Randy does not own FlyerTalk. He sold it for a reported ~$5 million on February 6, 2007. He continued to operate the site and was eligible to earn up to $2,715,000 in earn-out payments. But by 2010 that relationship devolved into a lawsuit where Randy sued Internet Brands for amounts in excess $1,193,000.

IB counter-sued claiming Randy had padded the earn-out metrics.

The suit and counter-suit were settled out of court under undisclosed terms.


Randy does, however, own BoardingArea. And InsideFlyer.

And I will always owe Randy gratitude for this amazing site where I learned so much about miles and points. I've always been a traveler; I've always collected miles and status, but thanks to FlyerTalk and Randy, I kicked it up a level of magnitude so that I rarely sit in the back any more. He is owed respect as the founder of FlyerTalk, a member of FlyerTalk, and an extraordinarily generous guy.

Agreed Diego. I've traveled in comfort and to places I've only dreamed about thanks to this great site.

Others have already covered this, but does this mean you can't disagree with him?

You can disagree with him but I didn't like the way 1 poster replied to him.

Hate to one-up you, but if it weren't for Randy creating FlyerTalk I'd never have met my amazing wife and my life would be much the worse for it! ^

I think you win. I agree that FT really opened up the world to many many people and for that we must thank Randy. It still is the standard and the best information is found here and sometimes lifted from here for blogs, including on BA.

She is lovely, smart, beautiful, gracious, warm. You are using your combined smarts to travel the world comfortably. Here's to Randy and FlyerTalk!

I think what others are trying to save is this is not about the gospel, it's simply about some facts. As you can see, some actually enjoy finding out the facts, others—not so much. But I'll try. You seem to have a fixation on "revenue-driven". Some facts which can be supported by members here would tend to disagree with that. I'm assuming you do know that for the first six years (and it might have been seven years) of FlyerTalk, there was absolutely no advertising on FlyerTalk. Yep, no revenue source of any kind. I paid the bills and actually spent north of $20K to get FlyerTalk started there was no real forum software around in 2005. Yep, spent money and didn't have a single clue about ever earning any of it back. Oh, and for the "revenue-driven" BoardingArea. Ooops. For the first year and longer I actually paid bloggers to post their information on BoardingArea and there was no advertising. And frankly no clue as to how to do that. My bad, i feel in love with what is now called social sharing and thought it was a good idea to help travelers help others. So "revenue-driven" ... history says differently, history that i can't change.

As for fact, here's the front page of BoardingArea when it started ... not an ad in sight and no sign on any revenue driven initiatives. Boy I could have used someone like you to convince me that starting a business with no idea on how to make money was a really, really bad idea. Fact is, I like the friends i made along the way and that's more valuable than a lot of other things people seem to stress about.

You seem to like being informed so I'll add some additional facts your way. SO, you say it is all about the page views. Here's a few numbers: 53, 145, 50, 72, 268, 89, 178, 323, 192, 65, 97, 70, 243, 38, 1,016, 127, 231. Nothing special about them, right?

Actually, these are the average daily sessions/visits for the first two weeks on BoardingArea that the last 17 blogs that joined us had in their existing traffic when they joined. Really, about the page views? Who in their right mind would take on 17 blogs onto a network where the ADS (average daily sessions) was lass than 200 visits a day. So it's about page views?

What of these numbers of an existing blog would tell you they were page views waiting to bust free? (the 1K+ was actually a greenbuild, not an existing blog).

And oh BTW, you can let others know that you weren't among the 153 "Dear John" letters we recently sent out from BoardingArea letting others know that we wouldn't be able to add them to BoardingArea. Do you know how many page views that represents? Dang, I screwed up again. (P.S. we'll let others wonder if when i say you/your blog wasn't among those that got a Dear John letter from BoardingArea if that means you are "in" ... we all do need to have a grin once and a while.

SO, my opinion is that lacking some actual facts you might think it's all about page views, but really, RTW1 even knows that 200 visits a day on average is no way to be "revenue-driven".

One more thing—you really should get that, cough, looked after. It's just not a healthy sign ...

Thank you Randy for taking the time to respond.

