The way the wind is blowing, 2018 edition

I don’t know about you guys, but I think it’s time for a self-indulgent year-in-review post. This has been a fun year of blogging, and it’s been neat to see the blog pick up a wisp or two of steam. I pulled in 73,883 views this year, which is pretty paltry for a real points & miles blog, but it’s pretty good compared to 2015 (143 views) and 2016 (3730 views). My goal at the beginning of the year was to write 125 posts and average 50 views per day by the end of the year; I wrote 137 and averaged around 208 daily views, so I’m happy with that.

Here’s a list of the most popular posts of the year:

Interestingly, I receive most of my traffic from incoming links, although the most popular post of the year has been all organic traffic. (Also, I say “incoming links” but I really mean Gary Leff, whose inclusion of my posts in his daily roundups is the only reason most people know about me.) I wasn’t sure anyone would really care about my timeshare experience, but I guess it turns out it’s a topic of great interest. And, hilariously, if you google “maui timeshare presentation,” my blog is one of the first that comes up. Other search terms that put me on the first page of results include “SAS business class best seat,” and “bullshit emotional support animal.” Those are both pretty good.

I’m also happy that my post about Allegiant’s clueless executives made the most-viewed list, since that’s the post that got me the most hate of anything I’ve ever written – even more than the Dr. Dao stuff. Most of that hate came from the sniveling fanboys on Airliners.net who for some bizarre reason take personal offense any time anyone criticizes an airline. (These pee-pants dickrags are also out in force on Twitter and in blog comments right now to jump down the throat of anyone who dares criticize SWISS for canceling those first class award tickets.) What annoys me most about it is that Airliners.net banned me when I tried to make an account to defend myself, when it was their legions of runny-nose fuckpigs that were shitting all over my blog comments section. There are good pictures of planes over there, though.

The year got off to a great start thanks to what I’ll call Vinh-mageddon, when Vinh from Miles Per Day tweeted about my blog, and people suddenly woke up to what a genius I am.

I don’t know, Jamie, but I’m glad you’ve heard of me now!

Free-quent Flyer (I just realized I don’t know his actual name) sends me lots of traffic via Twitter, so hopefully he’s answered his question by this point. The only problem with him is that he sometimes responds to my tweets by saying “good tweet,” and I can’t tell if he’s being sarcastic or not.

After Vinh-mageddon put me on the map, I landed a sweet interview on Million Mile Secrets, which propelled me to my best day ever, although those heady days have since subsided and I’ve settled into a more mellow groove.

So what’s next? Well, first I gotta figure out how to make money off of this blog. If I could get 1% of my daily visitors to give me $1, I’d make around $33, which would be almost enough to cover WordPress’s hosting fees. I don’t really see the blog growing all that much more, since I don’t post often enough… although I don’t want to try to post more often just for the sake of it, since I really don’t have that much to say, and I don’t want to become a news blog that rehashes stuff that 1000 other sites are already writing about. That means I’ll have to get creative about how I monetize… or, you know, say fuck it and not try to monetize it all. I’m pretty lazy overall, so I probably won’t get around to starting a Patreon or trying to find ads to host or whatever else.

There is the whole branded merch angle, though. I never really thought about this until The Points Guy did it, and one of their sweatshirts gave me a pretty great idea.

Here’s mine, and I’ll even let it go for $50 as long as you promise to help with my legal fees when The Points Guy sues me.

Goals for 2018:

• Get on TravelBloggerBuzz’s “Blogs I like” list.
• Failing that, get on TravelBloggerBuzz’s “Blogs to ignore” list.
• Meet Gary Leff in person, buy him a beer.

Honestly, thanks very much for reading… I get a lot of enjoyment out of writing this blog, but the reason I gave up the first time is that it became too much of an echo chamber going entire weeks with no views at all. It’s kind of shocking that I have any regular readers given how saturated the points & miles blogosphere is, but I’m also quite sure that this is the only blog that has ever used the phrase “runny-nose fuckpigs,” so I know that I do bring something unique to the table… Best wishes to each and every one of you readers (unless you came here from Airliners.net), and I hope your travels are aspirational AF next year.

Since you read this far, maybe you want to consider supporting this blog? I’m committed to keeping it ad-free, so reader support makes a huge difference!