Hi Stuart
Thanks for the in depth answers.
It goes without saying to offer congratulations to you on the 10th anniversary of travelfish! I still remember hounding you for PDF's to Thailand back in the day ;) You did then what you do now which is conduct a very honest, hard working business model which delivers what it promises. It's great to see such a thing pay off for you.
Looking forward to Travelfish in 2024 on iPaper-powered by Android ;)
Enjoy the squid!
Dave
Hi Stuart,
As I subscribe to your newsletter and saw Sam's request to spice things up on this "interrogation" here are some more relaxed Questions?
1) What will you be doing on the day of TF's anniversary to celebrate?
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? :)
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?
4) How often do you shave?
5) How often do you exercise and what do you do to keep fit?
6) When and where is your next vacation out of SEA and downunder? (this might work with Q#2)
7) Burger King or McDonalds?
8) razor or electric?
9) What do you want for your birthday?
10) Most embarrassing thing to happen on your travels?
11) Most embarrassing thing you've ever done to screw up TF?
Blame TF newsletter for the above :) Enjoy the celebrations in casa del fish!
I read through this a few weeks back when Tim tweeted about it.
I'm a big Wikipedia supporter. No system is perfect. But given the nature of Wikipedia it's maintained very well.
There was a big thing back about 4 years ago where people were trying to get wiki juice from google and having pages built up. Even two months ago I had a "travel blogger" email me and ask to help build their page. It's stuff like this that wikipedia is working hard to stomp out. And, rightfully so.
The big warnings on Tim's edit page were that he hired someone to edit his page. There were numerous edits by wiki contributors who have no edits elsewhere. And as Stuart mentioned the pay to play awards.
I honestly think if Tim's page just had links showing he's published books and won writing awards (non-pay to play etc) then nowt would have happened. On wiki though if you start ticking the editors off then you are as good as fried.
I certainly wish Tim the best as he seems a nice chap. Give it a year and his page will probably appear again. I've just seen stuff like this happen in other genres too so it's not just "Travel writing".
The opposite side of the scale is what if every "Pro travel blogger" felt they deserved to have a wikipage for being an "Author" etc. Wiki would be in a big mess. Let alone the redundant argument over blogger vs writer.
If some bright spark wanted to there might be cause for a "travel writers directory" out there. travelwriters.com or the like where for a minimum of say $5 you can get listed. The $5 would be for maintenance of the list etc as for sure it's not going to earn $ through advertising due to the travel bubble it would be geared towards. Might help with writers getting work too. I'd add 2 cents and say it would need to be a public directory and not a (link buying) secretive society too. A wiki of travel writers. If the subject really needs recognition by such a method.
As a follow-up.
Stuart,
What do you think travel publications could do to make things better?
As a producer/publisher of ebooks at Travelfish what standards do most people fail at when creating ebooks in the travel genre. And, what ones have you come across that have been good?
Zero.
I bought someone a birthday gift of Nat-Geo magazines once. The magazines all disappeared but they kept the gift that came with the subscription ...
Not read a travel blog in over 2 years.
Not seen much new in terms of travel content that's been interesting over the past few years. Travel journals have turned to sponsored splogs and once you read one you tend to have closure with that person.
Some of the ones I will browse are the ones on places like Travellerspoint by regular people doing regular or even (more interestingly) irregular journeys. That's when interest picks up again. The key here are that these are regular people writing about themselves or the places they are discovering in the real world. Warts and all.
Road Junky used to do this but have fallen away into something else now.
Interestingly, the BBC are shooting out a long-form travelesque article one a week these days which can be a good read.
There's no more fun in reading blogs these days! Hopefully that will change in the future. But for now it's subscriptions zero with a peppered dash of random good reads!
One of the biggest things that stops me from "pay" subscribing to "travelogue" stuff is the diverse content that's out there.
It's similar to buying a print magazine for just one story back in the day when they were "affordable". You'd take a read at the newsstand, like an article and buy it for that alone - and hopefully some others inside too.
