We compare Marriott travel packages vs SPG Nights & Flights, check out the new AA Award Chart, travel all over the world, and rant about financial blogging!
TBB Blog Mission: To Entertain. Educate. Inspire. In That Order!
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Frequent Miler lays out the Marriott Travel Packages and SPG Nights & Flights. Expect the only bright spot of Marriott to be whacked soon, these guys are…ruthless!
The New NotEnhanced AA Award Chart by Travel Is Free.
The SECRET to Business Class award availability to EUROPE on AA METAL! by Points, MD. Folks, the answer is fly to Manchester MAN!
Finally a positive development after so many devaluations beatings. FTC wants to block the merger of Staples and Office Depot!
Hyatt Gold Passport website will be unavailable December 15-18. You have been warned. Does Hyatt’s website stink or what?
Stunningly Beautiful Hikes Around the World.
Sublime Autumn Timelapse through Croatia and Slovenia.
The 58 most commonly misused words and phrases. Because TBB likes to educate and lives by the mantra #continousimprovement
Latest report by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Interesting numbers. Especially this: “The new regulations saved consumers $9 billion in overlimit fees, $7 billion in late fees, and $4 billion in other fees, such as add-on fees, balance-transfer fees, cash-advance fees, and foreign-transaction fees, according to the report. The total savings added up to $20 billion from 2011 to 2014.”
Here is the Norwegian dude again posting one picture from every country he has visited…that will be 198 so far. Kewl!
The Most Creative Instagram Account in the World?
7 Lessons I learned from Financial Blogging. This is from Canadian financial blog Financial Uproar. Hit a nerve as Andy’s introspective post hit yesterday. So many similarities about the state of blogging in our space and how TBB has evolved (or devolved by a few dedicated haters). Some excerpts and my commentary in brackets:
“Regular readers never click on any of the ads and rarely buy any of the products I kindly recommend. They show up, consume the media, maybe leave a comment, and hit the road. Imagine if you were a grocery store and your best customers did that. You’d be out of business in a week.” [Crap, I killed all the ads and never insert product links in the body of the posts….okay, we have more lol]
“The real money is made with search engine visitors. If somebody searches for a product I’ve reviewed or something I’ve talked about, they’re pretty clearly interested in it. These are great customers. Think about it this way. If a regular reader buys something from a blog, the author has to convince them it’s a good product, and then convince them to click on the referral link. The author only has to convince the searcher to click on the link since they’re already interested in the product.” [And this my friends is why there are Titan blogs, they excel in doing this!]
“In just about every paid course on investing, blogging, writing, or on any specialty topic, you can find equivalent (or, in many cases, far better) information out there for free. No matter what you’re talking about, there are already two dozen other guys who are also talking about it for free.” [Ummm, yep]
“Every blogger starts out the same. They write something they’re passionate about, content with the feeling of getting their words collected in one place. That lasts for a little while until they realize nobody is reading. Most quit at this point, while a select few power through. After a while, even if someone is getting traffic, the mindset changes. They just get tired of giving away content for nothing. So they monetize, doing stuff like throwing up ads, taking sponsored posts, or writing for other blogs. And almost always, they’ll get a few snarky comments about “selling out,” which is complete bs. You’ll notice these always come from readers who have no ideas about the reality of having a blog. And like I mentioned earlier, regular readers aren’t the ones paying the bills.” [That is so true in the miles & points slash travel space as well, so true so true *stepping away to look in the mirror ]
“Your attention span is probably about as long as a hamster’s…We all know you’re here for the giggles and thinly-veiled insults towards other bloggers. Blogging is competitive. If I write headlines that are interesting and promise something good and if you then click on that headline, I’ve done my job. You come here to be entertained and informed. You’re neither of those things if you don’t make it past the headline. The headline is part of the experience.” [He is killing it right now! For example how true this is. On Twitter I posted a link with Buffer on my post about the latest update in the TBB Blog Review lists, got 2 clicks. I added “you won’t believe who made the Like blog list” just for kicks to see what happens and got 17 clicks. THINK about that for a moment!]
“The genre is essentially divided into two forms now. The first is a model that’s used as advertising for a premium product. Think of the business models of the mortgage comparison sites as a great example. It’s all lead generation. The second is the more traditional model, where some guy just writes and hopes for the best. It’s going to be harder and harder for that guy as time goes on.” [I think he is so right about the second model….It IS getting harder as time goes on. Advice to any aspiring bloggers: DON’T if you want to keep your sanity!——> PSA]
And I leave you with this…
Thank you for making TBB a part of your life, I am honored! Help bloggers you appreciate & make a positive difference in your life by spreading the word about their blogs, emailing and commenting and using their few $ links.
Check out my updated blog lists: Blogs I Love, Blogs I Like, Blogs To Ignore
TBB
travelbloggerbuzz@gmail.com
Back on Top (as if I left).
Who was that poster?
Identify yourself so the TBB Committee responsible for awarding the hardware can commence its meeting at Panera this morning!
It is Tuesday, can’t wait for the grief support group, always so bubbly lol.
The music they play at Panera in December sucks even more than the one they played in November, WTF!!!
There was a guy in here this morning on the speaker phone with his lawyer talking about his ex-wife. Lost count how many times “bitch” was mentioned, wow, take it outside dude!
