CC Pushing Blogs

You reminded me that little pisses me off more than paying good money to see a movie and having to sit through commercials before the movie starts - that I'm paying for!!! Rant over.

I'm not certain why peeps get so upset about reading blog content when the said reading is entirely optional. I think the bloggers are damned if they do mention that they get a kickback and damned if they don't. The usefulness of any of the credit card info is linked to where you are in the journey of getting cards for miles.

When I first started I read FTG from the 1st post. However a couple of years down the track I find his blog irrelevant to where I am at. I enjoy reading One Mile at a Time. I would never do what Lucky does and I am not at all interested in what he has for lunch, however I do enjoy his style. From time to time most of the bloggers have something I am interested in.

However like Miles I am not about to have an aneurysm if it turns out that I didn't get the best possible offer out there. My life will go on regardless of how many points I get for signing up for a credit card. I think people tend to lose perspective after a while as to what is really important in life in their endeavour to get everything for nothing.

I am pretty darn sure that's not the issue here. We all know they get kickbacks, the concern is that some blogs push cards to the detriment of the rest of the material they provide. I think those blogs will get precisely the same number of referral credits if they cut the number of pushy articles in half and reformatted their ad section. It is in their best interest too, as that will keep people coming back and more likely to use those links in the first place.

I was thinking about this over the weekend. A blog that makes its money from advertising that I read regularly is daring fireball.

I think what works about it is the consistency:
1) There's always a small ad on the sidebar, but in a low-key form (though it does stand out pretty remarkably on a text-only blog).
2) There is one post on Friday, generally the last post, about the next week's sponsor.

Because it is so consistent while being limited in scope, I don't mind it.

I like what Toula said...we control who and what we read. If we have proper control over our eyeballs we can avoid the advertising and ultimately what is being shoved in our face. The real issue here is that we are a total marketing democracy. If you live in the USA you will always get a pitch for something from someone. Now...if you are truly interested in the pitch then it is your responsibility to determine whether it is the best deal or not. Many of the bloggers will have links for credit card bonuses that are less than the best deal...but many of those same bloggers will point out that there are better deals out there and will direct you NOT to select their link!

This thread is interesting. I detest the pitchmen who advocate a choice because they get kickbacks. I would not choose to do anything about them other than ignore them, though, because I don't think they do much harm. Most informed people will take them for what they're worth, almost nothing. They will not click on their links because that will end out costing them more. OTOH, if somebody wants to click and make income for the pitchmen, fine. They are not different than the TV sales shows anyway.

I do find them offensive when they promote a given card claiming it to be a better deal when it obviously is not. Because they are equally obviously not objective, so what? Comparison advertising has been around for a very long time. Remember, Lee Iacocca? "...if you can find a better car, buy it...". Most people did, but some bit. What's wrong with that? Consumers have a right to be stupid if they wish to be. We all make stupid consumer choices. We ahve the right to do so.

It is not worth being angry. It is simply crass commercialism masquerading as sound consumer advice. Allegedly a woman and a man a long, long time ago bought an apple that way. It was their choice.

I hope TPG makes money but I'd never follow his advice.

On this point I would have to disagree with you. I think it is the exception that tells you not to use their link because it is not the best deal. I think most are silent on that point.

ok, I'll go just a little bit further(but not too far because I don't think what I have to say is all that much more important than what's already been said.)
When I talk with young people about the frequent traveler game, I am always quick to say that they are responsible for learning how to play all aspects of the game in a manner that creates value for themselves. What works well for someone 30something, may not work so well for someone 60something ... and vice versa.
FTG has been very good about commenting on how important a person's credit score is. But what I rarely hear mentioned(and what I had to learn for myself) is the importance of the individuals relationship with the companies issueing the credit cards. Every now and then, someone will post that the bank closed their account. Often, as I follow those threads, I come to realize that there was a problem in the relationship between the poster and the bank.
At the moment, I happen to have a good relationship with Chase. But up until 2 years ago, Chase couldn't give me money! They would send me flyers offering $$ for opening a savings or $$$ for opening a checking. Then I got interested in ff programs, and suddenly Chase had something I was interested in, the CO credit card. It was all good for Chase and all good for me until the merger. (oh yeah, the debit card had to stop earning points, too). Suddenly I needed to ditch that CO card because it had come to have very little value to me since the merger. About this time I came to realize that in my opinion Chase was extending too much credit to me, when factored over all of my Chase cards. I payed my yearly fee, and then closed the CO card. People said why do that?!; just close the account and keep the fee. Even the Chase representative had trouble with that one. But my intention was to jettison the now nearly worthless to me CO card; not to jettison my relationship with Chase. I wouldn't take their 10000 points. I wouldn't transfer the CO credit line. The rep even directed some verbiage at me suggesting I might be a card churner. Two weeks later I got in under the line on the Sapphire Preferred. It was the first application for me since the Great Recession where I was instantly approved; and I was very, very,very happy about that!(although, the credit line was 60% higher than I would have liked.)
What the din of credit card hawking on travelsites puts me in mind of, is the push for mortages just before the Great Recession. Don't know about you; but I got to sadly watch people I knew, and cared about, lose their homes and savings. The travel game will change. FTG had an interesting entry on April 7. Remember that once upon a time FTG had been fishing for Wendy's cups.. At some point it is not just about a relationship between you and the points/miles; it also a about your relationship with the bank, and the airline, and the hotel, and the rental car company, etc ...

