The (almost) perfect travel affiliate scheme?

Posted on February 29th, 2008 in Additional revenue, Aim of your blog, Useful resources by Karen Bryan

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www.hotelscombined.comI love the HotelsCombined affiliate scheme because it makes money for me and it’s a great resource for my site visitors enabling them to quickly and easily find a great deal on hotels through a price comparison facility.

Finding the best affiliate schemes for your site is crucial. You want to maximise revenue by using contextual links which have a high utility value to your site visitors leading to a high click through rate.

I rate the HotelsCombined affiliate scheme as excellent because:

1 I can personally endorse the site through frequent personal use.

2 It’s a useful resource to my site visitors who are going to shop around for the best deal, so why not on my site.

3 A vast array of easy to use affiliate tools.

4 You can choose which commission structure suits you.

5 One year cookie so you can earn commission for longer.

6 Good back up support.

I first used HotelsCombined as a consumer to search for the best accommodation deals for my own business and leisure stays. The site searched over 30 accommodation suppliers such as Bookings.com, Octopus, Laterooms and Venere, There’s usually a wide choice of accommodation with some real bargains, so it’s a great resource for travellers. Whenever I’m thinking about a trip, HotelsCombined is my first port of call in my quest to find the best hotel rate.

I noticed HotelsCombined had an affiliate scheme so I decided to sign up. It’s a great asset to have a hotel price comparison site on my travel site as I know that visitors are going to shop around for the best deal, so if I provide that facility on my site, visitors are more likely to stay on my site and perceive my site as a useful resource.

The affiliate tools are extensive, you can make country, city or hotel specific search boxes to add to your site or construct links to any page on the HotelsCombined site. It’s really useful as an affiliate to have such a variety of links to use contextually on your site which I believe lead to a much higher click through and purchase rate than flashing banners.

You can earn commission in two different ways. You can elect to receive a 70% of the average click through fee paid to HotelsCombined by suppliers in their database. which averages 42 cents per click. The other option is to receive commission through your direct relationship with the suppliers in which case you don’t receive any click through fee. This option isn’t yet available for all suppliers. You have to judge which commission model is most profitable for you. It’s easy to change the commission settings you just have to type in your affiliate tracking number, so you can experiment.

The other great thing about HotelsCombined is that their cookie last for one year, which could generate a fair income from frequent travellers.

I’ve contacted HotelsCombined a couple of times with queries and have received helpful replies within hours. It’s really good to have the back up of good customer service.

My only criticism is I’d like there to be the possibility of a direct relationship with all the accommodation suppliers. I’ve requested an affiliate search box which fits in the margin and was told they will look into developing one soon.

So if you’re looking for a great affiliate scheme for a travel related site I’d recommend HotelsCombined.

Start your own blog carnival

Posted on February 17th, 2008 in Marketing your blog, Writing posts by Karen Bryan

I’ve decided to jump on the bandwagon and start a monthly Europe Travel Blog Carnival on my travel blog. A blog carnival is a collection of blog posts on a topic. I’ve been submitting posts to travel blog carnivals for the last couple of months. I think that blog carnivals are a great idea to help you promote your blog to new readers and to build up links and increase your Technorati ranking.

However I would prefer the carnivals to cover more specific topics. Some carnivals are more like a mere list of links, lacking in coherence. I think this represents a missed opportunity to build up a regular following of readers interested in topic and enhance the reputation and profile of the host blog.

It’s really easy to set up your own blog carnival but you then need to promote the carnival to ensure that you receive submissions. You can write a post about it in your own blog, email contacts and leave messages at Facebook groups and blogging sites.

In the Europe Travel Carnival I aim to collate the best posts with brief summaries in categories such as destinations, accommodation, travel tips, transport and activities. I’d like the Carnival to inform, entertain and inspire anyone who loves travel in Europe.

The first Travel in Europe Blog Carnival will blast into the blogosphere on Monday 3 March 2008 and appear on the first Monday of every month.

