I dunno, I'd say major media outlets are raising paywalls because income from online advertising has failed to replace the salad days of traditional -- and importantly, classified -- advertising. That a new bottom line has been drawn doesn't necessarily mean the model has failed. I agree mainstream media has made some serious missteps but I wouldn't extrapolate that out to suggest online advertising is failing -- it's not.

Fuck advertisers? Why? Straightforward traditional advertising is transparent and clear to the the reader. It can also be a vital way of keeping a site free to readers. See that leaderboard? It's an ad. See that 300X250 block half way down the text? It's an ad. People know that, it's clear to them -- and, lol, it's probably why many of them don't click on it. Branding remains important.

No, I'd rather reserve the "fuck" for publishers who are non transparent with their readers, who feel native advertising, sponsored posts and completely non-disclosed advertorial trash are completely acceptable. Who feel there is nothing wrong with trying to hide ads in their content to the point readers don't realise they're ads. Whose entire business model is taking an ad and then working to write content around it to a sufficient degree it's not recognisable as an ad, and then have no disclosure anywhere on the website regarding it.

They can fuck right off :-)

Sorry, ended up kicking off with an essay.

I read through John's interesting post-mortem and you'll see that his second suggestion of what might actually work goes pretty close to describing what we do at Travelfish -- his first suggestion is also a good one I think, though I don't quite have the level of fitness required for that.

On why not a blog

When we started the site "travel blogging" wasn't so mainstream -- Travellerspoint had a thousand or so travel diaries and I'm sure there were a tonne of travellers on Blogger and whatnot, but they really weren't on my radar. I don't think I even read a blog till we started getting traffic from a couple of quality ones like Lauren & Todd's Ephemerratic  in the late 2000s. By then we'd been online 5-6 years, so it wasn't so much me not wanting to do that, as much as me not knowing about that. Also, back then, Wordpress (and other platforms) were a shadow of what they are today, so even the platform wasn't on my radar (which for better or worse, resulted in me coding the entire site myself).

What really resonates in John's piece is where he writes "... because consumers don't research 'places Tom has been' - they search for '[place] I want to go'" and I think this is absolutely the case. For me, destination aside, travel is about the reader -- not about the writer. This is why we work to give the reader the best information we're able to: so they can (hopefully) get more out of their travels.

On monetisation

I think it's very important to say upfront that when we started, I had absolutely no idea what I was doing.

When we started the site, we had no clear idea of how we were going to make money; the initial plan wrapped around some kind of vague concept of selling PDF travel guides, which we did do for a while down the track, but the initial monetisation was through Adsense. Back then CPM rates were better than what they are now, so 5,000 to 10,000 worth of daily impressions to Adsense was worthwhile. It took us a year or so to reach that kind of traffic - mostly organically though I did waste a nice chunk of change on Adwords for a while there. The downside of chaining yourself to a revenue stream reliant on traffic is that the business becomes very linear. All other things being equal, double your traffic and you'll double your income; lose 30% of your traffic as we did in 2013 and it works in the other direction too.

Journalists sometimes describe their job as "feeding the beast", especially in breaking news, where there is always something else that can be written on a topic. Running a website that relies on traffic growing is very similar and travel can be very granular, lending itself to much beast feeding. For example you could write individual pages on:

Thailand, or

Bangkok, or

Bangkok's districts, or

Things to see in Bangkok's historic district, or

Temples in Bangkok's historic districts, or

Wat Pho, or

Wat Pho at dawn, or

Wat Pho in the afternoon, or

Getting a massage in Wat Pho, or

How to get to Wat Pho

etc etc etc

Or you could just say "When you're in Thailand, go get a morning massage at Wat Pho in Bangkok."

If you're chasing pageviews, the former is the way to go and somewhere between the two extremes will be the sweet spot to grow pageviews, help your readers and maintain your sanity. 

If you decide to chase pageviews I think you need three things. First, you need to be able to write. Second you need to be knowledgeable on the topic. Third you have to be willing to write more or less nonstop for a few years. Oh, and you need to have an audience for whatever it is you are writing.

