We bring you the shocking truth about point sales, do the ThankYou points to JetBlue promo, how Sister Jean became a superstar, book a Singapore award, a bizarre post on how to love your knee and lots more!
TBB Blog Mission: To Entertain. Educate. Inspire. In That Order!
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I have news: My credit card links have been taken away as of March 22 so please do not click on them! I have lots of feelings about the subject but I will concentrate on some travel coming up while I decide where this blog (my baby!) goes from here. I am not quitting…yet. Next week will be light but I do plan to post as usual. I think. Maybe. #Developing It appears to be a final decision but maybe not, I will update this sentence when I get word of the final verdict I guess.
I know miles and points sales sometimes could make sense if you have a sure thing award ready to book immediately and could save some money. But, I mean, this hobby is about traveling for free using miles and points and you should have enough never needing to buy them in the first place. So, when you favorite blogger SCREAMS at you to buy miles and points by making you click on them links, make NO MISTAKE that they are making money off YOU sucker! PSA: Point Sales Earn Bloggers Commissions! Be careful out there! I don’t do this here to you because I have never bought any in the first place!
Dan can sell it. But he can also bring it when he decides to sit down and type: All About The Ways You Can Use Your Starpoints For Starwood And Marriott Awards! 1 Week Left For SPG AMEX 35K Offer!
Excellent advice here on this deal: 30% Bonus for Citi ThankYou Points Transfer to JetBlue and What You Can Do With It.
Some interesting travel spots in this post: 10 Off-the-Path Places in the Baltic Countries That You Must Visit.
This is great: 10 Great Rail Journeys Around the World.
I am becoming a fan of Sister Jean! Sister Jean: how a 98-year-old nun became the hottest property in basketball.
This guy is sure different, now just making sure his legacy is what it is ought to be: The Last Days of Jerry Brown. I want to save the world too but I must first get out of my cold dark basement lol.
If you are a Wealthfront client, delete your accounts!
Landlopers has some great shots in this post: Photo Series: Sunrise, Sunset.
The Largest Company in Each State By Revenue.
Lets laugh! People Are Posting Their Most Embarrassing Childhood Photos, And It’s Impossible Not To Laugh. Which one is your favorite? I had a really hard time picking one to feature here!
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This section is for advanced level hobbyists and veteran blog readers & personal rants & stuff.
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Some of my thinking of where TBB blog goes from here… #developing
Chase will kill Chase Offers. All that will do is force bloggers to have one less excuse to sell their Chase credit card affiliate links. For the rest of us…who cares!
Great advice here on a fairly easy award booking. And heeeeeere is Johnny Brandon who asks: Boston to Singapore Using Miles.
Daraius had a post at MMS. No comments so please don’t kick start it okay? Is this guy okay? He loves his knee? Going across the world and blowing A LOT OF MONEY on a course about “Sex, Love and Intimacy” taught by these two guys? Jeeeeeeeesus! Or maybe he phones it in these days like Ingy used to after they sold out. While Emily is pounding the pavement to sell more plastic. With a baby and a new man and oh so happy oh la la. Ok, I look at these guys again and I am holding on to my wallet and I am never coming out of my basement okay?
Son is in Budapest…
And I leave you with this…Oh, hi Ramsey!
TBB
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End of the week gold!
Did United give someone a $10,000 voucher? This story is being underreported!
Our Bot is back!
@ Brenton: Enjoy the hardware while this baby stands…
@Scott Castle: Wait? What? I don’t believe it!!! I did not see this reported anywhere #rolleyes
@ Dml: Not sure bots go to Kurdistan and to places where young people who won the DNA lottery lock up others in hotels and extract billions from them 🙂
Back to normal, ZERO days…
I think my wife is excited that I am seriously thinking to quit. Hmmmm….
Can you imagine giving these two guys thousands of dollars to teach you about sex?
WTF!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
if you quit which blog to I read for my daily lefty implosions? Dont you dare quit on me. Keep up the good fight and tilt at those windmills !!!!!!!!!!
Just got word that a private equity guy wants to buy me out and turn me into the real and trusted The Points Guy…
and then I woke up from my nap 🙂
Please don’t quit. Headed to Banff next Thursday based on your trip report! Decided to use my certs at LL and not Banff. Paying half the price Fairmont BS wants to stay at Rimrock resort with free breakfast each morning. Mistake?