I decided to start with a monthly carnival until I test the waters and see how many submissions I receive. Initially I will host the carnival on my own blog but there is the possibility for other related blogs to be hosts. In some ways this is better as it means that regular contributors get links on different blogs. The downside is that I lose editorial control of the carnival, that could also be seen as positive thing to have some different perspectives. I’ll be asking the bloggers who are featured in the Europe Travel Blog Carnival to link back to my site from their posts in order to further promote the Carnival and to build up my links.

Have you or are you going to set up a blog carnival? Let me know how it goes.

My top marketing secret

Posted on February 11th, 2008 in Advantages of blogs, Aim of your blog, Writing posts by Karen Bryan

Jens of the Tourism Internet Marketing blog has put out a call for travel marketing secrets and tips. He’s looking for your best kept marketing secret to add to Tips from the T List ebook. This set me thinking about my marketing efforts in my travel business.  So here’s my tip.

Create and maintain a blog for your business by writing content which will inform, interest and/or entertain readers while building brand awareness and loyalty and increasing sales for your business.  Readers need to perceive benefits from your blog, they’re not going to spend time on blatant sales blurb. You need a financial return on the time spent writing and publicising your blog. Aim to achieve the balance of satisfying readers desires and wants and reaching and capturing customers for your product or service to realise the full potential of your business blog.

I bit off more than I could chew

Posted on February 8th, 2008 in Additional revenue, Hazards, Marketing your blog, Writing posts by Karen Bryan

I have to admit that I’ve overstretched myself. My Google Pagerank for my travel site has nosedived from 5 to 3. I assume due to the fact I’d written some sponsored posts for my travel blog had some TextLinkAds and some paid links in the main site. I’ve added the “nofollow” to the paid links and resubmitted the site and blog to Google accompanied by a grovelling note listing how I’ve amended my bad ways. I vaguely read about the new Google policy but didn’t pay enough attention to it. I found it devastating to lose my Pagerank which took me five years of hard graft to attain. So far there’s no discernible drop in visitors to the site or blog and my revenue from affiliate links is steadily increasing, so let’s hope Google reinstate me soon.

My Technorati ranking for my travel blog has dropped to around 140,000 although I’ve 54 links and a few months ago I was in the top 100,000. I think the drop is a combination of more blogs competing for top rankings and the number of people favouriting the blog also dropped as the faves are only valid for one year.

I was rather bogged down at the beginning of this year with the implementation of the Content Management system to my site. My son did all the technical site but there was still a lot of work for my to do transferring the content. The destination guides all came out of alignment and I wanted to try inserting my own ads in the margins.

I’ve also had a lot of work in my “day job” as a freelance social research interviewer. There was a lot of work on offer at the end of last year to meet the annual interview targets and this year there is a big survey in my locality. It’a an ongoing dilemma for me as to whether or not I should ditch the day job and just concentrate on the business.

I haven’t written regular posts for Business Blog Boost, partly due to lack of time and partly due to the feeling that I could hardly give advice to aspiring business bloggers with a pagerank of zero.

I’m feeling more optimistic now as my travel blog was highly rated by Bloggedout and I’m been invited to attend a Travel Bloggers Summit in Berlin next month. I’ve started to get more links through my participation in blog carnivals.

I’m a qualified travel blogger

Posted on February 8th, 2008 in Advantages of blogs, Marketing your blog, Writing posts by Karen Bryan

Well according to PhocusWright who’ve invited to attend the PhocusWright Bloggers Summit in Berlin 5 - 6 March as a qualified travel industry blogger. The Summit is a wonderful opportunity for me to meet other travel bloggers, exchange ideas and examine the influence of blogging on travel businesses. Hopefully I’ll come back with some great ideas on how to improve my travel blog. It’s also a vindication for me as it’s very difficult to be objective about one’s own outpourings.


Berlin: Haus der Kultur der Weld by medienfrech

I’m also looking forward to seeing Berlin and doing some research for guide to Berlin for my site.