How to Monetize Your Travel Blog

by Grant Martin on

Chances are, if you’re reading Gadling.com right now then you’ve probably once thought about abandoning your current office job, hitting the road and never returning home. Maybe you’ve even set up your own personal travel blog that has earned a few hits and gotten rave reviews from a few dedicated readers (thanks mom!).

Could you actually make the jump into a profitable, commercial blog though? Could you generate enough creative, interesting content to get enough people to return, browse around and click on some ads? Maybe. But where to start?

Nomadic Matt, the serial traveler/entrepreneur/twitterer has put together an e-book on the topic. As the owner of the (profitable) nomadicamatt.com, he’s got all sorts of experience in e-marketing, optimizing his site for hits and revenue and working the system to make money off of his blog — so he’s compiled all of the information into this book.

If you’re new to the industry and technology it’s probably worth a read. You can buy a digital copy of the book at Nomadicmatt.com, the site from which he claims to earn $3,000 a month with these tactics

JetBlue to offer “happy hour” fares in DC this afternoon

by Grant Martin on

JetBlue seems to be kicking up their marketing tactics into high gear. Just a few weeks ago the airline started selling tickets on Ebay, and coming up in the next few weeks will be sponsoring “happy hour fares” in several target cities.

According to JetBlue spokesman Morgan Johnston, the airline will be setting up a happy hour bar-eqsue setting in select locations around the cities where people can mill about and see special last minute fares that will only be available at that location. Tickets will be available on a first come first serve basis for upcoming last minute weekend fares, and as customers see fares they like published on a blackboard, they can jump on the tickets on the spot.

Whether JetBlue will dynamically adjust the price of their last minute fares based on demand is an interesting question. Depending on how many people show up to the events, they may have a hard time selling strange flights at strange times. Or maybe people will just get excited and buy anything.

The overall goal, however, is pretty clear: get a group of dedicated JetBlue customers isolated, fired up about travel and in the spending mood then throw some tickets to the fray — let the excitement of the moment overtake any reasonable doubts on prices. The same thing applied to the earlier sales on Ebay — nobody really got a good deal, but in the heat of the moment, winning an auction is much more fun than saving on tickets.

Today’s happy hour takes place in Washington DC, between 3:30 and 6:30 PM at the Reston Town Center Pavilion (11900 Market Street at the intersection of Discovery St.) Let us know how the the sales go and if it’s a good deal we’ll post more dates.

Why does Gadling seem so fond of Virgin, OpenSkies and Southwest?

by Grant Martin on

If you’ve been around the blog for more than a few weeks, you may have noticed that we seem to cover some of the newer and edgier carriers a bit more often. Virgin America and Atlantic, Southwest and OpenSkies seem to edge into our network fairly often and it seems like there’s always a Gadling blogger close at hand (usually with a vodka tonic) to report on the hijinks.

Why is this? Are these companies secretly paying for extra exposure? Do Gadling bloggers get free tickets any time they want to jet set across the country supporting their vokda binged lifestyle?

The simple answer is Public Relations. Every day Gadling bloggers are out, scouring the interwebs, newswires and telephone lines finding out new information for you, the reader, and reporting on daily developments. And what we learn and how we report is directly related to how friendly, prolific and open the PR staff is. Contacts and friends that we’ve made at the above carriers keep us in the loop, let us know when things are happening and occasionally send us piles of spam. Unfortunately, that’s about all we get for free.Conversely, most legacy carriers don’t give a rip about what Gadling writes or what we publish – so they’re not interested in talking to lowly bloggers.

From what I can tell, PR warmth is directly related to marketing strategy. Hipper, younger airlines trying to cater to the Gadling demographic (you know who you are) know they have to keep the blogosphere positively spinning. Older, more established carriers who may cater to more of an elder or family demographic, on the other hand, might communicate in more traditional places like, oh, church bulletins.

And its not like we haven’t tried fostering relationships with legacy carriers – most firms just don’t realize the leverage that blogs can provide. So we’ll let them be and continue the subliminal message that we’re sending from Gadling. I’ll have another vodka tonic please. Thanks.

GO JETBLUE!

Hotels (try to) give new meaning to women-friendly floors

by Abha Malpani on

Years ago, hotels would have women-only floors targeted at women traveling alone as a way of increasing their female clientele by promising safety through exclusivity by gender. Of course, that was thrown into obsolescence after being considered sexist and discriminatory.

However, hospitality marketing gurus have managed to swirl around the “women-only” floor idea into one of “women-friendly” floors. Some rooms on such floors have special items for women (a Victoria’s Secret bathrobe, a blow dryer, vanity mirrors), and yoga stuff for women who want to work out, but, to avoid the sexist tag, the floors and facilities are not exclusive to women.

Hmmm…so what makes them special? Some facial creams and nail-polish that the other rooms don’t have?

In other words, hotels are out of ideas to market their services, so they take an old idea, tweak it to sound like a new one when it’s really not an idea at all. Then they sell it as a novel service for a niche audience and get some press.

Hotels such as the Crowne Plaza, the Hilton, and the Hampton Inn have been successful with this marketing gimmick, that too outside the Middle East — so who am I to criticize it. Time will tell how much female customers succumb to this marketing ploy.

An ending note for hotels: your customers are smarter than you realize.

Baggage carousel ads: coming to an airport near you

by Grant Martin on

As our good friend Blogger Jeremy can probably tell you, one of challenges to marketing research is finding a good medium on which to deliver your ad. If you can find a way to acutely deliver your message to your target demographic, you’ve done your job well. For example, you don’t see many ads for GI Joes or Depends on Gadling.

And where else are you intensely focused and forced to watch than on the baggage carousel? Double Take marketing unfortunately just figured out that the perfect way to deliver advertisements to a select demographic (business or leisure travelers) is down where you get your luggage. You’re staring at the rotating metal blades, waiting for you luggage with nothing to do, and out pops an ad. You have to look, right?

Lucky for me, I still don’t check luggage. But the rest of you may soon have to put up with advertisements on your baggage carousels — installation begins this August. Take a look at the video below to see the ads in action.