Joining BoardingArea, A Personal Secret, A Brand New Website, Moving To London…

About two and half years ago I started GodSaveThePoints.com, because introductory Ferrari’s and unlimited Amex cards working extra hours of the day, to write about travel sounded extremely exciting. I’d been working in music, was newly married and decided to tell my wife that I no longer wished to work at my real job, I just wanted to sit on the internet, start a travel site that conscientiously did not use advertisement and had zero money making prospects to pass my days. She immediately said yes.

She said yes, because deep down, she knew that anyone who starts a travel blog gets a million dollar grant from the illuminati, needs to work two jobs to give it a chance, and she’d need to work one too. Unbeknownst to even many of our closest friends up until now, for years now, I’ve worked three. I’ve run GodSaveThePoints.com full time, work an entirely non-travel or music related job and luckily enough write for Condé Nast Traveler- but things are changing. Don’t get it wrong, I’ve done that because I needed to.

I started my blog because of Gary Leff, the creator of ViewFromTheWing.com. I didn’t start it because I hated his blog (like I hated many others), I started it because I thought he was funny, quirky and relatable, and I ******** loved his blog. He cared, it wasn’t about the money. I wanted to be that too, and I thought I could present things in a way that few other “bloggers” were choosing to present things. I cared about deals, the basics, the tricks, the humor, the tools and the inspiration to just get out there and travel. I wanted to become a resource for all travelers, not just the frequent ones.

A year in, we weren’t making money, but things were happening. We’d been on Good Morning America, CNN, the BBC and all these crazy things where people “knew us”, we were becoming real. But most importantly, people seemed to be interacting and loving what was coming out on the site, in our little corner of the internet. I had found an audience. We were close. Ironically, about a year later, the guy who started it all- Gary Leff, sent me an email, re introducing me to Randy Petersen, the OG (seriously, Google him) of frequent flying, miles and points. They both wanted to help.

Months later, we’re here. Welcome to our brand new site, and our new home on the BoardingArea.com blogging team. We’re part of the group. We joined Boarding Area because they care about us-being us. We did not sign away any future children, agree to pump credit cards in exchange for endless wealth or any of the other nonsense that doesn’t exist, they said we should keep doing what we do, and they’ll use their fantastic network to help us grow. In effect, they’re making this real and giving an opportunity to go from a “travel blog” to a legitimate-money making travel site. Yep, we’ll have ads, but the content will be the same.

Joining BoardingArea.com means that this is the beginning of the best experience you’ve had with the site, because I will no longer be working at my third full time job up to 10 hours a day. I’ll still keep writing for Condé Nast Traveler, because, let’s be honest, that’s a great gig, but I’ll be able to dedicate my time to more deals, more tricks, more ideas and opportunities for you to earn and redeem points, maximize your loyalty status and maybe even throw in some humor. Welcome. You can now even just bookmark the parts of the site you care about like deals, points and loyalty, destination inspiration, credit cards, editors corner (rants), reviews or anything else you find interesting to you, though we hope to tempt you in with the exciting new sections of the site.

It goes without saying, but there are many thank you’s to be said here. We’re happy and we’re excited. In fact, we’re so excited, we’re moving to London. New York has been wonderful, but our future home is in the UK, and we can’t wait to be there, writing about travel all day every day. Thank you first to Gary Leff, the owner (and sole writer) of the best aviation/travel blog out there ViewFromTheWing.com. Thank you to Randy Peterson at BoardingArea for thinking that I am not what people say I am in the comments sections. Thank you to friend and reader Thomas Sivapatham for inspiring me to build a better user experience, and not only inspire me, but dedicate his own time (gratis) to make that dream come true by building it. Thanks to Denny Butts at BoardingArea, for making the site transition to BoardingArea a treat, helping Thomas to build the dream and throwing in some top notch design as well. Thanks to my father in law, James, for not convincing my wife to divorce me, and for helping create our beautiful new logo (amongst other cool things), same goes for my mother in law, Anne, too. And last, but perhaps most crucially, thanks to my boss, Martin, who has allowed me to be the worst employee in the world for the last two years, leaving at the last minute to check out planes, review hotels and sometimes just sit on the beach. Though I’m sure he’ll be glad to get rid of me this year, I will miss it.  Oh, and my wife, how could I forget about the only person who would’ve ever believed that writing free information on the internet could be the best way to see the world. On to the new site…

Thanks for being here.

Gilbert

gilbert@godsavethepoints.com