Too much material in Feedly screaming for commentary by TBB. Following therapist’s orders to “let it all out”…
TBB Blog Mission: To Entertain. Educate. Inspire. In That Order
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The obligatory disclosure first…You can count on this TBB experiment to keep evolving and trying things out. I get bored easily and do like to mix things up. I even added an ad banner (below the Amazon and above RoboForm) on the right. This is supposed to be based on page views and not subject to click bombing like some “fans” did to my Google Adsense account. Not that it matters other than some pennies per day you know. Another lame attempt by TBB staff to justify our existence lol.
For new readers, please take some time to read the expose posted here and you may understand some of my strong biases. The “Travel” Miles/Points Blogosphere Has Turned Into a Giant Credit Card Pumpization Scheme!
TBB is about entertainment which involves hellish doses of snarky satire. I see TBB as a mixture of Yelp, Roger Ebert, SNL and Joan Rivers. If you don’t like it don’t pump ridiculous stuff out! Besides, you don’t have to read it you know. Go read how you can sign up for the Chase Freedom 5x quarterly categories and how you can get 3x points on your Chase Sapphire Card or how you can buy or transfer miles (WTF!).
As this was going to press, we have a post by Personal Finance Digest titled “Barclaycard cracks down on satire!” that pretty much puts it all into perspective and highlights perfectly my way of thinking. So, I quote:
The way the system often works is bloggers think of some pretense for selling cards and then write a half-assed post about it. No matter what the issue or problem is, you can bet the answer will involve an affiliate credit card link! (For those of you who don’t keep up with this stuff, affiliate marketing is where website owners get paid for getting people to get credit cards and other products. The incentive is to move the product, not necessarily to help the consumer.)
So, after doing a satire piece on the Hawaiian Airlines credit card (issued by by Barclays Bank) with the affiliate links in the post he received this email notice by the “affiliate manager”:
As part of their effort to optimize approvals, reduce risk, and streamline compliance procedures Barclaycard recently conducted a URL review and has decided to remove several publisher properties from their program. At this time Saverocity.com/pfdigest is one of the domains being removed.
This action is not necessarily a reflection of the quality or value of the websites being removed. Barclaycard controls the number and type of publishers in their affiliate marketing program. They also have the option to make changes, which may include the removal of publishers. Barclaycard continuously re-evaluates its strategy in the channel and does not preclude these sites from re-entry into its affiliate program at a future date.
The salesmen bloggers go along with this crap because they get paid very well to…not rock the boat. I think it is a bunch of big league BULLSHIT! Anyway, let’s see if I can keep this Blog Buzz stuff daily and leave the regular TBB Buzz all positive and stuff. So…another evolution…I just make it up as I go along you guys.
Note: This section is for long time followers of this hobby and references to blogs/bloggers may not make much sense if you are new to this. You are welcome to stay and read it of course but if you go WTF just remember this note! I think of TBB as the SNL of miles/points blogs and the content here is intended to be satire. If you get hurt I can refer you to my therapist!
So, here we go…
Credit Card Companion Tickets: Ins, Outs & Current Offers – The Points Guy [Hired gun Jason Steele does his thing and collects a nice check, probably much more than what the Frugal Travel Guy Inc cheap skates pay. Of course over a dozen affiliate credit card links…you know the drill. I am sure Jason will be back to do more of these click bait articles for his employer who gets paid by the banks.]
My choice of two premium AMEX cards & one for Skymiles 2015 – Delta Points [DP selling Amex credit cards. Remember when Amex took the links away…you never saw ANY Amex credit card links on this site, NONE! Instead, you would see links labeled Amex that lead to ALL the other credit cards the site sold but NO Amex links! Not even to the Amex homepage to help readers who may wanted to apply. What an honorable practice!]
