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| TBB kids at the Great Wall of China in 2009…being stupid just like Dad! |
It was a very busy weekend in the blogosphere! Lots of material to share with you so let’s get started!
BEST OF MILES/POINTS
Head for Points has a post on several recent deals that are…updated! The forever running Hilton MVP method of getting Hilton Gold status is now dead. There remains another way he outlines. Apparently the generous method of transferring from Accor to Iberia and THEN to Avios is back. And finally the recent Air France Flying Blue status match deal is now valid only for specific European residents. You can read up the details in his post. Do what you feel comfortable with, I am just reporting it here as it may be useful to some readers, that’s all!
Million Mile Secrets lays out a great argument to avoid the “hot” 75k AMEX Business Gold Reward Card that pretty much everyone else is pitching…screw pitching, I meant pimping! I agree with it. AMEX will most likely continue these limited promotions so it is okay to pass all right?
I absolutely LOVED this comment by Loyalty Lobby in his post about how Delta plugged the hole in its website. He said: “Delta has not been able to fix the award calendar display on Delta.com, although it has now been broken for several years. They were, however, able to fix this hole in a day. Makes you wonder?” BINGO!!!!
Point Chaser has a great “Best Club Carlson Hotel Redemptions: Category 1” post! Love spending only 9k Club Carlson points as I have a gazillion of them now. Guatemala City anyone? The Radisson Blu in El Quseir Egypt looks great, here is your chance to participate in a revolution too! This post is going to be saved in my Evernote and I am looking forward to the next series of posts with the other categories!
Chris Elliott (yep, he is in the right category!) has a great article this time titled “Warning! Soon, airline loyalty will cost you“. And you know what, I think he is right on when he writes: “
As painful as these changes are, they make sense. Air travelers who may be tempted to give their loyalty to an airline like Delta now won’t cling to an empty promise that they can reach elite status any other way than by spending their way there. Some will refuse to participate and will instead purchase a ticket that makes sense for them, and not for their loyalty program.
Also, airlines will no longer find themselves in the awkward position of having to reward customers who don’t deserve it. That includes travelers who exploit loopholes in loyalty programs by engaging in end-of-year mileage “runs” designed to rack up enough miles for elite status. Those customers contribute little if any real value to the airline and consume perks that probably weren’t intended for them.“
Gary Leff at View from the Wing wrote “Hyatt Confirmed Suite Upgrades: What Do You Do if You’re Downgraded“. That was excellent, I learned a lot about the whole process. If this happens to me I demand the number of points for a night as compensation! Hey Gary please,could you tone it down a bit “Hyatt is insanely generous“. Some Hyatt exec may decide to do something about it, thanks!
BAcon BLOGGING CONFERENCE
Check out the agenda at the website for the first Boarding Area BAcon Conference. “Only Invited Bloggers Eligible to Register“. I guess I won’t be receiving an invitation to this one. Because I will be attending this session below & have material for TBB to last me for months! My comments in brackets below…
AFFILIATE PROGRAMS | Chase (invited), FlexOffers (invited) [just threw up in my mouth again], CardSynergy (invited) [sounds BentOffery to me!]
TAKEAWAYS
- Comparing various commission options
- How to manage the online chatter of distraction [ let me see,censor comments, ignore them?, etc]
- Managing referrals and approvals
[ How about a novel idea here…You know, adding some valuable content to the blogs huh??]
NOT SO BEST OF
It may get crowded here…Did you think that TBB takes weekends off or something?
Unroad Warrior has a post titled “Booking Flights with American Express Membership Rewards“. Is there any doubt that this post would not see the light of day if it was NOT for the affiliate link and the opportunity to make some money? And WTF is this advice paying with points for flights and even redeeming for Macy’s gift cards, seriously??? I am all for redeeming what/when/how you want to do it if it makes you happy. BUT…this goes too far and can absolutely hurt readers! The author should make it absolutely clear it is his personal choice for burning the points this way. Then again…Will this blog be around if affiliate links did not exist? How many blogs would not exist? I say A WHOLE LOT!!!!!!!! And you can take this to the bank (pun intended of course!).
Miles Momma has a post titled in caps “HAWAIIAN REDUCES MILES EARNINGS FOR AMAZON PURCHASES“. It starts with the old news that miles for Amazon purchases through the Hawaiian Airlines shopping mall no longer earn miles! Ok, thank you. But she does not stop there! She proceeds to hit her readers with an amazing barrage of three affiliate credit card links (Hilton Surpass Amex, Citi Hilton Visa and Cith Hilton Reserve cards)…wait a minute, what was the title again? And then, for the grand finale, at the bottom of the post as “Helpful Links”, we get served another 6 affiliate credit card links, including all the Chase Ink cards. Unbelievable!
The Points Guy decided to respond to a reader asking whether to pick the Chase Sapphire or Starwood AMEX card. First, let me thank you for not replying with “Get Both!”. Second, couldn’t you wait to embed the affiliate links until your own answer? Did you really need to stick them in the reader’s questions as I doubt the reader stuck them there himself/herself!
Mommy Points has a “The Best Credit Card Sign-up Bonus Offers Right Now” post. Commenter #2 gomike said “cha ching” and commenter #4 spinergy7 said “it is about time to pay those holiday bills”. No additional comments:-) These are the types of posts that most bloggers with affiliate links HAVE TO do to get paid, we are all used to them by now. If you are not, well you WILL get used to them! Kudos for including the AA & US Air links. But still…My reputation was at stake here:-)
BEST OF TRAVEL
d travels ’round has a fascinating post about participating in a trip “To rescue elephants“. Wow! What a powerful story, no need for eye drops. It ends with “In this moment, I could not be happier”. Sometimes I feel like that when I hit publish in each of my blog posts:-) I am changing this world one reader at a time…ok, stop laughing and take a few minutes to read this story, it may move you, it sure moved me!
