If you’ve been reading this blog for more than a little while, you may have noticed that the pace of recent articles has slowed to a standstill.
I want to reassure you that this is not (only) because I now spend my days recumbent on my couch eating bonbons.
Blog? What Blog?
(I’ve actually been working quite hard this past month on a very “bloggy” project.)
And tonight I’m pleased to announce this project and to invite all of you to join in and reap the rewards of this hard work.
My friend over at www.Richmondsavers.com, Brad and I are launching a travel hacking course called travelmiles101.com.
For those of you who do not know Brad, he’s a fellow blogger and a great guy with very similar values to me (read: he is interested in both early retirement theory, and the miles game.)
More importantly he has a very complementary skill set. He is a logical and organized CPA, with a great working knowledge of website design. From a Miles game perspective he has traditionally been focused on getting the most out of each mile earned, as opposed to my approach of “churning, earning and burning” miles. So he has a great working knowledge of the redemption side, whereas my focus has always been more on the earning side, and the wacky machinations of manufactured spending.
So together we have most of the miles game bases covered and are excited to impart our knowledge to others eager to get started or to further their efforts in this lucrative hobby.
So what’s the idea here?
We will invite individuals to sign up for a web based course along with a wave of fellow students who are interested in a step by step approach on how to collect millions of miles, and travel for nearly free.
The individuals will be invited to an online curriculum that consists of 15 or so simple web based travel hacking lessons.
On day one the first lesson will both be delivered by email to each student and filed away in an always accessible course curriculum for future reference.
By day 15 or so, all of the basic lessons will have been covered and each student will be ready to execute their first churn of 1-8 credit cards, should (s)he so choose.
Following the initial 15 lessons we will then deposit a trove of travel hacking articles, videos, and step-by-step tutorials onto the course curriculum which will be displayed in searchable outline form. So at that point the curriculum will become travel hacking encyclopedia ready for detailed searches for specific questions. This is where the value will come in for travel hacking veterans, (in addition to noobs.) Unlike a blog our goal is to make our curriculum an ever-growing, but organized, and searchable repository of useful and actionable travel hacking knowledge. So if you have a question about how to unload your Softcard Serve Card, you would search under the “manufactured spending” topic for “reloadable cards,” “softcard serve,” and “unloading”, and you would likely find a step by step video on how to transfer money to your bank account or pay bills on the Serve platform.
The final piece of our course structure is a private Facebook page which will serve as a community forum for getting specific questions answered, and a meeting place for sharing the specific triumphs and trials of the miles game with fellow participants.
Brad and I are also committed to expanding to provide conference calls, forums, and webinars for course takers should there be sufficient demand.
As with any new endeavor there are obvious questions that need answering.
What will it cost?
It will be free. We are committed to not charging for this course for as long as possible (and hopefully forever.)
Our only ask will be that when you as a student decide to sign up for a credit card, you voluntarily do so through one of our links, so that we can make a small third-party commission.
Our reciprocal pledge is to organize a list of the best credit cards with only the best available offers linked, whether it uses our affiliate link or not. I.e. we will never knowingly direct you to any link unless it is the best available offer for that card.)
Why am I doing this?
As I have written about before, I’ve been very hesitant to monetize this site. My goal here has always been to write from the heart, and I feared that the profit motive would change my perspective, and my focus.
This course allows me to both profit from the service that I am rendering, as well as to create a firewall between this blog and monetary considerations.
What Does it mean for MilesDividendMD.com?
Importantly, I have found that I am more drawn to writing about more philosophical matters such as early retirement theory, investment theory, politics and ethics, rather then the constantly changing nuts and bolts minutia of travel hacking.
More to the point, I write about travel hacking to share its utility with others, but I write about philosophical topics for more personal reasons (ie I can’t help myself.).
So I will continue this blog, though its focus will gradually shift towards becoming more of a an early retirement/investment theory blog, rather than a travel hacking blog. I will of course continue to write lots of new content about travel hacking (I already have) , but that new content will be deposited in the TravelMiles101.com course curriculum only, not here.
I believe that travelmiles101.com will allow me a platform to more effectively and systematically help like-minded individuals learn how to play the miles game, at the same time that this blog becomes a more interesting and provocative personal platform. Best of both worlds.
The final benefit to me, that I certainly did not anticipate before starting this project, is my sincere excitement in participating in such an entrepreneurial venture. We are already half way through our first month of beta testing the course with 100 excellent guineapigs err… students, and things are going remarkably well. Creating something where once there was nothing is a very new thing for me, and something that I am greatly enjoying.
Come join in our exciting journey…
Working with Brad continues to be a real pleasure, and watching our shared but blurry vision become an ever more defined reality has been nothing short of amazing.
I sincerely hope that you will sign up for our course, and participate in its early incarnation. (It’s kind of a no lose proposition.) And I am quite confident that if you do, it will be a true value proposition for you.
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