New Warnings from Chase on Account Shutdowns – The Miles Professor [You know, when a post starts with “I recently read a report on Million Mile Secrets…” you know we are in for a doozy! Chase credit card links are present but are not affiliate…”give me a break TBB”….nope! We don’t give breaks, even our mother in law! (especially her! sssshhh ]
Announcing Los Angeles MileValue Dinner Sunday 9/21 – Milevalue [I wonder if there will be Barclay Arrival applications to be given out. If you email with a picture and proof you are a good looking female you will likely get preferential seating 😉 ]
The Best Balance Transfer Card – Million Mile Secrets [ How despicable imho to sell the Chase Slate card. Hey, if you carry a balance GET OUT OF HERE AND NEVER READ A MILES/POINTS BLOG EVER AGAIN…YOU ARE THE REASON CONTROL FREAKS LIKE US MAKE OUT LIKE BANDITS TAKING ADVANTAGE OF THE BANKS. PLEASE LEAVE…NOW! Barf! ]
It’s Time to Clean Out the Credit Card Bag – Frugal Travel Guy [Written by the Founder who wants you to know he still does not own the blog but keeps mailing in posts and collecting checks. And always selling credit cards. He wants you to know he gets no direct income from the credit cards anymore, he just contributes to the profitability of the blog that allows these KKR owned geniuses to keep paying him for stuff like this. Yawn.]
How Long Does It Take To Earn The 40,000 US Airways Miles Bonus? – Well Traveled Mile [This full time blogging thing sure is hard, we need to eat so we will sell this card again!]
Register For 5% Cash Back On Shopping – One Mile at a Time [Hey, click on my Chase Freedom link. Oh, here is the Chase Sapphire card and Chase Ink card links too…these pay so much better than the Freedom card and hope many suckers clicks on them]
One Credit Card Application, Two Vacations for Two People – World Wanderlusting [This blog just can’t stop selling the US Airways credit card. Do people realize how ridiculous they sound trying to appeal to a newbie who is clueless and finds them accidentally doing a Google search?. Is it time for the 2nd barf of the day? Yes it is!]
How to Prepare for International Travel: Tips. Tricks & More – The Credit Card Guy [ I like the titles the writers have. This one was written by “TPG Special Contributor” who inserts another 8 special affiliate links. Sell sell sell!]
IHG Rewards Club 100% Buy Points Bonus – The Credit Card Guy [Let me tell you a story. There is a credit card that earns 80k IHG Rewards points, I just got it myself! So, if this site clearly put YOU first it would swallow hard and…give you the link to that credit card. BUT, this credit card does NOT compensate this business. So, you get nonsense about buying points and then it attempts to sell you the Chase cards that compensate this business (Sapphire Preferred, Ink Bold, Ink Plus). Now if THAT does not make you ANGRY I don’t know what the hell is wrong with you! You must have mental issues or something! Major WTF moment right here! Got me buckets to barf right now! Eeeek ]
Earn 5x Transferable Points on Amazon.com and Department Stores! – Mommy More Cards [Holy mother of God….The credit card pumping in this site is approaching legendary proportions now. WOW! On the menu, all the Chase cards…the same ones as in the previous entry by The Credit Card Guy. Please click my Amazon link non stop…running out of buckets!!!!]
Thank you for reading. I hope you laughed. And stand up and speak up!
Check out my updated blog lists: Blogs I Love, Blogs I Like, Blogs I Ignore
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TBB
travelbloggerbuzz@gmail.com
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Daily 1st
I had faith in you that one day you will succeed, congrats!
Deuxieme
Merci!
Third da word!
Not too shabby 😉
George,
You consistently fault milevalue for relentlessly pimping the Barclayarrival card but are missing bigger issues. Isn’t it a greater sin that he consistently misspells Barclays and continues to use the hashtag of “Barclay’s”? Christ, when one is only fed by a single hand, wouldn’t it make sense to at least get the brand name correct? This has been going on for multiple years (not that I’ve read it recently aside from just checking that he still hasn’t corrected it). “Barclays” is the name of the bank. “Barclayarrival” is the brand of the card. “Barclay’s” could be used if making a possessive statement about someone’s dog named “Barclay”. Come on milevalue, pushing inappropriate personal finance products with appropriate diction isn’t fucking rocket science.
