Frequent Miler on the Air - Announcement: Frequent Miler on the Air joins Voyascape... | 5-12-25

Episode Date: May 12, 2025

Takeaways: The Frequent Miler on the Air podcast has officially joined the Voyascape podcast network, which signifies a shift in a few ways. Listeners of the audio version will notice new network identifiers and advertisements, which were previously absent from the podcast. (Viewers via YouTube will not see any change.) The transition to Voyascape will not alter the core content of the podcast, as we remain committed to producing original material without external influence, as always. Advertisers featured in the podcast will primarily be travel-related, ensuring relevance to the audience's interests. But we'll look for advertisers who are not too related to the specific topics we tackle in our episodes, so we can maintain the integrity of the content and make sure it's very clear to listeners the difference between the podcast content and the host-read ad segments. By joining Voyascape, we aim to diversify our revenue streams, moving beyond reliance on credit card affiliate links. The collaboration with Voyascape also presents an opportunity to potentially expand our audience by attracting new listeners interested in travel.

We're doing this special edition of Frequent Mylar on the Air to announce that we are joining a podcast Network called Voyascape. Frequent Mylar on the Air starts now Voyascape is a travel related podcast network and We thought it was important to let you know that we're doing this because it's going to mean some changes. Specifically for those who listen to the podcast in audio format, it's not really going to affect people who watch on YouTube at all. But for those of you who listen in audio format, you're going to be noticing some changes. So we're going to get into that.

Very good. So first of all, we should probably mention what it is. So Voy Escape is a travel podcast network, as Greg said. They've got some shows that you may already know about, like Travel Intent, the Frommer's Travel Show, Travel Tales, with comedian and TV host Mike Siegel. Yeah.

And they're growing rapidly. So they started fairly recently and growing quickly with new shows like ours. The first thing you're going to notice that changes is just a network identifier. There'll be like a tune at the beginning of our show and it'll say something like, this is a Voyescape podcast, you know, and I don't know exactly what it says, but. And to be clear, that means we're, that we'll be part of the VoyEscape network. It doesn't mean that the podcast is being like taken by someone else and the content is changing.

It just means that we're part of their network. It's still our podcast and still all of our content. Let's be clear. 100%. And the content we produce for our shows will be completely the same and because just as always we we will record without having anything to do with the network that we're on because we record once for both the audio format and for YouTube and

then things like ads and network identifier is added later so it's not gonna affect the the show but it will mean that you're going to be listening to some ads. So we haven't had ads ever on the audio version of the podcast until now. That's right. There have been ads on the YouTube version. YouTube has ads, but we haven't had them yet on the audio version. So again, first it'll be that network identifier that you're going to start hearing at the

beginning and then you'll hear some Post-show promotions for other voicecapes shows explaining some of the other shows on the network So, you know what other stuff there is to listen to at this point as we get ready to launch this I think we're the only miles and points related podcast on the network There's a bunch of other travel related podcasts that you might be interested in listening to if you like to travel Yeah, yeah and when it comes time for us to introduce ads, these are going to be mostly travel related ads and they will be mostly, if not all, host read. That means Nick and I will, you know, read an ad but when I say read I really mean we

will be discussing whatever the topic is. Like, you know, there might be destinations where they are paying us to, you know, talk about Aruba or wherever the destination is. And so it's not that we're just going to be reading ad copy that someone gives us, you know, we're going gonna be reading ad copy that someone gives us. We're gonna be talking about why we like that destination if we do. We might ideally even throw in some things like, hey, I know you can get there using miles in this way. So we hope to add some actual useful content

and hopefully make it entertaining as well. So we'll see about that part. But, um, so why, why, why are we doing that? Right? So like, I mean, yeah, okay. It should be fun and entertaining and hopefully we'll be able to tie it in to miles and points content. Like Greg said, it's going to be hopefully our two cents on these advertisements and to be clear, they clearly, I believe too. I mean, we're certainly intending to make it clear

