So many pumping blog posts full of plastic and TBB gets an intervention…
TBB Blog Mission: To Entertain. Educate. Inspire. In That Order!
You can support TBB by applying for CREDIT CARDS, please consider doing your shopping with our Amazon affiliate link and clicking/forwarding any of our Referral Links. Or click on the Amazon Banner on the right, thank YOU!
The following image shows you what my poor eyes see.
The image above contains 28 blog posts. Multiply that by about 4.5 images like this and you get a total of 122 blog posts since Sunday that would never see the light of day if they were not pumping credit cards to their readers. If not, it was just some cut and paste crap from press news releases (I am looking at you Points Miles & Linguinis!). Actually, it was more as I let some go in the past few days…
I simply do not have the time to satirize them anymore. Mrs. TBB made me stay away from blogs for the weekend (I am sneaking this one in very late Saturday night after returning from a party in the Detroit International Auto Show). You know, it felt good not posting anything at all Saturday. I was going to take Sunday off but I just wanted to let you all know what’s up. I am tired blogging. I can not be a pumping Titan, it’s just not me. How can I look myself in the mirror then? This quirky beautiful hobby has been over taken by a bunch of greedy pumping machines who are not even realizing what they are becoming and rationalizing their actions with warped excuses. I just don’t like these people!
If you want me to post the other 4.5 pages of this crap let me know and I will at the end of this short blog post. Enough with this crap, Ignore them!
I am going back to Blog Detox, not sure when I will be back. My other work is exploding in my face! You know you got some issues when a prospect calls you when you are at WalMart using the Kiosk and loading your Bluebird cards! Posting will get less frequent and more personal…I think and priorities readjusted. Yeah, I know, I have said this many times before but never really went through it. It is very HARD to quit this blogging thing cold turkey. Heck it was easier quitting smoking 16 years ago!
This always remained an avenue for self-expression. I never gave a flying squirrel for Alexa rankings. I am just privileged and shocked more than a few “friends and family” even care reading what I type here, wow!
So, what’s on you mind?
I say New England-Seattle in the Superbowl.
Need to update my Blogs I Like List. Which ones to add/delete? State your case!
Check out my updated blog lists: Blogs I Love, Blogs I Like, Blogs To Ignore
TBB
travelbloggerbuzz@gmail.com
Join over 3,359 TBB followers on Twitter @ FlyerTalkerinA2 and add TBB on Google+
First!!!
Been a while..
You need to take a break George.
Congrats and I agree!
Second.
This will be Silver in the Olympics that nobody wants anymore.
Third.
Had to point out this absurd line from PMM: “This promotion won’t last long, only until January 31, 2015. So there is still plenty of time”
For a post with 8 affiliate links, yet by using them you wouldn’t get your points in time until after the Avios bonus the post is for has expired. SMH
I bet they are really nice too 🙂
If these guys moved to Ann Arbor I will move! Nothing personal, just don’t want to be around them, that’s all.
This blog is making the other Titans look GOOD.
Believable!
1/18/15 TPG post:
“How Do You Estimate Travel Time from Lounge to Gate?”
Is this the kind of posts that annoy everyone else, like they do me? Seriously? If you have to ask these kind of questions, why are you travelling?
It is sort of like asking, “How much time do you think it will take to stand in line at the grocery store?”
SMH
Sunday morning is the time where these inane questions come up…
MMS Friday guest post was a new low. Pearls of wisdom like “use credit cards”. And “I started blogging in 2013 but I didnt know about Amazon Payments”. WTF?! Must be last blogger on Earth who wasn’t aware of AP.
Went to her blog and the day after her “interview” she writes saying she needs to post more as she’s neglected her blog. Unbelievable. Incompetent and lazy…but good enough filler for a Friday MMS post…
It does NOT matter! What matters is how many people clicked on the embedded credit cards of that post. The only reason it exists. And the beat goes on…
Warning to all future potential MMS Friday interviewees: If you appear here you have a LONG hole to climb out of!
I think clicking on the links in the post is secondary. The real reason the friday interview exists is for SEO, more linkbacks to his blog boosts his blog in organic searches.
I’m not sorry for having done the interview. I feel like the blog was different two years ago when I did it. I doubt I would agree to do it today.
Well okay, makes sense.
I can safely say that I have never been interviewed by another “blogger” — although I am not necessarily averse to that — and I have never ever pumped a credit card.
As far as content from other sources, I always credit those sources — and I usually add my own thoughts to customize the article so that it is not simply a “cut and paste” job.
Enjoy your detoxification, George; and I hope that business will get to the point where you can retire early…
As long as tuition bills staring at my face and the mortgage is out there I have no intentions to retire early!
Besides, what am I going to do do with my time?…
Retirement is over rated. If you enjoy what you are doing…do more of it I say. Just trying to figure out how much of this applies to TBB lately 🙂
I wrote “get to the point where you can retire early…”
If — no, when — you get to that point, you can decide what to do. That is much better than having no options and being forced to do something which you might enjoy now but do not want to do in the future.
That is the important part of what I wrote: having the decision be up to you; and that is what I hope for you…
I absolutely agree with this philosophy. All this financial money stuff is all about…having options and not be forced to choose a certain one!
I asked MMS to do the Friday interview in November 2011 after ignoring his request for months. After meeting the Boarding Area newbies like Mommy Points, PM&M, Deals We Like in Los Angeles that month, I could tell BA was headed for a whole lot of credit card pimping.
I used the MMS interview to share how I was not a blogger proponent of credit card marketing:
“What’s the one single thing people can do to get more points?
Travel. Plain and simple.
You can also play the credit card, but I am not an advocate of that lifestyle. I see a difference between promoting airline and hotel travel providers and credit card sign-up bonuses. I don’t want my blog to pimp for banks, even if they do provide a seductively enticing offer for some consumers.”
