Today Marks Seven Years of The Points Guy

Seven years ago today, I hit publish on my first-ever blog post, having no idea what was about to be created would change my life (and that of many others) forever.

At the time, I started the site as a way to generate business for my side gig of booking award tickets. With the award booking, I would charge clients $50 for consulting — to help them use points and miles for epic getaways. By day, I was working in human resources full time at Morgan Stanley. After work, I would head home and book clients' trips; it started out as a simple hobby. I really never thought I'd leave my career for a blog designed to make some extra cash. But here we are in 2017, and we have a buzzing new office in Manhattan's Flatiron District, and we recently crossed the four million monthly unique visitors mark.

Over the past seven years, we've:

• Logged more than 186 million visits and 313 million pageviews from more than 75 million unique visitors since the site's inception
• Surprised readers with more than $99,000 and 2.9 million points and miles in giveaways
• Built our team from one employee to 16 full-time TPG staffers and five summer interns (and hiring more)
• Published 12,567 blog posts as of today
• Watched our readers spend more than 363,443,160 minutes on the site
• Grew our Facebook page following to more than 1.5 million likes

For us, the growing doesn't stop there — 2017 is the year of the upgrade. Back in January, we launched a brand new and easy-to-use website, and we moved into our new office. We're continuing to work toward innovating the brand and the site as a whole, improving the reader experience and the content every day. This summer, you'll see a review on the site every day — whether that's a flight review, hotel, app, lounge, credit card or much more. Plus, we'll continue to cover all of the topics you've come to trust TPG to cover, from deal alerts to news reports to loyalty-program guides to deep dives into how to maximize points and miles.

To celebrate these fantastic seven years, we're giving away seven prizes to readers — seven of my favorite things. I'll be giving each of these out in a Facebook live today at 5:30pm ET, so be sure to tune in for your chance to win something. Plus, there's always room for some surprise giveaways, too. Here are our seven giveaways:

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1. Two round-trip first-class tickets to Hawaii using 80,000 Alaska miles each (160,000 miles total)
2. A dinner party for seven — you, me and five of your friends to be scheduled when I'm in a city near you
3. $250 AWAY luggage gift certificate and a carry-on filled with TPG swag and socks
4. Delta Silver Medallion status or a Delta Sky Club membership for 12 months
5. $700 in Hotel Tonight credits
6. Seven Global Entry/TSA PreCheck memberships for you and six of your family/friends (pending approval)
7. An office visit and free points consultation (or via Skype if you don't have plans to be in NYC)

I want to sincerely thank you, our readers, for supporting me for the past seven years. I know I won't always get it right, but I do promise that I'll always listen. So please, send your feedback to info@thepointsguy.com. Also be sure to follow us on social media — Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat. And, if you have any tips in the points and miles world, email tips@thepointsguy.com. Here's to seven (and many more) years!