On doing it today

Would I start Travelfish as it stands today, from scratch? Sure, why not? But I'd need to be in my 20s, single (or better still dating an editor) and be based in a low-cost country, with no debts and be content travelling on a very low budget. There are plenty of people who know Southeast Asia better than me, who write better than me and have more money than I ever had. It's true that the scene was less crowded a decade ago, but much of what ranks today in Google is of debatable value to the traveller, so there is plenty of scope to provide superior material. 

What I wouldn't do is write it for a general travelling market (we started as writing only for backpackers, but the site's scope broadened over time). Instead I'd pick a niche. Be the go-to guide for cavers/climbers/surfers/yogis etc in Southeast Asia -- or elsewhere. This will drastically reduce your traffic, so forget about CPM ads being an important part of the business and instead look at accommodation bookings/activities/courses etc commissions. Yoga in particular is an interesting area in this regard.

Yeah it is better than nothing, seems driven solely out of commercial interests rather than any well being of the actual creatures, but need to start somewhere.

Yeah bit of a missed opportunity for a non-fluff approach to a concerning topic. I'm not convinced of the "Don't go" mantra though -- well for Angkor Wat anyway (the only one on the list I've been to). As mentioned in the Gringo Trails stuff, it often comes down to better visitor management -- Angkor Historical Park is a massive, massive site and there is plenty of things they could be doing to modify visitor patterns, but little is happening.

There's been a rash of these kind of pieces of late -- some lamenting the sorry state of travel blogging, others, like this one, the more traditional trade -- must be something in the water.

In this case the publication is both advertising supported and subscription based. The price of the latter appears to have been halved between the 1st and 3rd issue (unless the 1st ed commands a special price I guess - it's not clear). When I went to buy a copy, the $12 cover price transformed into GBP19.13 which is kinda steep rise to whack in shipping to Indonesia.

The advertising, well the example is given of Puma where real residents were photographed wearing Puma shoes -- it would be interesting to see how that was portrayed in the magazine. Was it clearly marked as an advert? When editors start talking about advertising saying it should "enhance, not disrupt, the reading experience" alarm bells of disclosure/sponsored content etc start ringing. 

I couldn't find anything on their site explaining editorial policies regarding comps and freebies (something that is very important to me personally) so between a hefty price tag, talk of working with advertisers to integrate their stuff seamlessly and no clearly announced editorial/ethical standpoints, while the talk may be good, I'm not sure about the walk. 

They face the same challenges everyone does in this field - and while the writing may be fabulous (impossible to tell from the website) - I'm not sure that their route is a sustainable one.

Still I enjoyed the piece in general - would be great to see more solutions suggested rather than just tearing down others.

As someone who is approached by freelance writers very regularly, I'd like to give some advice from the flip side of the coin, that may improve your hit rate. None of the following is new or revolutionary, but may be worth repeating. 

DISCOVERY

1) Read past work they've published to acquaint yourself with the style and voice of the publication. 

2) Find their contributor guidelines and read them. 

3) Keep any rules and policies in mind. 

4) Endeavour to get the correct email address for the correct person to contact. Can't find them? Call the publication and ask.

5) Don't waste people's time. Pitching the wrong piece to the wrong publication wastes everyone's time.

THE STORY

1) Have a really good story idea that is an ideal fit for the publication you are approaching.

THE PITCH

1) Must be perfect.

2) No typos.

3) Don't criticise the publication in your pitch.

4) Explain why you are the correct person to be writing the story.

5) Don't raise the subject of money in the pitch. (See Discovery).

6) If you're previously unpublished, this doesn't matter if your pitch is strong enough.

7) Don't send stories (especially photos) unsolicited.

8) Craft the pitch to the specific publication.

9) Keep it brief.

THE ANSWER

1) Don't expect every publication to answer you.

2) If no answer within a week, send a single reminder. If still nothing, let it go.

3) Answer their answer as promptly as possible. Address any questions as succinctly as you can.

4) Keep communication back and forth to a minimum.

THE PROCESS

1) Never miss a deadline. Never.

2) Don't send the invoice immediately after submitting the story. (See Discovery).

3) Be prepared for a reasonable number of revisions.

4) Give the publisher what they ask for. Nothing more, nothing less. (See Discovery). 

5) Don't ask stupid questions. (See Discovery).

6) Submit clean copy. 

GENERAL MATH

1) Be prepared to pitch multiple stories out of a single trip to make the whole shebang financially viable (for you and the publisher).

