iadisgreat

They are also going to give you a 1099 to report the 67,500 miles as income to the IRS. Too bad the winner will have this taxed as income as opposed to getting the write off as a business expense that TPG will get.

HadesNL

Giving away miles would resort to gifttax payable by giver or receiver?
Holding a raffle / random lottery would imply gambling?
Must depend on the state or if it's done private or public?

84fiero

In the US at least, prizes including miles are generally taxable and (above a certain value I think) the giver of the prize is supposed to send a 1099 to the IRS and the taxpayer. The taxpayer has to report it on their income tax. There are some nuances and the taxpayer can try to dispute the reported value, but that's the general concept.

sbm12

$1200 IIRC, though the recipient is supposed to always declare the value, even if no 1099 is issued.

HadesNL

Thank you 84fiero and sbm12 for clarification.
I learned the basics in school but it's been a while.

st1575

Actually, a 1099-MISC is supposed to be issued for most prizes or awards totally $600 or more.

sbm12

^

I was thinking of a casino where the threshold is typically $1200, but that's also not a 1099. My bad.

HouFly

it looks like TPGs EY Res vid hit some of video content aggregator sites (like Worldstar and others) ... I guess this is after it hit Reddit & spread among the gen pop from there like PFD mentioned on his site.

not sure if that's cool or if I should be mad about the eventual influx of the hordes - who may vie for the very same award space that's increasingly rare as it is.

Raffles

Are there many people on those sites old enough or credit worthy enough to get a credit card?!

Highest viewing YouTuber in the UK makes Minecraft videos which are adored by my 4 year old ....

One thing about being in Rolling Stone - your audience is at close to the legal drinking age!

runfit

And yet it still does not have as many views at this point as the guy did the video about the Apartment on YouTube (even after a month on that vid, the guy had 1m views) Must be a bit disappointing that all that money couldn't bring in more views, especially for the premier cabin on the plane.

HouFly

which other guy did an EY Apartment YouTube vid with the intent of it going viral? I remember the [redacted] who did the EK F vid or the SQ F TR or the JRL character. but I dont remember anyone doing a trip/flight specifically to brag about it with the intent of creating a viral marketing campaign & generate buzz + traffic to their existing sites. lucky obv tried but failed w kickstarter - but he's caught other PR breaks this year alone.

I know there are tons of good videographers (ok youtube creators, some who even post TRs on the forums here) who happen to be #AVGeeks and post nice vid TRs/reviews -- and while I enjoy em esp when doing research before my next miles burn extravaganza lol -- they arent trying to be snazzy or cheesy or have any intent of catching the next viral wave to stardom. as such they maybe get a few thousand views because their vids are pretty basic.

runfit

TPG just posted their numbers over the years by pageviews and it makes me a little confused. Here was the progression he showed - "Whereas when TPG first began in 2010, we had 34,647 page views, that number has increased every year since — 805,084 in 2011; 1,137,349 in 2012; 2,348,788 in 2013; 3,717,877 in 2014; and 7,301,132 in 2015."
7.3 million for that site in pageviews in a year really does not sound that high (for his site). Not only that, it breaks down to 600,000 pageviews per month yet he claims to have 1.5 million monthly unique visitors. ??
Could he really be saying he has 7.3 million per month? But I do not think that is what he saying because he has exact numbers, not averages.
So, what is off?
http://thepointsguy.com/2016/01/20-y...nts-and-miles/

ctownflyer

Those numbers have to be off, they seem extremely low.

Astrophsx

Looks like they've made an edit:

Whereas when TPG first began in 2010, we had 9,887 unique visitors in December, and that number has increased every year since — 165,272 in December 2011; 295,035 in December 2012; 654,394 in December 2013; 1,200,154 in December 2014; and 2,516,447 in December 2015.

gpapadop

All of that and nowhere is mentioned the sale to Bankrate. Wow...don't let the transparency hit you in the face, it hurts..."conversions" #rolleyes