Not familiar with the Rimrock.
Time is almost here, I hope your experience turns out as well as mine!
Sorry about your links, been there before and it hurts. Any little thing in a post can turn the banks against you. Not sure why you still have banners for them up.
However…I know that I and others have always felt you were being quite hypocritical when you started shilling credit cards after calling out everyone else for that. The fact that you weren’t successful at shilling them doesn’t make your actions less hypocritical.
As for me, What I’ve learned over my 14 years of blogging is that people don’t mind sales pitches as long as they add value and teach the reader something new. That takes more effort on my part, but I think it creates a more loyal readership in the long run.
I agree with the last paragraph Dan wrote, George — and I have been “blogging” almost as long as him.
Although I do not hawk credit cards, it took me years to finally try out affiliate links at The Gate because I did not want to appear hypocritical and seem like I was in the business to sell products…
…but I do not allow the affiliate links to determine editorial decisions; and that has been working for me. I clearly disclaim when I am using affiliate links in an article; but the content must add value to the reader — usually in the form of saving money — in order for me to consider using them. I would have written many of the articles anyway whether or not they included affiliate links.
I realize how lucrative selling credit cards can be; but I have not ventured down that road because I do not want a commercial entity to dictate what and how I write — nor do I want to start engaging in quotas or other tactics to push me to sell more credit card applications.
In the meantime, George, keep writing those articles…
I am playing catch up today as I am focusing on more important things…
And I was just hit with the drive by barfing headline of the day:
Man Kicked Flight For Wearing Sweatshirt With Guns On It While Being Black – View From The Wing
@Dan: I admire what you built and from all Titans, you know your shit. I don’t think anybody disagrees with that. Period. Or Mark should say Period!!!
Not going to argue with you the definition of shilling. We disagree obviously. I will let others judge that my kind of shilling vs the other Titans in the Ignore list and vs yours. In my opinion, your shilling is phucking unbelievable, you can cram more direct affiliate links in a single post that will make MMS be jealous of you. And the myriad Amazon pumping posts. And the hideous paid advertisements. As far as actual valuable content is concerned, they show up here when…I get over that shilling feeling I get looking at your posts in Feedly. You used to post more valuable posts earlier. I guess it goes with the rest of the hobby, just not as much to post these days I guess.
Can you imagine what crap I will get if I go down your path here????
@ Brian: You are an outlier. Your stamina is out there, tougher than mine. Amazing. How you can do that for so long and resist the temptation is…weird 🙂 What drives some people in the blog space to just jump in and never let a single post go by without thinking how to make money (Rene, PMM, etc.) and other are so gun shy thinking about conflicts of interest and how they will be perceived is, well, fascinating. There should be a pshychological research study done on that. As fascinating (to me) as behavioral finance.
What I do here is different. I review this space and a crap load of online stuff. It takes a lot of time. And I am tired, especially now that I can not get paid for my own cards damn it. I was just going to get my wife a CSP card to keep for the duration, it is time, sad!
To be continued…Deck guy is here to hurt me with his estimate. CC income is NOT paying for new deck lol. Unlike Dan 🙂
For the record, wife had the CSP card before. And she is out of 5/24 now. Super sad!
Yawn.
Miss you Ingy!
Not sure I agree with “shilling”. That’s closer to prostitution on the scale, like Dan, Gary, etc. I think it’s obvious that Buzz is more towards the other end of that scale, he’s a flirt.
To whom would you recommend giving the “conversions” now, Buzz? Andy is my choice, he’s been putting out some good content since he returned.
Flirt lol. I like it!
Yeah, go with Andy.
I am in talks with the cc providers. Maybe I get them back. Maybe not. It’s a double edged sword no doubt. All I know is without them the present time spend here for maybe $2 a day is not going to cut it.
In other news, my wife told me she does not let our daughter read my blog because of my foul language…Maybe I am overdoing it. She is usually right.
I guess it is time to say goodbye to the latest on sex doll research you guys woohoo!
So…I am waiting to hear back….
#developing
Thanks to everyone who reached out and the kind words. I get so much love that I am certain this is the reason Ingy hates me so much…
I am going to dedicate the next card conversion to Ingy…when and if it happens lol.
1. Just curious, which blogs or websites would you not be following if you weren’t writing posts for this website? What would you be doing differently if you didn’t have this website?
