Hey, at least I’m honest about what the justification for writing the post is. There is a new $30 sign-up bonus code out there. Hardly life-changing and not even all that significant, really. But don’t tell that to the people pushing Uber so hard as the next big thing that their account balances are big enough from referral links that they’ll never pay for a ride again. Not surprising, of course, but people get really excited about things when they can make money doing it.
I won’t bother wasting your time with an affiliate link. If you’re reading this and don’t already have an account with Uber then odds are you aren’t going to sign up this week either. Or just use the internet and find a link; there are plenty out there. Hell, the front page of Boarding Area alone has 6 people shilling for it right now.
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This post is quite refreshing, actually.
Yes, I was going to say the same thing. I have long stopped reading most “travel” blogs, though. WA is one of the few survivors, and deservedly so.
I love, love, love BoardingArea….
But I’m quite sick of the page loading just to find 70% of the main articles are hocking the same item.
If I have to hear about Uber/First Fridays for the CSP one more time……
Wish BoardingArea would go for a tad more diversity in what they’re offering (ya hear me BA?! I’d like to write for the site!!)
Some people swear by Uber, I can’t say that I see the big deal about it. I guess if it was always free then I would love it too!
Here is my post about the one time we tried Uber: http://michaelwtravels.boardingarea.com/2014/05/uber-can-someone-please-explain-big-deal/#sthash.CWrrsWIT.dpbs
where’s the like button on this page?
Is there not a bar floating on the left of the screen? I might have to look in to other options to make that stuff show up on the page.
Something I learned after trying a floating bar is that it doesn’t show up in a lot of tablet and mobile browsers. After a few readers complained I switched back to the standard buttons under the post. (And for what it’s worth, the placement doesn’t seem to affect the number of likes and tweets.)
This is a great tool to use:
http://browsershots.org/
feel free to use mine too:
https://www.uber.com/invite/qpos1
Hilarious post! Definitely refreshing to read.
Here’s my referral link if anyone wants to support my Uber addiction in NY. Use my Uber code, pr2a9, and get $30 off your first Uber ride. Redeem it at https://www.uber.com/invite/pr2a9.
Does BoardingArea have any standards anymore? It seems like the influx of new blogs are mainly geared toward shameless plugs and referral links. I think that you, Gary, and Lucky should breakaway and form your own network.
Don’t put Gary and Lucky in the same category as WA. The first two are shills and are a shadow of what they use to be. WA is the real deal as well as a mensch. I hoped I spelled mensch correctly.
Indeed… And yes.
I have to disagree somewhat. I think Gary is one of the best here. Sure he posts referral links occasionally and sometimes he pushes his political views too much, but he also consistently produces interesting content that you don’t find elsewhere. I don’t think there is another BA blogger that posts original content as frequently as Gary.
I agree, and Gary posts deals that push people away from his affiliate links, which I like. I sent him an email asking for his Am Ex plat referral link. He told me to apply for the Mercedes instead. Great guy.
I find good value in Gary’s blog, less so with Lucky but still valuable content is there. But Seth is the most pleasing to read, you provide more than just product reviews and headline news, and your tools are great; it’s good to have someone who loves travel enough to do more than just review his own travel adventures but who will program solutions and mine data for us! I’m a computer geek (big data) and love providing value to my customer from data they don’t even know they have, you’re doing the same for us Seth!
Love it! Keep up the good work. I’m sorry your peers are so embarrassing.
i have asked Boarding Area to develop a filter tool. i appreciate the site but as they expand there is becoming too much repetition and shilling can become intolerable. Would be helpful if we could preselect those bloggers we each want to hear from. Perhaps not in BA’s biz plan but would help readers.
Actually, Seth – As you developed a tool for scrapping (look, using terms as if I know what they mean) airline websites perhaps you could knock up a tool that filters Boarding Area. A great service to the world would be gifted.
I’m not inclined to build what is essentially and RSS reader. This does give me an idea to simply hide modules on the main page, though. We’ll see if that happens or not. Probably not.
Need some uber rides for honeymoon, feel free to use my link! Thank you and happy weekend! 😀
https://www.uber.com/invite/t0h1o
Most of BoardingArea is comparable to 3am infomercials these days. Soon, the only people visiting the site will be insomniacs, people who need to dehydrate meat in bulk quantities and flowbee users.
You’re the blogger offering to give us a penny, for everyone to be invited to Goggle Wallet. It was a fun ride. Thank you for helping us out, Seth!
Love this post. Thanks for keeping it real.
LOL.
Nice.
Wandering Aramen and Extra Pack of Peanuts are basically the only real Boarding Area bloggers left.
Three points:
1. Uber *is* revolutionary
2. I’m glad the bloggers get rewarded for keeping me abreast of the latest promos. I find their posts very helpful. I often pass their content along to friends even though I get no benefit except helping a friend. Which goes to show the content is valuable even without any benefit to the person sharing the promo, contrary to your insinuations.
3. I think everyone would be happier if you’d just stop reading those blogs if it bothers you so much you feel you need to make a post attacking people’s integrity.
A dispatch service is not a revolution. They’ve existed for years in a variety of forms. At best it is a minor evolutionary step.
I assure you that I mostly don’t read the crap content. I have better things to do with my time.
And while I don’t have a problem with people being rewarded for producing good content I do not believe we’re anywhere close to that right now, certainly not on a consistent basis.