2) If you get a "yes" back but the offered money is too low, decline or negotiate. Don't write for less than whatever you feel is fair.

3) Marry wisely.

MORE GIGS

1) After having a story accepted, send a second pitch to the same publisher within a week or two.

SUMMARY

As a publisher, if I had to boil all the above down to three things, they would be:

1) Please give me what we agreed on.

2) Please don't waste my time.

3) Please don't miss your deadline.

Manage to do that, then, assuming the finances work for us both and you have more ideas that appeal, we'd work together again and again and again.

Questions about any of the above? Let me know!

Just to expand on my one liner above, I just loved this piece.

While I've never done a press trip myself, the author paints a picture like one drawn straight from my own imagination. In this way it reminded me a lot of this piece, Backpackers in Paradise by Sarah Menkedick I read a while back that also shows the farcical nature of this kind of "managed discovery". 

I also loved him describing what he was doing as "tourism writing" rather than travel writing. This in turn reminded me of Phil Lees on "food marketers" -- a term he used to describe the food bloggers, saying:

"Like most marketing, food marketing is about an almost relentless positivity, happy words bleeding into the soft-focus cake shots; never eating a bad meal." 

I've often used "travel marketers" for travel bloggers of the same ilk. Tourism Writer is another handy phrase. 

But what me thumping the desk yelling yes! Yes! YES! (well not really, but I strongly identified with it) was where the author talked about the feedback from the other punters at the end of the fam trip. Many of the complaints -- the smokey engine, the lack of recycling, the lack of sustainability, the lack of lifejackets are all, for better of worse, facets which make Guyana what it is.

Yet here were a bunch of prima donnas exclaiming that Guyana just isn't acceptable in its current state. Changes need to be made!

Sweet Jesus.

The Shirky piece is excellent. I read it this morning and tweeted suggesting it was essential reading for anyone working for a traditional guidebook publisher. The parallels are obvious and, as a guidebook author later pointed out, as many guidebook writers "double up" during their travels by writing travel freelance for newspapers, this becomes a double whammy.

But, this isn't exactly out of the blue. Newspapers -- and guidebook publishers -- have by and large been staggeringly inept at managing what has (through their ineptitude) become an inevitable transition. It was these owners and management teams who, unwilling to cannibalise their own bottom lines through inaction, allowed the rise of nascent classified sites like eBay, various real estate websites, coupon sites, and, on the travel side, TripAdvisor and so on. Not willing to cannibalise yourself? Someone else will come along and do it.

Yes it is a tragedy, but there is a silver lining for the most able of those who'll most likely not have a job for all that much longer. The internet removes almost all the barriers to entry and the time has never been better for independent writers, researchers and journalists, who really know their stuff, to make their mark.

Another great piece by Shirky on the state on denial is here. 

Perhaps if TBEX was actually interested in appearing to be even handed they could add a session. One featuring Rep. Merilyn Gomez Wells. Wells kicked off the legislation to ban rubbish like this in Mexico. More info here https://www.thedodo.com/mexico-moves-to-ban-making-mon-618573378.html (link via Matt's original story)

First, thanks for all the really interesting replies :-)

It was the current crisis in Thailand that caused me to ask the question in the first place, as we're being asked regularly "Should I go to Thailand" and while it is a very simple question, the answer is often far less so.

My general rule of thumb is, as Ron mentioned above, "would I send my family there". It isn't "would I go there" as I'm more familiar with travelling in a heightened security environment and what I'd consider to be tolerable, others perhaps may not.

We had a situation at Travelfish a few years ago, where I had written about an activity on some of the Thai islands in a particularly offhand way, saying something along the lines of "it's really stupid, but people still get a kick out of it". It was a quip that I barely thought about when I wrote it.

A year or so later, a young British traveller, encouraged by what I wrote, went and did the activity, ended up in critical condition and had to be airfreighted back to the UK. How do I know this? His father wrote to me, while his son was still comatose, and suggested I might want to think a bit more carefully about what I wrote. He was civil and acknowledged his son's idiotic behaviour, but I've wondered had he been more litigious, could it have been a legal issue for us. 

Needless to say I rewrote the section concerned to make clearer the dangers involved -- but I didn't tell people not to do it.

