This blog is a bit long, so let’s get started right away!
CHASE CLEANING HOUSE WITH SMALLER AFFILIATES?
Gary (a really nice guy too!) at Free Frequent Flyer Miles reports (in What’s New section) the following:
Chase has reviewed their goals for 2013 and have decided to reduce the overall number of affiliates that are approved for their program. This website was one of them. So were many blogs. We won’t know for a few days, but I suspect the surviving blogs are the pushy ones that throw a credit card banner in your face with every post, and repeatedly go on ad nauseum about their commissioned offers. It works, apparently.
What does this mean? It means the relentless credit card pushing will likely get more intense as current participants in the main affiliate company (Flex Offers) push links repeatedly ad nauseum to their readers in order to not get kicked out. A truly sad development in the already quite sleazy state of affairs our little hobby has endured. Of course there are other providers who do not pay as much and they do not serve the links as handy as FO but DO allow a bit more freedom in blogger choices (from my limited knowledge).
I will be a little easier on bloggers who push them from now on. No I won’t. For the one billionth time, I am NOT against getting paid for hard blogging work. Ok…I feel a rant so I will listen to my therapist’s advice, stand up and yell out loud “Serenity now, serenity now, serenity now”. There, I already feel better, she is soooo good, I love her!
The two following headlines will undoubtedly have an income on marketing budgets, just fyi:
Ten banks settle foreclosure charges for $8.5 billion
Bank of America reaches $11.6 billion settlement with Fannie Mae over soured mortgages
MVP Post of the Day
Maybe I am going to start doing this, highlight the ONE article I enjoyed the most or found the most usefu/inspiring/educational! First winner is Scott at Hack My Trip who wrote “Looking Back” after completing 1 year as a blogger (Congrats!). Yeah, be unique or at least make an effort as we do not need yet another blogger teling us about Vanilla ice creams or how Chase Ink Bold gets us 5 Ultimate Rewards points at office supply stores!
Some EXCELLENT advice overall about blogging. And I obviously have a long way to go to learn how the Internet really works. And me learning code is like saying I like Skypesos, lol. I loved this line ” Money is a bad motivation to start a blog. If you do a good job, you’ll probably be able to find a way to get paid for it. Be patient.”
You win the prize of a free pass (one-time only) from my now infamous “Not Best Of” category, congratulations! 🙂
BEST OF
Travel Summary became an instant hit around the blogosphere for this post with a 100k Amex Platinum offer. It was his first day with affiliate links so if you are going to start down this road might as well do it with a big bang! I liked how this whole thing developed. TS did a HT and then almost every other blogger properly HT his blog post, that is beautiful. And almost no other blogger attempted to push their own affiliate links, it was touching to watch. Maybe TBB IS having an impact afterall? As of late last night it worked….I think. I will be suprised if it is still going on when your read this!
Priority Club is AGAIN messing with its Rewards Nights, this time its structure! Here is the updated story at Loyalty Lobby. Enter NINE different category levels ranging from 10k to 50k points per night. About 30% of properties will go down and 30% will go up in points. Priority Club will NOT release a list of properties changing number of points required for a free night, boo! ( change is effective January 18, you can use older rates up to March 18, 2013). If the fantastic Point Breaks awards go, this program will go to the pits…where Club Carlson was before it rose! 🙂 John at LL says PC stated PointBreaks will be staying…
Frugal Travel Guy has a post “Flying First Class on Thai Airlines And A Giveway“. I need to focus on the positive I was told, it’s a generational thing I guess. Ok then. Thumbs up for originality for giving away TWO sets of Thai Airlines First Class XL size pajamas. They are still in the wrapper! Smile old man;-)
Ok, I see a pattern developing here! Amol at Hack My Trip has a very detailed and very advanced post giving Delta Award Tips. Wow, my head is spinning! One day Delta Points will do this for us…Silence:-) As I have said before, I excel in earning but suck in burning! Burning Delta Skymiles and not paying an arm and a a leg is so hard! Maybe you two guys can go into award booking, quick before Scott gets a real job:-) I must say I am impressed by the content quality coming out lately! Ok to fire off a few credit cards, it’s okay now, lol.
