TBB Mission: To Entertain, Educate and Inspire. Aim to at least do one well!
The ridiculous race is on to get readers to click on the SPG Amex 30k affiliate links! Make fun of them and enter to win two AA Admirals Club passes! GREAT odds, only 29 valid entries! Update: Let’s wrap up this baby, went on too long. Deadline is August end of day Wednesday August 21st. Say anything you want now to enter!
If you like what you see here, please let others know by passing them a link to my blog, thank you!
True to the TBB mission, it is a consensus over on Twitter that the comments in the last two blog posts have been wildly entertaining and educational! Check here and here
Google AdSense
As you know I assigned my son the task of adding AdSense to my blog. It was a cleverly designed ploy to get him away from his computer and playing League of Legends. He had to help me out in order to take his computer power cord back (yes I am such a mean dad!). You have NO idea how fast 15 year old boys can work at something to regain their ability to get back to playing computer games! So he went at it on Saturday night and he managed to figure it out on Sunday morning! He called me up while I was at Panera enjoying my 5th cup of coffee (free refills!). I am really proud of him, he is a good kid, 4.0 GPA, just plays computer games a little too much for my tolerance. He even told me he can help me out more by adding things and just design stuff, hooray! He is looking into how to mess with the themes and possibly alter the left hand side…In other words, my grand scheme was to get him interested and away from his computer and make him learn something new and valuable. I call this #winning
As far as the ads go please use an ad blocking device or just ignore them. And please please never think I have anything to do with picking the content of the ads! I can’t remember the last time I clicked on an AdSense ad! I actually do not think they will stay up as Google may ban me for a practice called “bomb clicking” (yeah, learn new things every day, google it<g>). I have already self reported to give Google heads up. We will see what happens. Everyone reading this (I hope) realizes the differences between AdSense and Affiliate ads. Let me have a reader explain it clearly:
Adsense is a few bucks for a blogger when loyal readers who want to help out click a banner ad. It’s literally about 5 bucks a day with no changes to any content whatsoever. Affiliate ads are enough to make a very comfortable living and completely change the content of a blog. It’s well documented what the demands are on a blogger who uses affiliate ads. At least Dan’s Deals admits it and says he has a family to feed. At least he’s honest about what we all know. Affiliate bloggers sell out the best interest of their readers to different degrees. Huge difference between that and Adsense.
So being accused of Hypopimping is wildly amusing! Delta Points even managed to capture a screen of TBB home page with a small AdSense ad touting the “10 Best Credit Cards” and he added big red LOL. I found it hilarious indeed! I would love to share it here with you but it is copyrighted work and apparently DP is very touchy about it. Maybe DP posts it in his blog. I may link to it then…maybe:-)
Hopefully son can keep learning and staying away from his computer games. Besides, I can always take his power cord back and take away his allowance. He needs to earn it, he is almost 16 now! So, hopefully expect some changes. A reader mentioned an amazon affiliate link and I always wanted to promote ebates (which has never failed me, unlike TopCashBack—>Boo!)
Here at TBB, readers come FIRST. What shows up here is for your entertainment, education or inspiration. Very rarely I can get two of these done well, I am aiming for one lol. Entertainment is first for a reason. Some people take me way too seriously, lighten up and make fun of yourselves sometimes, we all deserve it, keeps us humble!
I just saw this quote and wanted to share it:
“Never look back unless you are planning to go that way.” – Henry David Thoreau
Thank you for being along for the ride, buckle up!
TRAVEL
Lenticular Travel takes nice pictures. Angkor Wat sunrise romance. Great writing too. Adding the card links near the end is…tolerable;-) Perhaps I should assign son to investigate this creditcards.com thingie?
I am developing this interest for photography lately, maybe I should take a class as my own pics suck so so bad!
A very cool timelapse video about the country of Georgia. More like hyperlapse than timelapse. Great technique!
GEORGIA | hyper – travel from Timelapse Media on Vimeo.
MILES/POINTS
Saverocity wrote “Why I didn’t jump on the AAdvantage Accelerated Status Bandwagon“. I completely agree. Mileage runs are so 2000’s. Landscape has changed. LOVE the pic, mega LOL. And please don’t sue!