I can only recall one occasion when we told people not to go somewhere, and that was Bangkok, but during a previous chapter of their never-ending death of a thousand blunt blades saga. There was fighting in the street, buses on fire etc etc and in areas very close to where tourists frequented, so we said if you can skip it, skip it. On the other hand, the far south of the country, where over 5,000 people have been killed now in the last decade or so, we've not said don't go - but we do say, do your research.

All that said, if I felt somewhere was truly unsafe, I wouldn't hesitate to say "Don't go there". Sure I'd explain why I felt that way, and would obviously point out the final decision is their own, but if they're asking me for advice and I think somewhere isn't safe to go, I'll tell them so.

Thanks Sonja, from a travellers' perspective, yes I agree, though I was thinking more from a writer's perspective -- when -- and why (if ever) -- should a writer tell their readers not to go somewhere?

As a travel information provider, be it journalist, blogger, dude at the laundromat, at what point do you advise people not to go?

Is it when crime escalates off the scale? (say certain small parts of Mexico)

Is it when there is a coup? (Thailand, Egypt)

Is it when their travel insurance is no longer valid? (Egypt, Syria)

Is it when the place just ain't worth seeing anymore? (anywhere in Gringotrails ;-) )

Is it when you're liable to be being sued?

Which then leads to, is there anywhere people really shouldn't go? And if not why are you telling them not to go there?

Yeah, ummm, ahhh no. More or less what Matthew said.

Yes travel can be transformative. No it isn't for everyone. Some people should just stay at home. In some cases because that is what they want to do, but in other cases because they're just better off staying at home -- both for them and foreign cultures. Travel often works just as well to reinforce prejudices as to break them down.

You want to travel, go get a job, save up and do it. Earn it.

Good list. I like this in the comments in a reply to a question asking why they all cover "the same stuff":

"Because most 'travel journalists' would prefer an exotic junket or a paid trip to explore somewhere they wouldn't go if they had to pay for it... The location then provides the story and the sexiness of the article; traipsing around for example a small city in Poland to find and research its highlights is hard work and not glamorous enough to fit in many journalists view of themselves or travel writing."

While Smith isn't talking specifically about travel, I do seem to meet a lot more dickheads than I used to -- maybe it's our fault.

Could we have dolphins?

R&K does sponsored content - they call it "working with brands".

To his three points:

Readability: Agree, but is using this decade's Blogger (Medium) a great example? Yes it's easy to read. Is it self sustaining? Umm

Depth: Hmm I'm happy to push back against long reads. I want good reads - I don't care if they're long or short. From a publisher's POV long form also freakin expensive!

Monetization: Meh. It depends on the content niche. Some will float as arthouse mags still kind of do, many won't. The vast majority of readers (it seems) will not pay -- regardless of the quality. For many, the supply of "good enough and free" on sale around the corner is a killer.

I think magazines are generally doing an appalling job of porting their mags to devices -- as the author suggests. It's counter intuitive, the user experience is ghastly etc etc - but the mag without all those ads (becoming Medium) would come with a very hefty pricetag -- this isn't something he really addresses -- of course people prefer stuff without the ads -- I'm just not convinced people are really willing to pay the costs that come with that.

Shall we make a list of all the reasons why this is just freakin awful?

My off the cuff definition is "Has my Mum heard of you?" That works well unless your mother is a travel blogger.

And that's the problem. Tim arguably is notable within the online travel writing and travel blogging field - I mean anyone interested in either of those fields is likely to have heard of him. Outside those fields, perhaps not so much.

To get away from Tim and take different people, say Tony Wheeler (founder of Lonely Planet) and Bill Dalton (founder of Moon Publications). These two did pretty much the exact same thing (publish guidebooks), at the same time (early 1970s), concentrating on the same region (Southeast Asia), yet one was considerably more successful (financially) than the other. 

Now to my mind, (and certainly to my Mum's) Tony Wheeler is notable, Bill Dalton is not. But within **travel guide writing** they both are - these were the trail blazers. Not surprisingly Tony has a brief Wiki entry, Bill has none (though interestingly his groundbreaking Indonesia Handbook does).

Perhaps it is easier for a book to be notable than a person - not sure how I feel about that either!

