One of my readers recently e-mailed me and asked if I could put together a good list of points and miles blogs and communities in the UK. I thought this might be a good idea, not only for the UK but for other countries as well. Some people are dual citizens and can take advantage of credit card deals at home and abroad.
One issue I had was a way of scoring bloggers based on how upfront they are with better offers and disclosing their affiliate links. I have no problem with somebody using these links (I use some non-credit card links myself) as long as they are upfront about when they receive an incentive and also let their readers know about better deals.
I wanted a way for my readers to quickly know how trustworthy a blog is, there is nothing wrong with reading blogs that don’t do these things but you should be aware so you know when you need to be on guard and vigilant and when it’s ok to be more trusting of a blogger.
Here are some questions I’ll ask my self when evaluating foreign points and miles blog. This is based on a point system, each yes is worth one point and each no scores you zero points. The more points the better.
- Does the blogger always clearly disclose when they stand to receive an incentive?
- Does the blogger always post the best available offer they are aware of?
- Does the blogger update their post if they are made aware of a better offer? If they are capable of updating previous posts easily (e.g they are using prettylinks or a simple redirect) do they update the main link so that past posts also link to this new and improved offer?
- Does the blogger always approve non-spam comments including comments that disagree with their viewpoint or call them out on a mistake they make?
I think in the past six months the United States points & miles bloggers have done great job of cleaning their act up and answering yes to the majority of these questions. Laws in other countries aren’t always as strong and don’t necessarily require blogs to add disclaimers when they are being offered an incentive for promoting a product.
I’ll be linking to this post whenever I do a M&P country round up post. Before I get started, are there any other questions that you think should be added? What areas do you think this blog could improve upon?