Waiting for the 2 Hilton nights, minimum spend done. Took a trip to the mall and then to Wal Mart where I get in touch with humanity lol.
A bronze performance. Still looking for a replacement for TBB intern? Happy to do it, just require a 60/40 split of all profits from pumping 🙂
Yesterday brought in $4.87…if I give you 40% I will be able to qualify for food stamps lol.
This blogging thing is something….hope my rants prevent others from starting one…sanity is important bwahahaha. I got up at 4.40 am & have most of tomorrow’s TBB Buzz post ready. WTF! I am turning into a VFTW without the credit card pumping and TSA rants lol. Oh, there will be no intern named Ford here woohoo.
Just applied for the CSP using your link! Hope the moolah rolls in and you can buy your kids something for xmas… we Germans do anything to make Greeks happy!
Thank you! The German generosity towards the hapless bitching ungrateful Greeks is certainly appreciated…mostly by the ones who escaped long ago! I think Schaueble was right…and may get his wish in 2016 #sosad
Register for Discover It First Quarter 2016 now:
http://freequentflyerbook.com/blog/2015/12/7/do-this-now-register-for-discover-it-q1-2016-cashback-bonus
Reason #269 to hate Delta. Hey is that Delta Mileage Running website still up? WTF!
http://milecards.com/1588424947/delta-amex-companion-certificates-lose-comfort-plus-seat-access/
Dang. I was hoping you didn’t see the Points MD post. Now all we need is some Titan to pick that up bye bye award space.
Well, since you brought it up, I hesitated whether to post the link here! But then the benefit to my readers prevailed as this was going to get posted in a Titan blog anyway. Here is the timeline:
“Alan H.” finds it and it appears in View From The Wing
an hour later it appears on One Mile at a Time
later in the day we get a long post with pics and arrows from MMS pimping ALL credit cards he gets paid with and the few he doesn’t because, ya know, the ex-mother in law rule
three days later it finally makes it to The Points Guy
🙂
They picked it up and now say bye bye.
Yep.
See below.
Regular readers are the worst! That’s why you’re so unprofitable, George.
Lol.
I just can’t believe you never really had the HAWAIIAN AIRLINES® WORLD ELITE MASTERCARD®
I feel so…betrayed…cough!
I’ve *had* it, I just don’t currently have one.
Photos from this year’s outrageous Victoria Secrets fashion show…
TBBintern: Oh oh, hope the boss does not get mad!
http://www.businessinsider.com/victorias-secret-fashion-show-airs-tonight-2015-11?utm_source=feedly&utm_medium=webfeeds
How is this miles related you may ask? Have you seen so many beautiful wings in your life? We sure haven’t!
Please proceed with hideous sexist comments, controversy is awesome for Alexa rankings #subliminalmessagetotrollhAlexaupdateplease!
There is a war going on in Las Vegas between Uber, Lyft and taxis, it’s a free for all:
http://milestomemories.boardingarea.com/uber-vegas-price-reduction/
Consider using TBB’s Uber link if you are the only person left without an Uber account yet, thanks!
Republican Presidential candidates are too kinky – Humor alert
http://www.boredpanda.com/dildos-replace-guns-gop-politicians-republicans-matt-haughey/
Ok, that’s it, we are going to be canned…So what, we are on commission on TBB’s Amazon sales so who cares huh!
Shhhh….. I’ve been flying to MAN on that availability once a year for the last few years 🙂 It’s far better than dealing with Heathrow, and it’s easy to get to most other places in the UK via the airport railway station.
Sorry but the ghost writers/interns/guest writers of the Titan blogs are already working on new posts. It’s taking a while as they are awaiting for the affiliate links to be approved by Compliance Dept 🙂
And . . .FM and VFTW have already blasted out the AA availability to MAN.
Yep…see my timeline above 🙂
I don’t feel bad for pointing to this here as my blog readership is tiny and it was a matter of hours before they picked it up.
The thing that pisses me off is that other blogs link to VFTW because they saw it there first when they could all be reading my Buzz posts at 6.30 am like Gary does…oh sorry, Alan H. 🙂
I should have booked something myself but I was too busy instructing the TBBBreakingNews team what to do and going through Feedly for you all 🙂
I predict 2016 will be the year many small blogs die. Especially in Boarding Area. Ad revenue just keeps getting hit…repeatedly.
Not linking to the original post is simply lazy & bad blogging etiquette. VFTW linked to PointsMD, just like you did, but others after didn’t. Even if they found the idea through a bigger blog, people should have the decency to link to both. And if they found Points MD through you, they should link to you as well.
This happens a lot, there are just too many blogs out there and sometimes you just can’t remember where you saw something first.
What pisses me off is when people read something in a Titan blog and never acknowledging where it originated. Oh wait, that sounds like I am repeating myself here lol.
I cover a lot of this space and like I said, if I had a dollar for every link that shows up in a Titan blog after I post it here I would be a Titan myself.
It’s a crazy blogging world out there…
A little late with this one, we were at the gym, TBB cares for our health 🙂
BBVA NBA Card Now with $200 Signup & No Annual Fee
5x points during the NBA All-Star Weekend and two weeks of the NBA finals
http://www.doctorofcredit.com/bbva-nba-card-now-with-200-signup-no-annual-fee/
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