Take the latest on Compass Cultura. One story appealed to me but the others didn't. There are several genres within travel I like and there are plenty I don't like.
A subscription that covers all, to me, is not worth the $$. One story I like plus 10 I don't wastes my precious "digital time" unlike the old paper format.
Hopefully as more people try to create a good subscription model more travel content genres will appear allowing for a greater reach.
One thing I've not come across yet that's well worth exploring is buying out defunct digital magazine content to help swell the reserves of a new source. Likewise buying up quality "free display" articles. The more sources a new subscription model has the more likely they are to garner new subscribers. So instead of random content every month. One could subscribe to the overall content provider and be able to pick the genre list you like and ignore the rest. Of course this method is dependent on have a large archive. Hence the idea of buying out defunct digital magazine content or buying up quality blog/online articles.
One last point. I've also yet to come across a website that displays large amounts of digital travelogue or long-form content well. From parallax scrolling to Pintrest style thumbnails I find it a pain to even browse most of them. Honestly speaking KISS works a lot better.
I'm seeing more and more paywalls around with content I would like to see. My biggest obstacle is "internet laziness" when buying things online.
I really want it as simple as possible. Half the reason I ever signed up to Outbounding was that it just took a quick twitter login to do so. Otherwise, I might not have. And Outbounding is free!!
So yes, the idea of having a Tinypass account already is nice. But how many people realistically have one? And how many people have even heard of them? I'm talking joe public here.
I know I'm in the minority here but I recently did a survey on my own site asking what payment method would people most likely use. I really honestly thought PayPal would top the ranks. Not a single person preferred that option. At the end of the day the plain Credit Card won.
As much as I don't like PayPal I do use it and find it secure for subscriptions. It's really easy to cancel subscriptions with them without the hassle of contact a CC company etc. Again, I do seem to be in the minority here.
My ideal paid subscription form is email followed by a PayPal logo. That's it no more. I'm in.
Even Google wallet can't seem to get over that well outside the "industry".
If a subscription to a site requires two accounts, one for the site and one for TinyPass I'm really unlikely to subscribe.
The only way I would is with serious incentives. Firstly to subscribe to the originating site itself eg travelfish as a member. As a free member I get a free guidebook, app or something nice etc. Then when I'm a free member I would need an incentive to become a paid member and get access to whatever is on offer that I need or want. I would then subscribe via the tinypass option ...
To be honest I'd really, really need to want something badly to jump that many hoops.
As opposed to "want to be a member, get this that and this, enter email subscribe with PayPal, credit card or Amazon payments.
I know Stuart is a smart chappy and probably has a lot better things to entice people into being a member than what I listed above. However I have yet to see a paywall that jumped out at me as being "easy".
If one can overcome that. Then it's a major bonus on the road to paid subscriptions.
This coming from someone who saw the awful bookseller paywall yesterday and ran a mile :)
One day I read a blog post about a girl traveling through China that I subscribed too. The post was great. Really refreshing. She was suddenly doing all these great things and it was showing in her writing as it was flowing so well.
At the bottom of the post "this is a sponsored post by blah blah"
Yep, she'd not written it at all. I unsubscribed soon after. A) the sponsored post was better than her usual stuff B) She never told me up front this was sponsored C) She broke my trust as a reader.
I'm surprised the TBEX type clans haven't come on here rambling their mantra's about "We have a right to earn money!" or my personal unsubscribe pet hate "But my readers love me and want to support me"
All that said I'm not against Sponsored/Advertorial content. I am 100% all for telling readers about it upfront. And by up front I mean wayyyyy up front. Few due.
I've only ever seen Search Engine Land and Mashable (i think) handle sponsored stuff well(ish). They put "Sponsored post" in the post title text. Fancy that! Being up front about it.
End result: I don't unsubscribe. I don't feel trust is broken. I understand they are trying to make a buck. Ah heck I might even pay to subscribe just to get rid of the sponsored posts. Geez there's a novel idea - break out the paywall ideas on that one.