The Planet D has a beautiful post with “People of India in Pictures“. Amazing pictures indeed!
Everything Everywhere has a hilarious post titled “Help Eliminate Pretentious Travel Douchebag Syndrome“. Major LOL stuff, we all know people afflicted by this syndrome..but it is never us;-)
The Wandering Aramean found this very cool time lapse video from Norway’s railroads!
ODDZ & ENDZ
THIS is how you win $75,000 in an NBA Game! And then you get buried by LeBron!
We are staying at that Radisson in Guatemala City during a layover between Flores (Tikal) and SJO. Glad to know it’s a nice hotel!
From the title of your post, I was wondering why you were writing about breakfast foods, LOL!
Let me know if you do NOT like the Guatemala City Radisson! I sure made enough jokes on Twitter about breakfast and bacon:-)
LOL, I was trying to be polite and not mention pigs, hogs and that old saying!
The 4 in your “Not so Best of” – I wonder if their respective posts are a sign they need to attend that affiliate link session …. or if it’s a sign they should be speaking at it
Does anyone (besides you of course :)) actually read Miles Momma?
Like I said, I would love to attend that conference, I can have material for my blog to keep me busy for the rest of the year!
I read all blogs, including Miles Momma. Actually, her trip reports from Prague are pretty good. She should do more of those instead of focusing on selling so much!
I’ve never opened her blog, and she’s in your “not so best of” section way to often for me to start
The BAcon thing is kinda like an anti-TBB conference–they may even have a session on how to “Neutralize the negativity” or something like that. You definitely need a spy there!
To provide an update from yesterdays comment, I don’t see a single blogger writing about the latest SW offer even though I received the email for it 3 days ago
Wierd… $800 of free travel and no blackout dates can really get a couple their dream vacation to Phoenix, which Southwest flies to direct from about 50 different airport
I’ve had the Southwest Plus cards with 50K on my blog as the #1 deal listed since November. Did you get the email for the Plus or Premier version?
Premier
Can you post the link or do you need an offer code to apply?
There’s an “invitation code” in the email
I never get these invitations:-(
Have you negotiated some sort of cease-fire with delta points?
I don’t do cease fires, I review and post in my blog. Check tomorrow;-)
Haha Gary just mailed it in today. As he was thinking about what thread to create today, I can picture him saying “ahh screw it, I’ve made 95 posts in the past week, I deserve a day off”
Frankly, I wish other bloggers would do that instead of putting in some filler post (“did you know that you can get a 5K bonus when transferring SPG points to airline miles? Get the SPG Amex now”)
I really liked that post! Get a feel of what’s on readers minds. Maybe actually get to answer some of their questions one by one…that is providing value in my book!
TPG has a panel on the right side of his homepage with the “Top Deals as of….”
Remember how you mentioned a few weeks ago about the increased affiliate commission for the BA Visa?
Take a wild guess what’s the top deal as of today?
Hint: It’s not the 100K AA miles you can earn for $5K spend, or the 50K US miles you can earn with $1 spend….
Yep, no surprises of course. I think a lot of these side banner ads are automated. Non affiliated links will NEVER be in a automated banner ad on the sides, especially in high traffic sites like TPG’s. Paying for those exlusive rooms in safaris ain’t cheap ya know!
Ahh, so basically what you’re saying is that in case TPG’s credit card advice wasn’t bad enough, he outsourced the “advice giving” to FlexOffers
Does any other blogger pull crap like this? I can’t think of any that do it under a banner similar to “Top Deals as of…” which give off the impression that these are the top deals according to TPG… not Chase
Pretty horrific practice in my estimation. I know that some bloggers (i.e. Dan) will plaster their sites with ads, but at least in those cases there’s no confusion that it’s a bought-and-paid-for ad, and not a Dan endorsement
I do not know for sure, I am guessing. I am definitely NOT the affiliate marketing expert. If only they will invite me to the BAcon conference so I can learn more:-) Stuff on the sides of blog posts appear to be stuff that the bloggers may not have complete control over. This area is all about page views/clicks and…CC APPS. My guess is that if the cc apps $$ was not at its present form, more than 80% of the miles/points blogs that make it here would not exist.
Thanks for reading & commenting!
Even Google ads toss up credit card links at random. I even get them on MTTW. What I don’t know is if I get extra besides the few cents for the click. Do they track it and give you extra if a credit card app is approved via a Google ad?
I do not know. I think if you get in the Google affiliated network(do not know the specific term they use) yes they track it and u get paid. But it is NOWHERE near what Bent Offers will pay and will require some additional work to get to the actual link…I think. Bent Offers just serves up the cc app link very nicely instead that is why so many bloggers need to keep up the pimping because they are scared of being cut off at the knees. I think Boarding Area blogs do get a more lenient treatment.
All of the above are based of my own thinking…it is dangerous:-)
George, the link goes to the wrong page on Mommie Points:
Mommy Points has a “The Best Credit Card Sign-up Bonus Offers Right Now” post.
this link goes to a post from Dec 21 and not Jan 26 FYI
Oops, you are right, fixed! Thanks a lot for letting me know. Sometimes I am so tired late at night trying to finish the post I have no energy left to test all the links!