I love the Internet because of its transparency. I wanted to address a post made in the GBN group on Facebook that I believe is self promotional but others may or already have disagreed.
The posts format goes a little bit like this.
“Hi travel bloggers we’re new here please check out our new travel websites. Here’s one that’s a travel website and here’s another that offers advice on how to travel blog.”
Innocent enough, right? Well not if you know what you’re looking for. It’s my belief that the first website is being used as a thinly veiled attempt to detract attention from the second. After all the first one proves they are big travel fans so they probably just want to be part of the community for the right reasons?
The main purpose of the post is to build a sales/marketing funnel. To push all those people who gave their email through the funnel as many times as possible to sell something (probably their ebook), potentially an ebook or an affiliate product.
To do this you have to get people to your website, then once they are there you need to really impress them with some great engaging content (not much about travel blogging but more about marketing). Once you’ve read that great content, you’ll want some more right? Or at least want to know how to get your traffic to sky rocket out if this stratosphere? So just enter you email address, it’s free!
You won’t just receive spammy emails from signing up, “Internet marketers” don’t want to scare you away… They need to build trust. Don’t believe me? Then read this article on it from the man himself, A Wildly Profitable Timing Template for Email Marketing It’s a well trodden marketing path that’s been practiced for a long time.
So, after receiving numerous helpful emails you’ll receive another helpful one with a pitch to their email or affiliate products. In order for the travel blogger to be hooked into the claims and pitches don’t be surprised by claims of greatness including massive traffic.
Signing up for emails, work shops or training courses aren’t always a bad idea, but make sure you do so with people who have been there and done it not just some marketers wanting to make a living from travel bloggers.
Such people include:
Dave from gobackpacking.com with Travel Blog Success
Art of Travel Blogging
If you’re looking for help with WordPress then try Chris at RTW Labs
As for GBN, where is the moderation?
As a community forum grows so to must the resources that handle it and I think that is where we are failing. Both fb groups have over 1000 members and while we all love to think we can self moderate its quite obvious this is no longer working.
The example you mentioned above is proof of this. Another blogger just 2 weeks earlier was pulled up on posting a link to his blog yet this example seems to be accepted and the knowledge on said sites taken as gospel as people praise it. Worst still it was made by people who are internet marketers and wrote a book about making a living through spammy link sites.
Its a shame as once the groups were filled with amazing information now it seems you have to sift through the mud to find the good stuff.
Second that! Have really been disappointed with how GBN has been handled recently. Must say though I did have a read of some of said posters blog and some interesting stuff. Just not a lot of new information that I haven’t read previously.
Not only self promotional, but I can almmost guarantee you the reasons they are SO keen to interview other travel bloggers is as follows:
1. Expertise by association – get lots of travel bloggers on their site and they look like they’re highly “connected” and are experts.
2. Those who are interviewed will (hopefully) link back to the interview, forming not only back-links to their site from the interviewee blogs, but also (hopefully) links via social media that mention the interviews on their site. We all know that Google monitor social media and take this into consideration for SEO etc, therefore boosting their site again (and adding further credibility as per point 1)
A number of other reasons they’ve launched the way they have also come to mind, but it stinks badly of a well structured internet marketing launch it will end up as a case study of “How we earned 1 million dollars scamming travel bloggers to think we knew better than they did!”
Just my opinion of course 😉
Does my lack of inclusion mean I’m just a spammy marketer? 🙁
Hi Matt,
I actually started writing it but then didn’t have time to find the best link… Wrote it in a hurry on an iPad…. It’s a bit of a nightmare! I’ll update the post later.
Great comment Loreena,
It’s does seem like a well structured marketing launch, so much so that a lot of people are still praising them.
I only wanted to let people who weren’t aware see what they were really dealing with, especially as no one is moderating the forum.
I agree Chris, sometimes it seems to be fine and then other times not. Needs moderating, it’s a big community.
Otherwise it could become much less useful.
I agree with Chris that GBN has turned into a fucking mess. This is probably going to bite me karmically, but it feels like Remedial Travel Blogging these days and I can’t stand it. I don’t need group hugs; I want to have an insanely successful career as a travel blogger.
This product is a scam. I went through their site and I could glean more wisdom from the John Edwards Guide to Fidelity (or, for the Brits, the John Terry Guide to Fidelity); other parts were shockingly, appallingly wrong. And newer bloggers SHOULD know this — but instead they get seduced by the “OOH, SHINY!”ness of that site and leave themselves ripe to be taken advantage of.
Fuck.
In GBN’s defence it does say in the doco’s that its “for beginner and intermediate travel bloggers” which for some of us is obviously not applicable any more.
Maybe its time a moderated advanced user forum was to be created where those with years of knowledge can bounce ideas and breed better blogs.
But who’s moderating who is in that group or not?
in theory we all know well enough if your in the advanced group and don’t need the moderation but true who moderates who is a problem
Hi Kate,
Thanks for replying.
Unfortunately it seems that you are not allowed to disagree with something these days.
Someone had to call them out on it because there was no moderation. If we get labelled mud slingers for it, then so be it.
Very true. I know that. This reminds me of when I was a ballroom dancer in college and was asked to dance the man’s part EVERY SINGLE WEEK because there were tons more girls than guys, I was one of their strongest dancers, and they needed the good dancers to be men and even out the ratio. I know it was a nice and helpful thing for us to do for the beginner dancers, but I got sick of being a man over and over and over and never getting to do the cool stuff anymore…so I quit. I’m feeling that way about GBN now.