Sadly I don't see that happening with average bloggers. Pam's noble point about a Code of Ethics has been talked about for years. I don't see it happening in main stream travel writing. There's too little money in it to begin with to tempt people away from making an easy buck with a quick BS post about a "cheap holiday in croatia"
Thanks for the feedback.
Yes most of these awards are only really relevant to others within the same industry. But, like it or not the word "award" also plays well to the general public. It gives credibility to a person. Even the very backwards compatible blogger type voting contents which are so easily gamed generate a little badge that says "this person won something".
We all know they don't mean much. But still... We watch the Oscars.
Anyway I'm off track.
I still find it rather deflating that both the photography press (World Press Photo ) and travel writing industries all have internationally open contests or awards. In the case of the latter, many many awards. Yet travel journalism is a closed door depending on your nationality.
One of the reasons I like Word Press Photo is to see culturally different perspectives on international events and cultures.
I'd like to see the same with travel journalism.
I read that post too. I get the whole travel blogger trying to break into mainstream. Personally I think it's happening the other way round. Travel Journalists are merging with bloggers by virtue that a lot of people tell them they need a web presence. And, that's probably correct.
So yes perhaps it is that many of these Travel Journalist awards/competitions are indeed very old school.
That said, as I mentioned about to Stuart if World Press Photo and various travel writer awards can be open to all nationalities then why not travel journalism?
In that respect it would be interesting to get feedback from NATJA and others.
5. I am an international journalist, publication, or CVB/DMO. Can I submit to the awards competition?
Yes, international submissions are welcome. Please keep in mind that stories and marketing material must be written in English in order for the content to be judged properly.
17. For publications outside of the United States, you may enter your articles under Domestic (Newspaper) if distributed locally in your country, Domestic (Magazine) if distributed locally in your country, International (Newspaper) if distributed outside your country, or International (Magazine) if distributed outside your country.
Your earlier point about print seems to ring true here too :)
There's a good discussion on Outbounding about sponsored posts http://outbounding.org/articles/view/it-s-official-readers-don-t-like-sponsored-posts Might be worth a look.
Personally I'd prefer a paywall or giant ads as a way to monetize than see non-disclosed (or not well disclosed) sponsored blurb.
I used to be a fan of NG until I discovered what goes on behind the scenes. Something that slowly leaks out to public eg the scandal over tuna fishing and another water born topic all in the name of feature article.
There's no doubt their content is epic. And the society has done a lot to shape the world of travel all be it by proxy or evolution of the organisation. The TV, magazine, politics and money is different story altogether and one in which the society really needs to reel in if it's not too late already.
Can Atlas Obscura become the digital NG? Are they aware NG is already digital? The magazines are even digitised and online now. I'm AO know this and don't want to wait 100+ years to even remotely catch up.
As Mentioned by Ellen I think AO's best option is to build it's own digital brand as being user story based with facts following. The real issue with that system is the good old travel blogger sponsored post issue. Some of the content is seriously expensive to source. Inevitably people succumb to getting what they can.
If AO can slowly build a following and get some mainstream recognition while avoiding financial issues then there's a sure fire market there as the NG "brand" moves into cafes, clothing and dare I say travel guides ...
P.S. would be great if Atlas Obscura commented on this thread! Would show they really are different :)
"saves on a lot of jetfuel."
And Dolphin / travel blogger scandals :)
There are a few travel conferences online (video) I tried watching one once and nearly nodded off. The best I could do was balk when I saw one of the speakers say the opposite of what I knew they were doing in person.
Yea, networking seems to be the only advantage unless you really are a complete newbie and need a jump start as opposed to brain wash or recruitment spree to join some org for support.
A lot of this would depend on your area. There might be some value in agencies meeting up. But again most of it goes back to networking and discovery of new tech that can help.
Now working. Cheers!