I fought the banks and the banks won. Occupy Movement was soundly crushed in America.
I should also add that I enjoyed meeting Deals We Like, Mommy Points, PM&M and Daraius of MMS. My impression is they are all enjoyable people in person. I don’t hate bloggers for making money through their blogs. I hate the fact that banks co-opted the travel blog space with their big payouts and conditions that require bloggers to pimp their credit card products to stay in the game.
Agreed. I don’t normally look, but that train wreck was impossible to miss. Makes me embarrassed to have done one back in 2012.
I am more embarrassed for not being true to myself because I was thinking about doing one! Bottom line, I never REALLY liked that blog. Full disclosure!
OMG.
I really wish Gary Leff would stop posting about Paris. He is truly clueless about the city.
It pisses me off. Seriously, it annoys me that there are people that are going to take his “expert” advice on this. Ugh.
I prolly have 50 links to blogs that have better advice on Paris- hotels, food, etc. than Gary will ever write.
I’ll take MMS antics any day over VFTW’s Paris posts. *sigh*
I have stopped reading both VFTW and OMAAT trip reports. Same old crap.
I salute you for all of your hard work. If it is not fun for you and you are tired of it, please take a break. I enjoy your blog tremendously and at the same time I wouldn’t want you to get exhausted in the process.
Cheers,
PedroNY
Thank you for your salute. If it wasn’t for the positive feedback from you and other readers this blog would have folded a LONG time ago.
I am revealing my inner thoughts here and showing you all how hard it is to keep up blogging! Especially when you make as much as this blog earns (15 cents yesterday) and then having your spouse question your sanity and hinting that it is enough! Obviously, this blog has not focused on monetizing and I could really care less about them Alexa rankings. But there is a threshold that most bloggers hit at some point. Online Travel Review hit it. So many others have quit and I am sure more are in line. That threshold is “why keep going for so little payoff to your time you put into this?”. Amazon is having the worst month to date and 1 cc sale this month. Like I said, if it wasn’t for the positive comments like yours I would not be here!
Or it’s more like the workload in real job is out of control. Maybe I should look to hiring me some help so I can continue TBBing for pennies lol.
I may even miss the NFL games today oh no!
Detroit Auto show party was awesome. Need to take out Mrs. TBB more often & wasting less time on pimping blog crap!
Your clients’ taxes could be done by “FTG Staff”
Why not give your eyeballs a break, post links to good stuff, and make the rest more personal. I prefer to read about blog posts you think are worth reading than the ones you don’t, even if your satire makes me laugh sometimes.
I am thinking of taking a day off each week from any of this stuff. It feels like a p/t job that can expand to fill whatever time I allow it. And I have been allowing it way too much time!
Thanks for the feedback Elaine.
On that other question regarding software, reader recommended: http://www.socialsecuritysolutions.com/index.php
George, take a break! You deserve it!!
I am looking forward to hearing about your travels to Greece, and would love to hear a trip report later on in the year.
Your family is what is #1 important.
How about between now and tax day, you just update whenever you have an idea that you want to share? Delete and/or ignore all the blogs that you just don’t like.
Honestly, I’ve personally have followed a lot of links from posters on this blog. Scott and Dia, for example. These are the blogs I love to read. These are the people I want to read. This is the kind of advice I want to listen to, research, and see if it works for me. There’s a LOT of good travel people that post on this blog. I’m grateful that I’ve “met” y’all, even if you never knew I was there 🙂
(MMS amuses me. I’m never going to sign up on a CC link on their site. I’m never going to go to 85% of the places that they go to. So, it amuses me. The writing style doesn’t offend me like some people *coughGLCough*. I can be entertained.)
The only thing I would hope is that all newbies to the points/miles world would do research. Lots and lots of research. I’m kind of a newbie. It took me 6 months to sign up for one card. One. And that is the one I determined works best for me, my lifestyle, and my travelling needs. Everyone is different.
It does scare me to learn that people are signing up for 20ish cards at once- and then going ‘crazy’ trying to meet all the requirements. Getting that 1st class ticket to the maldives, a place that one never heard of before a blog post (and therefore had no desire to visit) is NOT worth a lifetime trying to fix the money mistakes one made earning that ticket! I think that is what keeps George blogging this way,
I know that everyone cares on this blog. That is why everyone gets so passionate in their postings. If one didn’t care, then the indifference would lead to apathy. But eventually, everyone is in charge (pun intended) of their own for their travel habits.
So George, take a break. Thank you for giving me a bright spot in my day reading this blog and making new online friends.
And to everyone that posts here with wonderful blogs- thank you for sharing your travels. You didn’t have to do this, but you did- and I am very appreciative of learning something new about the world every day!
-icicle
Trip reports take LOTS of time to do…most of the ones I have here are just copy & paste jobs from private family blog.
Yeah, I should put out a sign “to be sparingly updated until April 15” or something. Deleting the crappy blogs….that will take a LOT of courage for me 🙂
I see your points but my blog is more about the miles/points blogosphere…which is really getting on my nerves for obvious reasons lately.
Getting new people in the hobby to apply for many credit cards at once is, in my own opinion, criminal!
Most people are lazy and would not do the research, they expect everything handed to them. And the pumping bloggers know it. So…they pump it!
Now excuse me while I watch some NFL games while I brainstorm with material about my other writing gig. For everyone here, here is the latest by Yomadic:
http://www.yomadic.com/visit-iran-no-visa/
And thank you for taking the time to comment!
I love the sunday question over at MMS. “I just started this game in June and I have applied for 16 cards and now I am getting denied, what gives?” Yes, that would be 16 cards in 7 months, and there once again is why the credit card blogs do nothing but sell sell sell.