I just saw the piece on TV! Awesome!

It's great to see that this hobby is catching some attention. Free travel is the best!

Just saw the Nightline special. Nice!

Loved the bit on Nightline! I was in the travel industry but since then haven't been able to travel on one income….you gave me hope that my deepest desire to see this beautiful world just may still be reachable!
Thank You! Happy Thanksgiving!

Hi Rick,

Nice feature on Nightline tonight, but perhaps you might have done just as much by not saying anything? I realize that the opportunity to go on ABC and be on TV…even while having a segment in first class, where you personally said the past week or so that you never sit in F if you can help it…would be a bit too much to pass on (I know I would consider it!), but with the increasing role of government in our daily lives — not to mention the swift shutdown of the US Mint situation after the much less patronized NPR segment — might you have just kept well enough alone and not submitted to this interview? Keep things to myself has always been my mantra in this travel world that I have lived in for the past 7 years, and perhaps keeping your mouth shut would have been better than basically promoting your blog to the world….although YMMV. That being said, my subscription and bookmark to your blog has been discontinued as of immediately, so best of luck in the future and maybe I will come back in a few years.

tbf

Such a great show… You were the first blog I came across and it changed the way I vacation..

Wellcome all new travelers. Great show last night. I am not going to worry about the wide new audience interested in our hobby as a result of your excellent rewiew . We freely give out our techniques and hacks, yet few ever take it up. Telling all my friends that I've been to London, Vience, Florence, Rome this s pring. – Vancouver in the summer, St Andrews, Marseille, Paris in the Fall, and heading to Madrid, Barcellona tomorrow on FF points —– and showing them how — none do it!

Well done Rick. That was great. (and you thought you got a lot of emails each day before this? HA get ready to be flooded even more!)

Great show Ingy.

Thegrailer
aka fueldump

Great info like this is bound to get out eventually – however can you imagine the uproar if this had been Darius that went on TV?

Ingy, IMHO, your ABC piece grossly violated one of the fundamental rules of our game, "Don't Call!" which is the same as don't tell the whole world. If FF seats are harder to come by in the future, we can all thank you.

Rick congratulations on the TV piece. I also noticed a glimpse of Mommy Points in one of the scenes from Chicago. This is getting like celeb spotting.

I think it's unfair to single you out but I will tell you my wife and I watched and we both agreed at the end of it that this is the beginning of the end. Using points that cost an issuer maybe $1-2k to pay for a $20k ticket is an arbitrage that won't exist forever. Yes the game has run a long time but we are already seen signs of cracks with redemption levels going up and YQ fees being implemented and availability getting harder. The more and more people pile in, the harder and harder it will get and the more and more miles will be needed. I am sitting on nearly 3m miles today and need to use them up quickly as I don't see them being worth that much in five years time.

Anyway good job Rick and I think you came across very well… if things do go downhill from here I am sure you can get a job on TV

"The more players we have, the more deals we'll find"??? Who are you kidding? What would "newbies" know to "find" more deals? They will click on your ads and add to your profits – that's all you hope to gain from this exposure!

Any youtube captures of the clip?

I have been earning miles/points for almost a year now so I would consider myself a newbie. I have, however, been couponing for years, long before extreme couponing came along. That show was the worst thing that happened to couponers!! Stores changed their policies & most coupon items were out of stock when u got there. Unfortunately, I see the same thing happening to the miles/points collecting world. Airlines & hotels will change their policies. With only a certain amount of award seats available & LOTS more people trying to book using their miles it will make it almost impossible to get seats . I hope that this doesn't happen, of course, but only time will tell.

@houstonmama – I totally agree, but I am hoping that since redeeming miles is a bit more difficult than using a coupon (and most people still don't believe it will work) will help it die a slower death than couponing….

I actually thought the segment was very well done.. and honestly, from the point of view of a person sitting at home watching, I don't think they're going to jump up and apply for cards and steal all of our deals/seats, honestly. I spoke to a few friends about this, who know what I do, and asked them to watch. Did the segment make them want to apply for everything out there? Nope.. they actually said "seems like more work than I'm willing to do right now, and I am not interested in new cards" – even after all the explanations, a lot of people STILL won't get it. I've talked about this to MANY friends and out of all of them I maybe have *2* who have gotten on board with me, and to maybe 1/10th of the degree to which I participate. So I think it'll be quite some time before deals are a thing of the past for us. We will always be a small group and that's great.

Someone upthread said newbees don't know how to find the deals. I disagree. There are multiple threads on Flyertalk where noobs found and posted 'mistake' fares.

FYI, I turned my brother-in-law onto the Southwest credit card. Over the years, he always asks how I got all those miles. I send him all the links. He never even responds with a thank you. Yesterday he sent me an e mail that he cashed in 48,000 points for $600 in Hyatt gift cards. Looks like he finally 'got it'.

My point… lots of people watched that Nightline segment, but few paid attention, except maybe to laugh (at us).

To all the naysayers, remember you were a newbie once. Seems selfish to me to want to close the door to Paradise just because you made it in.

Just for the record, the number of extra visitors to my sitethe day afer was about 8000 out of 5 million viewers. I'm not to worried about the award seats running out.

Charles: Great question. I can't answer al of it as I don't know if one visitor clicked through on one ad or ten. all I see is total clicks which increased significantly but I expected it would as this was a new game to many. if it was one click per visitor old and new. it was about 1 click per every ten page views so your ten percent guess is right on. now the number of new card approvals is still unknown as it takes time for them to post. that percentage hsitoricaly is way less then 10% of the clicks. Way less. With new readers, I'm actually in hopes the number of clicks for the credit scoring services is the majority of the clicks. If the new readers don't know their scores, we all know the trouble that can bring.