[QUOTE= George has endured it all and should desire a merit award for perseverance!

Anyway his blog is the reality check we all need if we are swept away by the tsunami of echochamber of pumping BBB: Bask / Bilt / Brex[/QUOTE]

Thanks, I really appreciate that. Is it perseverance or just complete stupidity...I am not so sure. April to date has brought in $85 so far...how am I going to deduct my $395 Capital One VentureX fee this way huh? If this persists...IRS will say my blog is a hobby...oh, let's not go there :-)

Actually, does Amazon serve ads? I thought it was $ from product affiliate links...My sister in law, I am sure, was responsible for 90% of the revenue of that, very low triple digits every month, they like to shop a lot on Amazon in New Jersey :-)

Amazon is easy to deal with - said no affiliate, third party seller, or anyone other than their direct customer...but only on Prime purchases!

And from the thoughtleader himself:

https://viewfromthewing.com/what-are...-travel-sites/

Yet the comments are more illuminating....factoring:
tips vs tabloids
comments vs no comments
reviews vs experiences

And one of the comments:

Plus a whole bunch more point/counterpointing on FT.

​​​​​​​David

I saw that, how depressing. Especially seeing that Pile your own canoe or something smh.

Churchill was right, a strong sense of thoughtleadering:

https://nl-m-wikipedia-org.translate...n&_x_tr_pto=sc
in orginal Dutch: https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wij_va...iseren_Wc-eend


------

to keep in line with the topic at hand,

some travel blogs are more personality driven and give a peek of lifestyle,
this can be done without ads of nonstop creditcards hawking,
but in the way of tie ups sponsorship with brands/hotels,
promoting an own book, very self-concious promo images, the usual referal link to a brand,
https://pierreblake.com/how-to-trave...-1500-a-month/
Note no words: Brex/Bilt/Bask/Chase/CapitalOne/CreditCards etc...
Yet the question remains how impartial are these experiences ......


on the other end of the spectrum are those utilising a similair model as the US-titans of BA:
https://www.myglobalviewpoint.com/travel-blog-salary/

This guy looks like he’s just spamming Bluehost links which pay ludicrously well. Whether you can trust the rest of it is a different question given that the whole point of the piece is to sell you a hosting contract.

Understand completely about trust....
and about solid information and sources ....

even though one can slap a face on a blog,

if fundamentally the information is wrong,
the blog is nothing than a shrewd sales attempt aimed to the uniformed .....

read :
https://www.myglobalviewpoint.com/be...fly-to-europe/
Even though it says 2023 updated
Ahum: Norwegian kinda went bust longhaul and is now in a way reincarnated asNorse Atlantic .....

As Raffles mentioned .... some travel blogs are not so trustworthy....

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>the blog is nothing than a shrewd sales attempt aimed to the uniformed ....

True for the vast majority of blogs about the "hobby"

And it reads like it�s written by ChatGPT. Look at the paragraph/sentence structures.

I had the same thought!

i glance at these miles blogs from time to time, omaat included. im skeptical because their blogs are their main source of income, hence you cannot expect them to be fully objective and honest

for me, the biggest problem is these blogs greatly overvalue points. you cannot calculate value of a point as (cost of the same ticket* - surcharges)/total points required. at the very least, it is (max price one is willing to pay for a similar ticket* - surcharges)/total points required. one should also consider the opportunity costs, other costs associated with redeeming an award booking, and the lack of availability as you pointed out. a vastly different valuation could change the entire proposition these points and credit cards

another thing i feel is sorely missing is that fact that these blogs seldom point out that while redeeming j or f can give outsized value, you maybe paying for more than you intended to for your trip. people sometimes do not think of these points as cash equivalent, but that fact is they are, and people would have made other choices otherwise. e.g. a RT US-Asia qsuites saver maybe 190k + $500. some travel portals allow you to redeem points at 1.5 cents each, meaning that qsuite flight is about $3.3k. yes that is great value, but not everyone is willing to pay $3.3k for award flights. yeah, and i dont need to mention about advantage fares, which 380k + $500, which is about $6k, and i can easily find a comparable j class for cheaper than that (e.g. jal for less than $5k)

lastly, none of these blogs talked about the sustainability of cc giving out so many points. most recently, VX biz is giving out 750k points for $200k spend. biz card can also run through a lot of spend, hence they will accrue a lot points. SUBs for personal cards are also trending upwards, so idk how all of these are sustainable. too many and ever increasing amount of points and a limited pool of award is just a devaluation waiting to happen. but nobody talks about this because it will affect their commission. a larger SUB and an artificially high valuation of a point means that they can say wow this is a great value. they will milk it until they cant

all of these brings the wrong crowd in, and many lose out because they do not fully understand how to play the game. and it also makes it worse for everyone else.

*same ticket refers to same airline and timing, while similar ticket means a similar travel route on a comparable airline

Your approach is what most of the good bloggers use, including Ben. He uses a ballpark valuation of what he'd pay for an upgrade to C or F, and specifically takes into account all the fees, the opportunity cost of not earning redeemable miles on a cash ticket, etc.

Not following your logic here. If you think $3.3k for Qsuites is a good deal, why not book it? Another person might prefer to use the same points to fly their whole family in Y. To each their own, right?

Credit card companies pocket something like 2-3% of every transaction. The credit card company is making $6,000+ on that $200k spend. The points probably cost the credit card company about a penny each, maybe not even that (IIRC the major banks got heavily discounted access to basically all of the major US airlines' points as part of the airlines' Chapter 11 deals), so it's a moderate loss leader to bring in a big spender who will probably keep using the card. Ben for his part reports on every devaluation and constantly reminds people that miles/points are a wasting asset and need to be spent as quickly as possible.