UPDATE 3:25 PM EST:
Thank you to everyone who has offered their help! As of now, I’m closing the request for volunteers.
Why?
I’ve readily admitted in the past that I need my wife’s help when drawing my ethical line (see “Drawing the line“). Maybe it’s time to add my readers’ input into that line as well. When this post first published, many readers were vocally against my request for help. Many said that asking for unpaid volunteers was unethical and overly greedy.
I know that my intentions were good, but I also understand that readers can’t read my mind. I assure you that I would have been very generous to volunteers, but of course there’s no way to prove that. My goal was to make a better site for my readers, but the short term outcome seems to have been to turn readers away.
Some will say that I shouldn’t care what a few vocal readers think. Some have written their support of my approach in the comments below and through email. And, I very much appreciate that! But, I do care about the angry comments. Some of those who complained have been positive contributors to this blog for a long time. I don’t want to lose them as readers and commenters. Some will say “too late” and that’s fine, but hopefully most will give me a second chance.
Original post:
I started the Frequent Miler blog over two years ago and readership has increased steadily ever since. I’m now incredibly fortunate to have this blog as my full time occupation! That said, I find that I’m having a hard time keeping up. I write at least one full blog post every weekday. I research new opportunities. I publish Quick Deals. And, I try to answer all of the e-mails, tweets, and blog comments that come my way (which I appreciate very much!). All of these things are great, but they do prevent me from having time to tackle other projects. Here are some plans and responsibilities that have been neglected:
- Actively maintaining my Free Trips and Tricks newsletter. The newsletter is designed to teach people, from the beginning, how to earn nearly free luxury travel. Newsletters are sent out week to week, in order, based on the date each subscriber signs up. So, if someone subscribes today, they’ll get newsletter #1 right away, newsletter #2 a week later, etc. The purpose of this newsletter is to have an outlet for beginners, without changing the more advanced nature of my daily blog. So, what’s the problem? Well, I’ve been slow to send out Deal Alerts to this community to let them know about new stuff going on. And, I’ve been very slow to revisit old newsletters to correct them when things change. For example, I probably still refer to “Priority Club” in a number of emails rather than the new name “IHG Rewards Club.” And, I’m sure there are all kinds of corrections needed based on the recent United, Delta, and Hyatt devaluations.
- A Frequent Miler resource site. The Frequent Miler blog has lots of good information, but not much of it is organized well. If someone wanted to know the latest information about Vanilla Reload cards, for example, it would be quite a trick to find all of the relevant posts and to figure out which tidbits still hold true today. For example, I occasionally get an email from someone with the “news” that they were unable to use a credit card to buy reload cards at Office Depot. My first reaction has been to think “Well, of course not! Didn’t you read my blog post from… ?” And then, of course, I realize that they didn’t read that blog post. In fact, they’re probably a new reader who stumbled upon my old “One card to rule them all” post and had no reason not to think the deal was still alive. So, what I’d like to do is setup a site organized into topics like Bluebird, Reload cards, Shopping portals, points programs, etc. and provide up to date information there, along with wiki-like capability so that readers can help keep it up to date.
- Frequent Miler community discussion forums. Blog comments are not the best way to hold discussions. I’d like to setup something better. The “something better” should allow threaded discussions, subscribe-to functionality, and ideally the ability to setup private topics. Ideally, too, whatever this is would be embedded within the Frequent Miler resource site in some way.
Volunteers?
I’m looking for just a few people who would be excited to be part of the Frequent Miler team even though it pays roughly $0 per hour. Specifically, here are some skills I’m hoping to find:
- Content authoring: I’m not looking for someone to help with my daily blog (I intend to keep that one up myself), but I do need someone who can help with the newsletter (as I described above), resource content, and possibly with some Quick Deals and other miscellaneous stuff. The ideal volunteer would have excellent writing skills, good attention to detail, and thorough knowledge of the points and miles hobby and my Frequent Miler posts.
- Web site development (technical): I’m looking for someone who can help me, from a technical perspective, to setup the resource site and discussion forums as described above. The ideal volunteer would have some website development experience.
- Web site design: I’m looking for someone more on the artistic side, here. Can you help me make the resource site, Quick Deals, etc. look good?
- Other stuff? If you’re eager to volunteer, but have other ideas for how you can help, I’d love to hear from you.
I’m not looking for an army of volunteers here. If one person can help with most of these things, that would be fantastic. I really don’t want to go with more than 3 people altogether because the coordination itself would then become a full time job.
Interested?
If you think you’re interested in volunteering, please send me an email with the subject heading “FM Volunteer”. In the body of the email, please tell me in what way you’d like to help out and describe your skills in a sentence or two. If you have prior work that you’d like me to look at, please include PDFs or screen capture images as attachments rather than web site links. Also, subscribe to the comments of this post (add a comment saying “subscribe” and check the box titled “Notify me of follow-up comments by email.”). I’ll add a comment here occasionally to let people know if I’ve received many (any?) volunteers and how far along I am in selecting them.
Thanks in advance!
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I am with you JC!
Seriously margie, stop trying to be the arbiter for mainstream ethics and judgement… You’re messing it up by a wide margin. You can say what you think, but as far as speaking for most of your followers?
FM realized he screwed up and withdrew the request. He’ll probably be back with a similar request be it on the blog or via back door channels. Just hopefully the content of the request won’t be worded in such a self-centered manner.
The problem isn’t that he wants someone to volunteer for work. The problem is he doesn’t come off as a community player in this post. The whole reason I use his links to sign up for cards is because I feel like I’m contributing back to someone who is contributing to me. If I decide community interest isn’t a primary motivator in this guys work, then I just stop using his credit card links.
