We bring you another edition of miles bloggers in mainstream media, more news from Alaska Airlines, best advice on how to be a millionaire and lots more!
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Another blogger, another mainstream media score. This time it is Forbes. Congrats for the wedding! Was the link to MMS necessary? Ok, don’t answer that. I should have known this was coming when I read the original story and I did not link to it then. When will any big media discover me going at this for two decades and doing this travel hacking masterpiece for…a family of four crossing the US AND South America huh? Ok, don’t answer that either 🙂
The Cranky Flier brings us Part Dos of the Alaska Airlines exec interview on the Virgin America merger, loyalty and more. Good stuff!
Interesting post by The Free-quent Flyer on Starting from scratch: airline tickets.
Alaska Airlines cleans up its award charts! Finally. Who is next? Not Delta!
Gift Card Wiki. If you are into that gift card thingie. (HT: Frequent Miler).
Do you remember the dollar coins? Boxes and boxes directly from the US Mint bought on travel rewards credit cards shipped to us for free. And then we deposited them back to our banks to pay the credit card bills! I must say I felt a bit guilty for not circulating them back to the economy. But no worries. They did get back in circulation! In freaking Ecuador. WTFSeriously?
We go inside the Chinese iPhone factory. Wow! Don’t worry, Trump will bring all these jobs back and it will be amazing lol.
How to become a millionaire by retirement. Your personal finance fix of the day. This is great, starting early is key!
30 years after the Chernobyl disaster. Wow, it’s been that long!
And I leave you with this…
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First!
George, a correction. You did link to the original story from travel summary and I was the only one to leave a comment there about the ridiculousness of that article.
Just some frank thoughts – had this been written by so called Titan, there would have been blows flying from many corners. Well, this blogging space is same like the rest of the world- fight between haves and have nots. There are exceptions but then you could see clear group attitude where have nots often get together to ridicule the haves and vice versa. Just plain hypocracy. That article will be a nasty blow to our hobby and those who are deal keepers simply because you’re hurting at the egos of the airlines which they are not going to like. But who cares? This was anyway not written by a Titan. Let’s forget and celebrate.
Kumar: Thanks for the correction.
You make some great points. If this was written by MMS or TPG or some other Titan, my critique will be a lot more colorful 🙂 I guess it goes back to the history of a blogger and past behavior. No doubt this guy is one of the nicest people out there and he also is a great writer. Too bad he did not succeed in his blog while many of them Titans have succeeded commercially by posting crap. I disagree that this will be a “nasty blow to our hobby”. There have been so many over the past several years, it’s just another tiny nail in the coffin. Let him enjoy his moment before he gets married…as his life is pretty much over soon lol.
It is so interesting to see the development of this hobby over the past almost 20 years. This was the hobby in the fringe by some weird people poking around Flyer Talk. We were not in the radar of any commercial establishment. We were a rounding error in the marketing budgets of big corporations. And it was effing awesome!
Then FTG sold (waaaaaay too early) and all the newbie online marketers jumped in. Sadly, VFTW and OMAAT (who have been laboring for years in the shadows making nada) joined in the frenzy. You see the results in the past several years combined with industry consolidations and improved market conditions. It is not good times for the average deal hunting travel hacker. Most big time deals have gone underground. Bloggers are not your friends.
Name a blogger who spends some time on his blog who would turn down a write up at Forbes? Not many. Would I turn it down? Probably…but before I did, I would make sure the writer’s angle is approved by me so more can be educated. Judging from the buzziness of how media works these days (click here & u won’t believe what happens next!) I doubt these writers get our point of view.
I repeat: Bloggers are not your friends. This hobby does not thrive on popularity. On the contrary…it dies!
Kumar: Thanks for the correction. – You are most welcome, George. I remember writing that comment in Travel codex through your link only. Off late I mostly bother to read only 3 sites on a regular basis – Milenerd, TBB and DOC. Others on specific occasions only.
If this was written by MMS or TPG or some other Titan, my critique will be a lot more colorful. – Even it had been written by say someone like Pointchaser, I am pretty sure you would be shaking your head 5x times more vehemently than you do now, George. I really don’t know how you differentiate bloggers on this. May be on the credit card selling but don’t you think that must not be the only criteria?
No doubt this guy is one of the nicest people out there and he also is a great writer – In my opinion even Pointchaser is a good writer but that doesn’t mean whatever she writes is acceptable. I agreed with TS when he wrote an article on travelling as a muslim. I really sympathized with him. However, this article is just crap to me.
Too bad he did not succeed in his blog while many of them Titans have succeeded commercially by posting crap. – So, ultimately it is fight between haves and have nots that I mentioned about.
We were not in the radar of any commercial establishment. We were a rounding error in the marketing budgets of big corporations. And it was effing awesome! – Absolutely wonderful sentences. No doubt.
I repeat: Bloggers are not your friends. This hobby does not thrive on popularity. On the contrary…it dies! – Absolute blunt truth. No sugar coating required. Kudos.
I feel that most of the bloggers and greedy, stupid readers are going around killing the golden goose without even being aware of it. They don’t know how to play this game carefully, gracefully live something for others and aim for longevity. All they bother about is short term greed. They just mirror the mentality of the world we live in. Even a person like Shawn wants more publicity and is letting out details about his blog in the Bloomberg article. There is no need to reveal about his blog (where he writes about so many deals) in media house like Bloomberg. I would have kept interest of my readers in mind first, if I had been in his shoes. You are right – Bloggers are not my friends.
