned the risks in relying on platforms.
As Randy tweeted these numbers recently I am happy to quote them. God Save The Points has an average dwell time of 49 seconds. Our is over 2 mins 30 secs. That must make a huge difference to revenue generation.
When Facebook suddenly demoted news in feeds, media owners learned the risks in relying on platforms.
May 15, 2019, 5:41 am
#401
Moderator: Lufthansa Miles & More, India based airlines, India, External Miles & Points Resources
Join Date: Dec 2002
Location: MUC
Programs: LH SEN
Posts: 48,097
May 15, 2019, 6:43 am
#402
Join Date: May 2009
Location: South Park, CO
Programs: Tegridy Elite
Posts: 5,678
The thing with BA is that you are on their platform and people come to you for a story then click back.
As Randy tweeted these numbers recently I am happy to quote them. God Save The Points has an average dwell time of 49 seconds. Our is over 2 mins 30 secs. That must make a huge difference to revenue generation.
When Facebook suddenly demoted news in feeds, media owners learned the risks in relying on platforms.
As Randy tweeted these numbers recently I am happy to quote them. God Save The Points has an average dwell time of 49 seconds. Our is over 2 mins 30 secs. That must make a huge difference to revenue generation.
When Facebook suddenly demoted news in feeds, media owners learned the risks in relying on platforms.
May 15, 2019, 8:03 am
#403
Original Member, Ambassador: External Miles and Points Resources
Original Poster
Join Date: May 1998
Location: Digital Nomad Wandering the Earth - Currently in LIMA, PERU
Posts: 58,574
Lots of black hat ways to look like the ‘market leader’ so I don’t see that as a KPI.
And GSTP’s bounce rate is harsh.
And GSTP’s bounce rate is harsh.
May 15, 2019, 10:55 am
#404
FlyerTalk Evangelist
Join Date: Feb 2004
Location: London
Programs: BA, VS, HH, IHG, MB, MR
Posts: 26,869
Gilbert writes good content which actually takes longer than 49 seconds to read. I think he might have an issue with bot traffic. We have worked very hard to strip out all bot traffic except for search engine spiders, which kills our page view numbers but hugely increases our dwell time, since a bot stays for 0.00001 seconds, and lowers our bounce rate.
