Oh the far right ideology REQUIRES the shutting down of alternative views. It doesn’t want to listen or entertain freedom of thought as freedom of thought is a danger to their power, similar to religious fanatics who think in belive in our way of your a heretic. It’s a core part of their ideology, and your asking them to reject that. Lol good luck

See what I did there?

We are in our own echo chamber.

I am trying to work on it. Not seeing much from the other side. And in the far right side there are a whole lot more religious fanatics!!!

I agree. I am always nice to newbies and have coached several who went on to have a nice travel hacking career. But I am VERY careful of who I help. This is NOT for most people. Which is unlike ANY commercial blog out there that gets measured by, please sit down, CONVERSIONS!

We were all newbies once #neverforget

YTB=Yield To Blogger

I like it. You know, like YTM Yield to Maturity lol!

I have no doubt the banks make money because ENOUGH people fall for the easy sells in the commercial blogs and, you know, fall behind for whatever reason and pay for OUR free travel! It’s not like American consumers are the most responsible out there, sad!

The interchange fees are coming down but it is a looooooong way down.

I never quite figured out how they pay all these sales commissions and still do it…Only explanation: Bloggers MOVE product out the door better than any other channel.

One day I should look closer into that YTB metric lol.

I think you are right 🙂

I think that more knowledge is better. Look at the collaborative spirit of Reddit/FT/DoC/etc. I regularly host meetups and encourage newbies to attend. I’d rather have 1000 people kill a deal straightaway vs 10 people milk it for years. We were all newbs at one time and it isn’t fair to shut the door behind us.

https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/communitybuzz/1905143-pwm-meetup-sat-may-19-2018-a.html

Well said, Buzz. And you’re right.

But you know the bloggers’ financial interest runs 180 degrees contrary to the kind of stewardship you write about. It shouldn’t have surprised anyone when Ingy took card churning onto Nightline, then sold his blog a short time later. And while we have poked him about that (and will continue to do so), he was just tryng to increase the YTB (Yield To Blogger) like just about every other blogger out there.

Of course Ingy compounded the whole charade with his claims of just wanting to help people travel at ‘prices you can afford’. Last week we were talking down in the basement about maybe having the horse wear a flag with an image of Mother Teresa holding up a bunch of credit cards, à la Emily.

What irks me most is when these snake oil salesmen (and saleswomen) slant their articles, ignoring or giving faint praise to non-affiliate alternatives. And, gee, you don’t read much about how tough it is to find awards. Just a link every once in a while to ‘our parter in the booking business’.

What I can’t figure out is how the banks are making money in this game. I’m sure they are but the number of cards that run a balance must be pretty big to support the card benefits, plus the commissions to bloggers on the front end.

Same.

When I started reading that…I could not stop. I felt my stomach turn several times.

Dang!!! Sorry, taking it down. Please send your link. I go for a bike ride, freeze my buns off and I come back to this!

One of my kids was a student of his at MIT. I just sent her the story and will be interested to see what she has to say.