It always amazes me in this hobby how much information is out there and how much I still do not know! Ok, I know quite a bit since I have been around for so long. But still, shouldn’t I know about this Club Carlson laundry benefit in some European hotels? Never heard of it before! Pointsnob wrote a post about it and I will sure let Mrs. TBB know to inquire about it when she visits Radisson Blue Le Metropolitan in Paris later this week (on points of course, come on!)! It could have saved me some underwear I had to sacrifice in Norway after hiking around too much, dang it! So, my point is, if you love learning new and ever changing information this is a very exciting hobby, especially when you score big! Maybe this is what attracted me to switch careers to financial planning…because, each day you don’t know what will happen in the markets (or which mistake fare may hit the fan!)
Expedia Rewards severely devalued its very devalued loyalty program. In other words, why did you bother and why are you bothering now? My condolences!
ON MY MIND
Learned a lot today, laughed a lot today, grilled (burgers, ribs were not on sale, sorry amigo). And, most importantly, I finally burned some miles! How about 100k United miles flying to Thessaloniki (SKG) Greece in December for Christmas to see Mother TBB. On a combination of Lufthansa and Aegean on Business class (both ways this time). And excellent times too! I could have added a free one way but no definite plans in 2014 and wanted to grab what I could get and be done with it. Blogging was calling.
I almost never get angry. Yeah, sometimes I may lose it very temporarily seeing son play computer games so much. I do get angry being threatened with lawsuits…again! I fought only once in my life. It was the 6th grade. The famous school bully was phucking with many kids again that day. I had enough, I beat the crap out of him and he never bullied anyone else again. I still remember it to this day, it is the highlight of my life, it’s been downhill ever since lol. Thank you (yeah you, you know) for reading and spending so much time at my site!
ODDZ & ENDZ
Winners of iPhone Photography Awards 2013
The Evolution of Windows. Hilarious!
BLOG BUZZ
Note: This section is intended for long time readers and miles/points addicts who follow the blogs in this space. Readers not familiar with this crazy hobby could skip this section!
A few days ago I shared with you how mainstream travel personality Johnny Jet let his readers know about the (what else?) SPG Amex card. Well, guess what? He is back with the highlights of the card. And while at it he throws out (why not?) a few Platinum AMEX links. I expect more mainstream media persons to jump on board. Why screw around with nonsense adsense?
Touchy post from Mommy Points and her cute dog. Sticking to a post related to her audience and holding back on presenting affiliate links.
When I see a relevant post with original content without an affiliate link I immediately think better of the blogger. It is like a mental note for a bank. Each affiliate link flashed is a withdrawal, each post with good original content is a deposit. Yeah, Frequent Miler has a lot of deposits built up. And some other bloggers will never, to put it mildly, never ever get close to be on the deposit side of the ledger, cough.
Points, Miles and Martinis tells us about the W bed 40% sale and guess what cards you can use to buy them? Yep, what else? I suggest this post is cut and pasted about three months later or so when it comes back again, just change the 30k to 25k, ok? 🙂 One of these days I am going to get this bed, fyi everyone!
The Points Guy has 500,000 unique visitors a month. Wow, that is a hugely humongous number! No doubt the leader (in traffic) in this space! Watch out these Wall Street brokers Brian, insist on full disclosure and hope they are not getting paid on commissions advising you okay? If you buy TBB out I promise I will never say anything bad about your site again. But if you ask me to hypopimp, keep your dinero amigo 🙂 If you think I am serious about what I just wrote, maybe I can sell you some farmland in Greece…please lol.
Mommy Points with another good post “Leveraging Points and Elite Status for a Family Weekend Trip“. Without a single affiliate link. Another deposit in the bank mental account for Mommy! I have a dream: “Affiliate links to go away. Ok, this won’t happen in the near future. So my next dream is to have bloggers EARN their clicks based on content & blogging practices and NOT on Sell, Sell, Sell tactics. Ok, that won’t happen either but it is a worthy cause trying me thinks.
Looks like Milevalue got Citibank affiliate links. Great, I was getting so tired of the crappy US Air card offer!