Frequent Flyer University has an insightful post pondering if he should go for Elite status. I agree with his conclusion “So basically for anyone that does not travel for Business, I would recommend that you should save your money and time, and NOT go for Top Tier Elite Status. The only time I would suggest going for it, is if you have already flown a certain amount of miles and are in striking distance of the next tier.” After almost 10 years with Northwest/Delta Elite status I am giving it all up in 51 days. Fly coach domestic, burn up front internationally, my new motto. Long Live Free Agency!
Dear blogger: If you find something elsewhere, please do a HT. Please do it on the top of your post and not way at the bottom. If you want to see how a HT should be, look at this Mommy Points post!
Club Carlson’s First Quarter 2013 promo is Triple Points. Register here.
40 Great New TV Travel Show Ideas by the Grumpy Traveler. This is hilarious, a few examples:
From Matador Network: It features a guy who is a self-described “couchsurfing drifter” who went on hitchhiking across Asia and couchsurfing with the Taliban. I think I am nuts sometimes but this dude completely takes the cake!
From The Planet D: Sea Kayak Antarctica – The Adventure of a Lifetime. Wow, just stunning!
From Miles, Point, and Mai Tais: “Credit Card Churning for the Rest of Us“. I like the message here, something you almost never see mentioned when it should be pounded over and over. First, and most important, if you don’t plan on paying off your balances in full, every month don’t do it! [TBB says AMEN!] Please don’t go out and buy a bunch of stuff you don’t need. [TBB says AMEN2! Vanilla is ok:-)] Stay organized. Don’t forget to actually CANCEL some of your cards! Don’t overdo it [If only the same care was taken by bloggers to empasize THIS stuff instead of adding/editing the billionth affiliate credit card link..maybe, just maybe, it would make a difference to YOUR blog’s readers…Shouldn’t they always come first? Rhetorical question to all bloggers, feel free to comment or insult, NO censoring is allowed!]
And thanks for adding that Flyertalk link with the current best offers (at the end of the post). And I really like the “Rest of Us” angle. Of course this comes from a person who is still new and has no idea what he is doing, lol.
Gary Leff (again!!) has a nice comprehensive post about Airline Status Matches.
I have stayed at the Hyatt Thessaloniki in Greece and loved it. Nice trip report by Upgrd. I am trying to get more tourists to Greece, they really need the money!!
A few hilarious gems from a Flyertalk thread:
Worst Of:
Our favorite MilesMomma not giving a single ounce of credit towards Travel Summary.
“Thanks always whenever you apply through the Miles Momma site. I appreciate your support! You can choose to go straight to Creditcards.com and give the big guys all the $$ or support your favorite blogger like me. Thank you whenever you do. I always appreciate it!”
http://milesmomma.com/hot-deals-alert-american-express-platinum-100000-points-more/
Truly exceptional post but for those who love adventure.
I wouldn’t be impressed with the coverage of the 100K offer. Even the worst bloggers don’t have enough shame to ignore this one (or if you want to be cynical…. they can’t fool even the newest of newbies on this one)
It’s those more subtle differences, like with the US and AA cards that separate the good from the bad
Agree on all comments above. Thank you for reading & taking the time to comment!
It’s too bad there’s a landing page on Amex’s website for this offer
It would’ve been really funny to see some of the bloggers try to justify why people should click on their 25K link because it’s a public offer and the 100K offer is a risk
That would have been extremely funny and…so sad!
I don’t think the Chase purging will change much unfortunately
Because the ones we constantly criticize here and on FT are the ones who incessantly pimp cards to line their pockets. And those are the ones who Chase will most likely leave alone
The TPG’s, FTG’s, DP’s, VFTW’s of the world will still have their links to pimp. It’s the FM’s of the world who don’t toe the company line which will be affected
Which stinks for those of us who appreciate the non-pimping nature of him and a few others and try to direct our affiliate $$$ in their direction
It is a very fine line indeed!
You pimp non stop….and we think you get lots of app $$. Or, do you drive readers away to bloggers like FM?
I bet you FM is doing fine taking the high road. When he gets dropped by Flex Offers we then know for sure that the pimping absolutely works…Right now, we suspect it does.
As we can never confirm the real $$$ involved, we may never for sure!
To me, it sure sounds like FM’s way is a more long term sustainable business model. Of course the content should always comes first and he for sure blows pretty much everyone else out of the ball park.