Well, it is the attitude that matters ultimately, I guess. A rich person wouldn’t be bragging about his wealth in public. He is just not interested. He would be focusing on preserving his wealth and growing it. Whereas a poor person when he gets rich will be bragging constantly on how he became rich. I see the same attitude in most of the bloggers.
See Matt’s post I commented today.
It is difficult.
Some bloggers chose this as their career and have diapers and/or college tuition bills to face.
DOC is posting less, hope he is okay.
Past history/behavior is important to differentiate. Not that it matters much anymore.
What is more pathetic, all imho of course, is having bloggers continuing to link to some of these bloggers and even invite them to speak at conferences. I don’t want to be a part of this charade and thank the all mighty I have a blog I can unleash my own weird inner thoughts to whoever wants to read them. So, thank you for reading 🙂
Do you think bloggers like MMS and TPG give a phuck about you and/or killing the golden goose? Of course not. I’ts ALL ABOUT CONVERSIONS. Heck, some or most of them are recent hobbyists who just excelled on the online marketing business stuff and made and making a killing.
BA blogs also make money from page views. It is almost impossible to resist being mentioned in mainstream media because it means DINERO.
I am grateful I am in peace I don’t worry about dinero much. Just some whining here for several nice dinners with Mrs. TBB to let me continue do this blogging thingie 🙂
Here’s original article:
http://www.travelcodex.com/2016/04/my-100000-honeymoon-using-miles-points/
I had to go there so I could read Kumar’s comment!
Thank you.
Thank you to both for reading and taking the time to comment!
The $ dollar coins in Ecuador is very old news. Went there for the first time a decade ago and they had them then. Dollar has been official currency for some time. Their president got his PhD. in Economics from U of Illinois.
I had to post that to feel better about myself because I still feel guilty for not helping the $1 circulation. At least this was accomplished in…Ecuador 🙂
Good morning.
Buenos Dias senor!
The consolidations of both airlines and hotel chains, the switch to revenue based airline programs and yes, the need for clicks have really hurt this practice in which we are involved. And I do think it is a generational thing happening at the moment. What I will call the oversharing culture is killing us.
I think you are on to something, about this “generational thing”. Almost all Titans are young people who really jumped on this online buzzy SEO clickbait branding “sharing secrets” way of doing business. Because, it is a business to them selling “free” luxury travel.
Very interesting observation, thanks.
It’s just money. No big deal. I miss the old golden days when all this was done purely for the love of it. No $$$$ motives behind.
I want to thank everyone for making me $2.25 over the past few days from Amazon. And thanks to the reader who got an HHHilton card with my links (#hint:).
I am still sore from my soccer game on Monday night…
Sore is good. I hope my soccer playing sons will keep playing like you have. One is already on a team that won their league recently as well:)
I do not have anything important to say about the state of our Game but I did get a smile out of the lack of status underwear photo. I guess we can’t all be Titans. 😉
Trying to pump in an innovating & entertaining way. Ooops, forgot the link to my links!
Speaking of mainstream…
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-27/inside-the-risky-jet-setting-world-of-credit-card-churning
Oh boy…
Thanks. Added to tomorrow’s post.
Holy cow. Two more of the blogs I occasionally follow are written up in the press. That damn mainstream media! (I can finally agree with the far right wing crazies on something!)
There’s a part of me that wishes this would all just end. I’d rather hunt for deals using a single currency. I’m talking about the one used in Ecuador, not MRs or URs or you-name-it points.
“There’s a fear that the more people who know about it, the sooner the deal is going to get killed,” says Miller, 40.”
Yea but Mr Miller has no fear…… and that’s why a chat with Bloomberg sounded like a great idea!
I’ll be looking for Mr Churning and MS in the obituaries.
My PR agent just informed me he just turned down another dozen requests for an interview with me.
#hallucinating
Is that a Chernobyl photo or a metaphor for the current state of ‘The Hobby’?
Lol
Signed up for an IHG Card a couple days back. I thought by going through the link thing here it would benefit. Hope so, cuz I got the card!
Thanks, it should show up eventually!
On a slight tangent to the “publicity is bad for deals” idea, read this article about how publicity (a book) led to the demise of the Soc. Security file-and-suspend method:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-personal-finance-retirement-get-whats-yours-book-20160426-story.html
It’s the same writer!
If only he could do an article exposing all the posers who recently discovered how much can be made selling credit cards while traveling for “free”…
Gave that book to my husband for his birthday. Loopholes will be closed before he can use them anyway because of the book. Ironic.
Yeah, not sure I feel any regret over someone killing a “””deal””” about scamming–excuse me, “maximizing”–Social Security. SS should be as simple and unfuckupable as possible.
>>>>>>>>>unfuckupable
BEST word in TBB Comments ever?
Lol.
What is so surprising about the SS File and Suspend “loophole” was how swiftly it was shut down. Meaning, it was never even mentioned that it was in the chopping block. Usually you get some rumors started and then it takes months to years before the Feds finally move to so do something. This was done super fast while no one was even suspecting it.
Having said all that, at least that Bloomberg writer gets it…while most other mainstream writers are just clueless…
Let’s be real, Forbes is a hack publication these days, with freelancers posing as journalists, her piece got a whopping 7000 views. No, its nothing impressive. Nor is it “mainstream”
If it was Forbes Magazine we have something different. Contrast Ben’s article probably got 1,000,000+ impressions.