TBB Mission: To Entertain, Educate and Inspire. Aim to at least do one well!
If you like what you see here, please let others know by passing them a link to my blog, thank you!
Blog post covers one day, not two. So it is shorter…
A blogger and loyal TBB reader, Dima of Dima’s Corner, is competing for a Chief World Explorer job and is kindly asking for your support. Like his travel video please; its’ a great video too! Voting ends on Sunday! I get several such requests and I am making a one time exception as Dima promised to buy a banner ad 🙂
TRAVEL
12 Places where you will feel absolutely dwarfed by nature By Matador Network.
18 Unique Hotels from Around the World. By THE WORLD GEOGRAPHY. Holy mother of God…this is absolutely fascinating!!
![desert-lotus-hotel-4[6]](https://travelbloggerbuzz.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/desert-lotus-hotel-46.jpg)
The Many Mysteries of Air Travel. By Pogue’s Posts at the New York Times. Geared towards newbies but still good info to know!
MILES/POINTS
United will honor the $0 fares! Hey Smisek, something is not right over there. You know, it is about execution not shooting yourself in the foot wings each time!
If anyone gets Chase INK Visa signing bonus, after already receiving the bonus for the Mastercard, please let me know!
Excellent tutorial on how to find a Starwood Best Rate Guarantee and get 2k SPG points by Points Summary, the workhorse of First2Board.
Delta found yet another way to screw its Medallion passengers. Something about prepaying $199 to get a load of crap or something like that. No link provided, don’t worry about it.
Current Chase Sapphire Preferred and Freedom card holders can refer others and earn 5k Ultimate Rewards points per referral. There are two of these in our household presently. Not sure I would go for the Freedom card right now; will wait for a bigger signing bonus. The CSP bonus is at its regular 40k. If you need a referral let me know.
ON MY MIND
It looks like another weekend I will not get to do anything ON the blog. Oh well…
ODDZ & ENDZ
Blobfish voted ugliest animal.
BLOG BUZZ
Note: This section is intended for long time readers and miles/points addicts who follow the blogs in this space. Readers not familiar with this crazy hobby could skip this section! Do not take anything personal. TBB reviews blogs. Call me Siskel.
Great entertainment at the TBB Comments from a few days ago. TBB vs Ingy and a whole bunch of “angries” 🙂
Apparently Chase has instituted a referral system for current Sapphire Preferred and Freedom cardholders to earn 5,000 Ultimate Rewards each for each successful approval. And the cards get the latest bonuses (40k for the CSP and 10k or $100 for the Freedom). So, if I read this correctly, is Chase going around the bloggers to avoid paying them? Nice to see some bloggers at least mentioning this. Of course they would insert their own links too…comes with the territory. And the referral period goes until January 31, 2014. So, Chase beats AMEX again (which recently discontinued its referral system). So, to recap, is this a major development in the murky world of affiliate links? How would any blogger now with a straight face recommend readers to use their own affiliate link? Thoughts?
As soon as I saw this pic I thought of Gary Leff and Mr. Pickles. Smile guys 🙂
TBBon!
🙂
You are Number 1!
Love that last pic of the fortune cookie. Reminds me of a message my brother got in a cookie referring to his secret admirer, that was awkward.
So, was there a secret admirer for real?
That is not the Blobfish, clearly that is a specimen of the Mr. Magoofish.
Every time I look at that thing I say to myself “Well deserved win!”
Re: Chase Referral Bonus
Personally, (as a non affiliate blogger), I love the pyramid-type scheme for readers to profit by a means similar to bloggers (I consider myself to be more of a reader than a blogger). I wish credit cards implemented it more often.
While nothing new, this sort of thing comes around entirely too infrequently. With all the drama over how a credit card affiliation affects a blogger’s trustworthiness, integrity, content, blah blah blah, this seems like a pretty good solution to me. It sure would level the playing field if readers were rewarded for sharing their miles and points tactics with family and friends as bloggers are. And like you said, any blogger unscrupulous enough to still promote their own links without mentioning this opportunity would “fold like a cheap suit” (to use your line).
