Jasper2009

Not all that shocking IMO. At $100-$200 per approved referral, that's 150-300 sign-ups in one day.

For a credit card sign-up bonus that's actually worth posting about / was among the best sign-up bonuses FFers had every seen, that doesn't seem like a ridiculous number to me.

ctownflyer

CSR launch probably did 50x that for TPG. Easily.

YoungSoloTraveler

I see his traffic numbers and its larger then the entire boarding area. 7M Uniques a month. Even a 0.1% conversion ratio is 100 CC apps a day, so TPG is making five figs DAILY off CC conversions.

No wonder the minnows are getting cut off, their monthly traffic is less then one day at TPG headquarters.

ctownflyer

Try to find a CSR affiliate link on any website other than TPG...

Randy Petersen

While I can understand that you believe your research is correct and that you are likely an expert on these topics, let me try and help you by pointing out some facts that are in the public domain.

- Actually TPG (the good guy that he is) does not garner "7M Uniques a month." You are likely confusing this information with visits and or pageviews and there is an extraordinary difference between the two stats. If you care to fact check this, look no farther than Brian himself:
https://thepointsguy.com/2017/06/sev...he-points-guy/
(on June 7th, just slightly more than a month ago Brian makes mention that he just recently passed the four million unique visitors a month threshold.) Kudos to TPG on this amazing milestone.

- As for your contention that "... his traffic numbers and its larger then the entire boarding area." Actually no matter the source of the "traffic numbers" you have seen, you are likely trying to compare apples to oranges. TPG is a single domain while BoardingArea operates as a sub-domain and in addition as a distributed network. There is a huge difference as traffic research does not identify all members of a typical sub-domain website and in addition there are a number of quite large blogs of BoardingAre that because of their interest in tech, prefer to manage their own URL registration and as such do not appear in our sub-domain structure though they appear internally in our Network stats. As a way of fact checking, simply visit such members of the BoardingArea Network as (Seth's) blog.wandr.me/, travelskills.com, godsavethepoints.com, pointswithacrew.com and modhop.com. There are certainly more but again, it is highly likely that whatever traffic source you are measuring does not have an actual traffic stat on the BoardingArea Network.

Hope this helps.

Adam1222

"TPG" as a site is no more a good "guy" than Boarding Area is. Both are corporate entities reflecting the input of multiple individuals, some of whom are paid employees.
The big difference with Boarding Area, of course, is TPG.com has at least a modicum of quality control, whereas Boarding Area ranges from phenomenal contributors of content like Seth to drivel that duplicates content from other blogs Or is written by people who went to Cancun once and heard about a credit card.

so comparing the two is hard. Boarding Area proves every day that quantity (of domains) is not quality. Bankrate/TPG has a different business model and marketing team than the sockpuppet or German or high school sophomores who write on BA.

Of course when challenged on the poor ethical conduct or quality of BA blogs, the response is always "we're just a hosting platform." But dare to suggest it's not as successful as a site that operates coherently and suddenly there's a uniform defense.

GUWonder

That was Randy Petersen's point.

When the business model of boardingarea.com is what it is, then being a hosting platform should be the anticipated representation in return when being challenged on lawful content over which little to no centralized editorial control is applicable by the hosting platform. Just like not all opinions on FT are reperesentative of IBB, telling off IBB because someone doesn't like like what I post doesn't mean that my FT-hosted posts are representative of IBB action and/or opinion.

Adam1222

Thanks for sharing.

gpapadop

Deep

GUWonder

...... in fact.

It's not like hosting platforms generally take the contributions of the platform user as being editorial controlled and approved in such way as to claim that any or all opinions provided by contributors are the opinions of the hosting platform. Isn't that what even some newspapers claim? . But in this situation, there is even less editorial control than at newspapers.

Adam1222

Well that doesn't have to do with TPG or Boarding Area. Clearly Randy has a different interest in perpetuating his brand than Squarespace or WordPress . Boarding Area certainly could hold it's bloggers to standards. It selects it's authors, and Randy has jumped in where there has been especially egregious issues. Boarding Area doesn't exercise any more control over it's bloggers for one reason: It doesn't want to. Plenty of other blog networks are more selective and have standards for their members. Boarding Area has chosen quantity over quality. But there's already a thread going on discussing the poor quality and problematic nature of Boarding Area.

And no, that's not what newspapers claim. If a newspaper publishes an opinion piece that it says isn't it's viewpoint, it still edits the piece for writing quality and ensures factual accuracy. And it doesn't publish every opinion piece submitted, particularly where the author shows little sophistication, knowledge, or unique perspective.

GUWonder

Well, it does, as the comparison is being made between TPG and boardingarea.com -- even as the point is that it's like comparing an orange to a carrot. Sure, both are orange and are plant products of a sort but both are also different in material ways from each other. Thus making a comparison hard, as shared by multiple posters in this thread.

Adam1222

Thanks for that illuminating, detailed, nonresponsive rebuttal. Your most recent post has nothing to do with your incorrect understanding of how newspapers work.

Since Randy has gone back into lurker mode from piping in to defend his "its just a network i dont vouch for quality or content but i will ferociously defend the brand anyway" brand, getting back on topic, who knew the Points Guy and credit cards could save a long distance relationship? "One of my favorite things about being TPG is hearing reader success stories. Today, a reader figured out you can use miles to fly places...even short distances served by many airlines!"

kokonutz

Funny you should bring up FT. When Randy owned and ran this place he set up strict TOS, controls and enforcement to standards. We still live with that legacy today.

His BA business model is clearly very different. Who knows if it is as lucrative, but it sure is different.

GUWonder

Does the BA business model prevent its affiliated bloggers from accepting freebies from the industry participants it covers? FT TOS hasn't done that. At some point TPG claimed it didn't accept free flights, but what about other freebies from the industry participants it covers?