Adam1222

If Gary is really one of the most intelligent people on the planet, it's a shame he is wasting that intelligence and time blogging about flying, miles, and points, and low profile tv appearances about same.

Moderator2

In fairness to Gary, it is no secret his day job is as a senior officer of a libertarian think tank with ties to a major university. Not exactly low brow stuff. Everyone should have a "Hobby" )

bthotugigem05

That Gary accomplishes what he does on the blog while still maintaining a full-time job is nothing short of miraculous to me. I've had a good week on my blog and put out a ton of content but still didn't match his number of posts. I don't know how he does it.

Adam1222

My understanding is that he was CFO, which is not really a policy position, and that his background before that was in fundraising.
I'll stand by my point that that's not a job for the most brilliant person in the world.

Not saying they are low brow or bad jobs, more knocking the suggestion that he is so outrageously brilliant. (Note: brilliant and tenacious/industrious are two different things.)

Also, he telecommutes for work, only going to DC, where the Public University his think tank is affiliated with is, once a month. That kind of flexibility explains how he can also blog/plug himself.

kokonutz

Certainly no one will ever out-work Gary. His volume of output on such a consistent basis is impressive.

I don't have time to read it all, and much reeks so much of clickbait that I don't read but maybe a third of them so can not speak to overall quality vs quantity.

But he is a posting machine!

GUWonder

Reminds you of the kid at school who would crank out the longest papers to hand in on just about any subject requested by a teacher and manage to do so even when procrastinating?

Adam1222

Quantity is not quality.

Often times that kid got an A or an A-, while the slacker wrote a pithier paper and got the A+.

It takes far more time and skill to write 5 interesting posts than 10 recycled garbage posts.

84fiero

Well, McDonald's has a tremendous output volume too but it's not the best food out there I guess his post count doesn't seem all that unusual to me, but I suppose it depends on the points of comparison.

The post quality is generally not great especially of late. He prides himself in not proofreading, so once he's typed the post I assume there's no more time spent on it. Nor are his posts typically that lengthy - the actual writing can't take more than 15-30 minutes for his typical post. While some advance research clearly goes into a few posts, I think many come off as just off-the-cuff thoughts after reading a news article or someone else's blog post. Plus the posts can be written ahead and set to publish at certain times.

A wise man knows his limits but he seems to believe that he's an expert in everything including constitutional law, which isn't really helpful to anyone. As to particular FFP matters he has a lot of knowledge and experience, he'd be better off sticking to that, IMHO.

GUWonder

I've never seen him present himself on VFTW as anything but what he is or perhaps wants to be.

Having an opinion, for better or worse, on something, everything, or nothing? That doesn't require having expertise, but it does involve having some interest in the covered topics. He has lots of interests of interest to me, but to have interests doesn't require expertise even when engagement in the subjects of interest comes with opinions and even knowledge of relevance to those interests.

I'm curious but what are his latest readership figures like?

oliver2002

http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/viewfr...ardingarea.com

Raffles

Interesting, didn't know that was public. That split is in line with what I was told by 'someone who knows' this Summer.

If I were Ben I would be tempted to do my own thing looking at those numbers. He is doing more for BA than BA is doing for him I would guess, especially as the loss of Ben's volume would make it a lot harder for BA to sell ad space full stop. Gary, as is publicly known, is a shareholder in various HOM entities so gets extra upside that way whilst Ben AFAIK is not.

GUWonder

Break-ups aren't always all that smooth and without risk, even for the party which thinks it has the upper hand with or without a break-up. As some would say, "better the devil you know than the devil you don't".

OMAT author seems more focused on the blog than the VFTW author, perhaps with the deserved returns due that focus/diversion?

Raffles

I struggle to see the logic in that.

Gary will be one of the highest earning people in the US thanks to his credit card earnings. (Only 0.1% of US tax returns are for $1m or more and lets assume Gary is up there.)

He is a shareholder in various bits of HOM, which is a fairly serious business these days.

He gets to be the spokesman for what is now a very major industry, with the profile that brings. If we're honest, we have probably all benefitted at some time or other from Gary putting pressure on programme executives over changes, either in the media or in private.

He gets lots of adoring email from his readers thanking him for helping them arrange their dream trip (I get this, so I know Gary will too).

He is his own boss.

The real question is why he bothers with his real job!

GUWonder

Because very few artificats of life have perpetual value, in line with past returns, and so diversification and retreat-position/safehouses may be the order of the day?

He's intelligent enough to operate on the assumption that US airline programs and their US bank card partnerships are not always going to be all that they have been for him.

ctownflyer

Just as interesting is that FM is nearly as popular as VFTW at 15.24%. A fraction of the income though I'm sure.


Bingo.
Never mind how extremely fickle the banks and their auditing departments are. All eggs in one basket is a recipe for disaster.