I'm honestly surprised to hear the negativity towards the credit card promoters. It's been my impression that they all (I read Brian Kelly, Gary Leff, Ben Schlappig, Rick Ingersoll, and Daraius Dubash) do make an effort to point out when there's a non-compensated deal out there. I have seen a few instances where I read about something here at milepoint a day before it shows up on their blogs, but that's about it.

I'll have to keep a better eye out.

The bloggers spend a huge amount of time writing their content for us - it’s completely understandable that they would want to be compensated for that time.

If you feel someone is giving bad advice, or the ads on their sites promote worse offers, you should reach out to them to express your displeasure and stop reading that site if you want.

Affiliate perspective
Also as an non-credit card Affiliate I believe that at some point the CC affiliates will be under pressure to stop promoting CC offers that are not part of the official Affiliate program. You see that today with companies similar to say Staples specifically stating that they only want official coupons posted on affiliate sites. This will cause some stress as blogs that got their footing based on off market credit card offers have to choose between official links and affiliate income, or unofficial off market links and no affiliate income.

I agree with everything you said. Many people, including most of the bloggers, do not really know how the operating dynamics of banks work. They do not know about Basel II or Basel III http://www.bis.org/publ/bcbsca.htm and usually do not know about Dodd-Frank http://www.sec.gov/about/laws/wallstreetreform-cpa.pdf or about the Durbin Amendment http://www.optimizedpmts.com/regulations/durbin_amendment.pdf.

There is no real reason that they should know about those things except that they have collectively changed the profit dynamics of credit and debit cards in the US. Not all banks have ceased their overly generous recruitment techniques, but all of them are tightening credit standards, partly because they have little choice.

Even though generic FICO scores don't really mean too much, you can be confident that if you have a score of less than 660 you'll not get too many new credits approved these days, and even below 700 is becoming less common. The bloggers are almost all living in a world that was dying five years ago and is almost completely gone now. The days of rich introductory offers are ending. That is not to say that they are completely finished, just that they are on their way out.

From now on relationships are making more of a difference. That is not totally obvious now but a year from now it will be. Even many people working in the industry do not really understand that. The Chief Risk Officers of the banks do understand it but lots of the marketing people, the willfully ignorant ones, do not. Thus they'll be surprised too.

Obviously many people will disagree with me about this. If you do not just keep churning away while you can. Just don't be surprised when banks start canceling cards on you during the next couple of years.

I think that this situation came about because of a similar thread on FT. Before that, the disclosures or links to better offers were rare (maybe an exception is Daraius).

So, fine, they respond to these threads a bit. That's a good thing.

For me, though, I had formerly emailed TPG when I had good, early info, and he posted a few of my finds. But I won't do that anymore - especially since I would rather post them here now.

They've been going out for years, too. My last app spree was in 2007, and, save for an Amex product change, haven't opened a new card in over two years.

What's interesting are the people I know who've opened cards, gotten higher limits, and had their cards closed on them because they were being too aggressive, while my product mix has been stable (except for one card closed on me and two smaller cards I closed).

It's also one of the reasons I'm giving Chase a year's rest. Clearly, I wasn't spending enough on my BA card for them to keep it open, so they closed it last year. At that point, I decided to try again in 2 years.

I always thought churning was risky, though.

I have to agree with JBC as I also believe the good old days of CC companies splashing out 100k on sign up bonuses are over. I think they are probably very tired of people doing the minimum spend thru questionable methods before they move onto the next big thing. I think the new BA offer says it all, you are not going to get the cherry on the icecream unless you do some serious spend.

I think the change in the FF blog world is reflected by the content. Remember a couple of years ago there were regular postings about being bumped and compensation vouchers flying everywhere? When was the last time one of the bloggers posted any such thing? Airlines have increased the number of points needed for redemption, ticket costs have gone up. It seems every man and his dog has a blog telling you how you can churn credit cards endlessly without any risk attached.

