Yes, the picture made me laugh for a long time, too. That was well played, indeed. On the merits, I certainly agree that "[p]eople looking to get into the miles game don't want to fan through 16 front page articles on the same topic." A closely related problem is that few of the blogs seem to add any real value vis-à-vis each other. Mommy Points, for example, in truth has practically nothing that's unique to family travel and isn't even remotely as sophisticated about credit cards and first-class travel as several of the other sites. And Delta Points is pure pidgin English -- just an out-and-out embarrassment all the way around.

I think Lucky could almost have a site like TPG. Could someone explain what keeps someone like him at BA? I get back in the day when he was trying to find a balance between his award booking service and his blog, but could he not just go out on his own? He seems to produce enough original content.

Loyalty? Wasn't that the reason he gave when he was asking for advice on his "new" site? Something along the lines of "we're in this together" and/or "we've been in this together from the start"

I confess that I'm a real Lucky fan. Much of his content is truly original and his self-aware, self-deprecating sense of humor is a real plus. (A lot of people on FlyerTalk evidently just don't get that.) The weeks-long saga of stalking La Compagnie's new TATL all-business class service, for example, was really entertaining, and resulted in what I think was the first professional review. I have zero interest in credit cards, nice hotels or first-class travel but I read every post anyway and that, I think, says it all.

I like Lucky too, and his blog is one of the best on BA (if not the best), but...

1) It's so obvious he's starting to get preferential treatment.

2) His results should be able to be replicated, and due to preferential treatment, the chances of this are getting less and less

3) The format of his blog can only go on for so long...how many Lufthansa reviews can one have? Why is he flying 22k miles in 5 days? For the "sake of his readers"? At what point is it entertainment verses something that has actual value?

4) He basically doesn't go anywhere but Europe [he goes to South America and Asia for mileage runs].

The inner traveler in me gets mad at him...he's not traveling, this is just drive-by tourism. I'm not sure he knows the first thing about what it means to 'travel' or if he has any in depth knowledge or experience of any culture beyond the US.

Why leave? Is it going to increase his traffic volume or eRPM rates?

Seems unlikely to me that either would happen based on changing the URL but not the content or marketing behind it.

My "inner traveler" sees the same thing yours sees, of course, but I guess you can't be all things to all people and Lucky consciously chooses to concentrate on planes & hotels. I kind of like the "for entertainment only" stuff, though: I had fun reading about La Compagnie even though I'll never fly them.

Personally, I'm an almost pure art, architecture, history and culture traveler. If I had world enough and time -- and no job -- I'd fly to art shows and concerts every week and blog about that.

...not to mention that he does not have to be concerned about maintaining it like he would if he were on his own.

At BoardingArea, he can concentrate primarily on producing the content....and I will bet that you could develop an audience with it.

Why not try it — even if only sparingly at first? Make the time. It sounds to me like you would truly enjoy it...

some of us dont want the publicity, and dont like writing that much :D

so in the context of "if i were a billionaire" - perhaps some of us would like writing more if we didnt have to do anything else

I agree - he's in it for the product review, not the travel.

That said, at what point does it become inane...how many reviews can he do? There's only so many products?

I think they don't leave because of the SEO/URL issues.

It comes down to the fact he thinks this outweighs the cut given to BA/Randy?

I always thought Gary and Lucky could stand on their own and they could control their own destiny (obviously with some paid help). TPG, MMS and FTG were never dropped by Amex recently.

Obviously, the longer they stay the tougher it gets to cut the cord. And I am sure loyalty plays a role too.

The above are based on my internal brain processing after considerable consumption of red wine. Despite on what some people think I am not an expert and I am blogging to entertain myself primarily :D

gary is an example of blogger with "real" job.

ben doesnt seem to be trying to become like TPG, MMS, FTG.
many other bloggers are (now) regardless of "real" jobs or not.
even if many dont know exact revenues, they know its a lot.

He's young, so I'm sure he will do as many reviews as he can. It seems he is very open to the feedback from his readers. He can also take constructive criticism as long as it is not too mean spirited knowing it is part of his job. That being said.. a few things could limit him in the future. The first being how to obtain a steady flow of miles and how to handle the devaluation of programs. The other could be that he gets burnt out or finds a partner that keeps him from not traveling all the time or living out of a hotel.

Yes we can complain about the Kickstarter thing and about preferential treatment, but he reads these threads looking for feedback and seems to listen to his readers. I asked why he stays with BA and I saw a lot of good responses, but I curious if they take much of a cut. Though, he could always evolve his blog into something new or branch off at a later point in time.

I listened to a podcast interview with him a few weeks ago and it sounds like he is still having a great time. Though, if he can't go a day without posting 10 things.. might have become somewhat of an addiction as well!

So easy to fix this on the server that it is a non-issue. As you may have recently noticed all the Boarding Area blogs changed URLs. Do you think he lost all his SEO ranking then??? I changed URLs in November '13 dropping the boardingarea.com part completely from mine and didn't lose any SEO at all.

Any other reason he should leave??

I have been told if BA bloggers leave they will lose lots of traffic due to SEO Google stuff. Are you saying this is not true and they will keep the vast majority of their readers if they go out on their own servers and own URLs (without containing "boarding area")?

The main reason is, in my opinion, control of own destiny. Those two are certainly big enough to afford to pay for techie help. Then, again in my own opinion, they would no longer have to give Randy any cut at all. Especially now with the BA ad revenue drop starting in July. I hope August was better by the way!