You make a great point. I am at fault of doing the same as I have been murdering this one…you must admit it is not the easiest “banking” term to get right! Then again I have never sold any of them so why should I care? 🙂
The difference is that you serve multiple masters, rather than just one, Amazon and something comptuer-y that is far too complex for me to grasp. Oh, and you don’t mislead people into sub-ideal financial products solely for personal gain. I work in consulting for the finance industry, so the MV posts, if I still read them, would make me cringe while 99.94% of normal people don’t notice. Your blog is great; stay clays-ey. However, to give due credit, MV did have a few good posts early on about United, and Mrs. Lincoln did, in fact, enjoy the beginning of the play.
Heh. I’m borrowing that one.
Thanks Brendan…doing my best to stay clays-ey 🙂
Buzz-
I have some thought questions.
1.On the financial front, I know a guy who sold when Apple (adjusted for splits) hit $100. After it hit $100, it dropped back for a while, as stocks often do when they hit a benchmark. So the guy started saying “Got out at the top”.
Well Apple kept going up and up and up, but this guy kept saying “Got out at the top”.
My question is, do you think this will ever happen in the blog world?
2. While you know how much I treasure your mission to bring the blogging world back to reality, I’ve been thinking that maybe there’s another way to look at this.
Remember Vegas back in the 1970s? Small casinos, friendly table games, and above all really cheap stuff. You could get a decent hotel room for $10, and good cheap food all over town. Downtown, Binion’s ran a steak dinner for like $1.99 from midnight to dawn. Sex was not only cheap but inexpensive. How/why did they do this? The answer is that most of the people eating those $1.99 steaks would go out to the tables and drop a few hundred later in the evening. But some of us ate cheap, stayed cheap, and limited gambling to bets with the best odds like certain craps bets and counting cards at blackjack
I know what you’re thinking: Where the hell is this going? Stick with me.
The Vegas of old worked for everyone-the smart guys got bargains and didn’t lose enough to matter; the suckers lost but thought they were getting a bargain; and the casinos raked it in. And that’s how I see the state of the bloggy (new word) today. The airlines are selling miles to the banks, and rigging redemptions to raise their odds, the banks are in on selling the miles and scooping up those swipe fees. The suckers think it’s all swell until they try to book a trip.
And what about the bloggers? Well they’re the ones standing outside the casinos, often in costume, yelling to catch your attention. “Step right up, folks.” “Everybody wins”. “Dollar bingo at 2 pm” “Ten cent beer all day long”. When I read posts about taking the kids to Mars on points I think back to Circus Circus, where you could lose the car payment while the kids played outside with Bozo.
So maybe we should really thank the bloggers for being such good carny men and women. Think of it this way-if the bloggers didn’t create all the traffic, the banks might sit down and figure out how to attract profitable customers and avoid the others. And then we’d all be cleaning out our card bags.
Great way to think about it. Thanks.
I did not know sex was subsidized to bring in more traffic to the casinos. I thought sex would be a stand alone product that could further alcohol sales. Maybe I’m just thinking with my wiener.
Sam, wow, thanks for taking the time to comment!
I am no fan of gambling either. Family story my father drilled into my brain about my uncle…
Very interesting analogy. And yes I did wonder where you were going with this.
You make a great point so…am I supposed to apologize and thank them then? 🙂 Not happening!
Love it. Love the phrase I learned on your blog. Describes you perfectly
“Winner laugh and tell jokes while losers piss and moan”
Mommy keep on laughing and George, returns to his daily “whine”
And just think George, if you hadn’t been so lazy and slow on the trigger you’d be laughing all the way to the bank. Doing it absolutely right of course and showing us all it should be done 🙂
Stay angry my friend
The troll is back! Just can’t stay away from my blog, can you?