And he knows enough people think like that that he withdrew the request. So, he made a mistake. We’ll see how it goes from here…
and that’s your choice. i respect it. you may be right that i was out of line speaking for others, i just assume that there are many that feel the way i do.
and i agree that perhaps he didn’t convey his message in a perfect way. but for me, it was not an issue, nor would it prevent me from using his links or reading his blog. i think its the best there is.
PLEASE KNOW that most of your followers have NO ISSUES with your request, your ethics and your judgement. There are always going to be some naysayers about everything, and they seem to be the loudest, but I can assure you the majority of us have no issues!!!! Keep doing what you are doing!
One way to avoid creating a business infrastructure is to work for other people. You can do the same research and write for FTG, MMS, or TPG. That way you don’t have to worry about supporting an infrastructure or worrying about the money and you can focus on what you are passionate about.
I am sitting in a lush cotton robe at the brand new Westin Singapore looking out my window at Marina Bay below…having flown Biz Class from the US to Japan to Singapore…and to a large degree I have you FM to thank. To be fair, there are other bloggers to thank…and I must credit myself as well – for playing the game my own way with my own skills, ideas and actions. So my first point is to offer a word of support – I think you are very good at what you do, you have helped me greatly, and IMHO you have no apologies to make. You can learn from what has happened here and move forward – there really is no other way and you seem like a good, decent and smart person that will carry on and win the day and new fans in this way (maybe even recapture some of the old fans once they cool down:-) My second point – and perhaps this is a different and interesting angle to come at this from – is to offer (volunteer:-) to come in and help you run the business (I like running businesses and am quite good at it:-) This way, you can do what you like (be an awesome blogger in this field) in the way that you like – whether that mean staying small, lean and hungry or bringing on paid staff to help you do what you do so well. Either way, mate, carry on…we need talented, smart people in the world!!!
Why not just call it an internship? People do unpaid internships all of the time to increase their skills and get experience in a new area. Funny that volunteer somehow has a stigma but internship generally does not.
I wanted to follow up on my last comment, because it came to my attention, that some perceive me using your first name as somehow outing your identity. I can assure you, it was not. I think most in the industry know your name and it was printed on an FTU brochure as well. But if you feel otherwise, please edit or delete my last comment. I have absolutely no problem with it, and it is your right as this blog owner.
I don’t want my comments to be perceived as a personal attack on you. Because they are not. I really resisted commenting in the first place when this whole debacle started. But when you said how you did intend to compensate workers and was just trying to test their motives, that crossed the line.
I actually find it more offensive than you not wanting to pay. It indicates a lack of transparency. And that is a big problem. I am one of your loyal readers and did use your links in the past.
Which is why I decided to give my 2 cents. You are correct, that you should be proud of this blog. You are one of the best in the industry and compensated accordingly. My suggestion is for you to do a post and apologize to your readers and go on record, that you will compensate those, who volunteered.
I think you can regain much of your credibility that way. No one is perfect and I am a huge believer in second chances. You probably don’t care what I think and thats fine. All the best and thanks for many great posts.
@ Jim, who made Walmart analogy. You are brilliant! Have you considered starting a review blog? This industry needs a watchdog in the worst possible way. Even if you can do one post per week, that would be fine. You can set up a Paypal button and I would donate. Others can do so anonymously as well.
Who cares?
What is everyone up at arms about? I for one would love to volunteer depending on what kind of work you needed and how much time it entailed
I have a business, yet will not apply for business cards. Mainly, because you are supposed to only use them for business expenses. And while I don’t claim that what has happened here is illegal, I think its highly unethical. I’m not really sure, why Greg thought this was a good idea. Some disagree and thats fine.
I’m sure there’s not a single person in this thread who’s believes that this is illegal have never actually applied for a business card without actually having a legitimate business.
Or am I just naïve?
Not only do you look like a jerk asking for people to volunteer when you get paid, but it might not even be legal:
http://www.dol.gov/elaws/esa/flsa/docs/volunteers.asp
Wow, Greg. I can’t believe how nasty and mean some of these comments have been but I applaud you for publishing them all, responding to most and fully explaining your thought process. Glad you agree the post was ill advised and kudos for the way you handled the fallout.
Mark
First, I am very glad that you have come to realize the travesty of your request. I do have to say, I am very glad, that most companies don’t advertise their job openings in such manner. As in “come work for us for free, because you love the industry”. And after hiring: “hey, we were just testing you, you are gonna get paid after all”!
You get paid for your work. And yes, you are motivated by money, whether you admit it or not. Daraius did it the right way.
FM – sorry I had not seen your response in comment 37 before publishing my rant. Your comment helps clarify, but I still think the essence stands. I understand not wanting to deal with the complexity of employees, that does take things up another level. However it would not be that difficult to offer some minor equity or hell even just pay some people with points. I just found the concept of asking for volunteer help in a for-personal-profit enterprise vulgar (and if someone ever offers me free help – like if my neighbor helps me mulch my back yard or fix my car, I will repay them in kind somehow. I won’t just take it and give nothing in return)
MilesAbound: Thanks for the followup. I had every intention to compensate volunteers based on what they would most value (cash, free trips, help starting their own business, etc), but I didn’t want to advertise that fact because my goal was to recruit a couple of people who were intrinsically motivated to help (vs. extrinsically motivated by the offer of rewards). Obviously this approach was a big tactical error. If I had known that it would offend I wouldn’t have published.