2. How much value do you place on having a voice and people that follow you, contribute ideas, and are abusive to you in that amusing crotchety old man that sold out too early way?
3. I’ve probably gotten you 20-25 approvals over they last few years, and feel responsible for giving you the visual capitalist. I know that’s not much in the big picture, but hopefully it means something to you. I agree that you don’t shill, because mostly you just complain, which is basically the opposite.
4. Thanks for creating somewhere for everyone to go once they realized that tpg and mms were such overwhelming disappointments…
1. Such a tough question to answer. I’ ve been doing my routine for so long that I just don’t know how to answer this. I would certainly not be having 318 in Feedly, I would certainly reduce it to under 300 🙂 I would be doing a lot more biking of course. And maybe I would open up the gates to pick up more clients I guess. Okay, maybe aim to get the Feedly blog count to under 250. And then 200… #developing #evolving Maybe I need a new real hobby. Oh, maybe travel more lol.
2. If I did not value that as much as I do…TBB would be long gone!
3. When that day comes that I sell out big (definitely NOT early lol) as Sam thinks it is coming (I don’t really!) I would think of you and will share my wealth. It may come in Kohl’s gift cards but I do intend to share. Maybe go on a year long TBB readers appreciation tour. Of course the medalists will get first dibs. Not sure if that Scottbot qualifies though 🙂 Yes, it means something when we go out and have sushi, I just tell my wife this is not from me because I wouldn’t take you out to sushi more than once a month haha. Complaining goes down when clicks go down. Yeah, I like to complain but I have improved!
4 I get emails to this day from readers thanking me for opening their eyes on that. And those are very precious to me. But the kind of email that is DA BEST is the ones that go “Hi TBB, just want to let you know I got a CSP for my mother in law with your links. I used to do all my cards at FTG with that guy who sold me too many times I must admit and I fell for it. Thank the Lord he sold too early and then I found your site and you exposed them all” .
If you told me University of Michigan will be in the Final Four I would say you are insane. And play Loyola Chicago? I would have demanded you be committed to a mental institution for “evaluation”. Super crazy. March Madness indeed.
I better get some sleep…
Thank you.
complaining goes down when clicks go up!
way past my bedtime!
I’m following your existential unease with great interest. I joke a lot about finding a way to make money from my blog, but I know deep down that I’m going to continue writing it as long as it’s fun, regardless of whether I get paid anything. Last weekend, I set up a $5 donation link that I put at the bottom of every post, and that’s probably where I’ll leave it.
It sounds like it may not be fun for you anymore, but you’re too committed to the cause to give it up, which is admirable… Personally, if I wasn’t enjoying writing every post, I’d stop. Of course, my situation is different in that my blog has no mission except to be an outlet for my babbling. Anyway, I hope you keep going, even if posts come less frequently, since your links are always interesting (and not just when I’m in them!).
Email me if you want some advice.
It is going to be freeeeeeeeeee
when I get to it, hopefully soon.
Come on folks, let’s get real. Buzz loses his links on Wednesday, then on Friday this comes out:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/you-should-do-it-trump-officials-encouraged-george-papadopouloss-foreign-outreach-documents-show/2018/03/23/2dae8c8e-2d38-11e8-8688-e053ba58f1e4_story.html?utm_term=.6469d7d8c9c4
Draw yiur own conclusions.
You guys are better than the FBI, I quit!
Actually, slept in today again. 6.22 am, at McD’s by 6.45 am trying to do the Best of Web Sunday post.
Have not heard from the cc dude with what I gotta do to get my links back. Will they castrate me? Click again my shocking Amazon link to find out, hurry, limited time…
See you all tomorrow.
Isn’t it amazing how all this crap about the other George keeps trickling out, wow!
Rumor out there that Ramsey just looked at his 401k and is…crying. On top of the fact that instead of a wall there was some money to fix the fencing that we taxpayers paid, sad!
Buenos dias. Enjoying a nice Kimpton redemption and thinking when IHG will devalue. It was 45k for a room selling at 480 plus tax. Not bad at all.
Was reading about the Liflemiles award changes. Seems to me too complicated. I’ll bet they’ll go full revenue based not long from now.
I have 2 nights at a Kimpton coming up. And I think it is one of the best ones, if not the best Kimpton!
When Lifemiles screws around with changes…they will come down with something hard…They mimic Skymiles, sad!