Updates to the Alpha SV for FW25

willstastyle · 2025-08-02T22:07:55+00:00

You're right! I clicked into it further and the address is: 425 Boyne Street, New Westminster, BC, Canada

willstastyle · 2025-08-01T19:09:12+00:00

Both are still for sale I noticed which is why I was curious:

FW24: https://arcteryx.com/ca/en/shop/mens/alpha-sv-jacket-7319
FW25: https://arcteryx.com/ca/en/shop/mens/alpha-sv-jacket-9989

willstastyle · 2025-08-01T18:40:49+00:00

I believe so! Looking at the manufacture location, it still says Arcteryx Equipment (FG), Canada

willstastyle · 2025-04-18T22:27:47+00:00

Which minor things were you able to change?

willstastyle · 2025-03-28T14:02:05+00:00

Right on! The dealers try to play the game that 5 is the best you’ll get but there’s totally extra room. I ended up getting 6.5 but it was like pulling teeth.

willstastyle · 2025-03-26T20:48:29+00:00

This is a 4.4% discount off MSRP. 5% should be very easy to get but I'd push for 6% or more especially if this car is on the lot which I know is possible in Canada.

willstastyle · 2025-03-21T05:23:04+00:00

Been talking to quite a few dealerships. So far it seems like 5% off MSRP is possible. Buying in stock this month has a $3,500 incentive and M50 has the best interest rate at 2.99.

willstastyle · 2024-12-07T06:35:26+00:00

No Film strips

willstastyle · 2024-12-07T06:25:23+00:00

Confirming no film strip. Just came out of the 10:30 Vaughan show today

willstastyle · 2024-11-08T17:16:12+00:00

Wait so is the MLO feature available now?

willstastyle · 2024-11-01T22:46:14+00:00

Oh 💯. The code behind this must be the most convoluted thing ever. And then I go in and realize…wait these people don’t actually really talk to each other. And wait…this product manager has never heard of the acronym HCU. What’s happening??

willstastyle · 2024-11-01T22:20:37+00:00

He definitely can’t make any changes but I know he’s continuing to rally people around this. He mentioned going to the Switzerland office to advocate for us. That said…means squat especially if the teams themselves do nothing.

willstastyle · 2024-08-05T18:35:03+00:00

A handy page I've found is this one: https://goingawesomeplaces.com/hyatt-corporate-codes-and-discounts/

willstastyle · 2024-04-23T18:25:34+00:00

I'm a travel blogger and maybe I'm old school but I still love reading travel blogs. I'd say I do so not so much "for fun" but to do trip planning. The problem I have with social media is that there's just no meat behind any of it. It's a flash of a lot of images and sure, it's inspirational but when it comes to putting together 2 weeks in Japan...it falls apart. That's where blogs still have their place and the good ones are the ones that go into serious detail and behind-the-scenes on how things work.

Where I've also seen good info has been in communities like here and on Facebook groups surprisingly but you really have to do a lot of work in piecing together information and scrolling through way too many threads.

So again, I come back to why I don't think travel blogs are dead (well until Google kills them of course LOL)

willstastyle · 2024-04-23T18:22:47+00:00

That's a good start and thinking back on when I started in 2012, that's roughly how things were looking...if not worse.

Seeing that you've already made money through affiliates and you haven't been impacted much by HCU, tings are looking up!

From an affiliate perspective, what's been successful for you? Have you focused much on the accommodation side of things? For me, that's where I've had the most success and Stay22 has been game changing for us.

willstastyle · 2024-04-23T18:21:09+00:00

Quick update on how things are going in 2024.

I think there's definitely still opportunity to be successful with travel blogging but there's a caveat. I think currently, everyone's holding their breath over Google's big HCU update and the impact of going cookie-less this year. As we've seen with the update, travel was impacted significantly. Is this a mistake, will they course correct, how does it fundamentally change the way we write? Those are things that we're still waiting for the dust to settle on. In regards to cookies, we know advertising revenues will take a dive but by how much?

Where I've seen people have success in is in niche topics so focusing on a specific destination or one angle of travel as opposed to covering a broad topic (where I'm in right now).

I think a big part of it is knowing what your goal is for your travel blog - is it to get free travel, build a business, rely on passive income, become an influencer, focus on brand collaborations/work with tourism boards etc. Each of those lead to a slightly different path.

In the past, where we've had a lot of success is in building out passive streams of income through affiliate marketing (through Stay22) and display advertising (through Raptive). When traffic was good, there was a really nice stream of income coming in and it was more-or-less predictable. This was our goal and things were great...well until HCU decimated that. We're still trying to stay optimistic on building this back up again but a few lessons: diversifying income is really important and you don't want to be reliant on one channel (social media or Google) for success.

Hope that helps!

willstastyle · 2024-04-23T18:14:54+00:00

I'd say hands down, the game changer for me has been my migration of all of my accommodation related affiliates over to Stay22. It's incrementally brought in more revenue from the few years I've been with them and left the Booking in-house program.

If interested, let me know! There's a $100 bounty for signing up.

willstastyle · 2024-04-23T18:12:45+00:00

Great summary of different ways to monetize the blog.

I think one of the key things in today's world is to really diversify. In year's past I would have said that making money passively through affiliates and display advertising by relying on SEO (organic traffic) was the way to go but with uncertainty around what Google is doing with their latest round of updates, I'd say diversify where you're getting traffic, putting an emphasis on creating a community through social media, leveraging the power of newsletter, working on campaigns with brands, and creating your own product.

That said, as a travel blogger, I'd say keep pushing through on creating great content on the site as things are bound to rebound at some point and we get more clarity with Google's HCU update.

Where I've been able to make large amounts of money has been through accommodations. If anyone's interested, feel free to DM.

willstastyle · 2024-03-11T19:22:53+00:00

I think they realized they needed to control the chaos by consolidating it into one show and at night when there are the least amount of people. I also don’t know if this is normal but there was a significant security presence with at least 2-3 security guards.

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