Learn from the mistakes of others ... Travellllllll give or take an L.
Sadly they gobbled up their own content rather than leave it for others to learn from so it's hard to see what they did a few years ago but there was a stagnant jobs board there too.
I'd like to see a subdivision of categories for topics. Eg posts to do with countries (country name), It can get over bearing but at the moment content seems to get lost in the OB shuffle.
Likewise the unpopular choice of no sponsored content in user submissions.
Share buttons really need to be easier to find. Top and bottom.
Agreed with images. It's a discussion platform. If things start looking like Pintrest then ...
The comment box needs one of those stretchy things in the cover to click and drag to make it bigger!!!
Just my 2cents.
One of the biggest factors here for many years is the fact that many people simply don't know what sponsored content is or turn a denial blind eye to it eg Pro Travel Bloggers. This has been said many times as "it's not sponsored it's a partnership" etc. All silly stuff really but people still deny it's "sponsored".
Case in point: I read an elder travel blogger moan on about how they never sell text links or take sponsored posts. Yet when you opened their blog the first post was a damn hotel review where they disclaimed they stayed for free?! Meanwhile on the home page were three text links?! This same person denies anything is sponsored!!!
Whether it's terminology, denial or dementia it shows that Bloggers cannot police themselves. I should also note Google really is not that great at policing the travel blogosphere either. At least not in the past 6 or so years since it became popular.
Quite frankly, if someone paid you in anyway to write something that promotes something of theirs - it's sponsored.
You can break it down into, junkets, hotel stays, free products, destination promotion or text links. It's all sponsored.
This crap about disclaiming is about as useful as disclaiming what font you wrote in. Most who do disclaim do so at the bottom of the post once you've read it. Quite honestly it needs to be up top before the article. Yep it doesn't look nice, but at least it's honest.
Regarding Stuarts point on hotel affiliates or others like Amazon etc. No I don't think this is the same as sponsored posts. This is ones own initiative to make a "sale". Hotel affiliates or Amazon etc don't make a dime unless the end user books/buys. With SEO text links no one cares about direct sales they care about search placings on Google. See Tnooz artilce here on Expedias whoopsie. They want SEO. More rankings mean more direct bookings for them.
Any blogger creating this type of post will not register this as sponsored. It's a partnership or they got a line saying "discuss a package or how you wanted to compensated"
Compensated vs Sponsored? Is there a difference? Nope.
Regarding how Outbounding prevents sponsored stuff appearing. The only real way is for an admin to read every post. Time consuming. The other as I think Stuart mentioned is a "flag as spam/sponsored" button which everyone can use and the admin can moderate - this might work a little better.
Yep, this is a common type of email sent out. Not just for hotels either. But also with bad spellings too. I often get them from Eastern Europe and India yet with USA mailing addresses. Some spelling is so incredibly bad I'm often shocked a big company would pay to have it sent with out without proof reading it first.
I can only imagine the company hired an SEO company to help them, either genuinely or not so, and the SEO company outsourced the work to a cheaper company to do the main work.
For Nepal "The Living Goddess: A Journey into the Heart of Kathmandu
By Isabella Tree"
Or, my website :)
I'll add in Shantaram: by Gregory David Roberts for India.
Yes, it's true about other realms of travel and sponsored content. I took the headline and discussion to mean just blogs and travel websites. My mistake.
That said, I rarely see good disclosures on travel blogs. Granted I stopped reading them 2 years ago but the occasional one does fly up on twitter etc.
Regarding traditional press and junkets. Yes, I fully agree. It's not just travel either. The tech world is full of this too. Perhaps there is no hope for pure content to outflank sponsored content in terms of volume? Perhaps this is dead horse that's been flogged too many times already?
I wrote in another outbounding post about National Geographic TV recently getting caught out again with "paying to get the story". Maybe at the end of the day this is just the world we are living in. I know most readers don't seem to care. It's just a question of ethics for me.