Delta Points had a 17,500 Flexperks card, no thank you! We are informed a mileage run blog fest is on the way. Can’t wait to learn about mileage runs from experts! Please tell us what year you took your first mileage run. You can tell us all in the comments of my blog, it sure appears you spend a lot of time on it! Thank you for your emails too!
Million Mile Secrets conveniently picks this question to answer: “Reader Question: Why is the American Airlines Card Not the Best for Earning American Airlines Miles?” When TBB gets direct Chase links (lol) I will choose to answer a reader’s question: “Should I use the Chase Ink or Bold card?”. Come on guys! The correct answer is: Get both:-) And puuulease, you used to do it, but not anymore, why? Here is the 50,000 Citi AA Visa (see the wiki on top ), read it and you may get to get it..again! Instead of FT, you link to the Citi Executive card. Disappointed in this weak post. A withdrawal for you 🙂
Why aren’t credit card offering travel/miles/points blogs helping their readers left and right with 50k AA miles from the non affiliate link above????
I have been a little harsh on Travel With Grant I must admit, sorry. But when he wrote “Why I Blog and my Future Use of Credit Card Affiliate Links” he immediately moved up on the Deposit side of the ledger! “I am pledging to my readers to never write another article with an affiliate link in it (a la Frequent Miler).” Bravo! Maybe what TBB is doing is making a little impact? Maybe the lawsuit threats amazingly thrown at me has not stopped the tide of getting the message spread around that there MUST be a better way of doing things online instead of sell, sell, sell? I somehow doubt it but, as I am a proven delusional personality, I sure LOVE to think so! Maybe I should ask Grant advice on how to get my own links:-) Grant, you surprised me. If you can keep this up, start writing some good stuff and somehow make a go of it it would be great! But hope you get a real job too, you are late to the party, me too:-)
I figured out why I was looking at an ad about Filipino women on my homepage! (Hey Google, you freak me out, really?) I was told by a kind reader I can tell AdSense to stop ads from these “sensitive categories”. So I did. No more dating, sex, get rich quick, weight loss, astrology, gambling, video games, and freaking ringtones. I went further and stopped Credit Cards & Insurance too. If you are looking for the Top 10 Credit Cards ad you missed it, it was a classic moment indeed in the history of TBB! Sorry if you were offended.
Thank you!
TBB
a division of Hypopimp Enterprises, Inc
Wow! You had a lot to say today!
Yeah, had a busy weekend;-)
Number two! Yay! You must have lost Jeff with all the ads for Filipino women… 😉
BTW, are you coming via MUC or FRA on your Greece trip?
Also is there a scrip for you youtube video? I’m bored here at the arctic circle and could reenact it… something to fill your youtube channel… you could start a series of ‘videos from readers in far flung places atleast 500 miles away from a Hyatt’:)
PS: saw your Dec 30 MUC comment in the other blog entry.
Number 3! Which is a bit worrying given its 9am in the land of free healthcare and no guns …..
Im vacationing in Sweden which has free healthcare too :p
Recently visited Norway and everything was so darn expensive, nothing was free! 🙂
Sweden is only 2/3 as expensive as Norge.
Ps. Just saw an Adsense ad for ‘Luxury Toilet & Bar Hire’. I think Google is going to struggle to get a handle on what you’re about ….!
I could make a post about my “Top 10 Ridiculous AdSense ads on TBB” and have some fun with it! The one that gets me is that ugly dude about finding arrest records ad!
Google Sweden is service boring ‘visit israel’ and ‘finnair’ ads :p
https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/ODLT7trFpAofMuY0myOt9NMTjNZETYmyPJy0liipFm0
Hey, that is not that bad actually. Better than Filipino dating and such lol
About to head back to the US from Croatia and hoped I could have some last minute rantings from the asylum’s internet room where they keep Rick locked up. (Too “frugal” for a real retirement home for him and the katybug). Shucks.
I’ve had adsense in a corner of my blog for over a year and earned a total of $0.00.
I also think TPG’s 500,000 unique visitors is likely 499,000 spambots. There’s no way that many people are interested in credit cards or obtaining poorer quality travel info than they could find on Google.