Thank you for taking the time to read and comment. Don’t trip on your way to the bank!
“Your credit is my most important asset” – Frugal Travel Guy Inc
You ‘ll be reading tomorrow 🙂
To some, one’s credibility is one’s most important asset.
Of course I read your blog. It is part of my job to keep up with current events.
Current event #1. George is still whining about others success. Its almost two years now of whining day in and day out.
Instead of tweeting 20 times per day and whining constantly, why not keep up with the fiduciary duties to your clients? I’m sure they would appreciate the attention you give to this fiasco
>>>>>>>>Of course I read your blog.
Of course I don’t read yours…I only scan it so I can “report” on it here so my readers don’t have to visit it and get their eyes gouged.
>>>>>>>>George is still whining
Rick is still whining about George whining. Yawn.
>>>>>>>>why not keep up with the fiduciary duties?
You are the last person on this planet to mention the world “fiduciary”!!!
>>>>>>>>>I’m sure they would appreciate the attention you give to this fiasco.
In the dictionary, under “fiasco” there is a picture of FTG
Thank you for taking the time to read our blog and participate in our community. It is due to loyal readers like you this blog is a fantastic commercial success LOLOLOL
Fiasco? Depends on your point of view. To the readers who appreciate the content and continue to click on the links it is a very worthwhile project. To the blog owners it adds nicely to their bottom line and is a true financial success. To you well, what would you expect, but a whine.
Winners laugh and tell jokes while losers piss and moan.
Stay angry my friend. I’m sure your therapist is glad you are 😉
2: Number of comments at FTG today
4: Number of comments by “rick” FTG Founder in this TBB post Updated!
This is what we call reader loyalty! Thank you.
Yawn
Now that is some impressive math their Georgie Boy. Good for you. Up to the number three now like the rest of your readers. Lets all practice our counting: “I’m number 1. I’m number 2, and I’m third today”
Now with those kind of comments, who wants them anyway. Oh I forgot. That is your metric for success: “Comments. Get your comments here at TBB” “And while your at it, don’t forget to click on my entirely unrelated to travel links for Amazon and RoboForm”
And to think you spend hours a day with this. I’m so glad I “Sethed” you a couple months ago. Now my visits are comic relief as you will never change. I’ve come to accept day in and day out George will be whining about someone and something.
Comments. Get your comments here, OR if you’d like leave a comment and I’ll personally respond to every one of them including those most critical ones practicing our numbers. “First.” ” No I’m first”, “Damn Second oh well” ” Bronze medal.”
I can see why you are so proud George. You are indeed adding to the travel space. You provide a reference point for the bottom of the barrel.
Stay angry my friend. It looks good on you.
2?!
I got 185 comments (which admittedly includes some responses from me) across the 3 articles I published yesterday.
Today’s reminder, for all you playng along at home:
1. George caused incivility in the hobby by criticizing other
bloggersbusinesses.2. George’s incivility led to a fall in trust in the hobby. Deals didn’t expire or go underground because they’re tapped out, or due to the entry of hordes of inexperienced hobbyists calling the airlines and harassing CVS clerks. People are less trusting now because of George’s blog.
3. George criticizing
bloggersbusinesses for misleadingsuckersnewbies makes George a loser.4. If
suckersreaders click on inferior links, well, that’s their own damn fault. Caveat emptor, no take-backsies, I got mine, f— you.BloggersBusinesses can’t be expected to keep up with all the better links that don’t pay them, after all. Things move so quickly!This has been another update from a different, albeit non compos mentis , universe.
“non compos mentis”… niiiice!!
I wish I had an intern to set up a template to insert comments like this one to the TBB Gem Comments blog posts 🙂
Gracias. I agree 🙂
Awesome summary of the “ethics” of the card pimps posing as “experts”.
MommyPimp’s fluff piece of garbage and the high fives from the other pimps congratulating her “success” were equally revolting.
Off for a series of meetings. Do not expect replies here until later today or evening.
Buzz on!
