TBB To Evolve Once Again, Random Thoughts About the Hobby/Blogging/Pumping, Confessions, Life & The Pursuit of Happiness, Kumbaya

TBB evolving again, now with Discover! That’s a hint for BOP (Best Offers Patrol), hello???

 

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I have a lot in my mind that I feel the urge to let it all out so please excuse me if this appears way too loose and unorganized …it is!

Starting on January 1, 2015 this blogger will stop following 358 blogs in Feedly. Therefore, the normal Buzzing “feel” you are accustomed to will not be there.

TBB blog is NOT going away! This has been my little corner on the web and I still very much enjoy speaking my mind about my dear hobby, helping people and interacting with you.

Why now? Well, there have been some developments in my life. Two new clients have just come aboard that will require my full attention. In addition, it is the regular quarter end and year end work. As I pick up 1.5 clients per year on average this is totally new to me having to on board two at the same time while dealing with all the quarter/year end work and tax season! I have put up a sign “No new clients until April 16, 2015”!

One of the two new clients is my largest client to date and I would not have him if it was not for TBB! Say whaaaat? Let me explain this a bit more…

I absolutely used to despise writing. The reason? It would take me for ever to write something because I would go over it repeatedly to ensure it is as perfect as possible! Writing something was excruciating to me so I largely avoided it. Until I decided to start TBB. Slowly I started to enjoy writing and stop caring so much to get something perfect! I mean, I wrote this rant about Greece in a Lufthansa Business Class seat from Frankfurt to Detroit because I could not sleep! About a year later I was contacted by the Wall Street Journal to participate in their new Wealth Management Experts blog which I am still doing! The new client has been reading me since I started writing there and told me he likes how I think and my advice and felt he can trust me. Isn’t this mind blowing or what?

In addition, surfing on Facebook, I came across a posting by a friend who had a crazy (yes we are all a bit crazy doing this!) question about a travel itinerary and in the comments section revealed a very important development in his personal life. It just hit me and perhaps it is time to get TBB down a few notches from things that occupy my life.

It will be weird not going through Feedly, so weird. But it will also be incredibly liberating. Let’s see what happens around April 15. Depending on my business I may get back to Buzzing, especially if I hire me some help (must know WordPress lol!).

What I have learned about the online world and blogging has been very educational. I had no idea when I first started. I still have no idea about marketing online but have picked up a few things here and there. It’s all good.

I have cherished being a miles/points blog critic. I am extremely proud of my Blog Review Lists, I think they are awesome 🙂  After being around this space for so long I think I may know enough to be a good judge of quality. I have given more genuine praise than every other blogger without ulterior $$ motives. I have also spoken my mind about awful blogging practices and I have made enemies. And I am cool with that, comes with the territory of being a critic.

It is incredible to me there are so many blogs out there and they keep on coming! I think most of these bloggers would be better off quitting and refocusing their energy in more important things. Why? Because most just are not offering anything constructive, do not have a niche, are not good writers and post sparingly. Blogging is NOT easy! It takes a whole lot more time than you think. You think about the blog 24/7, you think about what to post, responding to comments/emails, and there is always so much technical stuff to learn and implement! I wonder sometimes how many bloggers would be happier without their blogs. I bet you Online Travel Review is much happier now.

Being a blogger takes a certain amount of passion. It also takes some form of talent. Sadly, in most blogs the lack of real talent is evident. The most egregious examples of lack of talent coincidentally happen to be in blogs in the TBB Ignore List which, again purely coincidentally, are the pumpiest ones out there. I guess the only talent they truly show is on doing online marketing well. And that’s cool. I will just never recommend a reader to learn from them; in general, I just don’t trust them.