Don’t be so sure. My little UK effort gets 40,000 uniques per month with very UK-focussed content. Gross up x4 for the population difference with the US, gross up x2 to account for the greater interest in miles in the US then gross up 50% to account for the fact that I never appear on TV to promote myself (!) and you get to 500,000.
Yeah, maybe you are right. What kind of sucks is that there is no 3rd party independent standarfized body with verified metrics around. Or is there? Must be free:-)
whoops, didnt mean to be anonymous. its me above.
Looking forward to the trip report from Croatia!
I just wrote what TPG actually wrote. Come to think of it this morning, this number just sounds awfully high!
I earned a penny today, woohoo!
DP could probably glean some insights from a top 10 list. His latest churn was comical. Dimwit doesn’t even have the 50K AA on his radar.
This card should be on all Top 10 lists, no Top 5. Heck it should be at the top damnit!
You’re so easily duped by your man crush on TPG! (And his superhuman ability to slip in 300 credit card links in a post about pet food.)
There’s no way he has 500,000 unique visitors. It’s inconceivable he has even 500,000 visits. Possibly 500,000 pageviews per months.
https://siteanalytics.compete.com/thepointsguy.com/?metric=uv&months=12
Compare TPG to BoardingArea and he isn’t even close. And since it’s highly unlikely there are many BoardingArea readers who don’t ready Gary and Ben, it’s likely that Gary/Ben have significantly more readers than TPG does. Gary’s been claiming 30k per day for quite awhile. But that’s not 360,000 per month, since many of those daily readers come back, right?
TPG is all smoke and mirrors (and credit card pimping). And if he had anything like the traffic he claimed he’d get far more comments than he does. Of course TBB has far more comments than TPG does…
Yeah, thought about it some more. 500k unique visitors does not make sense, maybe it was meant to be 50k?
I am amazed daily with how many comments my blog gets. And I have some readers who check my site first thing in the morning;-)
What was the source of info for the 500k visitors a month?
http://thepointsguy.com/2013/08/how-do-i-follow-the-site-and-how-do-i-contact-the-points-guy-with-questions/
about halfway down, in paragraph titled “Keep in Touch!”
And some who check your site last thing at night. I have noticed that right around when I check twitter before turning off my computer, you often have just posted on your blog and tweet that. Hence my frequent appearance at the top.
We leave 4:15AM tomorrow for Istanbul and Israel so I may not be popping by as often. Today started with an evisa problem with Turkey’s website. Mr TWA44’s went smoothly but my computer coughed and I paid but never got the pdf of the visa. Ended up starting again two hours later after the site deleted my initial app and I will try to get the extra $20 back from Turkey (or Chase) on my return. It seemed easier than trying to sort it out (“yes, Turkey, I did pay)” and when I saw I could start again, I just did.
Spoke to two different consulates in the process and although the site says they don’t refund your money, sounds like if I email all the details, they will check out my tale of woe and may reverse the charges, but at this point I’d rather get into Turkey first before worrying about it. And that won’t happen til Sept. 9 since we are in Israel first.
I am hopeful that is the only glitch we’ll have. I did confirm the flights and that the other airlines have ticket numbers from US Air’s award ticket. Will check the first flight later.
We are basically ready – all packed and just a few last minute tasks to do. We should even get some sleep before we have to get up at 3:30~!!
A shout-out to Matt of Saverocity. I had emailed with him regarding the survey he was doing, and in the course of that exchange he offered to show me the ropes with my first US Air award booking. He really was helpful. Thanks again, Matt! And thanks to all the others here who have answered my questions lately. You are a great group and I’ll miss you!
TWA44
TWA44:By the time I am done with the new blog post and tweet it…I am so exhausted and go straight to bed!
When I went to Istanbul last year I remember buying the visa on the way to passport control. Piece of cake. Not sure if requirements changed since.
Good job Matt.
Little old me has over 200k page views per month, for a blog almost unread outside the UK. (And that is the Google number, ex spam-bots, not the inflated Alexa / WordPress number.)
