Ben/Jeremy,
I have been reading the blog for almost a decade, but have maybe commented three or four times over that time period. I’m one of those “lurkers.”
Whenever I can, I have applied and will continue to apply for Credit Cards through your links in order to support the blog. I have never, nor will I ever purchase anything through an ad I view on the Internet… so I would love to see those reduced, but also understand they are an important part of monetization.
I am excited at the prospect of purchasing the ability to reduce or eliminate ads. I don’t expect you to change your business/pricing model based on my comment, but just as a point of reference, I will have a bit of a hard time spending $225 per year for the platinum plan. However, I would absolutely pay $10 per month and not think twice about it. I realize the end of the day that’s not a huge difference but $10 per month feels like an afterthought and $225 feels like a bigger lift. At a minimum I’d like to see a monthly subscription model even if the pricing comes in higher than I’d like.
Thank you so much for all of your hard work creating content over the years!
Writing my comment again because your ad partner just refreshed the ads which kicked me out of the comments section and deleted everything I’d written.
Love the site and didn’t know you could pay to get rid of ads, will be doing that. FWIW - a combo of the number of ads and whoever is serving them essentially grinds my Chrome browser to a halt on both my machines.
I've been a loyal reader for years and I want to thank you for the transparency and just generally keeping your readers in the loop. I wouldn't be so quick to discount some sort of paid content. A couple years ago I would have completely rejected the idea of paying for content. But I've now subscribed to multiple paid newsletters and substacks that I think have really interesting content that I can't get anywhere else.
Reasonable changes and I'm excited for the next chapter of OMAAT. I hope it continues not only provide for your family, but live well. Keep it up!
You're super fun to read. Do what you need and I'm happy that I get to check in every day!
I tried subscribing to the newsletter to get the points and I see a little toast message pop up that says 'subscribing' but it doesn't actually catch my subscription and give me the points. any way to update that?
The short term issue is monetizing a product that has a lot of readily accessible, freely available, competition. I am not young but I think the sponsorship issues raised in the Blog are not as significant as you might think. I watch Youtube videos for Apple products and most are sponsored. The Youtuber makes a point of saying the video is sponsored by product x and rambles for a minute or two extolling its virtues. It does not matter how many YouTubers tell me that a particular brand of screen cover is as good as paper. I do not buy the product. If I need paper, I use paper. The YouTube video is not usually about the sponsored product directly. There are also YouTube videos where the YouTuber will provide a detailed breakdown of how they make money and how much they generate from each revenue stream. Monetization of this blog is a short term problem.
The bigger issue for this blog, however, is the long term sustainability/viability of a service/product that is rapidly losing its utility. Miles and Points are becoming harder to use. The cycle of credit card companies, airlines and businesses paying large fees to the credit card companies (in the US and a few other countries) that sustains this miles and points schema is coming under strain as a model. Simply looking at the credit card aspect of the model, while I enjoy being able to book a hotel in Reykjavik in ISK using an American Credit Card issued by a non American bank, the big three credit card companies, Amex, Visa and MasterCard, are waging a multinational war to preserve their monopoly and high profit margins which sustain the transfer of money to airlines to support the miles and points game. Countries like Brazil have already issued their own card. Sovereignty issues, cost, and other factors are eating away at the big three's monopoly. This does not even begin to address the discontent and frustration customers of the Credit Card companies will begin to experience when they start to realize that the 200,000 bonus they got with their shiny new credit card gets them an economy trip on a packed flight within continental USA and not the business class pigs in space trip advertised on the glossy promotion material. Unless there are significant changes, the entire miles and points game may be nearing the end of its cycle. If the miles and points game becomes a fringe hobby, then this blog has bigger issues than monetization.