Thoughts on mypoints...
 

Hi all

I'm sure, like me, that you are racking up your mypoints at a rate of 200 a day or greater. That's about 73,000 points a year.

It only just dawned on me though that you can only convert 20,000 points to 25,000 AA miles once per year. This has put a bit of a dampener on things in terms of really long flights (Europe/USA) ex Australia. It will take several years to build up the miles for a really long trip.

I think the strategy has to be to rack up 20,000 points per year and convert these to AA miles and then any excess you accrue during the year over this should be converted to Alaskan miles. Unfortunately the conversion rate is less favourable but at least the points are not wasted.

I wish Mypoints would allow the conversion of their Vacationmiles to Continental Onepass miles on at least a 1 to 1 basis. That would be extremely useful. (Are you listening Mypoints?)

At any rate this fast rate of Mypoints accrual is all dependant on the Talkcity site still allowing points on a daily basis. So far we've been pretty lucky.

Have any others got any good strategies to follow re the conversion of mypoints into FF miles?

cheers Peter

ffhound.....I wouldn't worry about spending those 73,000 miles just yet. My guess is that this is a short term strategy....maybe for the month of September....to build up "hits" or traffic at their website to show potential advertisers. The surveys are also a nice way to inflate the "average time spent at the website." It would be nice if other websites pick up on this strategy.

I agree. Get 'em while you can at Talk City. Eventually they're gonna figure out this loophole and shut it down.

BTW, found an extra 25 pts. if you build a web site at talkcity. click on HOME PAGES. then look on the left side of the screen for the mp logo.

Don't know if you can do it more than once though.

Also, if you don't mind giving your credit card and can REMEMBER TO CANCEL DURING THE 30-DAY TRIAL, you can get 300 pts from @backup from downloading and installing the back up program for your PC

It took multiple requests from customer care at Mypoints but I got my 300 last night finally. Now I can cancel!

You never know how long online point/mile earning promotions will last. I earned well over 100,000 miles through PlanetAll during the 18 months they offered 100 miles for every new referral. I was originally told that the promotion would last 3 months.

This was the promotion that was the catalyst for starting The Mileage Workshop.

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Addicted to airline miles? Check out: The Airline Mileage Workshop

good points all, lets enjoy the points and hope they last. THe way I figure it, if the talkcity promo lasts long enough and with a few other good deals thrown in everyone should be able to make the 20K mark by early december and get the 25K in 1999. Then continue building points to 20K again in 2000 (assuming power, computers, and all else dont fail, world doesnt end,...). If the promo lasts that long we suffer and figure something out...

actually it isn't even that hard, you can still get the 20K to 25K vacationmiles multiple times a year, only the AA miles is capped at 25 from/by vacation miles. There is still the AA flight award (24K?) or the Delta award (24-27K i think) or Hyatt package w/cash, for 28K.

The alternate is to go either AS miles (3mypoints:2AS), Honors points (1:1), or Marriott Rewards (3:2).

Or lets not forget you can get GiftCertificates to marriott, target (and buy catman some soap he was looking for in some other thread) or various other places, the best offers put a mypoint at 1 cent, some a bit less. At 1cent per point, offers like the more.com 500points for $10 look pretty good, that's a 50% discount off the top (sticking right at 10 for the purchase) or as miles even better. If mypoints was just a bit better at crediting those points i would be accruing 700pts a day easily..

so, let's all hope we have the problem Peter is hoping for...

tg

All good points. What do you make of the comparison of 1:1 Hilton vs 3:2 marriott? Which is better/more valuable? I've been thinking about this stuff since the question of mypoints vs freeride.

ffhound, a question: I went to Talk City and took the surveys, then I went back the next day to take the survey again, but it had the same questions. Is this a weekly earning opportunity or daily, as I thought you said on another thread? Thanks.

I'm also figuring this one's not going to last long. I'm amazed everyday I open it up that it's still available. I've been trying to figure out just how many people might be answering all the questions every day to see how big of a "problem" this might be to MyPoints. The religion question only has about 1,000 posts and it's been up for quite a while. Any guesses as to how many people might be doing this?


Nanook: They don't change the questions very often, but you still get the points for answering them again.

letoile- Considering the total number of cumulated rsponses, the cost is seemingly quite low- relatively speaking. I've wondered how many FT's have been participating. I've only done it the last few days and the relative per day increase in total responses semms quite small. I wonder whther they just do not count your votes after each succesive time you vote- just crediting the points! Unlikely bt a possible explanation.

I don't think they count your vote, except for the first time you answer the question. So if you answer the question 5 days in a row it will still only count as one vote.

Another comment about the promotion with talk city. I don't think talk city cares about the information that might be gathered from the survey responses. Especially since when people like us are answering questions about what we want our classmates to notice when we start school. Talk city wants people to visit the site and see the ads on its site. I don't see any real reason for them to change the promotion or to even change the questions, because we are not going there to learn about others.

Thanks for the info on this deal, I have been doing it for about 10 days now.

Giftcertificate....I'm sure you're right that Talk City does not care about the survey answers. The average amount of time people spend at their website is much more important to them....If you click on "advertising and products" in their pitch to potential advertisers they note that the average time spent on the website is "over 22 minutes, five times longer than similar websites" I hope this is working out well for them....I love the points!

It may actually be worth their while to leave the surveys up.

When you go to the home page there is a banner ad at the top of the page. And another at each topic/voting page. And another at the top of the vote results page and finally another when your screen refrshes. That's 3 banner ads shown for 10 points gained.

I suspect that some of the cost of the 10 points is defrayed by the display of the 3 banner ads per survey. I'm not sure what banner ad display rates are at the moment.

Here's hoping they hang around for a while.

cheers peter

Think. Think. Think.

I've given this a bit more thought and come up with a strategy that I think will prove beneficial provided the talkcity points are around for a while.

Firstly the strategy is to rack up 20,000 points this year and exchange them for 25,000 AA miles. We should have this before the end of the year.

The next thing to do is to continue accruing a further 20,000 miles to exchange for 25,000 AA miles early next calender year. In late February or thereabouts these should be ready.

This gives 50,000 AA miles. For those clever persons who joined Renoair's FF program earlier this year a further 1500 freebie miles will have been credited by the end of 1999 as American merges its FF program with Renoair's. That's 51,500 miles so far.

What to do - accrue points and wait until next year?

No. Accrue the extra points and then convert them later in the year to Hilton points which in turn can be converted to AA miles. The conversion rate is not very good but at least the miles are aggregated ultimately in the AA program and this means that some awards requiring > 50,000 miles are within reach. this is a good strategy if you dont' want to wait until 2001.

http://talk.flyertalk.com/forum/smile.gif

cheers Peter

Or you could even stay at a Hilton for free and not lose in the conversion! Thanks Peter.

If you earn a vacation cert for 25K miles this year and then next year, could you work around the AA mileage exchange cap by starting a new account with MP once you reach your second set of 20K mypoints?

If Mypoints caps the exchange, seems like they'd never know. If AA Vacations caps the exchange, guess this wouldn't work

BTW, just curious, how many points has anyone managed to accumulate with MP so far? I'm at well over 5,000 and still voting.

Anyone else into the 10's yet? Maybe i'm bringing up the rear, just curious!