IMH

That's so sweeping that it is -- unsurprisingly -- wrong.

sbm12 is absolutely right to point to exceptional SEO as one of the most important reasons TPG is so successful at attracting readers. Raffles is almost certainly right about the top four or five MPCC* bloggers bringing in over $1m of annual revenue apiece.

pricesquire is probably right about his blog possibly having 29 unique readers. And I was right about the parties to the FTG sale knowing the terms of their agreement.

*MPCC = miles, points and credit cards

Kagehitokiri

quality? surely you jest. irrelevant, as proven by countless mainstream examples with disclosed figures.

my source is a big name blogger, try again

and i dont care about blogs - i dont read them for anything related to travel

kokonutz

So that makes you a blogging blog bashing board basher. @:-)

oliver2002

Ladies and Gentlemen, Dear Kids,
please don't provoke or be provoked. Lotsa things to read and post about elsewhere, if you continue as above, this thread will be history.

Regards Oliver2002
Mod EM&PR forum

brooklynmatt

I'd argue that you could have some room for correction on the bolded.

brooklynmatt

Cost Per Click rates don't stay at $13 as readership increases. Rather than getting excited about that, just sum up your income from the month - I doubt it averages much more than $14, rather than $13*30.

brooklynmatt

When you say 'remember I probably have the biggest English language non US blog' are you referring to you mentioning it in the past, or is there some data to support it?

I was intrigued by your claim and looked at the metric reporting sites out there and couldn't see much. Compete doesn't list you, Alexa (which is obviously awful) has you ranked over 100 - what does Google Analytic list your site as?

Kagehitokiri

brooklynmatt, the point is more about how few of this kind of blog outside US
which is what Raffles is talking about - not ANY blog, if you are implying that
Raffles has been much more specific (category of blog) in his statements in past
in discussion of points/miles/whatever blogs, theres no need for him to be repetitive

pricesquire was saying $13 total, divided by clicks, not times clicks
his point was re large sites: "I can only imagine pages" - no "excitement"
and "29 unique readers" (per day?) not a specific number of clicks ("$13*30" ?)

blogs target mainstream new non-experts - so what are you saying?

brooklynmatt

I've just seen many times how his blog has a large readership, and it now has become "probably the largest non-US" but i've only ever heard it from him - I was just wondering if I hear this regularly, if there might be something other than his opinion on it. I understand the distinction between US and non US within the niche, but it comes across as an expert opinion regarding volume/data/whatnot when it might be that the readership in question is fairly small.

I think that is a very limited view, assuming that all blogs are TPG designed to convert new readers, and that conversely all experts come to FT.

There are many blogs out there that aren't packaging information found within FT for the purpose of converting 'newbs' and there are many newbies that come to FT. There's also a lot more going on out there within the game than you see on a forum like this one, often with people with experience leading the way.

Now I am not saying that someone like FTG is out there innovating manufactured spend (heck they haven't figured out how Avios works yet) but to think that is all that exists is very narrow minded.

brooklynmatt

Oh and this:

My point remains - whether it is 13*30 or $13/29*40000.... it isn't a linear progression like that. 40000 views will pay maybe $20-200 using Adsense. The current number he has with a low number of views is anomalous.

Edit- it's also not uncommon to see with low readership. It just doesn't scale like that.

Kagehitokiri

i think we are interpreting what was said by Raffles and pricesquire differently.

as well as what i said, as i was not saying all blog posts are the same.

pricesquire

Bingo Kagehitokiri!!

Raffles

Obviously the words 'miles and points' should have been included in that phrase but, to be frank, I assumed it was obvious what I meant

This is also purely my best guess based on no statistical proof whatsoever except gut feeling And, frankly, whether I am No 1 or No 3 or No 5 outside the US is totally immaterial, I only said it to make it clear that the point I was making was not made from a position of total ignorance!

brooklynmatt

There was no doubt at all we were talking within the miles and points niche. I was just wondering what sort of substantiated data there was to support you position of not total ignorance.

I just hear a lot of comments from you here and elsewhere about how high your readership is and how based on that you have insights- so I was just wondering about how it was tracked since you aren't listed particularly highly on some of the tracking platforms I've seen. But I know these do have flaws. Just general nosiness on my part.

brooklynmatt

Really? I must have missed something huge.

I thought you said with $13 from 29 uniques you could only imagine what sites with 40,000 were getting?

I interpreted that as you were speculating on what they could earn, and were using your data point as a jumping off point. I simply pointed out that one you start to see 40,000 or 400,000 you won't see the same correlation to $13 as you witnessed due to regression towards the mean.