If you are thinking about starting a blog, you should probably reconsider. You probably do not have a niche and there are gazillions of blogs out there telling you the latest 5% bonus categories of the Chase Freedom and Discover cards. Or posting incredibly boring trip reports and blah blah blah. Save all this time (more than you think!) and spend it with your wife/girlfriend/boyfriend and/or kids or improve your career or travel more! You will not be able to keep it up anyways, most give up. The amount of sacrifices you will have to endure to become a Titan may not be worth it as at some point the banks will stop paying as much as they are paying for credit card approvals. Can I think of a niche? Yes. How about: “Travel for Free for swingers” or “Travel for Free for priests to save the world” “Travel for Free for jihadists, we specialize on one way tickets!” or “Travel for Free for pets”. Seriously, not much left out there!

I just got me another 50k US Airways miles 🙂  I love Barclays Bank, they like me!

A lot of the things we do in this hobby are crazy and sometimes I wonder if we are certifiably insane. Most people will never understand us. I look back on some of the stuff I did and think “Holy crap, I did THAT?’ Are we all sick? Is this a disease? I get this kick of earning miles and then traveling the world for a fraction of the cost in accommodations I would never pay cash out of pocket charge (for the miles). It’s like a natural high. Does your significant other understand this? Mine does but we have been together over 20 years. If you are younger and starting your career and/or a family you would be hard pressed to work on the hobby and do it well. Of course the light bulb goes off when you take the next trip for free or a fraction of the cost. But, in the meantime, all this effort, all this running around MSing, would you be better off connecting even more with the important people in your life?. You can only do so much connecting while in line at Wal Mart LOL. These thoughts started swirling in my brain after friend revealed he was served with divorce papers and I just wonder maybe he took one trip too many?

I have no idea where I am going with all this. I just feel better letting these things out of my system. Confession: I do not have a therapist and her name is certainly not Suzy! 🙂  I am too cheap to pay for one, come on! I really liked having fun with it though, thanks for playing along!

Another confession: I am a saver. As in saving 30% to 40% of my income. Goes back to messages ingrained into my DNA while growing up. Both my parents were raised in the World War II and felt many hardships. Heck, I still remember my dad telling us stories of how when he was our age he had to sneak into German trucks to steal bread to feed himself and his siblings! My mother’s every third word is “Save!”. Her rationale? You just never know what can happen so you need to be ready. I need to lay off on that a bit and doing it with miles/points perhaps is my way to cope 🙂

I burned 1,053,524 miles & points in 2014, woohoo!

2014 Year Resolutions accomplished: 20 lbs lighter. Quit pizza, pop corn, soda/pop, potato chips. High Five. I need to set me 2015 goals.

I apologize to all for adding a tab with credit card affiliate links. In two months it has brought in as much as 8 months of Amazon shopping pumping. Don’t let anyone fool you that if the banks stopped paying there will be as many blogs, hell no! Over 90% will vanish overnight!

I have never spent more than 1% to 2% of my time on TBB on monetizing efforts. It is still not important to me. I think it is more important mentally to think “Wow, everyone who got a card or shopped with the TBB Amazon link, took the time to do so to show appreciation for what I produce here!”. So thank you for taking the time, it is greatly appreciated. I would be equally happy if you took the time to tell me you applied using links from a blogger who is a true expert and works hard to produce quality and original content and respects his/her readers so please please use the ones in the TBB Love and Like lists!

The space is riddled with vast doses of conflicts of interest. Sometimes going from blog to blog in Feedly felt like going to a Happy Hour in a huge whorehouse (Full disclosure: I have never been to such a place!). Some bloggers are so deep into the pumping mode that they justify even the most preposterous things. It is truly sad to watch. Especially some people you knew before they cashed the first commission check from a bank.

Toughest part of blogging is coming up with quality content consistently. And I really mean the consistent part! This is why you see so many (guest) writers! And lots of what you see out there is probably done by ghost writers and of course writing staff! There are not many bloggers out there who consistently put out awesome content by themselves. The closest who comes to that level is Travel Is Free.  For the record, TBB has only used one guest blog post and I still get crap about it!