Hi Mike,

Here are a few spots to start your dolphin re-education ;-)

Humane Society

"The public display industry captures many species of marine mammals from the wild, especially whales and dolphins. The Humane Society of the United States believes that these animals should not be taken from the wild simply to entertain and amuse people, for a number of reasons." read more

Oceanic Preservation Society

"Dolphin and orca life expectancies are cut drastically in captivity. Dolphins will live for upwards of 40 and 50 years in the wild, but in parks their survival rates are staggeringly low. At SeaWorld San Antonio, the average lifespan of a captive-bred dolphin is four years2 and at SeaWorld San Diego, 24 dolphins perished from pneumonia in 25 years." read more

Whale & Dolphin Conservation

"Death rates of bottlenose dolphins increase by six times during and immediately after capture from the wild" read more

Wiki

A very general overview.

There's also the link I pointed to back up the thread with videos of the kind of stuff that goes on (it's in Bali, not Mexico), plus the links in Matt's original post. 

Going on the non-reaction of both TBEX and PTBA I wonder just how appalling the animal activity needs to be before they believe it "crosses a line" as Rick said in one of his comments. Maybe they need to BBQ the animals at the end of the session.

Cheers!

Stuart

I think there's two facets to this drama. First, restaurants using legal means to silence critics and, secondly the judge's impression of how search works.

On restaurants suing over crap reviews, there is plenty of precedent in traditional press -- this one for eg got ink by the bucketload when it happened. Yes it is totally and utterly idiotic, but in this regard the story isn't new.

The being fined over a Google placement, well that is more bizarre -- unless there was clear evidence of the author gaming the results for a high result, I'd have thought the lion's share of the responsibility for prominent placement would have rested with Google. 

If the review is libel -- I dunno, if she had said the owner eats live chickens in the lobby or something, well sure, take it to the courts, but a review is just a matter of opinion. Did she allow the restauranteur the right of response?

I can't think which is more bone-headed. That anyone thinks dolphin riding is somehow ok, or the replies by the TBEX guy defending them listing dolphin riding. Some people are into butchering dolphins -- would they have drawn the line there? There's a property here in Bali that does it as well -- the videos at the end kind of indicate just how dense some people are.

Thanks Michael,

Lonely Planet had a greater opportunity than anyone else to "own" independent travel on the internet and they totally missed it. I wouldn't blame the internet -- it was the web that handed them an obvious way to transition from their printed business -- blame their management, they completely blew it.

Reaches for crystal ball...

...drops crystal ball on floor shattering it.

I'm not sure what the future will bring. I do think "travelling" is changing -- at least in Southeast Asia. People seem to have more disposable income and many more younger people are taking shorter, more frequent trips as opposed to one-off long haul trips. Far more Southeast Asians are travelling regionally than ever before. Low Cost Carriers like AirAsia have redrawn travel routes. These new shorter trips lend themselves more to reservations in advance and more detailed planning -- making obvious revenue possibilities for publishers.

As I mentioned above, I wouldn't be surprised to see more specialised websites surface -- Thailand for yogis, Vietnam for caving, Indonesia for divers etc. Take James Clark's Asia cafe listings - it will probably never cover the cost of a beach house, but if he expanded that to cover SEA it would make for a popular ebook. The tighter the niche the easier it is to do it better than everyone else. At the moment, just about everyone is concentrating on the exact same stuff.

Technologically, I guess location and location aware devices will play more and more of a part in people's experiences.

All that said, in my opinion, the single main point of failure is that anything electronic -- be it a phone, laptop or Kindle -- lacks the usability of a paper guidebook. Nothing comes close. The information may be better online (though that is very often not the case) but usability wise, online & apps etc remain awful to use when you're crammed in a bus or standing in a wet market. 

When some smart cookie comes up with a way of mirroring the usability of books into computing devices, that will really shake things up.

Cheers

Stuart

(Reposted this as the original went awol when posted)

Hi Greg,

We were lucky enough to spend a few days with the founder of another far more successful travel business last month and we talked at length regarding quality content, "content marketing", popups and so on. We were in agreement that popups are pretty awful.

Neither of us use them, instead our approach it to write the best, most useful content we can and have organic search as one of the main ways of surfacing it to the reader. But rather than attack them with a pop-up trying to forcefeed them our newsletter, we give them what they're looking for.

