JetAway

My point was that this is a very labor-intensive/time consuming business. And lots of people are now doing it. A thousand requests yields less than $150,000 after taxes, helper salaries etc. Good job for a recent college graduate. Not so much for a career.

cruisr

The quote from Tiffany is patently ridiculous. The whole point of the blog is to sell credit cards and she now says that their clients DON'T want to use the credit cards that Ben has encouraged them to sign up for and use. Why would they not say, "you may not realize this but if you pay for this award ticket with your CC you wil earn X amount of points. Of course they don't want the client to put the charges on their credit card because this way Ben can put it on his. Either that or the clients don't trust them with their CC info,

josephstern

The net proceeds from one credit card app conversion are probably greater than the proceeds from one award booking. Let's consider them to be the same for sake of argument.

Do you think Ben and Tiffany and Travis and whoever else is there would rather get one anonymous cc app to convert by stuffing the blog with endless posts, or do one award booking?

iadisgreat

The point was, it really didn't take that long to figure it out myself. Despite what the bloggers may say, this isn't rocket science.

Hengilas

Yeah, but do most people want or care enough to figure it out on their own? My mother probably has 100k award miles just sitting in her account that she would never, ever redeem without services like this (or me to help). For the vast majority of FF program members I would bet this is true. The system is convoluted, complicated, fickle and most people aren't aware of their alternative options if they see no off peak/saver/cheap awards on their preferred dates in their preferred class of service. Do you think the average person is going to know that they have to book a J award on X airline exactly 355 days out or inventory is going to get gobbled up? Not a snowball's chance in hell.

bthotugigem05

This mikekelley character is onto something. Quit looking at award booking services from a FlyerTalk perspective. For most people it's worth paying a few hundred bucks for a service like that. For instance, to book my most recent RTW award (DFW-LHR-AUH-DOH-BKK-HKG-LAX-DFW) I had to do four searches on three websites to find availability. Many FTers would immediately know how to do that but there's no way the average person who isn't waist-deep in this stuff would have any clue where to even begin.

I briefly tried to start my own service but because my blog audience was mostly FTers at the time, I ended up being asked to do the bookings they couldn't do after trying everything on their own. An award booking company needs to have a ton of easy bookings to offset the amount of time and resources spent on booking the really hard ones. Ben's service has that blend, which is why it's so successful.

josephstern

I sincerely hope Ben isn't taking $150 to book a domestic, non-saver award for anyone.

cruisr

Well you can always call and ask what he charges for that and then you will know and can post the answer.

TMM1982

150k sounds pretty damn good to me and I'm not a recent college grad. I think you're out of touch with how much money most people are actually making.

josephstern

Pretty sure that's what he charges for such a situation.

I just hope that no one actually uses the service for an award as easy to book as that.

84fiero

Hopefully not though I wouldn't be surprised if someone out there has done it. Looks like current pricing starts at $200 for the first passenger, $100 per additional passenger on the same trip, $50 for infants. The site states higher prices may apply for more complex trips with multiple tickets. There is a $100 surcharge for Korean Air bookings.

http://pointspros.com/pricing/

Of course Lucky also earns lots of miles for award bookings, with most of the cash fees/surcharges portion of awards being paid with Lucky's credit card and reimbursed by the customer. Think of some of the several hundreds of bucks per person in fuel surcharges, APD taxes, etc. that some programs charge.

Also, not sure if this is new, but they apparently are advertising some sort of Small Business Services:

LPDAL

I should start up a rival blog called "The Honest Guy". The first post would be, "Points Bloggers Are Not On Your Side: First Class and Traveling Was Never and Will Never Be Free".

It would delve into:

1. Why points bloggers push credit cards so much
2. Why point blogger claims of "Free First Class travel" are bogus
3. How, in actuality, points bloggers fund their first class trips every week (Hint: It's not credit card points)
4. The devaluation of miles and lessening of redemption rates
5. The dangers of having too many credit cards and churning
etc.

The next post would be about getting into first class for cheap, not for free. Yes, there are still a few methods that don't involve jumping into an ocean trench of debt.

-LPDAL

JetAway

I mentioned that taxes, expenses and salaries of assistants have to be deducted from this. Another poster said his business "makes a lot." A "lot" would not remain after the necessary deductions.

skunker

I noted that before. http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/25686049-post1120.html
His ex-boyfriend wrote for the blog when they dated as well. Seems to be his MO.

Astrophsx

Not sure if you noticed my post earlier where I pointed out that his ex came back as a guest writer to cover the new AS lounge just recently. Within 24 hours his ex's name was removed as the author, replaced with Lucky's name, and then the story was changed to one written by Lucky w/ quotes from his ex.