What interests me more are the huge Facebook, Twitter and email numbers being banded about, in relation to page views. I have about 1200 on the email list and 500-600 on FB and Twitter. Some of the FB and Twitter numbers I see (whilst inflated by competitions etc) just seen disturbingly high.
Also worth remembering that someone said Brian had stopped emailing full posts to people (I do email full posts) which forces them onto the website to read the article. That bumps up uniques and page views.
I just moved the Google Analytics button to “Month” from “Day” and see that I have over 17,000 page views so far this month. Watch out Raffles, I am catching up on you:-)
I have not made a TBB Facebook Fan page yet because I do want a a life:-)
Email list neither. On the to do list.
I spend time on Twitter. Every time I do my productivity goes down, talk about a time suck over there lol. But I see many blog visits from links off my tweets.
Learning something new every day in this blogging thing, quite educational and entertaining indeed!
Thanks for the comments!
Yep George. That story is about as believable as Daraius’s story about wanting readers opinions on adding affiliate links so he did a survey first.
smoke, mirrors and redirect attention. Give your readers, including me, a little credit.
Georgie wanted to monetize his blog. Plain and simple.
Oh and I don’t doubt that your kid put up the Adsense. Your about as computer illiterate as I am.
We agree on MMS.
I always stated my intentions about the blog. Eventually it will be monetized. It took 10 months for AdSense to show up here and got son away from his computer and interested in learning new things —> winning What’s the rush anyway? It is like startups focusing on the IPO and not on their product. I am focusing on fulfilling TBB’s mission and enjoy the ride. Thank you for contributing to the TBB mission. Maybe I should share some emails from readers URGING me to put up cc links so they can use them:-) No big deal man, it’s just money we are talking about. Health and having a good time are more important (credibility too!).
>>>>>> Your about as computer illiterate as I am.
Ouch, that hurt. But not too far from the truth. I am good USING computers and got on Social Media years ago. But when it comes to actual messing with codes I get very very frustrated and inpatient! That is where son comes in, he can earn his allowance from now on. #winning
Thanks for taking the time to comment as always. I appreciate it!
There’s nothing wrong with letting Google serve up ads, that FTG (the person) and his red herrings (the imaginary fish).
It will be quite a riot if TBB offers IB a banner ad for FTG (the blog). Just kidding;-)
Should I get sued for making the pic I’ll counter sue you for making it viral 🙂
Don’t worry, I have the best attorney connections, they ‘ll make us a deal;-)
“Adsense is a few bucks for a blogger when loyal readers who want to help out click a banner ad”
It’s not about the $$$ amount. Has nothing to do with whether you make $1 or $1 million
It’s about the affilate ads affecting the content
The issue isn’t the MommyPoints and OMAT’s of the world making affiliate $$$ of say…. the Club Carlson card
The issue is the fact that they are only giving link-bombarding coverage to it now because it pays affiliate $$$ (the rare times it was covered before, it was usually somewhere in the middle of a top 10 CC’s post where it got lost among a dozen other links). And that they’re now largely ignoring the Chase Hyatt Visa just because it stopped paying them affiliate $$$ (or at least became much less lucrative). And if/when the Fairmont Visa pays affiliate $$$ too, all of the sudden they’ll “discover” that. And if the Club Carlson card ever stops paying affiliate $$$? Well hopefully MP can give it a proper burial since it will be more AWOL on the blogs than Hoffa
THAT is the problem with affiliate links. If AdSense somehow causes similar shifts in your posts to cover/ignore something just because it makes you money, you’ll be similarly called out for it. If you don’t (and I don’t see how AdSense can skew content), then you probably won’t get much brushback except from Rick and DP trolling
And THAT is why the FM’s of the world largely go uncriticized
Because he’s been able to develop quality content which is pretty free of affiliate-skewing
And yes, it’s obvious when affiliate links do and don’t drive your content
If TBB’s content is ever affected by the ads, it will be as noticeable as FTG’s perpetual unstableness
Steve: AWESOME comments, thank you so much!
Do you mind if I use it in a blog post (attributed to you of course)?