You know how employers can get in trouble for treating employees as contractors in order to get around having to pay benefits, payroll tax, etc? I wonder if certain large banks owe payroll taxes to bloggers…
Aha…I was thinking about exactly THAT recently! As I saw another write up about how IRS is cracking down on employers avoiding payroll taxes. Amigo, this could be BIG.
The chain bank-afiiliate company-blogger is an issue of course. But some of the big commercial blogs, from what I know (not much), have cut out the affiliate “manager” big cut and for those it is a more direct relationship. Which can make the “relationship” be more “sticky” to this! And you know the money is in the banks right? 🙂
Hmmm….got me thinking now
Of course, one of the biggest criteria to judge if one is a contractor or employee is the amount of direction to a role:
Get me conversions= Contractor
Get me conversions by talking about XYZ, not mentioning churning, removing reconsideration numbers, etc = Employee
As soon as the ‘how’ the job should be done, and criteria is given on execution, you are well into Employee territory.
It is about “control”.
I think a pretty strong argument can be made for it. But an equally strong argument could be made (by very expensive lawyers) against it…
So, who knows?
Buzz, FYI, on an iPad the new banner is really annoying. So far not so annoying that you’re off the list, but annoying nonetheless….
Rickgry, you clearly have no idea how gratifying it is to get regular visual proof from you on George/Buzz’s success in calling you and others out as the creepy snake-oil salespeople you have become! Of course your pyramid scheme is doomed as it depends on uneducated newbies. Once they educate themselves they sure won’t come a-clicking on your sales links anymore. But they’ll still need to buy something from Amazon using Buzz’s links!!
Agreed!
on the iPad thingie or the other one or….both?
Can you elaborate on why the new banner ad is annoying? I have not used our iPad in months. Actually I don’t know who or where it is!
I call it as I see it. You bet a bank and/or affiliate manager has not influenced the content and hope to keep it that way…
Crap, forgot to buy cat food….Guess my wife will buy some using her favorite link #winning
It’s just a floating horizontal banner that eventually rests on the bottom, but floats again when one scrolls. Hey, next time you’re @Panera look for someone using an iPad, go over to himher, explain and try. Give ’em a brush with greatness that they can use to amaze and entertain their friends! (or shove ’em and say you’re Rickrgy Ingry? 🙂 )
Every Tuesday morning this Grief support group comes and sits next to me…I am not asking them 🙂
Thanks.
That thing brought in 5 cents yesterday so I just don’t see it lasting long. I will give it a month and reevaluate.
You can opt out of the banner that pops up on mobile devices and keep the other sidebar ads.
Not sure how to do that. I have looked around this media.net site and I don’t see much I can play with. Like I said it is not like it is bringing in gazillions…Need to post the Blog Buzz next!
Nice post, thanks for keeping this up, it’s entertaining to read.
Cheers,
PedroNY
Thank you for your feedback.
Great blog!
Love your Blog!!! You should post pictures of your wife too!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I often dream how you would look in a bow-tie.
Do you have info on those great cards from Barclay’s? Also please pose more pictures of yourself on flatbeds.
In my humble opinion your blog is not very good, if it was up to me it would have more pictures of fatty foods.
Your blog is FAB U LOUS……..send me money.
Thanks to all the bloggers who are my biggest fans. You have a great sense of humor. Except DP who is angry all the time 🙂
Get back in there and SELL, SELL, SELL!!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wDI6SEIzwNM
🙂
Awesome clip! I may use it at some point in my blog, thanks!
Maybe it’s just my fratboy roots but I think most provocative flight attendant uniform is important information. Better would be a post on how to pick up a flight attendant…I think i’d have to wear the dress white to pull it off.
Them were the ugliest uniforms ever! But they sure made the headline click bait!
Yawn
I think I should post another Blog Buzz, you know, for our entertainment.
I just want you all to know that I value blog success by the number of comments each blog post gets
#winning
LOL
Just upping the comment count.