when it's an ad and what we're talking about. But why, why are we doing it? Yeah, yeah. So when we started the podcast, we always intended to have ads on our show at some point, but we were waiting for the right fit. You know, for one thing, we didn't wanna be going around looking for advertisers and spending our time doing that instead of creating content for the right fit. For one thing, we didn't want to be going around looking for advertisers

and spending our time doing that instead of creating content for the show and for our blog. But also, we didn't want things that were completely unrelated to our show, all of a sudden talking about just best brand of toilet paper or something doesn't seem like a good fit for the show unless it's travel toilet paper. You never know. You might be able to pack that in your bag, right? Yeah, then it would be fine. But we also, we're kind of wary about doing things that are too close to the type of content

that we talk about all the time because we don't want people to get confused about what's an ad and what's not. We don't want people to think there's a conflict of interest. So for example, if we're talking about a great credit card welcome offer and that credit card company's also a sponsor of the ads, like that could get pretty hairy there. And so we're hoping to avoid that kind of conflict

of interest as much as possible. So here we are. It took us, what, six years to figure out the right fit. And we think Voyescape is that because Voyescape is, it is travel related. They're only planning on selling travel related ads. They're going to do all the work for us. So they're going to be out there pounding the pavement, trying to find advertisers that are a good fit for their network. And they'll come to us with, you know, here are some, here are some advertisers, and we'll have

the right to say, no, we don't want to do that one for whatever reason and So, you know, we'll be using our judgment around that and Hopefully, you know, it'll it'll work out to be a decent way for frequent miler the business to earn additional revenue while at the same time being still hopefully entertaining to the audience not too off-putting having the ads there. We have a desire as a business to diversify our revenue. Most of our revenue to date has been through credit card affiliate links,

where we get paid when people click through our links and get approved for a card. That leaves us sort of at risk, because things change all the time in that area. And so, we're hoping to not be so tied to that single revenue stream. And that should help a lot with that. Um, I, oh, I also want to point out, this is very similar to what we already do on

the blog and, and since the beginning of the blog, we've, we've been part of boarding area, which is a blog network. That's that's a travel points and miles related blog network, they sell the ad space and they keep a percentage of the ad revenue. Same thing here, Voyescape is a travel related, it's not points and miles, but it's still travel related, and they sell the ad space, they keep a percentage of the ad revenue and we get the rest. And also in both cases,

they handle all the hosting costs of the technical hosting experience. And yeah, oh, finally, I forgot to mention, this could also, I talked about the primary reasons we joined Voyascape, but a potential other benefit is we might grow our audience. You know, Voyascape has an audience of people interested in travel.

That doesn't mean they necessarily know anything about Points and Miles. We think as soon as they hear about our show, have a listen, you know, they might get interested. And so we could potentially bring the points and miles game to a lot more people this way. Yeah, you know, and I think it's really important to emphasize that there's no voice keeps not going to have any influence over our content in the sense that it's not like we have given up the show to someone in the same way that boarding area doesn't have any influence over our content. They're both just essentially entities that are going to help bring advertisements that

hopefully are relevant to our audience, to the table. And so I wanted to reemphasize A, that there's no influence over our overall content coming there. And also that, like Greg said, the benefit of joining a network like this is that we don't have to spend our time trying to figure out that part. Instead of taking away time where we could be making another podcast, writing another post, coming up with an interesting idea, we'd have to be out there running around trying to figure out advertising.

And neither one of us is particularly interested in stepping away from miles and points stuff to become an advertising salesperson So it's very helpful for us to have a network that's established to be able to do that part of things and hopefully Get some some some very good related stuff So I think hopefully there'll be some interesting things to come out of this and it will hopefully create some more benefit in the sense That it may even create ideas for us that we say oh well we wouldn't have thought about talking about a or b but this actually triggers a whole other conversation about something else and so i think it'll hopefully be a value add in the long term for listeners also in the sense that it makes it possible for us to come up with some other interesting ideas but it's still all going to

be our ideas and our content and i think that that's the most important thing for everyone to know that that's you can expect the same from us that you always have There'll just be an ad now and then but that'll and it will take some time before we get to that point. That's right Yeah, very well said