Doctor of Credit

Both of you have the money to pay a staff writer, if it's such an amazing opportunity then grab it with both hands.

Raffles, you don't run a BA blog. You run a miles & points blog and the most useful program in the UK is BA. Look at your recent posting history, you're posting often about other programs as well. That's not a criticism either, your readers would be disappointed you didn't cover something useful just because it wasn't BA.

I think you're both overestimating the demand for this type of blog and underestimating how difficult it is to compete. It's incredibly risky to blog solely about one program.

Since reddit.com/r/churning disallowed direct blog post links, I thought there was a gap in the market for something that focused solely on the best posts from P&M bloggers each day and the discussion of that but I think travelmo.re is a good solution.

Big_Foot

that really made my day

Raffles

It wouldn't work with a staff writer. The writer has to be:

A) one of the 50 most knowledgable people in the country about a particular programme
B) able to write well
C) want to work for you as a staff writer

Unlikely you would find such a person.

DoC, if you go back to my earlier posts, what I was proposing was not a 100 per cent AA site. It is a site where all the airline content is AA but the rest is hotel and car rental stuff. All the reference articles would be AA. Call it 'American Miles' or whatever. This is effectively what I do in the UK.

You need to add in the hotel stuff to keep your site a 'one stop shop' for the readers - and no-one wants to read 3 AA articles a day, however much they love it!

I also fail to understand why you think there is systematic risk in a blog on one airline. If AA was taken over by Delta, all of your readers would transition to Delta together and it becomes a Delta blog. Your readers wont abandon you for Delta Points on the day of the announcement. It would be the opposite, they would want you to hand hold them through the complex merger process.

And once it was merged, you would have a big Delta blog and be able to pick off readers from Delta Points. It is actually an opportunity more than a threat. A bigger threat would be anti trust breaking up AA into three, since your readers would fragment 3 ways.

If you think travelmo.re is what the average business non-FT reading business traveller (who currently has no airline credit cards ...) is looking for then you are mistaken, I think.

oliver2002

Lufthansaflyer has done a blog solely aimed at the North American travelling LH & co. From what I heard he is doing well, though I doubt it would justify a writer.

Doctor of Credit

If your monetization strategy is credit card links, this is a huge risk. If you lose (or fail to get) links from the card issuer that handles the co-branded cards for that airline then you lose your income stream.

DP ran into this earlier in the year and was "forced" to run posts/advertisements for generic cash back credit cards. Doing this hurts your credibility in the space, but if you don't do it and continue promoting the cards you have no links for then there is no incentive for the card issuer to pay you for doing it.

That's not what I said at all. I said there was a gap in the market for that type of website. It probably won't convert well for credit card links, but it's something I've personally found useful for scanning what people are interested in each day.

brooklynmatt

Why? None of that is relevant. It would certainly make for a great blog, don't get me wrong... but look at any successful (revenue wise) blog - FTG, MMS, TPG et al, none of these guys are in the top 50, they have mediocre staff writers and just put out content to convert newbies. If money is your goal, expertise is not needed.

That isn't supposed to be an attack on any of those blogs, they are great at what they do- but they don't write well, and they aren't experts (other than at converting credit card applications).

More importantly, you and Rene are saying 'it would be easy' and throwing out these huge numbers, and saying it from this perspective of being successful - but the numbers you guys have as successful bloggers are nowhere near what you say is so easy to achieve!

Raffles

Obviously 'easy' is a relative term but someone who gets the formula right would do very well. 2m page views per month would only require (scaling up my personal numbers by 3), 25,000 people a day visiting your site assuming just under 3 page view per visit.

I'm sure someone with more spare time than myself could look up the number of Google searches each day relating to AA and then apply a click through percentage based on you being ranked first page for the majority of queries (because of the huge raft of AA content you would have).

84fiero

I guess the magnitude needed would depend to some extent on how one defines "making a living" for their personal circumstances.

Renes Points

There are those who get it and those who don't. The "titans" get it, but most are just gripers on FT and don't. ^

1848

Riddle me this: if one gripes on FT about the gripers on FT what does that make them? A meta-griper?

gpapadop

Just now seeing this after my romp in Hong Kong. I find it hilarious in the advice on how to make a living no affiliate credit card link pumping was even mentioned...imagine that!

I now need to continue my laundry

itsaboutthejourney

(bolding mine)

The above couldn't be farther from the truth. The DP blog is the laughingstock of Virginia Avenue due to its misinformation and bizarre ramblings. I'd add that DP's censoring of corrections/comments only cements the lack of credibility the DP blog has in the Delta space.

Renes Points

So pleased to be YOUR personal Delta expert / pro and thanks for being a loyal blog reader!

oliver2002

Reminder to be nice and keep the personal comments where they belong.

Regards Oliver2002
Mod EM&PR

BuildingMyBento

[QUOTE=kokonutz;23961257]The problem with that approach is that there already IS a resource that provides this: FlyerTalk.


Yesterday I was wondering what lounge I would get to use at PEK on a first class connection from BKK on TG to IAD on UA. My google results: THAI, star alliance, flyertalk and three blogs. The blog reports (that consisted mostly of photos of the food offerings) were from 2008, 2011 and 2012. The FlyerTalk thread was from March of this year.

[QUOTE]

I'm glad FT (still) exists in China, because non-mainland blogs are a no-go.