From travel blog to uncovering Nat G TV I lose a little hope with every read with something that throws up a financial incentive that overrides the morality and ethics behind it all.
I still stand by affiliate links though. No one is paying to have them placed in content. I've never been approached by an affiliate seller with "free content for my website" either. As opposed to SEO stuff. If you go down the no affiliate route then what about adsense, Chitika or even SEO plugins? All designed to turn a buck but without payment being made.
I agree. Yet I've never seen a comment from a reader on a website saying they hated the article because it was sponsored. I've seen blogs post sponsored stuff, the really bad "hotels in Spain" stuff, and still get oodles of comments about how great the post was. Sure they could be fake comments or network comments but nothing negative about sponsored content.
Maybe it's not so much that readers don't care. But more about readers aren't aware - disclaimer or not.
Again personally speaking if I don't see a disclaimer top and front but see one at the bottom only after reading it then they've lost a reader.
Judging from the lack of interest in this post I'm not sure it's an "issue" for many people.
I'm not a lover of "Visit the Inner Brazilian Jungle with Low Pro" but I can still see something like that working. If it's done correctly it could even be useful.
Sadly I don't see many big companies interested in this sort of thing. I guess they prefer a greater reach with mainstream advertising.
That said, I remember a traveler years ago being sponsored by a company for some equipment. I trusted his feelings on it and bought the same. I've never looked back. But that was not a blogger nor writer. That was a bloke traveling on mission and as such was a lot more believable than many others when it came to product endorsement.
I see product endorsements coming from bloggers and writers and I immediately don't believe a word. Correctly or not. I simply I don't trust them. Maybe I simply know too much about the backend of it all to really trust a thing they promote :)
As you say the real problem is with all these hotel review sponsored posts, SEO stuff etc.
I wrote on What is the future of travel content? that I don't trust travel bloggers or writers when they mention a product or place in a review. There's a reason for that. Maybe I know the backstory too well.
On the other hand I have trusted a non-blogger traveler when he mentioned a product he always uses. And, he was sponsored by that company. Why? Because he wasn't writing about it on their behalf. They were after photo ops. Not SEO text links or direct sales.
Likewise if someone has a personal blog on say travelerspoint and they mention a tour, product or hotel I'm much more likely to be interested in it because I know it's not sponsored drivel. "Tour company A" in Thailand is a lot more enticing to me when written by a no name dude talking about his travels to mom and his buddies in Thailand than a "famous" travel blogger promoting a tour via someone who sponsors them with a freebie or discounted trip. It's a no brainer to me.
Ultimately when it comes to OB and sponsored it's up to OB to set their own definition. What comes of it will be telling no matter the route.
Yesterday I saw a link on OB called "Discover Southern Tunisia by 4x4: oases, dunes and desert cities" I knew by the title this was, in my book, going to be dodgy before even opening it. On opening it's got pretty(ish) photos. The content is pretty generic (all about things to see in Tunisia) and then low and behold at the bottom a link to tourism Tunisia. So in my view this is pretty obviously an advertorial bought by them. It certainly reads like one. I don't like it. It did nothing for me. It was not a good read. I would like to have seen Outbounding put a tag after the headline labeling it as "advertorial" (at the least). Why? because I know who ever wrote that certainly isn't going to bother telling me it's an advertorial or sponsored nor will they disclaim it at the top to prevent my wasted 5 minutes going through it.
Another example is this headline "The Greatest 7 Treks of Uttarakhand" Aside from being a listicle I was tweaked by interest. Then I saw who wrote it himalayanwonders.com. The person who submitted it (they've only submitted this one link and nothing else -- and low and behold the user name matches the websites owner!).Himalayan Wonders are a tour company for India and Nepal - I know nothing about their services. But the content is written to basically to drum up a booking for them. It's a company advertorial if you would. What really irks me about this type of content is that even the darn photos in the post are not theirs. They are used from flickr. Why on earth can a tour company not use their own photos?!! I instantly have no faith in them due to this. Not due to the generically written content.