>>>>>>>>>>>Who in their right mind would take on 17 blogs onto a network where the ADS (average daily sessions) was lass than 200 visits a day. So it's about page views?

Hey, 200 times 17...it adds up! My opinion is BA IS about page views. You disagree. Okay, not a big deal. We'll just let others form their own opinion.

>>>>>>And oh BTW, you can let others know that you weren't among the 153 "Dear John" letters we recently sent out from BoardingArea letting others know that we wouldn't be able to add them to BoardingArea.

Excuse me? I do not remember applying to be a member of BA. I think I may have sent you an email inquiring about it and you never responded. I don't remember getting a "dear john" letter from you or it just probably went to spam.

>>>>>>>One more thing—you really should get that, cough, looked after. It's just not a healthy sign ...

What? What are you referring to? My cough? I haven't actually had a real cough in a very long time.

Happy Easter!

Go Broncos! :-)

This thread is so fascinating on so many levels.

Randy Petersen said you were not amongst the 153 who got such a letter, so why would you remember getting a letter which was sent to 153 others but which was not sent to you (at least not directly)? Of course you wouldn't remember that, nor would I. :)

Maybe it was a way of saying you may be welcome to become a boardingarea.com blogger too?

Personally, I like the idea of boardingarea.com being a collection of a variety of miles/points/travel blogs and a one-stop shop of some sort -- not to say that it doesn't have its room for improvement too; not to say it doesn't sometimes contribute to deals getting noticed in a way that may not necessarily be all that useful for me. Oh, pardon my pair of paraleptic references -- for I did say it. :D

Oh, I misread that I think....I am really slow this morning after I had a little bit too much wine last night. It looks like BA does not need my 200 page views then :D

Thanks you Randy for creating Flyertalk, it's been a part of my life for so many years.

Actually, the only time I really considered BA was when Rene offered to leave BA if I joined :-)

You all have a great holiday weekend!

Are you smarter than a thought leader?
 

Fascinating? This thread and Randy's last post in particular are suddenly confusing as hell. And I'm the [redacted] damn thought leader in this area. ;)

Can anyone translate Randy's double negatives and vague references (eg, a 'dear john letter' is a break-up letter, not a denial letter...was BA firing bloggers or denying them entry or both or neither!?!?!)?

Speaking of which, did you know you can get 30k star points for signing up with my affiliate!?

Bottom Line
I can't figure out what Randy's on about. Tell me your thoughts in the comments section below.

:D

LOVE that you saved that BA homepage screenshot Randy. Brings back memories of you, Christine, Tim and I working late into the night the day before the launch trying to get all of the last minute kinks worked out (my apologies to anyone else who worked late that night who I might have left out).

Fun and exciting times.

And just to add my $.02 to the revenue-driven discussion, I can vouch for Randy when he says revenue isn't what drives him. In fact, and I'm not trying to take undue credit here, I would say I was much more revenue-driven with regard to the growth of FT and BA than Randy was. When FT was attracting millions of page views and was producing very little income to show for it, I tended to be the buzz in Randy's ear saying, "You know what, we might want to try placing some ads in the posts." After launching BA with a business model that dispersed nearly all of the ad revenue to the bloggers and kept very little for the company, I was whispering in his ear, "You know what, maybe we re-jigger this model a bit so we can make a reasonable profit."

Of course, I wasn't the only FFS employee whispering in his ear, so depending how you feel about the ads on either FT or BA, please don't assign me all the blame/credit :p

And the thing is, in every case when someone was suggesting to Randy that we try a new approach in an effort to increase revenue, it took an awful lot of convincing and a very sound case. And the case HAD to include an argument that the revenue-producing change would prove beneficial to the community over the long term. More than a few solid, revenue-producing ideas never saw the light of day - primarily because Randy rejected them. And in my estimation, BA would probably produce less revenue than it does if Randy didn't feel an obligation to the bloggers in the network to help them maximize their earnings.

Randy and I didn't always agree on how best to manage/operate the FFS sites (though thinking back, we had surprisingly few serious disagreements), but I think anyone who would claim his decision making is primarily revenue-driven doesn't really know him very well at all.