I apologize, I haven’t slept in 24 hours and I’m probably not making sense.
And actually, my words about GBN in my last comment were unnecessarily harsh, and I really don’t mean them to sound that way. Should have read it over. I DO know GBN’s heart is in the right place — I just wish we could talk candidly without everyone getting so sensitive.
You know….an Advanced Travel Bloggers group — a PRIVATE group — might be a great idea. I’d be down for sure.
How can you disagree when everyone’s an expert these days and knows best.
Agreed! I’ve been around online business for enough years for the situation to raise many warning flags, but unfortunately many travel bloggers have not.
I normally wouldn’t weigh in on something like this, because I hate negativity, but I hate, even more, seeing good people being placed in a situation they could be manipulated without knowing it.
The problem was that the post wasn’t moderated and people were checking out their content without (some of them) knowing what they were signing up for. I’m sure there are plenty of sites and tutorials, workshops, newsletters etc that people would love to plug. But they don’t because they know it’s spammy.
The people who posted it knew it was, they are marketers after all. They are not newbies who didn’t know what they were doing. Should they be welcomed with open arms?
I don’t think you quite get it.
Many travel bloggers have been building that trust of many many years of blogging and building an audience, not for profit but because of passion.
Not simply producing one marketing campaign (guest posts, interviews etc) as it suggests that money is the primary goal.
As the owner of both Trekity and TravelBloggerAcademy I’d like to clear up a few things:
1) From your post: “It’s my belief that the first website is being used as a thinly veiled attempt to detract attention from the second.”
The first website is Trekity.com and our main travel site. It has over 830 articles on destinations around the world. TravelBloggerAcademy has around 15 posts at the moment and focuses on the business and marketing side of travel blogging.
If you don’t find the content useful, that’s fine.
2) Regarding interviews, I’ve conducted ten interviews with top bloggers (including David Lee and Nomadic Matt, who you’ve mentioned above) and really enjoyed the process.
Do interviews provide valuable insights for my readers? Yes. Do they help me build relationships in the travel market? Yes. Is this ethically wrong? No.
3) Adventurous Kate seems upset about our “product”. I’m not really sure what that product is, seeing as we don’t have any at the moment. And regarding the content’s quality, well, we’re all entitled to our opinion.
My wife Darcie and I have worked very, very hard to build both Trekity and TBA. We even wrote over 50 guest posts (including the one you mentioned on Aweber, which made Copyblogger’s roundup last week) and it’s disappointing to see such hostility towards two blogs which strive to offer quality content for free.
So be it.
4) As for GBN, I’m brand new to the site and wasn’t attempting to be self-promotional. When Darcie posted it was intended as “Hello, we’re Darcie and Adam and here is what we’re working on…”
If it was seen as self-promotional, I’m sorry. That wasn’t our intent.
5)Finally, I had to smile at this bit:
“you have to get people to your website, then once they are there you need to really impress them with some great engaging content (not much about travel blogging but more about marketing). Once you’ve read that great content, you’ll want some more right? Or at least want to know how to get your traffic to sky rocket out if this stratosphere? So just enter you email address, it’s free!
You won’t just receive spammy emails from signing up, “Internet marketers” don’t want to scare you away… They need to build trust.”
Great content? Build trust? Isn’t that what good marketing is?
I think so. And that’s exactly what I am trying to do with both Trekity and TBA. So if that’s a bad thing, well, you got me: Guilty as Charged.
-Adam
It certainly constitutes a passion for something…
830 page content could easily be bought, means nothing.
I think writing over 50 guest posts, a press release and conducting ten interviews constitutes a certain level of passion.
And considering most of those I interviewed do this full time, to say they do it “not for profit” is utter nonsense. I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: making money from your websites is perfectly fine. In fact, if you can make a full time living from your travel blog, hats off to you: many people that would like to, don’t.
Trekity has over 830 pages of content. 830 pages written over a nine month period. And that’s before we ever told anyone outside the project about it (including my own mom).
That proves a certain level of commitment, don’t you think?
Agree to disagree, then.
It’s becoming a chore to look at GBN, with the level of self promotion.
I have made a new post over there, hopefully someone will take the time to respond.
It’s not just newbies who are self promoting, its the passive self promotion from people who should know better that’s more sinister, IMHO.
Glad you made the post Nate as while I considered it I fear I’d be stoned to death in there. GBN has great potential but with such a huge audience now we need stricter guidelines and more enforcement on the law.
haha Chris, as a fellow Aussie, you know all about tall-poppy-sydnrome.
I’m a newby in this game, not a tall-poppy, so I’m currently immune to such stoning’s 😉
(I hope!)
But, I agree – I’ve already found, and utilised, some genuinely useful nuggets from the group – so I know it can be a great resource. However, I’ve been around this block before with other website endeavours in other genre’s. I hate to be cliched, but it’s a slippery slope once self-promotion, in all it’s many forms, is allowed to clog up the stream of a group like GBN.
I agree with what your are saying, it’s a shame that somehow the people who highlight these issues are seen as being negative when in fact they are trying to help people.
Welcoming spammers, opportunists and the like with open arms only proves to devalue the group when really a clear stand against it should be made.
Hi Nate,
Thanks for the comment. Glad you made your point too because I’m not alone in expressing my view on this post.
No one was trying to be negative or mud sling. In fact we were trying to warn others. It’s not the case that the people who posted were newbies who were confronted by hostility (as some naively think), they are Internet marketers they know the rules of engagement online.
Hopefully they will get on top of this problem and the good content will surface. But unfortunately they are alienating people (like myself) for trying to help people.