Introducing: OMAAT + YouTube

I’ve been blogging for over a decade now, and for the most part I’ve been doing exactly the same thing. I’m usually someone who takes the “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” approach, which is why for better or worse, not all that much has changed with the blog in the past decade.

However, sometimes it’s fun to try something new, which brings me to something that I’m excited to announce.

We’re (not) pivoting to video

Previously I’ve used YouTube as a place to embed random videos in order to share here, but as of today we’re launching an honest-to-goodness actual YouTube channel.

This won’t in any way replace the blog, and you’ll get just as much content here as before (for better or worse).

However, I appreciate that everyone learns differently. Some people prefer reading, while others prefer watching, while others may like both equally. So I figured launching a YouTube channel with tips for maximizing miles could be a fun thing to try.

Here’s a quick teaser of the channel, if you’d like to get a taste of what it’s about:

And if you haven’t heard the stories of flying in the smoking section with my parents, or why I started mileage running as a teenager, we put together a bit of an introduction to me, One Mile at a Time, and the YouTube channel in general:

What will OMAAT be like on YouTube?

Obviously future videos won’t be as “me” focused — at least I’m assuming that one biographical video is roughly six minutes longer than anyone wants to hear me talk about myself and what I do as it is. 😉

Going forward, I’m hoping to do more videos that focus on the fundamentals of miles and points, tutorials about redeeming miles, and other practical aspects of loyalty programs. I can also envision situations where it’s easier to explain something technical using a video where I can show you guys my screen rather than taking a hundred screenshots, so there will eventually be some of that too.

Just to manage expectations, though, the primary intent of the channel will be to talk about miles & points, and not to do trip report vlogs. There are plenty of great trip report vloggers out there (including Nonstop Dan), and I have a lot of respect for what they do.

I pride myself in my written guerilla-style trip reports, and I just don’t think it’s realistic to do both pictures and videos for reviews. We may feature some content from my travels as things go along, but it will be more of a “hey, here’s this trip I took, and how you can use miles and points to book something similar” approach than a video review.

The general plan is to start with more beginner/entry-level content, and build over time. I recognize that other than the Beginner’s Guide OMAAT doesn’t really have much “introductory” stuff, and we get a lot of questions from people who have gotten their feet wet with miles and points, but aren’t sure where to go next or how to get started in practice.

I don’t want to change the tone or expertise level of the blog, so putting some of that foundational content on YouTube seems like a good solution. I’m new to doing videos, so please bear with me, and hopefully they’ll get better over time.

Anyway, here’s the first “real” video of the channel, which should give you an idea as to the type of content I’ll have in the coming weeks:

We have a few things filmed, and my plan is to initially post one video every Tuesday, though eventually I’d like to do more.

In the meantime, if you guys have any (constructive) feedback or questions you’d like answered in future videos, please let me know.

Thanks for the support, and hopefully you guys enjoy the videos (and if you don’t that’s fine too — nothing is changing here).

You can check out the full channel (and maybe subscribe) here!