I still remember it. It was back when there was an American Airlines devaluation. Leff broke the news (well I think he broke it, but regardless I learned of it from his post). He made an award chart showing some differences in the old and the new.
I read it, and I recreated it.
My take might have been vastly different, it might not have. I forget. But I do remember basing a lot of my work from that post. And I remember the reason was I felt that I simply had to produce that piece of news in order for Saverocity Travel to be ‘dominant’ or ‘relevant’ or some such bollocks. I remember thinking if I didn’t write it then maybe my readers would go elsewhere for their news…. I wouldn’t be the expert. I’m pretty sure if you looked at the posts side by side they would be different, but we all know deep down what happened and where it came from.
There’s certainly a difference between influence and plagiarism, but at the core this burning desire to be number 1 makes for a lack of creativity, originality and enjoyment for both the reader and the writer.
I’m not alone
There’s some blogs/bloggers that I think I might put in a TBB-esque ‘like’ category that do this too. I remember reading a post by The Devils Advocate over on FrequentMiler that told us how to use IFTTT to book flight alerts. Check it out:
Blatant Rip Off Post this had a ‘Hat tip’ to a comment on another Frequent Miler post that showed Yihwan from Milewriter (our latest superstar) offering the original post…. Original Post
I really liked the blatant rip off post, and it wasn’t until Yihwan joined us that I noticed the original! Why the need to repeat and rehash? I guess the same reason as I did it back then too…? Recently, we had a run in with The Forward Cabin for ripping content off as his own, I think he has changed his ways now, which is cool.
Then I learned that Dia our rockstar Momma found a deal for $34 hotel rebates which Points Miles and Martini’s ‘just happened to find’ a day later.
Even the good Doctor, who I think highly of reproduces a ton of content from other sites – one I just read with a ‘Hat tip’ to Leff, who in turn Hat Tipped to some dude on a Forum.
Blatant Rip Off Post which had a hat tip to Leff, why bother writing the same stuff all over again, hat tip or not? Why not just say ‘Senor Leff found this card <link>?’ I think it is that fear of losing relevance again. And I’m saying it not to gripe so much as to share that I’ve been there, and know the feeling.
It’s everywhere… but why?
We recently saw Ric from Loyalty Traveler confess that he needed to add more filler to his stuff to make more money. But I think that’s a real problem. In fairness, I think that this is in line with all the bloggers are doing, Frequent Miler posts a ton, but how many of those are the original, thoughtful posts vs those by staff writers, or recaps? Here’s a guy who knows so much about points, but then adds in a post about a mistake/low cost fare to Brazil..
So now we have a great blog and a great blogger who is posting some low cost fare and mixing that up with staff writers who are ripping off other posts. We all gotta make a buck right?
I don’t want to be that guy
You know, I get that we all need to make money, and I don’t want to sit here and bitch about this, but the reality is that there is less money in blogging than people think. You can make some good coin if you do it right, but all i’m seeing these days is people copying one another, either overtly with a hat tip and then ripping the whole thing off or covertly by just stealing shit directly.
Go get a real job.
Really. If you squeeze blogging too hard the price is huge. You are selling based on your reputation, and once you sell that out for more views, you lose trust. Some people clearly don’t care about this – there are blogs who only measure success in money and views, which I think is pretty crappy when you consider that they are slipping in nefarious stuff to convert their readers into cash cows.
You gotta find your voice
And if nobody listens then so be it.
For me, I’ve learned that I write to learn. I find pleasure in topics that interest me and I find that trying to explain them means I have to learn to fill in the gaps of knowledge. I think that this is the best way to blog about things. It may not be for everyone, but it works for me. Writing forms clarity.
You don’t get that feeling by ripping off Leff.
Apologies to anyone that may be offended by the post, I intentionally named some of the best writers in this space because I can’t see any value in calling out the crappy ones (excluding Points Miles and Martinis)
While I firmly believe that content should always be attributed to the original source, I appreciate different bloggers communicating good deals, even if they only found out about them by reading another’s post. I don’t have time to follow every travel blogger, so I only follow my favorites. If they limit their posts solely to original content as opposed to occasionally passing on good material from others. I would undoubtedly miss out on more opportunities. Consequently, I’m pretty tolerant of the redundancies in this business, especially if a blogger approaches the topic from a slightly different angle than did the original writer.
I think you hit on an important point: “different angle”. If a blogger can deliver any extra value by communicating a deal already reported, I agree. It’s the cut and paste that gets tiring.
Glad you mentioned “value” in your reply. It really is important for a blogger to create/deliver value to readers – doesn’t matter if it’s copied/ pasted/ hat-tipped – I personally could care less about who invented the idea if (s)he can’t communicate it effectively.