And maybe we’d stop hearing [in an exceedingly innocent tone], “Oh, I just wanted to start a blog to share this hobby with my family and friends.” Gonna have to come up with a better excuse now.
Thank you for raising this topic. Hope for a good discussion (and more cc’s following suit!).
It will be interesting to watch how this develops. And who promotes it…or not. I bet you many bloggers must be very pissed. And can’t say much about how they really feel because they do not want to piss off the hand/bank that feeds them
#developing
Good Morning,
I’m off to PMI for the weekend. Couldn’t use my spg free nights, major screw up. Still life is good!
Sounds like a great place to spend the weekend!
You’re now soliciting readers for referrals. Whether you are an “affiliate” or not, what’s the difference? Why should we be referred by you instead of a blogger, you both get paid and we get the same bonus. For shame TBB.
Not sure where the disconnect is but TBB has never said referrals were bad. He just criticizes the endless pimping of often inferior affiliate links without substance in the pimp posts. The Chase referral links are the best publicly available links as of right now, there is no reason to not give someone the referral bonus.
Bingo!
And since TBB won’t put up a ‘donate’ button, it’s as close as we can get to rewarding him for his hours of work (and pleasure) providing us with education and entertainment… and a bit of inspiration!
Thanks! I need to work on the Inspiration part;-)
Poor Moral Equivalence: you saw something you didn’t like and immediately posted your “outrage”. It’s a pity you could not spend a few minutes thinking more about the topic, because you missed the important subtleties.
It’s okay. People should express themselves. It’s very healthy 🙂
Moral Equivalence (love the name!): Thanks for taking the time to comment. The two links were provided for readers to use to refer their “family and friends” so they can earn 5k pts per referral. In case any reader does not have the cards and want them they know what to do if they want me to refer them. I would pass on the Freedom, bonus is too low. The CSP is the highest public signing bonus so no harm is done.
Thanks to all readers who took the time to respond, I sure appreciate it!
M E where is he soliciting for referrals, are you referring to his “let me know” ? The link he posted is to take readers to where readers can register for referrals. He gets nothing for this. No linkfest here.
Looks like you missed out on the ‘educate’ part. dah
Thanks. No linkfests here at TBB, not my style!
Hey TBB, use my referral link: https://www.chasereferafriend.com/ 🙂
P.S. that is just a generic page where you can enter either the Freedom, CS, or CSP card info.
Just wanted to add – while the sign-up bonus for the Freedom is low, there’s not much reason to hope it will ever get back up to the once 30,000 bonus. Lucky offers up some good insight on this front – http://boardingarea.com/onemileatatime/2013/05/15/will-the-chase-freedom-ever-have-a-higher-sign-up-bonus-again/
I’d even venture to guess it could go down to zero eventually (eeek!) with the popularity of the highly profitable 5x categories every quarter.
So this may in fact be the best time to get a Freedom with the opportunity to earn some referral bonuses (to make up for the poor sign-up bonus) for someone who’d make use of the 5x bonus categories.
But for people who already have a Sapphire to try to cash in on referrals, yeah, I wouldn’t scramble to go out and get a Freedom until/unless you think you’ll manage to max out referrals on that card. But I definitely think the Freedom is a better card than just the regular Sapphire (not Preferred).
My gut feeling is that we will see 20k on the Freedom card. Not going to bet we will see 30k in the next year. Just a gut feeling, no inside information at all.
HELLO from the THE FOOD STAMP TRAVELER, foodstamptraveler.com will be up and running 09/19/13 we hope you will give us a visit and watch for our upcoming interview with one of the biggest names in the Travel/Points blog industry next Friday. We will help you get to travel for nearly nothing even if you enjoy government assistance. We show you how to get mile earning credit cards even if you don’t want to work for a living. We’ll do features on getting free cell phones service paid by the government, not to mention schools loans and how not to ever pay them back. Want to live cheap, check out our government housing subsidy section. Also check out our sections on maintaining unemployment benefits indefinitely, how to never pay for your medical bills (medical insurance is for losers).
Food Stamp Traveler I interviewed someone yesterday who had 4 years, back to back, unemployment comp. Guess what #stilljobless
Food Stamp Traveler sounds like a great niche blog to me LOL
[response meant to both!]