RIght on Seth!!! Its one thing if a blogger produces interesting content and also sprinkles in referral links, but some bloggers on BA seem to focus the majority of their postings on crap content such as links to buzzfeed stories or shilling referral links.
Take a look at points and pixie dust. It seems like every other posting on that blog is about a stupid dating website so she can earn referral money. On the rare occasion when she does bother to post content on travel its just a rip off from other blogs. I have no clue how bloggers like her have gotten invited to BA.
Seth,
I can tell that you are still very upset about the community reaction to your negative comments on the story I wrote in December about my worst seatmate ever.
I do feel bad for you that your feelings were hurt, and I understand why you might want to try to hurt my feelings here.
I hope you feel better soon.
If your feelings are hurt by valid criticism then you need to find a new job. If you want to be a better blogger you need to learn from criticism. Read the other comments to this posting, I am not alone in complaining about lazy bloggers just posting referral links. I may be the only one calling you out, but all the criticisms above describe your exact behavior.
Love the sense of humor here. I do find it easy to skip over content that doesn’t interest me, though. Might go through 10 blogs in less than 10 minutes. But then any one of them might have something that’s really valuable to me, so I keep checking.
Where does this promo show up in the account? I referred my wife but under “Payments” I do not see any $30 credit in her new account.
Thank you for this post. I went back to look at the BA page and viola! 6 shills for Uber. Over the last year I have stopped visiting most BA sites except Jeff’s and yours. If you take away the referral posts and the “look at me I’m flying 1st class” posts there is about 20% of the content which is useful and my time is worth more than that. Further, Lucky lost all credibility when he stumped for his crowdfunding campaign.
I also want to thank you for your tools section very helpful and appreciated.
This is so wrong. I only post about Uber so that my readers can find out about this awesome deal. Does it happen to help me out at the same time? Maybe. But my main motivation is to inform my readers! I don’t care what you say. I have a tough skin!
Hey can you pay for my Etihad ticket? I’m doing this for you, I swear!
/s
Thanks for this post…. It’s so refreshing given that half of today’s BA posts seem to be about this promotion. :/
I wanted to stop by and thank all the bloggers that posted the latest Uber deal. I saved $30 + got $10 in future credit two days ago by referring my brother and doing Uber SUV in NYC. It was much better than getting two taxis. If you guys hadn’t blogged it, I wouldn’t have known about it and would have been stuck with trying to cram my family into two taxis. Keep up the great work! Haters gonna hate, but it’s not your fault. They can stop reading your blogs if it bothers them that badly.
You’re helping people and doing it transparently in a way that keeps reader interest first. If you ever actually made a bad recommendation that put your own self-interest above your readers, then Seth would have something substantive to blog about. But I don’t recall having seen such a post from Seth.
You were already signed up though, right, HansGolden? So you would have received the email from Uber alerting you to the promo option. I certainly did.
Talking about a good deal is fine and dandy but all the posts about Uber are, at this point, more about padding referral accounts IMO. Feel free to disagree, but multiple posts about the same “deal” and making up crazy circumstances by which it is suddenly a “life-saver” just comes off as too forced to me.
Yes, I am. Since you asked, I searched my email and was able to locate the unread email from Uber touting the $30 promo. However, I get tens of promo emails every day and there’s no way I can take the time to sort the good deals from the junk. That’s why I’m happy to give the BA bloggers credit card referrals: they sift through all of that so I don’t need to. (Not everyone is in your position of being an industry geek/reporter/insider/hobbyist who can expend the time to keep up with everything from first-hand material.) It’s a hugely valuable service to me, so I get a little frustrated when people criticize them for something that myself and many others find very helpful. The funny thing is, as it is, I spend an absurd amount of time curating travel deals (even a travel blogger, who doesn’t focus on deals, expressed amazement at my routine the other day), yet I find the curation by bloggers helpful–there’s a certain class of deals that I don’t need to expend the energy to keep after. I can only imagine how helpful it is for a busy traveling businessperson that reads only one or two blogs.
There are two ways you could take the service these bloggers are providing and improve it:
1. Create a curated (or even better, customizable) RSS feed that de-dupes posts touting the same deal. This could be done by lumping blogs together or on a per-blog basis. You could select the post to not be de-duped based upon either first to post or best-written.
2. Create a hierarchical listing of deals like the Uber deals that creates an RSS entry when updated. This would provide an excellent reference of ongoing deals/promos and would create a single point of updates for promos. Bonus: Get all of BA to buy in to this system to centralize promos. Sub posts could be added by BA bloggers for commentary on the promo.
Finally, BA could come up with a standard tagging system and allow certain tags to be excluded in the RSS generation script.
Personally, I don’t think the slight pain of having to scroll past instantly-obvious dupe postings is worth a big project to “fix”, but if you really feel that strongly about it, above are some constructive suggestions.
I tried the curated thing a bit at one point. Way too time intensive to do it right. I could probably do it better/faster/easier with a bit better automation but I haven’t had the desire to build that because, at the end of the day, I’m not going to appropriate the content, claim it as my own and try to get ad dollars out of it.
I have no problem with identifying good deals when they come up (though I am not nearly as convinces as you are that this was so amazing). But I do have issues with the invention of circumstances by which such deals go from decent to amazeballs. And I also think it is worth pointing out that there are a lot of things which are amazing if one never actually pays for the service. And I know a few bloggers have built up sufficient balances in their referral accounts that they never do. Yet that’s rarely noted as part of the push to get everyone to sign up. And I also have no problem calling that out when I see it.