B747-437B

With all due respect to yourself and whatever achievements you may have had, Ben took what was his hobby and found a way to leverage it into a career despite pretty much everyone else around him telling him it wouldn't work or wouldn't be sustainable. That is creditworthy regardless what advantages he may have started off with, the most beneficial of which is probably supportive parents who encouraged him to pursue his dreams. By his own admission (privately at least, although I'm sure he's said similar in public), the blog is just the PR machine for his PointsPro business that generates the bulk of his income. He's obviously making enough money now to support himself out of miles and points related business activity, so more power to him for succeeding in that endeavour. There are plenty of people who started with even "huger" advantages and made a mess of them, so credit where credit due.

You don't have to like him, nor his blog, nor his ethics or lifestyle, nor anything else he may do. But that doesn't change the fact that he has built and is running a relatively successful business right now.

JonNYC

No one's gonna explain it better than this, Bravo!

Raffles

$100k? Doddle. You don't need credit card links for that. Ben will get more than that from points.com alone just from his articles on buying points (I base that on grossing up what they pay me by his far greater readership).

Renes Points

Blogging is, clearly, worth a lot - if you know what you are doing.

ctownflyer

Mostly true. He surely makes 7 figures+ and has positioned himself well to ride this era out the longest.
i question the strategy of adding writers that dilute the brand, but that's a minor quibble.

But this part is laughably false:
The real money all comes from the big banks. The rest is gravy.

ctownflyer

Duplicate post, please delete.

Raffles

Agreed. Why bother with a booking service, with all the hassle of dealing with people, when a single card application pays more?

gpapadop

Agreed 2.

Hey guys, remember the TV ad "When EF Hutton speaks, you should listen". This does not mean you should listen to a now part time blogger Or ever!

Astrophsx

He's making the claim that mid-low level blogger gets that. What is considered to be a low level travel blogger?

It could have been his plan B if he wanted to stop writing the blog (before he hired other writers). Also, early on in his blog if I remember correctly this is how he obtained most of his miles/points that he traveled on. By booking other clients award tickets and putting their taxes and fees on his business card. Seems like his booking service is rather healthy from what I've heard.

ctownflyer

It could be making a nice chunk of change or be a Plan B for a post-affiliate credit card world, but it's a drop in the bucket compared to the credit card stuff.

josephstern

I used his service many, many years ago once (and he did a great job).

He took my credit card info and paid the fees that way. I suppose if you didn't trust him with your cc number, he'd have another option, but he wasn't pushing to charge it on his own card and get reimbursed at all. In fact, that's a bit of an accounting (and potentially, tax) headache.

DanielW

Seems to be a lot of hate in this thread. I thought Americans celebrated success?

oliver2002

14 posts detailling the intricacies of earning big $$$ by blogging about miles and travel have been moved here:

The points and miles blog business model

Regards Oliver2002
Mod EM&PR

belfordrocks

This is what 236 pages of bitterness and jealousy looks like. I'd be lying if I said it didn't make entertaining reading though.

TheBOSman

What is interesting with Ben/OMAAT is that he has almost a Robert Parker thing going on when it comes to premium cabin reviews. Parker has reviewed so many high-end wines, and wine is a much bigger and moneyed market now than when Parker started, that to try all of the wines Parker has tried to reach his experience level and review with that experience will cost someone A LOT of money. Likewise, even with relatively fewer and fewer of them to go, it would cost a significant amount of money to fly all of the premium cabin products Ben has flown, especially as some of the better ones (looking at you LH 747-400 F...) are no longer around at all. There's a really high bar to entry to become what Ben is. And, while the blog model of credit card conversions will continue to decline, if Ben can keep up other revenue streams high enough, he can keep up being a premium cabin travel review blog for quite a while.