30,000 Travel Destinations and Branding

[TravelNotes]

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Travel Destinations
================

I'm thinking about promoting certain destinations and would prefer to
put out destinations that you feel are 'properly' covered.

No disrespect, but I find the 30,000 destinations a little ambitious;
especially if Sopron, Hungary is supposed to be one of them.

:(

I did a test on Sopron and didn't get enough information returned for
a customer to justify paying the 'retail price'.

Is there a list of all these 30,000 destinations?

Which destinations do you feel are adequately covered and you are most
excited about?

Can you give me a Top 10, Top 100, or even Top 1,000 Destinations?

I feel that by promoting 'Top Destinations' we could achieve better
results and maybe even create more of a buzz about the product.

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Statistics
================

Are there any stats available to show:

Which destinations people are looking into the most?

Which destinations are being purchased?

Best conversion rate for destinations researched - to destinations
purchased?

While it would be great to have global statistics to these questions,
it would also be handy for affiliates to see which destinations their
visitors are choosing.

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Branding
================

Are there any plans in place for affilliates to brand their pages with
headers and footers; or at least the ability to change the font and
link colours?

Michel
http://www.travelnotes.org/

[TravelNotes]

Eric, no reply to this one?

[Dave]

Michel,

I appreciate your question - we're constantly in a state of improving
and enhancing the algorithms that help us to provide great guides for
all of the destinations in our database. As we continue to build out
both the professionally-written and algorithmically-generated guides,
we're constantly increasing and enhancing the guides we cover.

We are in beta - and as such, we're really interested in hearing
feedback on all the destinations that our algorithms cover, and if you
find a particular guide or destination where the guide isn't up to
snuff, we will either (a) fix it, (b) add information to the guide
that is written by one of our authors, or (c) remove it from our list
of guides.

We do have top destination data, but as we continue to grow and
enhance the algorithms, and as more and more people use the site,
those lists are constantly changing and in flux, so we're loathe to
release those statistics at this time, but I'm definitely very
interested in providing that kind of information as we continue to
grow and learn more from our users.

We're going to take your suggestion to heart and see how we can build
a top destinations list for you, too.

I hope that answers your questions to a reasonable level of
satisfaction. We're taking this slowly, learning as we go, and
constantly improving things as we hear back from you. Thanks for your
great question.

Dave

[TravelNotes]

Dave,

Thanks for taking the time out of your busy schedule to answer my
concerns.

I know you were in Munich and Davos recently (so you are forgiven) but
I was getting a little frustrated with the silence from Eric; who had
replied to another post.

I've been involved with many affiliate programs online, since 1997,
some very profitable and some not so.

To make affiliate programs work we need to spend time on them - and
believe in the product.

Just sticking up links and banners is easy enough but, to succeed, we
need to know what's working and what isn't.

Therefore, the need for statistical data is vital!

Likewise, I don't have the time to test your guides for every
destination we cover - as TravelNotes.org covers the world (also with
some destinations better than others) - so thought it would be best to
look at where your content creators have added original material and
concentrate on the 'best value' guides initially; by deep linking to
the required destinations.

Many affiliate programs move the goalposts, or disappear completely -
which often means removing a lot of 'dead' links, if we've spent time
promoting them. That's why I need to have something of a vision of,
and be comfortable about, the way forward; as successful affiliates
often 'feel' a part of the company, if the right relationships are
forged at the outset.

I do wish you success and I'm sure Offbeat Guides will get enough
early buzz, just because you're behind the project.

Let's just hope the buzz doesn't die down if people discover that they
don't get more insight into their 'offbeat' destination than they
could by going to Wikipedia and Wikitravel themselves, and from doing
their own 'what's on when' searches, or visiting the official tourist
websites.

Michel
http://www.travelnotes.org/

[David Sifry]

Michel,

Thanks for your great questions and your thoughtful reply! My
apologies for our lack of responsiveness to your earlier question.

I completely agree that a successful affiliate program means that
everyone needs to feel involved, and it is a partnership between the
company and affiliates. That's our goal. We're just getting started
on this, and really appreciate your feedback - in fact, we're going
further by sending out a survey this week so we can better understand
what you (the affiliates) are looking for and how we can best serve
you guys.

I'm going to have a chat with the team today and see how we can best
serve you with regards to getting more information about particularly
great guides, to make it easier to feature top books.

And as for your point about wikitravel and wikipedia - we actually
contribute back to these sites, even when our writers and editors make
changes and improvements. We see our value proposition as being one
where we are providing a lot of aggregation, convenience, time
savings, and reputable sources, including our own - but most of the
books have information from sources that you can get from across the
internet. We're not trying to trick people. Our goal is to help the
folks who aren't internet experts, or are people without enough time
to pull together all the best information from across the net.

The core value at this point is to help people get all the great
information from places like wikipedia, wikitravel, all the different
event sites, mapping applications, current exchange rates, weather
information, electrical outlet and voltage differences, local blogs,
flickr photos, and more, and then do on-demand layout and perfect-
bound printing.

As we continue to grow, you'll be seeing more great information from
more writers all around the world. Your thoughts and feedback on that
value proposition are greatly appreciated, and we're going to work
really hard to make the information in the books deeper and more
complete, and make the guides an even more compelling product for our
customers and affiliates.

Michel, thanks for your great thoughts and feedback, it's really
appreciated.

Dave

--
David L. Sifry
Founder and CEO, Offbeat Guides
http://www.offbeatguides.com/
da...@offbeatguides.com
+1 415 846-0232 (Mobile)