fartoomanyusers

or maybe people don't want to work for him (for very long) ?

or maybe he doesn't want to share his profits and pay them properly ?

Raffles

Promise you, that's not it.

The issue is simple. When you know your stuff, anyone you hire will know less than you. Their content won't be as good as you could produce, so you rewrite it. Rewriting it takes longer than it would have taken you to write it yourself from scratch. Add in people management etc and it is the logical approach. External writers are best for reviews - since you can save the time of taking the trip - but the whole point of OMAAT is the reviews so that won't be outsourced.

Adam1222

Yeah, if Ben can make a comfortable living without hiring employees (or independent contractors), the hassle of that relationship isn't worth it

lsquare

I think Ben hired a new writer to write about Canadian cards, but that didn't seem to go anywhere.

Duke787

He’s hired a few folks to write from time to time but it doesn’t seem like anyone apart from Tiffany has stuck around for the long haul. And it’s clear her focus is more behind the scenes management with a rare post (pre-COVID) if she had an interesting trip to report on or was traveling with OMAAT and offering her POV on a trip he was writing about

Raffles

Tiffany's great. Hugely knowledgeable and very commercial. Don't underestimate how much work goes on behind the scenes on these things.

Pre a run of maternity leaves, Head for Points was running with 2 x full time and 2 x part time. The 2 x part time were 100% devoted to 'commercial stuff' and rarely wrote a word.

FlyerTalker324193

LOL@Raffles criticisms. You are just as corporate and greedy. For example, you do not tell your readers about cashback. You rather earn the reflink money yourself. In fact, not just there are no articles on cashback, but you actively work to suppress commentary which mentions cashback opportunities. Anyone who wants the full picture still has to read FT rather than blogs.

So I find it a bit strange to criticize Ben for having a team. It's not as if it's unclear who is the main author of which article. In fact, if you go to OMAAT's About page, you have links to each author's articles. It should be clear to any reasonably-intelligent reader of OMAAT that it is not a one-man operation. Each blog entry provides an author and there are other names to be seen, not just "Ben."

As for the design: I don't really care, as stated above, as I rely on RSS and milesfeed.com exclusively. But from inspecting it, I don't see that "you can't have it both ways--personal and professional" thing. I think it's a reasonably-functional design. Not particularly avantgarde, but it works on the desktop and on mobile. The blog isn't about free art, new media design, so who cares overly much about the look-and-feel as long as the UX is reasonably painless.

skywardhunter

As a professional in the web development space this new site is shockingly hideous...

Raffles

I’m not criticising Ben for having a team and as I have a team that would be hypocritical. What I am saying is that you need to decide if you want to run a corporate style site or a personal blog - it is really hard to do both and the balance feels wrong now.

We went more corporate in our rebrand and we changed a lot of the personal style at the same time. No ‘Hi I’m Rob’ stuff. It now fairly reflects what it is as the UK’s biggest seller of premium credit cards.

FlyerTalker324193

Granted, I am just a blog reader with zero knowledge of the business side of things. (And apologies for me being a bit in a grumpy mood this morning and ranting about sites being "corporate". Truth be told, I have no problem acknowledging there are good blogs which aren't merely done for fun and the love of miles & points.)

In my impression, the personal blog side of OMAAT is very, very present at all times. Sure, if all you want is information, then a lot of stuff in Ben's posts is superfluous. Like, he posts what types of trips he thinks are right for his significant other, what works for his family, etc. Or what he thinks about covid restrictions, what he particularly enjoys in conversations with cabin crew etc. etc. You know it's OMAAT when you read OMAAT. Ben has his unique angle on things.

Also, while I think some people use OMAAT to learn about making premium-cabin travel or 5* hotels more affordable, he has moved his focus more strongly towards EXPERIENCING luxury travel. A blog such as HFP instead focuses a bit more on the technical and logistical side of things. I think both have their place. I can only imagine gen Z (which I personally am not) cares more deeply about the "experience." Obv, gen Z'ers want to find ways to make travel affordable, too. But I think they care a bit more about the experience of luxury travel and of foreign destinations and a bit less about the (for lack of a better word) "nerdy" aspect of miles and points. They sure care less about elite status as well.

And from the bloggers' side of things (again, without me having any actual busines experience), I think his stronger focus on his personal life, his personal take, and experiences can be financially successful. Just look at all those young 'gramers and Youtubers and such: A lot of what they do is what used to be dubbed "low content" or even "no content" on serious newsgroups and internet forums back in the day. And still they make good money.

EDIT: BTW, I am aware of the notion that things such as layout, style, or design should be consistent and clear as to not distract from the message being conveyed. However, nowadays, you can be very successful on the interwebz without exactly shining when it comes to traditional formal aspects...

josephstern

Agreed that I liked a lot of Tiffany's posts. She seemed more focused on activities like hiking, biking, and running than Ben so she had more valuable info for me.

fartoomanyusers

I had a quick flick through the "team" yesterday ... it looks like not one of them has written an article in 2021

I know it's a strange year, but not a single article from any of them dated after 1st January 2021 (from what I could see)

FlyerTalker324193

I think they have. Little bug with the article timestamps since the relaunch, me thinks.

GUWonder

When Headforpoints got its major redesign, I wasn't too happy about it. Over time, I've gotten used to it.

When OMAAT got this major redesign, once again I wasn't too happy about the layout changes. Over time, I may get used to it, but the old and new HeadforPoints layout makes for easier reading to my eyes than OMAAT's new layout.

Not everyone is in the "if it ain't broken, don't fix it" group; and I'm guessing that these redesigns are probably done to signify a change in tastes or in hopes of growing something. Maybe Raffles can tell us why his website won't go back to old versions which I found to be good enough for me; or at least give us a reminder of how retro is or is not in fashion and the order of the day.

Raffles

1. Whilst existing readers were totally happy with it, the message we got loud and clear from advertisers (and we are unique, I think, in the points blogging space in selling our advertising and indeed selling a substantial amount of it) was that it didn't work for them. Not just because having their ads on an old school format didn't look great, but because the site wasn't optimised for the sort of placements they wanted.

2, The old site was fixed width. As screens got wider and wider (or simply had more pixels in the same width) the site would look very lonely in the middle of the screen. We also had to run a 2nd 'theme' for mobile.

3. My gut feeling was that, whilst we weren't losing existing readers, we weren't doing enough to convince new readers. It's hard to persuade people you are the dominant force in your space when you're running a 15-year old design. The launch of TPG UK was the final kick up the butt to do it.

9 months in, it is too early to know what it has done for readership (there are not many new readers out there to attract at the moment given the lack of travel) but I can say that there has been a substantial rise in the number and value of ad bookings.