This. I don’t want to subscribe to Leff because I don’t give 2 cents about men stripping Naked for the TSA (literally the front page article today). If Leff has a single article about a rewards credit card that is potentially interesting to churners among hundreds of crap posts, then I appreciate the Doc doing a write up about it, and doing the filtering of crap for me. Of course there will be redundancy, because the facts don’t change and the CC blogging space is limited. If he were to copy Gary Leffs opinions and write them off on his own, that would be a different story, but as far as I’ve seen Doc applies his own brain to his posts (but maybe I’m being overly generous in my judgments, who knows).
Could there be better attribution and less straight up plagiarism in the travel blogging space? Sure. But I don’t want an RSS feed of links to other posts because only ‘original content’ should be allowed. Redundancy is to be expected in the travel blogging space.
Great post.
Personally, I am at a point at which I’m “unfollowing”, “muting” and “unsubscribing” from several blogs due to redundant information. At this point, I’ve limited this to bloggers who continue to voice their complaints online, and those that engage in what I consider continuous meaningless banter on Twitter. There’s a difference between delivering “noise” and “creating value” to readers, and that may have an impact on those that continue blogging successfully and those that don’t, especially as the miles/points blogosphere continues to get flooded with new bloggers.
Uh oh, I guess you’ll be muting me soon then 🙂
was it the “meaningless banter” that did it? 😉
Matt, I find value in what you, and the bloggers on this site have to say – keep it up please. I use “noise” as a broad term that covers anything that doesn’t add value to me as a reader, and stuff I have to filter in order to find 1% of the “gems”. My definition of “meaningless banter” is golden for somebody else. Therefore, readers will ultimately decide the future of this hobby.
there are always exceptions and nuances, but my overall response is: Bravo.
Terrific post.
And this is why I continue to read what you write:
“For me, I’ve learned that I write to learn. I find pleasure in topics that interest me and I find that trying to explain them means I have to learn to fill in the gaps of knowledge. I think that this is the best way to blog about things. It may not be for everyone, but it works for me. Writing forms clarity.”
Best part of the post was the “TBB-esque ‘like’ category” reference, love it!
This will make the next edition of TBB, excellent. You hit on important points! I think the main reason is: THERE ARE WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY TOO MANY MILES/POINTS/MS/DEALS/TRAVEL blogs out there now! So, what you are referring to is inevitable sometimes, even for some blogs that have a good reputation.
I blog to: Entertain. Educate. Inspire. In that order.
The quality of my life is enhanced after dropping to about 158 blogs from almost 600. I recommend it to readers, you don’t need 90% of the blogs you read! Delete/unfollow them! If there is something marvelous you come to my blog to read it hehe.
As long as I blog that is woohoo.
Crap, I need to work on the next post and hope I get it done before the 2nd half of the NBA game starts!
Darn it Matt, 159 now, I finally added Milewriter, it’s all your fault!
Its interesting, the happenings of the past couple of weeks… I faced this exact thought earlier this week, when Doctor of Credit, who hat tipped Mommy Points, posted about the United 2,500 bonus miles for shopping through the United Mileage Plus Mall. Here I’m thinking: “That’s my niche! Shopping Portals! I’ve got posts about that! I should be writing something about it!” But, I thought it over, as it was, Doc was hat tipping someone else, this probably has gotten a good awareness. My solution: I’m including it in this week’s “Roundup”, why? Because its important enough to just make sure folks know about it, but standalone posts have been done.
It’s a tough call though, because, and I mean no disrespect, but, if you don’t stay relevant, you lose readership. I see it happening with myself (from a reader’s perspective), with folks posting about “nutgate,” and weird mile and point dreams, and regurgitation of the same material (aka something about Citi’s Thank You cards? I don’t know, maybe Matt, you could do a post on that? :-P).
I think the comment that struck me the most this week, was from FreequentFlyerBook, quoting a posting on Flyertalk from Ric of the Loyalty Traveler, it was: “BoardingArea has become the 800-blog gorilla crowding me out. ” — and last I checked he is on BoardingArea!
I think that the shopping portal bonus deserved a separate post. But that’s just me. Including it in a roundup is good too. It’s important and frankly MP’s focus and yours are very different. So, even though I read both of you guys, I can never be reminded often enough about portal bonuses, especially with the end date highlighted. 🙂
I also kinda think you guys are too worried about copying people. Matt, Trevor, and DoC have unique voices that I like (also BigHabitat). Basically if any of you guys wrote about a deal that was posted first on a different blog, I’d be very surprised if there wasn’t a new angle included there. If you don’t have additional perspective on it, then yes, it’s great to include it in a roundup.
Maybe you should create original content yourself instead of circle-jerking and writing about the art of travel blogging. Meta meta meta
The guy on FT found that it was Visa Infinite, Gary found that additional cardholders were fee free – IMO, the piece of information that Gary found was more relevant than it being Visa Infinite. I thought the card was interesting so I wrote about it and I’m glad that I did. Gary’s post doesn’t mention the 1099 tax form for example, which I think is crucial.