I've not had any cards closed on me yet, nor do I expect to. I make sure that I spend on each of our cards on a regular basis so they can see a spend pattern. Actually we have been in the process of cancelling some of our cards as I found it tiring to deal with them all. I think within 12 months we will probably be back to AMEX and Chase products only.

Next year after the Citi AAdvantage Visa product lose their credit for AAdvantage MM status I'll close that one and will be down to only Chase Sapphire and an Amex cobrand with Mrs jbc's favorite US department store plus an HSBC MC for use in Brazil only. I have closed all my other card accounts.

Different strokes for different folks. My only way into the frequent flier world at the moment (since I don't even have the leisure to mileage run) is through credit card bonuses, so I'll taking modest advantage of what's available. I was introduced to the whole topic by Rick, Brian, Gary, and Ben and I appreciate their making it accessible to me (even though their success at doing so is likely to lead to a cut-back on these kinds of offers).

In my case, I still have large student loans from two master's degrees in private schools, so that is clearly a big risk factor for me, and I don't blame Chase for getting ancy about it in the current climate. I'm just glad I owe $100k less than I used to.

My plan is to close most of my cards over the next three years; I just don't want to change anything too quickly.

I've always maintained an appreciation for bloggers and try to resist bashing them (other than referring to them as "cloggers - credit card bloggers" a few months ago) but I can't help make this observation:

The last few days we've seen an explosion in BA Visa blogs. If you read them collectively, they sure seem to be motivated. The card's been out for a few weeks - why all the sudden now?

The average reader is going to assume either 1) they were asked/encouraged to create content or 2) they just got killer referral incentives, or both.

Whether true or not, these types of occurrences and coincidences are exactly what are jading some readers.

EDIT: after posting this, I moved on over to FT and saw a similar discussion that's been ongoing for the last couple days. So at least I know I'm not alone; just late in posting my thoughts.

I did find it fishy when I looked at my twitter feed last night and saw 3 or 4 different posts about it within several hours.

EDIT: i went back and counted. it was more like 7 or 8 posts.

Over at TOBB Mommy Points indicated that yesterday was when the affiliate links became available. I don't have a problem with the Affiliate links or the blogging about credit cards, but I do find it disappointing when it seems like that's all anyone's talking about.

I generally become aware of these offers through those blogs, so to me it looks like the card came out and a bunch of bloggers wrote about it.

It raises an interesting question (well, interesting to me anyway) — just as the credit card companies manipulate interest in their cards by moving the bonuses up and down and running "specials", I wonder if they're doing the same thing with the referral kick-backs to their affiliates (eg "next three days only earn an extra $20 per approved applicant").

Has anyone written an expose on the credit card referral industry? Even better, is there a site easily available that covers the current referral market the way these blogs cover the card market more generally?

I would guess that if you look back over the few weeks on most blogs you will see at least a small mention of the BA card as soon as it was offered. That mention might be in another post or just a short post.

The blogger might have waited to invest the time to do full scale FAQ’s and BA point maximization posts once they were able to promote the best bonus available via an affiliate link. In this case I think it’s completely fare for someone to wait until they have an official affiliate link to spend say six hours on a BA maximization post.

These blogs are very informative and do their best to present helpful information. In this case I don’t think there is any dishonesty with the offers, it’s the best offer available to you the consumer?

For your information affiliate links will look similar to:
http://track.linkoffers.net/a.aspx?foid=3744745&fot=9999&foc=1
http://track.linkoffers.net/a.aspx?foid=3744741&fot=9999&foc=1
http://track.linkoffers.net/a.aspx?foid=3744696&fot=1017&foc=305

non affiliate links will look something like:
http://www9.chasecreditcards.com/ba/100/

Just don't close your green card. You may be the only person on the planet with one.

An article on the credit card referral market would be interesting. What would be more interesting is if any of the bloggers discussed in this thread would have the courage to approach that subject. Isn't it strange that the well known bloggers with credit card referral links haven't responded with their thoughts on this thread. I'm sure they read MilePoint. What does that mean? I would like to get their view on the issues brought up in this thread.

On FT some people responded on the initial posts.
Such as Frugal Travel Guy
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/18060827-post23.html

Generally I doubt its worth their effort to respond. I would guess that readers either see value in what they write, find it of questionable value and don't come back, or worse the readers think the bloggers are cheating them or something - yet continue to read the blogs...

In general the author seem to be spending a lot of time writing posts, and responding to more positive feedback from their readers.