JetAway

Sounds good to me!

bthotugigem05

The credit card companies are hugely invested in airline miles (Citi pretty much financed American's bankruptcy by purchasing billions of miles), they will continue to be involved at a significant level for the foreseeable future.

Ultimately if you want to fix loyalty programs you should get credit cards out of the game. But that will never happen.

LPDAL

I accidentally posted this reply in the OMAAT thread when it was meant for the TPG thread here:

I should start up a rival blog called "The Honest Guy". The first post would be, "Points Bloggers Are Not On Your Side: First Class and Traveling Was Never and Will Never Be Free".

It would delve into:

1. Why points bloggers push credit cards so much
2. Why point blogger claims of "Free First Class travel" are bogus
3. How, in actuality, points bloggers fund their first class trips every week (Hint: It's not credit card points)
4. The devaluation of miles and lessening of redemption rates
5. The dangers of having too many credit cards and churning
etc.

The next post would be about getting into first class for cheap, not for free. Yes, there are still a few methods that don't involve jumping into an ocean trench of debt.

-LPDAL

Canarsie

TravelBloggerBuzz already exists.

bthotugigem05

I don't think a ton of people care how their trips are funded, honestly. A lot of people live vicariously through these bloggers and follow them mainly for the trip reports.

The amount of people that are insulted that these bloggers make money doing stuff like this baffles me, especially when they're sharing said comments and information on a website owned by a Venture Capital firm in San Francisco who will most likely start doing the same sort of monetizing as soon as they can.

TheBOSman

Insulted? Nah. Good on TPG for cashing out at the peak I say, and convincing his superiors that a $32k expenditure for one flight was a good idea .

LPDAL

If you replace bloggers with trip reporters from this forum, I, in particular have been asked over and over again to the point of severe annoyance how I fund my own trips (29, trip report 30 is in the works) and have started ignoring / reporting comments like that because in actuality they do not have anything to do with the report itself. It is an issue. Who cares how I funded it? Just read the report and enjoy it...The reason they ask why I can afford what I post on here is irrelevant anyhow.

Again, who cares if you write the truth on a piece of paper or on FlyerTalk, it's still the truth, no matter how many semantics games one may play to abrogate themselves of any personal responsibility.

-LPDAL

84fiero

Some readers care, some don't...depends what they're looking to get out of the blogger's trip report. I don't care as I'm comfortable with my knowledge of my loyalty programs and plans for earning and burning my miles & points, so I look for good information on the trip itself.

But it is a fair question for some readers on a blog that is selling the dream (illusion) of using miles and points to achieve travel aspirations. Some blogs mislead the reader as to the extent that "easy to earn" miles were used when that wasn't the case...simultaneously hawking affiliate credit cards to do so. (And the worst ones hide information about better signup offers not a part of their affiliate deals.)

It's not unlike weight loss advertisements where the spokesperson didn't really use the diet or pill (or didn't use it exclusively) to achieve their results - but the ad wants to give a different impression. Of course TV ads do at least have a tiny disclaimer at the bottom for about 2 seconds.

I'm sure there are a few, but I don't know that most people take any offense at making money with P&M blogs - I certainly don't. But they will call out shady or misleading information/tactics just like people will post reviews of bad experiences with companies, products, hotels, etc.

dimramon

I noticed that TPG is being pushed a lot on Facebook, in the same way Amazon and other companies are pushed.

Personally, I don't really care what they do and how. I just don't get the "selfie" mentality.

"Here's a picture of me in my first class seat, here's a picture of me holding a drink, here's a picture of me with a piece of dried macaroni in my hand,.."

Maybe there's a narcissistic aspect surrounding it that I fail to understand. It's not like there's a compelling story behind the picture...

I found the whole video to be pathetic, sad and disgusting up to a point since I don't want to watch people eat. Or maybe I should get with the program and film myself at In-n-Out tomorrow and push a credit card while I'm at it.

bthotugigem05

It's the blog/vlog mentality. These aren't anonymous people reviewing products, these are people you get to know by their travels. I know it doesn't appeal to you but that's why a lot of people keep coming back.

Raffles

TPG is only being pushed to you on FB. Their ad targetting is amazing which makes it incredibly cheap.

If you charge commercial rates for your advertising (which I don't as I don't have a sales team) you may well be paying less to FB per click than you would be earning in ad revenue from the page they land on, even assuming they immediately navigate away.

TMM1982

I disagree somewhat. While technically it is your business and yours alone, the whole point of a trip report, IMO, is to get others excited about it and possible have them consider a destination that they may not have considered before. The 2nd part of that is how to pay for it. Not everyone is well off enough to just straight up pay cash each and every time. So when they see your almost 30 awesome reports, they are simply curious how you are doing it. Do you have a high paying job? Are you using points/miles? Is someone else covering it? They want to learn the secrets.

sbm12

Yup.

People here kvetch incessantly that the "travel" blogs are just CC-pushing schmucks. And then they kvetch when those sites try to actually be like travel blogs.

Some people will never be happy. Unless they're able to kvetch here, I suppose.

84fiero

You report a member for asking how you funded your trip?

baccarat_king

Very few can actually take kvetching to an "art form level," I come from that family.