One of my readers recently e-mailed me and asked if I could put together a good list of points and miles blogs and communities in the UK. I thought this might be a good idea, not only for the UK but for other countries as well. Some people are dual citizens and can take advantage of credit card deals at home and abroad.
One issue I had was a way of scoring bloggers based on how upfront they are with better offers and disclosing their affiliate links. I have no problem with somebody using these links (I use some non-credit card links myself) as long as they are upfront about when they receive an incentive and also let their readers know about better deals.
I wanted a way for my readers to quickly know how trustworthy a blog is, there is nothing wrong with reading blogs that don’t do these things but you should be aware so you know when you need to be on guard and vigilant and when it’s ok to be more trusting of a blogger.
Here are some questions I’ll ask my self when evaluating foreign points and miles blog. This is based on a point system, each yes is worth one point and each no scores you zero points. The more points the better.
- Does the blogger always clearly disclose when they stand to receive an incentive?
- Does the blogger always post the best available offer they are aware of?
- Does the blogger update their post if they are made aware of a better offer? If they are capable of updating previous posts easily (e.g they are using prettylinks or a simple redirect) do they update the main link so that past posts also link to this new and improved offer?
- Does the blogger always approve non-spam comments including comments that disagree with their viewpoint or call them out on a mistake they make?
I think in the past six months the United States points & miles bloggers have done great job of cleaning their act up and answering yes to the majority of these questions. Laws in other countries aren’t always as strong and don’t necessarily require blogs to add disclaimers when they are being offered an incentive for promoting a product.
I’ll be linking to this post whenever I do a M&P country round up post. Before I get started, are there any other questions that you think should be added? What areas do you think this blog could improve upon?
View Comments (5)
The first 2 questions don't tell the whole sto
Just because bloggers don't post an inferior offer, and just because they disclose when they receive commission, it doesn't mean they are doing it ethically
By any measure, the AA 50K (or more) offer is one of the best 2 or 3 cards out there. While most bloggers didn't link to the inferior 40K offer, there would still be dozens of mentions of far inferior cards compared to how many times the AA card is mentioned. As an example - last month there were more mentions of the 70K Marriott Visa than there was over the past year of the Hyatt, Fairmont and IHG 80K offers put together even though they are all inarguably superior. You can still do that and check off boxes 1 and 2 in your post, but does that make you ethical?
So I propose to add these 2 questions, the first of which should probably count triple:
1) Does the content drive the links, or does the links drive the conten. (aka are you manufacturing post after post of non-news just to get the link in or are you inserting a link because it's relevant to newsworthy content)?
2) Do you ignore good credit card offers because they don't pay you (aka, do you need to use the hubble telescope to find mentions on their website of the AA cards, IHG 80k, Hyatt, Fairmont, the non-affiliate SW 50K, United Explorer etc.)
When you answer those 2 questions, a lot of blogs, including just about all of boardingarea sans Loyalty Traveler and Wandering Aramean are weeded out
Hi Rob,
Those are good questions to ask, the problem is that from an outsider looking in (remember the goal is for me to apply this test to foreign blogs, not US based blogs) it's nearly impossible to objectively answer the questions. Even with U.S based blogs it would be fairly difficult on where to draw the line.
We're trying to do a better job of highlighting the lesser known offers on this blog. I think it's better to try to lead by example. I think I am doing an OK job of that at the moment, but there are definitely areas in which I can improve. Thanks for the comment.
"Even with U.S based blogs it would be fairly difficult on where to draw the line"
It might be difficult to know where to place the line, but you can still figure out with most of the blogs whether they crossed it
Without knowing where that line should be, I can say with pretty certain confidence that MMS will be on the wrong side of it
This will be interesting. I'm a tri-citizen and would love to step my game up. I always thought you had to have a primary residence in the country you were applying for credit in and also there are different credit scoring systems in different countries too.
Depends on the country to be honest. One of the biggest factors is your income in a lot of other countries outside the U.S because of the way they have restrictions on what financial data can be collected and sold by third parties. That's means they can't use the same sort of scoring models that are used here.
To be honest, it's not something that the majority of people will be able to do even if they are dual citizens but it's not just credit card bonuses you can take advantage of it's also other deals that require a mailing address/citizenship of a country other than America. It's definitely worth following a few blogs and testing it out in any case.