Some may stay, but many -- the majority in fact -- will bounce off after they've digested what we've produced.

Next time they search, hopefully they'll find us again and repeat the above process.

And again.

And again.

And again. Hey I remember this site.

Eventually, once they've found we've continually answered their queries, perhaps they'll start at our site rather than Google/Bing etc.

Then maybe we'll make it into their bookmarks.

At some stage, perhaps after they've used the site 5, 10, 15 times, they might notice the box for a newsletter sign-up and think, maybe that's worth signing up for? Look, there's a link to previous issues, so they take a look.

Maybe next time.

Then they sign up.

Of course keeping them as newsletter recipients is an entirely separate process, but I'd rather have 10 on my list that decided to sign up in the above manner, than 1,000 who I force fed a popup to.

Why?

Because they decided, totally at their own speed, and on the basis of what we already gave them, that they wanted to be on our mailing list. And you know what? They read the newsletter.

Getting subscribers is easy. Yes put a popup on your website. Getting readers is harder and I believe the manner outlined above is a better approach to it. But it will undeniably, take far longer to grow your list.

I compare newsletter popups to websites that offer some publication -- say en ebook or industry report for free -- but you have to signup for their mailing list to get it. To me this is totally wrong headed. I don't want to get their newsletter -- I want their ebook/report whatever. I have no intention of reading their newsletter. Why do they want to send me something I don't want in order to give me something I do want? I guess it bulks out their mailing list so they can crow X,000 subscribers, but really, what is that worth if the bulk of the recipients signed up to get something other than the newsletter?

But, as with everything, Your Mileage May Vary!

Cheers

Stuart

1) What will you be doing on the day of TF's anniversary to celebrate?

Picking up my broken laptop hopefully, then perhaps a day at the beach.

2) It's pretty obvious your wife is a major part of TF so what gift will you be getting for her to thank her for 10 years of hard TF work? :)

That depends on what she is giving me.

3) You seem to have lots of laptop break downs (sore subject I know - have a beer/sprite) what percentage of caving in are you at to finally switching to windows and rejoice at no more break downs?

Yes, that's funny.

4)  How often do you shave? 

The day before I'm passing through any immigration checkpoint.

5) How often do you exercise and what do you do to keep fit?

Typing is exercise right? If so I exercise daily. I cycle and pretend to be an able surfer on occasion.

6) When and where is your next vacation out of SEA and downunder? (this might work with Q#2)

I'm keen on Iran at the end of the year, but it's looking more likely we're heading to Oz. Otherwise, very rarely.

7) Burger King or McDonalds? 

KFC

8) razor or electric?

Razor 

9) What do you want for your birthday?

My two front teeth. (They were smashed out when I was living in London)

10) Most embarrassing thing to happen on your travels?

Trying to bargain down a meal I had already eaten, when very drunk, then walking out of the restaurant and falling on my face. Watch out for the Hercules Wine in Udomxai, Laos..

11) Most embarrassing thing you've ever done to screw up TF? 

I accidentally deleted the entire site a year or so ago. Took me days to recover it.

People who have never met me but follow me on Twitter are often surprised when my age comes up. They assume I'm far younger, I think mostly because I talk so much crap on Twitter. I was invited to speak at a co-working thing once and the organiser (who had made a big deal about having me along) almost fell over when I arrived, was visibly uncomfortable and barely said a word to me for the entire session -- I'm positive this was because they expected me to be 23 -- not a couple of decades older. It was a peculiar few hours! But, I think that experience said far more about them than me. As others have commented, age is just a number -- if nothing else we walk a bit slower and so have more time to take in the view.

Before anything else, great stuff. I'd wish I'd seen it in my 20s when I was busy doing all the stuff I shouldn't have.

A bit cheeky, but two questions:

1) With the benefit of hindsight, how could have Haad Rin on Ko Pha Ngan developed? I can't think of a single beach in Southeast Asia that has managed itself/been well managed well once it became more popular. Beaches are often particularly fragile areas, so there's certainly scope for improvement in approach, but I just can't see how a community focussed approach could have worked there. Be interested to hear your thoughts.

2) When will the film be available for the greater public online? Having just watched it I'm psyched to write about it on Travelfish.org, but where/when/how will people be able to see it?

Cheers