Since writing about the card I’ve learned quite a bit from readers (lounge access can be given to somebody that isn’t an authorized user, there might be a hard limit of one authorized user, etc etc) and plan to update that review further. If I didn’t write the review I probably wouldn’t have found that out.
In regards to the Dia post about the $34 hotel booking deal (which incidentally I also wrote about), I thought it was a great find but she didn’t really take it much further than here is the deal maybe you can get it to work. If she had included a few samples of hotel deals you could achieve, I probably would have just linked to that post in one of our recap posts. I don’t think her post did a great job of demonstrating how useful that deal could actually be in limited circumstances (and that isn’t a knock on Dia – I didn’t realize either until talking about it to her on Twitter more).
I agree with where you’re coming from in a broad sense, I think too much content is copycat and as I said on Twitter it’s why I’m leaning towards more recaps when I don’t have anything unique to add.
That being said, different forums and blogs have different voices. If a deal is posted on Slickdeals should it not also be posted on the Saverocity forum for example? I’m sure both forums would come at the same deal from different angles, I think the same is true for blogs. My post on a credit card is going to be very different from say Gary’s or Lucky’s and it’s one of the main reasons why I started blogging in the first place.
At the end of the day, I just blog about whatever I find interesting (or something I think readers will find interesting). I’ll happy link to other sites if that’s where I saw the deal, but I don’t think just because somebody has posted something it should never be posted or discussed again.
/rambling
From my perspective, you blog about products, and include all pertinent info, including your unbiased recommendation. Many others blog about products. Your blog and your types of posts are popular among my group of traveler friends.
I hope this post gets a bit more exposure among the travel blogger community.
I have to agree with you about Dia’s post. It’s actually a general criticism I’d have of her blog (which I enjoy). There are lots of great pieces of information, but I often find myself wishing she had written more about it. I like her voice and I know she’s got tons of travel and deal experience. I’d like the posts to be more in depth.
Hi Jamie,
I’d like my posts to be more in depth too! It’s a necessary evil based on the limited time I have to write. Often I’ll go back and expand on a thought if I can.
But if I find a great deal during TaeKwonDo practice (like BA TCB) I err on the side of getting the info out. I’m happy to let others help color in the details.
I very much like and enjoy the “Doc’s” in depth review in his posts. I get very busy to research every new product and card.
That being said, I love Matt and his unbiased posts and honestly as well. So, I will read and trust you both, still.
I don’t think it’s a valid argument. You can’t avoid repetition in this tiny and overcrowded niche. As long as you don’t plagiarize, add value, and give credit where credit is due, there will be people who appreciate what you do. And, of course, those who don’t.
Cheers!
Someone once described it as the “echo chamber” and I found that to be very apt.
I think the blogs are getting desperate. Maybe the finances aren’t there or have changed. They always start as a “niche” so they get picked up and then regress to regurgitation, because as you say they need to be “current”.
The worst is boarding area, do they really believe someone would subscribe to one blog but not the entire area? The percentage of new content there is astoundingly low.
All of the “error fares” posts as you mentioned are classic examples. When MMS or FM start posting that click bait, you know they are desperate.
I think we will start to see blogger attrition soon. I think more so than the blogger saturation, there is consumer saturation. There are only so many people that have the credit and aspirations that can product revenue for these blogs, so I think “new customers” will be down. Additionally, some of the “current customers”, for the same reason they found the blog in the first place, will transcend into the forums because their desire for knowledge is not filled by the blog alone, which is the irony of the hat tip, that the customer may cut out the middle man, which is how I think a lot of people found FT the first time. Second is that I think it is very hard to consistently generate quality content, and at some point the relevance or connection is lost if it goes too deep. 24 hour news ins’t for everybody. An interesting one I am keeping my eye on is Miles to Memories, obviously a premeditated splash attempt to gain momentum but I am waiting for the fizzle when that runs out.
I’ll bag on Gary all day, but one thing he does bring to the table (albient not at a high frequency) that most bloggers do not is original thought, analysis and perspective. He has some good connections in the industry that help.
I know I’m a few days late to the discussion. I’m just a reader, not a blogger. As a reader, I can accept that there is a lot of duplication of material across different bloggers. I don’t follow that many and I see a lot of repetition, but I understand a blogger may want to present a deal to their readers. What really irks me is the absolutely blatant repetition, esp. when so obviously inspired by a recent commission deal (think recent Citi Prestige pumping). I do miss TBB’s tallies of the daily pump counts. The only other thing that that turns me off a blog so quickly is another Park Hyatt Maldives “review”. Travelsort may not be my favorite blog, but at least she did some comparisons across a couple places in the Maldives when she inevitably went there.