My take wearing my TBB hat!
or call me #hecallsitasheseesit:-)
I’m a big fan of Dans Deals website, but something that bugs me about his practices…
If he’s posting about a huge deal, he almost always H/T’s someone in his forum, instead of whoever the original blogger/FT’er who posted it
Even in cases like the Amex 100K where it would take little effort to trace (and credit) the original blogger
I got a reader message that perhaps the correct HT way is to do it when you see it FIRST. I am not sure what is the correct protocol here, I am really not that up on this blogging techie stuff…as I just make it up as I go along:-)
He may be doing it correctly? Besides, lots of stuff do generate there;-)
I will keep an eye on it, thanks for the comments to everyone above!
The whole purpose of giving H/T is passing credit to where it’s deserved. In that vein, you should be giving the credit to the person who found out about the deal…. not the 7th blogger in the konga line
Ok, good to know this, thanks!
The 100K offer actually has been discussed via PMs between veterans on the DansDeals forums for quite some time, but I was sworn to secrecy so I couldn’t break it. Sort of a catch-22 situation for me as a blogger, but if I’m told about something on condition not to break I’ll do just that and do it again. There are dozens of other deals I could kill in a day but there’s that fine line of blogging about sustainable deals (Amazon Payments, etc) and unsustainable ones that will always be whispered between folks at DOs who are sworn to secrecy and via PM.
Either way once someone posted on the DansDeals forums the link along and someone posted the links to SD and FT the gig was up and I went with it and yes, that is the first place I saw it publicly so that’s where I gave my HT to.
And of course with all that publicity what has been alive for a while now has been killed within a day…oh well, onto the next deal!
You talk to me next time the next time a deal comes around and I can keep secrets for EVER! You have my word on that, thanks:-)
It is amazing the speed from “breaking” it out in the blog world to spreading like a wildfire until the eventual killing of it…
I was watching my Google Reader feeds last night and kept shaking my head as I saw it spreading…Got kind of ridiculous! And excitingly thrilling at the same time too….bizarre. I think we all thrive on that “kick”, I call it crack!
Today I turned it all off pretty much and concentrated on actual work to help me pay my bills as this blogging thing is not it…lol.
Thanks for commenting here Dan!
It’s easy to blame the blogs, but this deal also had 7K FW views, 37K FT views and a whopping 177K SD views, probably more than all the blogs combined.
Either way this kind of “deal” will never last long in the wild.
I did not realize that….FW and SD territory is kind of scary, so many weird people in that wild part of town, lol.
i dont blame blogers from killing this one.
it’s the spoon feeding every little trick to kill lucrative deals that drive some crazy. Especially when it’s done solely to line their own pockets. i.e. the bluebird/OD/VR barrage and the ink bold card
If Ink Bold referrals didn’t exist, it wouldn’t have gotten 1/4 the coverage it got
I agree
Would be interesting to look at which credit card pimping blogs DIDN’T mention the 100k offer. Plenty of Starwood American Express links over at Frugal Travel Guy but no mention of this offer that might pay CreditCards.com. Who else didn’t bother with a great offer that didn’t pay them? THAT really belongs in tomorrow’s WORST OF. Thank you.
Actually I have ALL who posted it in my GoogleReader & thought about doing a special investigative piece on it like I did with US Air. But no time, I still need to do the Buzz post for tomorrow…
Actually I heard Rick plans to file suit against AMEX and CreditCards.com for age discrimination for killing the deal before a senior citizen like himself could get around to posting the deal.
No comment, I may be misinterpreted again by some readers!
In a similar but unrelated lawsuit, Randy Petersen and Beaubo are suing AMEX for 800 million MR points
They’re not sure why, but they’re doing it anyways
funny…oh wait, is it true? 🙂
is Anonymous one person or many?
No idea, I wish they would just pick something. One day I will move up from blogger, one day. Hope it is to something better….if not blog retirement:-)
anonymous is funny!
Maybe they are more than one anonymous? 😉
TBB- You are wickedly funny! I hate the sanctimonious attitude of FTG.
Thanks Suzanne for reading and the compliment here! I love it when readers get and appreciate my humor! I’ll keep going until…I crash, lol.