Yeah, no worries for AdSense to skew content…unless I do a post on dating Filipino women or something to push the ad lol. Same goes for the aff ads too. BURN ME like a mfer then, I will deserve it:-)
This is the prime reason I have not jumped in the circus yet. I am very afraid I will be compelled to sell, sell, sell. And I just can not sell, aggressively or even overtly! I will figure it out. Can FM’s success be replicated? Remains to be seen…
TBB’s content is all about the ads. That’s his primary subject, complaint about other people’s ads. His content consists of other people’s pictures, other people’s blogs and his personal criticism of others. There is not much “George” in his blog
I had great hope for George’s blog when he started it because George is a really nice guy. It has been very disappointing to see him still slamming others.
“complaint about other peoples ads”
no it isn’t. That’s just you pretending to play ignorant. Its the posts he complains about
but the fact that a post by many of the bloggers can be mistaken for an ad does an excellent job proving his point!
its easy to mistake all the spg “posts” as being ads bought and paid for by Amex
>>>>>>Its the posts he complains about
Some people read what they want to believe. I have noticed that quite often in my day job:-)
>>>>>>…..but the fact that a post by many of the bloggers can be mistaken for an ad does an excellent job proving his point!
Bingo!
Thanks for taking the time to comment. Love positive feedback. Negative feedback is fine too!
Rick, are you plain stupid by nature or do you come here to pretend to be an ignorant illiterate senior citizen?
This blog is doing its purpose, plain and simple. We as readers, enjoy every bit of it, instead of your stupid challenges you posted daily with inferior links.
Thanks for the kind words (to me). If there is something you do not enjoy please let me know too, I don’t take things personally.
Ingy: Once again, thank you for checking out my blog several times a day and taking the comment to give me your feedback.
For the nth time, TBB reviews blogs! Loves to give praise where warranted! If I did not point out the bad content/blogging practices of other blogs it would be quite hypocritical indeed!
This is a unique niche I started. I could have started yet another blog trying to help friends and family travel for “free”: and pumped credit cards daily. But that would be so…boring. I like to do things in a unique manner. This is my baby, a release of my artistic brain cells that have been buried:-)
You would not be here so much if you did not enjoy it. Come on, fess up, it’s ok. If you do not enjoy it, why are you here?
Let me guess: Yawn 🙂
I keep coming back with the hopes you can go a day without criticizing somebody else’s work. Doesn’t look like you can do that. so sad you went negative on a hobby and people that has given us all so much
For the nth squared time: TBB reviews blogs.
>>>>>so sad you went negative on a hobby and people that has given us all so much
The only one who is going negative against TBB is you and your friend. It’s okay. I can take it. We disagree. No surprise there. Please consider a different point of view (if you can). Maybe this whole hobby is going on a VERY negative direction and little old idealistic me trying to save it by educating and inspiring others to choose a different direction. Travel with Grant is a case in point, kudos to the kid! His credibility shot way up!
I already marked a FTG (the blog) entry today to comment on: Card #345 is the IHG Rewards (Priority Club) Visa. The inferior 60k link (that pays FTG…yeah, I know, it is all disclosed blah blah blah) is shown FIRST and the “unofficial” FT so superior link (that does NOT pay FTG) is very cleverly worded to appeal to your readers enough to scare them to COST them 20k IHG Rewards points. That is FOUR Pointbreaks nights. If this should not be a TBB BLOG post to comment on, it would be hypocritical to even exist!
How do YOU (FTG person) feel about this? Oh, I forgot, you have nothing to do with the blog.
Another point of view: Maybe some people care about the hobby MUCH more than others who put MONEY first. TBB will ALWAYS put READERS FIRST.
When Gary Leff gets his own miles/points cable TV show (he does have the LOOK) he should invite us as guests to go at it on Milepoint (get it?) TV. It should be very entertaining. I think people will pay for that in pay per view. And we can do it all for charity lol.
I know what I am saying is not getting through.
TBB is like the Chris Elliott/Consumer advocate for the miles/points world, a hobby that has turned into a giant aggressive credit card pumping machine and is RUINING the hobby.
