Points Panda

I Turned My Passion For Credit Card Points Into A Successful Business

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Frederick Lansky

Founder, Points Panda

$3.8K

revenue/mo

Founders

Employees

Points Panda

Pointspanda.com

from Mexico City, CDMX, Mexico

started August 2019

$3,800

revenue/mo

Founders

Employees

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Hello! Who are you and what business did you start?

My name’s Freddy Lansky and I’m the CEO of Points Panda, a points & miles travel blog/award booking consultancy business.

I do reviews about credit cards, flights, airport lounges, loyalty programs, and all things about the credit card and airline industry. I help my audience make informed decisions through my reviews but at the same time, I also offer consultancy and award booking services. Apart from that, I also have affiliate partners that promote their credit cards through Points Panda.

I started Points Panda way back in 2018 as a personal blog to talk about my passion - points and miles. Now, Points Panda has been slowly and steadily growing for the past four years as a sustainable income-generating business.

What's your backstory and how did you come up with the idea?

Before Points Panda, I was already into points and miles because I helped book business class award flights for myself and my business partner in my previous business, iChess.

In that business, we had to frequently fly to Europe and South America on a minute's notice for business meetings and filming; flying in the economy was exhausting. That's when I learned about the value of transferring points to airlines to get really good deals on long-distance business class flights.

Years passed, and more people were asking me for help booking their award flights and I would just charge a small “hassle fee” for it. I then realized I could turn this into a legit business. There’s a large number of people who have thousands of unused points and I could be their go-to guy on how to maximize these points.

Always diversify your income streams. Everything is digital now so there are a lot of ways to do that.

Take us through the process of designing your initial blog and services.

I was a one-man team in the beginning so my initial goal was to keep the Points Panda business model as simple as possible.

I offered three types of consultation packages: a one-time consultation, an annual basic plan, and an annual premium plan. I designed these packages based on my encounters with people who asked for my help. My first official clients were mostly referrals from friends and family, and those initial consultations turned out well. It wasn’t new to me because I have been doing it for a while now, and the only difference was that I turned it into an actual business.

But referrals can only get you so far, so I did turn to Facebook by prospecting in niche groups that were about points and travel. I wanted to become a thought leader in the industry so I gave as much value as I can in these groups to get noticed, and eventually, direct clients started to come in. Some casual travelers would just message me once or twice a year on how to maximize their points so I made a one-time award booking for them.

For the more frequent travelers, I created the basic plan for those who want unlimited consultation per year and I created the premium plan for those who want unlimited consultation + complete booking assistance.

I started the blog way between 2018 and 2019, and it was a slow process since it was just a one-man show at that time. I wrote most of the blogs and also did the consultations. It was hard!

I had to get some help because I couldn’t handle all of these tasks. I also decided that I should just focus on the consultations. Eventually, I hired like-minded people, who share the same passion for points and travel, to help me with creating content for the blog. I was still hands-on with the content creation process. We would have weekly meetings and I would come up with ideas on what topics we should write about.

After years of fine-tuning our content creation system and hiring the right people, I’m happy to say that Points Panda is steadily growing. It’s not at the point where we want it to be yet, but it’s heading in the right direction.

My advice for people who want to start a blog is just to start doing it. It doesn’t have to be well-designed and perfect, just keep on pushing out valuable content for your audience. And it doesn’t have to be a website because you can start blogging on Facebook, Tiktok, Instagram, or whatever platform you’re comfortable using. My point is that you have to start from somewhere and be consistent at it.

Describe the process of launching the business.

I had already existing clients even before I launched the business so the transition was smooth, although I did lose a few clients along the way because of the price increase. However, the challenge was to create an online presence for Points Panda because obviously, it’s a start-up business and there are competitors in the same industry that have already made a name for themselves.

I had to start from scratch. I hired writers and also hired an SEO specialist to increase web traffic to the site. I would even write some of the content myself and even created Youtube videos to help build the business’ credibility on social media.

It wasn’t easy building the Points Panda team. As you know, the points and travel industry is a very specific niche, and I already knew that it was going to be hard to find writers who were at least familiar with this topic.

When I was hiring people, my only criteria were that they were passionate about travel and that they were willing to learn about points. I know that they weren’t going to be that good in the first few months so I was there to guide and train them.

Since launch, what has worked to attract and retain customers?

The key to attracting and retaining customers is to be consistent and to always overdeliver. There’s always another competitor who can do the exact service as you, and sometimes even cheaper. However, going beyond what your client expects and making them feel good about their purchase is what makes them come back.

One important thing that I always put in mind is that if you’re a salesman, don’t try to sell a product but rather sell the experience of using that product.

When it comes to acquiring new customers, my go-to strategy is to partner with other people within the industry. For example, offer to sell their products to our email list or vice versa. Anything to establish a relationship with somebody. You can’t be successful without the help of other people so I collaborate with podcasts, blogs, and Youtubers to help promote my brand.

For example, I did a talk on the GeoBreeze podcast and discussed how people can get amazing flight deals using points. For this particular talk, we could have many high-quality leads.

Those leads would then turn into subscribers or casual visitors, and that’s when I start to provide value for my new audience. I push out reviews, updates, and deals on Points Panda every week, and these have been my bread and butter for acquiring new clients.

This is an example of a newsletter that we regularly send to our subscribers every week. We give them valuable information on how to make better decisions when it comes to redeeming their points.

How are you doing today and what does the future look like?

The pandemic was a big blow to Points Panda. Since most of our income streams relied so much on the travel industry, we had to adjust our business model temporarily.

But now that travel is starting to come back, we’ve been doing pretty well for the past few years. Points Panda is still in its infancy stage so I can’t say that it has reached where it should be.

However, we have about 1.5k followers on Facebook and 3k subscribers on Youtube. We just grow our socials organically so it’s a slow and steady race.

Our future goals would be to grow the team so that I don’t need to do the consultations myself. I’m hoping to achieve that within 2-3 years from now.

Through starting the business, have you learned anything particularly helpful or advantageous?

If there’s one thing that I’ve learned in the past 4-5 years is that you should always have a plan B. I wasn’t prepared when the pandemic hit the business and we were earning zero dollars with no cash inflow.

The only income streams that we had was from our Youtube videos and our credit card affiliate partners. Bottomline, always diversify your income streams. Everything is digital now so there are a lot of ways to do that.

What platform/tools do you use for your business?

We use a couple of tools in our business. We use Google Analytics and Webmaster Tools for monitoring traffic on our site, Canva for creating graphics, and SEMrush for keyword and competitor research.

What have been the most influential books, podcasts, or other resources?

Enjoy the Tropical MBA podcast that led me on my entrepreneurial journey. Some of my favorite books are Ask by Ryan Levesque and Built to Sell by John Warrillow. Anything by Ryan Deiss and the digital marketing team is fantastic training for your team as well.

Advice for other entrepreneurs who want to get started or are just starting out?

Be around other internet entrepreneurs which usually means leaving your hometown and going abroad. Not only will your cost of living be much lower, but you’ll also meet a lot of people who will be willing to hire you to work inside their internet businesses until you are ready to start your own.

Are you looking to hire for certain positions right now?

At the moment, I am looking to hire a few more writers for the website. I’m looking for a full-time writer to join the team but due to budget constraints, we are keeping the current team. At some point, we’d love to hire a face for our social media as I don’t understand Tiktok and the changes that are happening on Instagram and youtube.

Fortunately, we are slowly gaining traction on google for good keywords and rapidly growing our email list.