If these sponsored / advertorial posts were clearly labeled as such via Outbounding tags then I'm ok with them appearing on OB. I can essential ignore them and look for better things.
I'm giving the above as just two examples based on OB. As Pam said in another post you'd like to be told a product contains peanuts before eating it, not after! Just in case of that killer allergy.
(edited for typos)
Yes John that is true. Websites could easily delete negative comments. That said, I've seen many generic comments on sponsored posts which could just have easily been paid for or "added" to or simply belong to a blogging circle just to make it look good. Some of the sponsored posts are so badly written it would take a special person to write something positive about them. There's a lot of truth in those too.
I second Pam's suggestion about a "self promotional" button!
It's needed on main links and obviously in the comments too.
I flagged himalayanwonders as an example of the things which I've already listed above. I'm not going to get into a back and forth on how himalayanwonders runs itself as it's probably in need of a whole separate post/discussion in itself.
It's common practice in many communities not to self promote. Least of all to self promote before sharing other peoples links, sites, etc. I'll point you to outbounding.org's own guidelines here and rule number 2.
"The community works best when we're sharing great content from across the web, not just our own material. Please don't limit yourself to posting your own stuff, we'd also like to know what other content you're finding inspiring and influential wherever it may be published."
If content is worth sharing others will discover it and share it with the world. If it's not worth sharing by others then it tells a lot.
Thank you for bringing the topic of self promotion to everyone's attention! Hopefully a "self promotion" tag/flag along with sponsored, advertorial etc.Will make it onto the new Outbounding.
I just think it would help the outbounding Admin team if people were able to help out with flagging material. It also helps for a reader to know exactly what they are getting before opening it. Something I'd enjoy in the sense of content curation and a website bringing the best of travel to its readers.
But yes I agree that blogging circles are problematic. None-the-less it can be obvious if only one person keeps submitting a single blog posts.
I remember visiting a historic site in Budapest which had been bought by a big hotel chain. It had been completely restored. The only problem was that it branded just about everything. Little flags etc.
Ditto in Lisbon, St.Georges castle I think, also bought out privately. Completely restored. And the ticket prices tripled.
I know these are different examples than travel content. But I wonder with private sponsorship if certain things would be favored over others. There's a magazine in Nepal which virtually no one reads. But because of the high private sponsorship it's one of the best content driven publications in the country. The only place you'll see it though is in embassies and private doctors suites.
Is company or private sponsorship likely to eventually become for the rich (or well off) only?
Good points about the rise of developing world bloggers though. I think we've been seeing that grow steadily over the past few years. Interesting times ahead for some folk!
It'll certainly be interesting to see the rise of English speaking blogs from Asia. I've heard of people outsourcing content to India too. I think this sort of thing will stick. If people can pay $2 for relatively original blog post content and they can spew it out quickly they are probably getting rewarded somewhere along the line. I'm sure these folk don't care too much about their readership either.
Fascinating insights here.
I'll resume interrogation before he gets distracted by a volcano or barbarian king ;)
Let me start by following up on one interesting point made above.
"* Selling PDFs works - we only stopped it to do iPhone apps, which, in hindsight, was a mistake."
1. Why were iPhone apps a mistake? What happened and why?
2. At what point did you decide to make a Travelfish.org your full time breadwinner?
3. Was it vital to have your wife involved all the way? Or do you think if say she was a firefighter and not an editor would travelfish have turned out the same?
4. During the rise of Travelfish.org's success did you supplement your income by other means? If so, what, why how?
5. Do you think Travelfish will benefit from Lonely Planet's recent and forthcoming change of direction? If so, how?
6. What's the next big thing for Travelfish.org?
7. When are ever going to go to the Philippines and then write about it?
8. Did you write the original travelfish.org CMS yourself?
9. Do you ever thing the "travel blog" craze of "making money with your blog to travel the world" will die down?
10. BBQ Squid or T-bone steak?