Rodney King: Why can’t we get along. RIP Rodney 🙂
TBB criticizes, it’s his schtick, when he doesn’t criticize he doesn’t get comments. Less social interaction = fewer page views, which means he won’t be able to monetize his site. He saw the big $$$$ ingy (the senior citizen) cashed out when he sold FTG (the blog) and made an entrepreneurial bet. So far he hasn’t come out ahead on it. Just wait, though, BentOffers here he comes!!!
It is absolutely true that whenever Rick appears in my comments traffic lights up. Maybe Rick deep, deep down he loves me and this is all an act:-)
I started because I was bored and needed a new challenge. And make a positive difference in the hobby that has been so dear to me and it has become a freaking banking product pushing fest.
And yes I have entrepreneurial brain cells. Can I build something totally different (totally) from scratch? Can I reinvent myself? Talk about a huge challenge! And all this techie stuff, what an education it has been!
Well, not bad so far I must admit…I can’t believe I am still doing it actually!
It is absolutely true my little blog has not come out ahead. I could have joined the circus long time ago and just aggressively pumped the cc offers…but not my style dude. What is the rush anyway. You are all dying me to be associated with BentOffers…
Thank you for taking the time to read and comment in my blog. I love to read negative feedback because it gives me a chance to improve.
Cheers mate!
TBB
a division of Hypopimp Enterprises (NYSE Symbol:PIMP)
George, I hate to nitpick when you have such nice things, but my blog is Travel with Grant, not Travelling with Grant.
Ironically, the person who told me about creditcards.com was FM haha 🙂
Oops, sorry about that. I will fix sometime today. If not, please let me know. Thanks.
5 cups of coffee, eh?
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/08/15/coffee-consumption-death-risk/2655855/
I did notice that. I am working down from 6;-)
I think your boy did a good job of putting the ads on the site. they are non-intrusive. and they are those clever ones that look at your cookies so when you are looking at some computer at best buy then you get bomrarded with best buy ads. very clever. i will click on them for you. $5 a day? that’s nice that would cover my costs. i spent about $500 putting my blog together. it’s about to go up as i am running out of bandwidth on photobucket. the trip reports get pretty big volumes.
Yeah, I am proud of the kid. I could not figure out the darn sizing and placement of them. I know they are there now & are not too bad at all. I even took out the ‘sensitive categories”. Darn, I can no longer look at the beautiful Filipino women at that dating site lol.
I am way way under my costs but this is a good start. No rush. Focus on the product and having fun!
You know I like your Maldives trip reports. They make me almost…to visit once:-)
Ha yes I have another trip to Maldives coming up in… one week… and then another in 6 months… second one will be first time with kids… burn baby burn! Look forward to many repetitive trip reports. I will look to include wet towels and nuts 🙂
take the kids to Maldives? no comprende.
Since Macombergate MMS has been making so many withdrawals, chapter 11 can’t be far off. With all the grief he got for that episode, it seems like he said to himself screw it, no more pretending, I’m all in on the grab for affiliate gold. He ended the charade that he had our best interest in mind (mother inlaw rule, pleeeeese).
Yeah, I was quite disappointed too. I think the kid is very busy in this card software project and the content has suffered lately. We should have known it was the mother IN LAW and not the mother rule in effect? haha. We shall see.
whats the card software project? MMS is not in an “exciting career in international marketing” anymore?
This one:
http://millionmilesecrets.com/online-shopping-maximizer/
I think if they can pull this off, it is going to be BIG!
Love the iphone pix – amazing! FWIW, I really like Mommy’s blog (but I’m a mom and a noob, so I fit her demo). I’m all for the adsense – good for you.
Thank you Jen. Yeah, quite amazing what you can do with a smart phone camera these days. I have a Galaxy 3 and my friend has a 4. The quality of his pics are so much BETTER…makes me want to go out and switch my phone. But don’t want to break the 2 year contract!