Another confession: I have never really spent 6 hours on the blog per day! I think I may have spent 5 hours a few days. About this time I have gotten brutally efficient by getting into a nice groove using low tech Notepad (don’t laugh, it is awesome!) to paste all the headlines worth for the next Buzz post along with my commentary and then pasting into WordPress and then adding the links for them that were previously bookmarked. And thanks to my Samsung Note 3 going through Feedly is not as bad as it appears.

2014 has been my best year. Ending in an incredible high with business in a record year, well behaved smart kids doing awesome, beautiful smart loving wife who still tolerates my obsessive and insane antics, miles/points balances inching back to 4 million, 20 lbs lighter, terrorizing opponents on the soccer court, TBB community & blog record monetary numbers too (nowhere near Titanic levels, I assure you!). I mean, living the dream already. I am so grateful and humbled and too darn lucky.

Remember, TBB is a side project and acts as a release of my inner inadequacies and an avenue to offer something constructive and help people. It is my form of releasing creative energy & expressing myself. I always wanted to be in a rock band but sucked in everything I tried using my hands so blogging it is then! But there will be less of it going forward and we reevaluate the landscape around April 16th. Can you become a Titan blogging part time? I highly doubt it.

Criticizing crappy blogs is constructive, HELL YEAH! Every serious critic has enemies, the ones who don’t are paid shills! You should speak up too! Speak your mind and your ass will follow or something like that 🙂

Pumping pays. No doubt about it! This is the reason many blogs have descended (pun intended) to becoming plastic pumping machines! It takes a village…err, I mean, it takes some talent in doing that but please NEVER ever confuse that with true expertise on the subject! Most of the pumping bloggers’ knowledge of our hobby is, to put it mildly, laughable! Some are so out of touch with what happens in the trenches is, well, not laughable…it’s just sad!

Revenue based earning is mostly here and there is no turning back. Revenue based burning is next…Brace for it. Is there still value in the hobby? Hell yes! As much as it was? Not really. If it wasn’t for this Manufactured Spend thingie we would all not be here now. But the exciting part of this hobby is that there is ALWAYS something that comes along…

I have too many free hotel nights I wish Award Wallet had a special section to keep track of them too!

I have no idea what TBB will look like going forward until April 15. I think it may become an odd mix of personal stuff sprinkled in with more rants and just odd stuff, always keeping the mission of the blog in mind! Or I could just bang out 10 posts on the Macadamia Nut Gate or something (just kidding, I will spare you that ordeal!). Maybe I will still share some truly awesome stuff I find too. The Blog Buzz weekly feature? I don’t know. You all like it I know but do I need to waste more time on these pumpers? Probably not and neither should you. Just stop reading them and give your clicks elsewhere!

When they take my crappy Credit Card links this becomes a weekly mega rant against the pumpers! And I will share complete figures about the blog’s finances to….educate!

Where is Steve? I miss him.

Damnit, I just checked Feedly, talk about a habit! Check out the latest post by Yomadic, some bloggers have real talent!

I had more to say but I am a little affected by the wine at my friend’s house for New Year’s Eve. I can’t wait to get to Panera in the morning and then start working on my quarterly invoicing project, we need to eat too! This market ride since 2008 has been just incredible!

To everyone who read this in one sitting, you are my hero. Thank you very much for taking the time. I love feedback, positive and negative.

Don’t spend so much time online. I look around me and see everyone stuck in their phones and not even looking up! I strive to spend less time on my phone in 2015 (easy, no Feedly miles/points blogs at the rate I was doing!) and get more involved with real people around me. I also strive to get back to earning, MSing and (most importantly) burning! I still find it amazing I burned over 1 million miles/points last year, wow!

 

 

It is 2 am on January 1st. Not staying up that late for TBB this year 🙂  Unless you go nuts on my affiliate links and then you make me change  my mind lol.

I am always there…like a State Farm agent…so behave!

 

 

 

Check out my updated blog lists: Blogs I Love, Blogs I Like, Blogs To Ignore

Please pass my blog link to your friends and family if you think they will enjoy it too.

 

TBB
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