TPG's disclosure is more based on the fact that he sold his website to bankrate several years ago. The site clearly has a structural conflict. He is still a straight shooter in my view, but you have to take the credit card stuff with a grain of salt given the blog's ownership. Also, this is about much more than just getting some point for referrals. This is big business and these guys are making a lot of money. I don't know how much TPG sold his website for, but he is very wealthy. We're not talking about side-businesses here.
Frequentmiler is really pretty good. I find him to be really transparent, and I never feel like he's pushing the benefits of a certain card just to get the affiliate referral fee. He also is about much more than just miles -- he's sort of a 21st century extreme couponer with a travel bent. Mommypoints is pretty transparent and honest, and her blog is not big business for sure, but hardcore points and miles and credit cards are not really her thing. I find view form the wing to be among the least transparent. He will write entire blog posts that purport to be helpful -- top 10 reasons I love X Card -- but which are really just wind ups for his affiliate links for that card. He has some great content at times, but in terms of trustworthiness, he's behind the others to me. One Mile At A Time is somewhere in between. Some of his trip reporting is the best in the bloggosphere, but he'll hawk credit cards too.
Bottom line -- view all of them with skepticism. If you view them as mainly credit card salesmen in business to make money, who post associated content in order to drive traffic to their credit card sales platforms, you won't be entirely wrong. With issuers getting more and more hardcore about churning, with lifetime bonus limits and 5/24, you really need to manage your credit card portfolio carefully. I always see a few cards that just don't seem worth a hard pull and a space in my wallet that get completely hyped. There were a couple of Hilton cards a few months ago like that, where the affiliate payouts must have been massive because the amount of artificial buzz that was being generated from them was pretty significant. I feel the same way about the IHG card right now. It's a good card, no doubt, and the annual free night is a really good benefit. But its exposure right now makes it seem like the second coming of the 100k Sapphire Reserve.
Here's just a small example of what I'm talking about. A blogger might say, "this card is not subject to Chase's 5/24 rule." But what does that mean? It might, for example, mean only that you can get the card if you're over 5/24, which is clearly important information. But that doesn't necessarily mean it won't count toward 5/24 when you want to get better card in 6 months. So, if you're at 6/24 right now, with a couple of cards that are 21 months old, you can get the card, but do you want it? The blogs are not a place where you're going to necessarily get the straight scoop on that -- though I think Frequentmiler is pretty good about this -- flyertalk, DocCredit, etc. are the better places.