Just keep your eye out on Slickdeals. The carriers routinely change their T&C and when they do you can get out of the contract for free. These days it usually means filing for arbitration as per the contract which might sound hard but is actually very easy and your costs end up being covered. I was able to get out of AT&T recently 4 months into new contract through this process. All because they added a $0.61 service fee 🙂
This is a great tip, thanks! I scan Slickdeals once a day (fast)…now I will look a bit closer.
iPhones have good cameras but you’d hate the battery life and small screen if you’re used to juice and a decent sized screen for man hands. (I understand the pain of typing on small screens with giant thumbs!) There are some Android phones that have outstanding cameras as well.
IPhone screen is just too small for me. Android Galaxy is great. Thought about the Galaxy Note…a little too big:-)
Yeah I have a Droid Razr M, it was pretty cheap and it’s quite good for my purposes. Maybe they’ll let you pay out of your contract using miles instead of cash. 🙂
I tried that on a sales person. Did not work. His loss:-)
I feel like I should troll the senior citizen troll.
I troll Feedly all day long to keep up lol
George,
I love your blog and read It first in the morning. I will click the non sense ads daily once so you can get some money.
Pl. keep up the good work.
Wow, I am honored, thank you so much!
If the same guy clicks the ads each day, Google will dump you within a week!
Yes I know. I expect to be dumped shortly. I can see who is doing it and I can separate the ones with the good intentions from the other ones. Expect TBB to get really angry when this happens!
Thanks.
Was I the only one American didn’t invite to tour the A319?
Funny you mentioned that because I saw that type of title in my Feedly list quite a bit today:-)
I think old man FTG still sends snail mail to Siskel and Ebert criticizing their practices
“You guys need to stop bashing terrible movies. You should only be giving positive reviews. It couldn’t be clearer that you 2 are a bunch of angries”
You know I was thinking about THAT earlier today. You are absolutely right TBB serves this same purpose. I do not have enough thumbs down lol. I loved these two guys, excellent movie critics.
This is what TBB does. Most people get it. Some don’t. Life goes on.
Thanks for the comments, I really enjoy them!
Thessaloniki (SKG) Greece is this where the lost city of Atlantis is thought to be near?
Well not exactly. But they do have an awesome Hyatt next to the airport. Come to think of it, I need to transfer some Hyatt points from my Chase Ultimate Rewards and book me one night!
Of course all you points junkies never find yourselves sleeping at the airport – enough points to burn as needed I’m sure – but if you ever are in that situation, this is a helpful and fun site to check beforehand:
http://www.sleepinginairports.net/tips.htm#.UhLc7oWeAz0
I did but I sure hope our flights tomorrow do not necessitate any airport sleeping! Not any!
We are drowning in hotel points to be using this website. But has great info indeed if you need it;-)
Hey, thanks for finding me 🙂
I honestly appreciate your “great writing” comment. I was very worried about it.
I’m quite confident my photography stands out, but writing is new to me…
Yes, I have some links on my site. I started it less than 2 months ago to see if my “angle”
could be interesting to people. I got almost 200 super-positive comments, not a single angry
or bad one. It’s quite amazing and it seems like expectations are high. As you know it’s
a full time job which in my case takes me away from my real job. I would be extremely
excited if I could get “even”, don’t think it could ever happen. But I like working on my blog,
keeps my mind focused around traveling and photography 🙂
Thanks again!
– Andrew
Your pictures are just awesome. The writing was good, the anticipation to see it came through very well. What I found about writing is that we can always improve. I don’t like writing long things because I suck at it. This is the reason I took this angle at TBB, reviewing blogs and sharing the good and..the bad 🙂
I hear you about the real job. I resisted the CC money so far…so you don’t have to tell me about it how tough handling two jobs is!
I am developing a strong itnterest in photography, surely and steadily…
Hi George
Just wanted to say that I’ve been reading these points blogs on and off for years, and I love reading your vitriol about them every day. Long may it continue, yours is the only blog that I go directly to and read every single day, and I think you’re doing sterling work.
Thanks!
Hi,
I like to call it constructive criticism 🙂
Thanks for the kind words, I am deeply honored.
I call it as I see it. See latest Top 10 post by The Points Guy. Offers better non affiliate links with the best cc offers.
They think I am angry. I like to call it constructive criticism to influence blogging practices to improve to benefit readers instead.
Thanks again, much appreciated!