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| Glacial Waterfalls. From Twisted Sifter. |
ON MY MIND
I live in Ann Arbor, Michigan. University of Michigan lost last night in the final of the NCAA Tournament. I am distraught.
I am philosophically opposed to buying miles directly from airlines. What fun is opening your wallet and just handing your money to an airline that still controls the currency and can move the goalposts anytime? I don’t care if AviancaTaca offers a 100% bonus. Actually I have never done it and likely never will. Remember, I am the guy who has no trouble earning them, why will I BUY more, that’s absurd!
You know what drives me absolutely nuts? Seeing bloggers come up with more and more innovative ways to write a blog post that would never ever see the light of day if it was not to push the same affiliate links again and again and again and again. You see it all around the miles/points blogoshpere every day. What especially irks me is to see a misleading headline that is designed in such a way to catch your attention and make you think “Oh, there must be some actual content in this blog post, I may even learn something”. And you surf there and you start reading and you may even think ‘this is not bad” and then…bang bang bang come the Chase and AMEX affiliate links. To take it to another level, you never see a disclosure in the body of the post…not even a simple “I sure appreciate it”. My readers tend to be a bit more advanced and know the shell game going on and can spot these bloggers from miles away.
MILES/POINTS
I ran into the Statusmatcher website. It is supposed to be a place where you can see what your elite status can be status matched to. Looks promising. You may want to take a look at it and let us know if it is worthy or not. (HT to Free Travel Guys)
Thinking of the possibilities and doing calculations with that recent Visa pin thingy.
TRAVEL
If you are interested in Iceland, this blog is a must click! Iceland news and more, video and photos
22 Google Street View destinations. From Matador Network. Wow!
The Quiet City: Winter In Paris. Another stunning HD video. First seen at Gadling.
ODDZ & ENDZ
March of the Penguins: Can you handle the cute. From Landlopers. Awesome penguins!
Life is tough, get a dog. From theCHIVE. Awesome dog pics!
Actually, I could do without the “I sure appreciate it”. Feels more like pandering than appreciation. How about a disclaimer up front stating something to the effect “while there may be affiliate links in this post that benefit me, I swear on my mother’s grave they had absolutely no influence on the content or advice given and I will only display the best offer I am aware of without a bunch of crap about why you might want to click on my lesser affiliate link.”
P.S. please read that with humor. It sounds more serious than I intended. 🙂
Let’s just say the disclosure language could sure use some innovation;-)
“You know what drives me absolutely nuts? Seeing bloggers come up with more and more innovative ways to write a blog post that would never ever see the light of day if it was not to push the same affiliate links again and again and again and again”
You used to call out people by name when they did that. It it actually had some positive results in some bloggers content
That ship has long since sailed
I’m scared to click on Today’s top 10 list by TPG. You can tell by the title where this one is going….
Yes, I used to call them by name. But if I continued doing that I would be working on my blog 24/7. I just could not afford to sustain it. Maybe if I retire from the job that earns me a living I could go back to the hard hitting mode…Not going to happen in the near future!
Just follow 80/20 rule and continue to call out the big boys. Who cares if some lightly travelled blogger is pushing cards? They will soon die out anyway. but keep going after the big boys.
Yesterday’s post by Ben (about paying taxes via credit card) was one of the worst offenders in a very long time. Not only did he promote very bad advice (pay 1.8% with credit card instead of using a debit card, like Frequent Miler pointed out in more detail), he push a sh*tload of cards in the process.
TBB, we need you to step up and call bullsh*t when they do this!
Correct you are
You don’t need to call out 500 blogs
Just call out the 10 or so well known blogs that everybody reads who are the worst offenders
Lucky is reaching TPG territory with his recent sociopathic affiliate pimping
Lucky DID say that the Suntrust Delta debit card was a great deal. Not open to folks who don’t live in a Suntrust state though.
Thanks for taking the time to comment here with your thoughts. I am taking everything into consideration. I am just buried too deep in tax work right now to clear my head.
Glacial Waterfalls link to Twisted Sifter is broken.
I am sorry I did not intend to put the actual link, just so time consuming. Just go to twistedsifter.com, it was the picture of the day yesterday. Love that site!
I think DeltaPoints misses the daily mention here. Today’s post almost seems a plea for recognition in response to TBB’s latest venting. 😉
I look at the headline, I can guess what links are in it, I shake my head and go on to the next one in my Google Reader feed:-)
Okay, I found this funny.
1. FTG offers a referral RocketMiles link. Whether it earns him a referral credit is unclear. No disclosure one way or the other. Remarkably, the return on RocketMiles looks better than hotels.com, but I haven’t checked on how inflated the prices are.
2. WA comments that PointsHound has more hotels and partners and offers a blog link.
3. FTG accuses Seth of spamming (which isn’t quite the right word), and trying to draw people to a referral link.
4. Linked WA page has a comment fight with Jason Steele over, I don’t know, affiliate links or something. There’s probably a backstory but I’m busy right now.
If anything, at least the fight over affiliate links is out in the open.
I plan to comment on that Jason Steele defense of affiliate links, but work keeps getting in the way. Sometime soon. Hope all is well, George.
harvson3
I am way behind today on FT and everything else! “Work keeps getting in the way” – Ain’t that the truth:-)
I know I am going to find that FTG/WA exchange. The way I see it is this: WA fully dislcosed it and his prior history blogging shows he provides good content and he is no credit card pusher. On the other hand…well, I don’t need to spell it out.
One of my goals starting the blog was to get this to happen “the fight over affiliate links is out in the open”. I think I may have succeeded in doing so. It is very important. In my career, all this non transparency is not healthy…someone is getting hosed. Don’t get me started, I have work to do:-)
All is well. One of these days I need to think about packing for Norway next week!
Rocketmiles is a truly terrible site (as several of his commenters alluded to) that no points and miles expert would ever recommend.
But that means little to the Frugal Car Salesman
There’s nothing he wouldn’t right a puff piece about for the right $$$ amount.
He would endorse the bird flu if pigeon paid him enough money
That last line had me laughing non stop, thank you. Best entertainment, this blogging thing:-)
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Like I said previously I miss it too. But the material is so vast I had to be at it 24/7. Not sustainable
wow..I love your picture! Where is it?
Spitsbergen, Norway
http://twistedsifter.com/2013/04/glacial-waterfalls/
Thank you! Love it!
From your blog,I can learn some new knowladge,I like the valuable information you provide in your articles.