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myupdatesystems-blog · 8 years ago

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How Often Should I Travel?

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How Often Should I Travel?

I once found myself in London sitting on the floor of a friend’s flat, debating my next move. I had been traveling for a couple months and couldn’t decide whether I wanted to visit Morocco or Istanbul next. I had never been to either and both were well out of my normal comfort zone, a combination of criteria that should have ensured a feeling of excitement no matter which route I chose.

Instead, both options felt boring to me. I knew, cultural differences and random unexpected experiences aside, what to expect from my next destination, wherever it was. No matter which location I decided on I would end up in a routine similar to the one I had been on while traveling the past couple of months. No matter how odd the destination I arrived at I knew I’d be able to find my way and do just fine for myself.

I realized I couldn’t choose between the two options because I quite frankly didn’t care to go to either of them. The growth I experienced on this trip seemed to be at a plateau and no amount of culture shock seemed like it would jolt me back onto the fast track of enhanced personal revelation.

Debunking the Myth of Eternally Vagabonding

After a couple months on the road, I was tired of traveling and just wanted to go home. Though “going home” presented its own problems as I didn’t have a home to return to. I left with the aim of traveling indefinitely, yet even when I had been back in the States I moved often, leaving one location for another every couple months, sometimes within the same city, sometimes across the country.

Now, sitting in London, totally ungrateful for the opportunities at my fingertips, I wanted a real home. I thought endless traveling would be right for me but I was wrong, and it became clear the notion of vagabonding indefinitely wasn’t right for everyone. In fact, in all my travels I’ve realized the notion of constant, consistent, endless travel isn’t right for just about anyone. For most of us, travel is a special experience and not the way of life we desire for our day-to-day existence.

A Quick Caveat

If most of us weren’t made to travel indefinitely, then how often should we travel, and for how long should we leave home?

The answer to this question will always be intensely personal and depends on individual factors that are both ephemeral (personal disposition, relationships back home) and entirely tangible (money, work, mortgages, and leases). For the rest of this article, I’m assuming you’re in the fortunate position of being able to travel whenever you want, for as long as you want.

What’s the Point of Travel?

Before you can answer how often you should travel you need to first answer why you want to travel.

Do you get bored when you stay in one place for more than three months at a time? Do you love surfing and do you want to explore the world’s best beaches? Are you intensely interested in food and do you have a laundry list of native cuisines and restaurants you want to munch on? Do you simply want to see more of the world? Or do you simply want to expand your understanding of the world by experiencing as much of it firsthand as you can? Everyone has a different reason to travel and knowing why you want to explore the world is a good first step towards figuring out how often you should leave home.

In my opinion, there’s really only one reason for travel, a single reason that lies at the heart of every specific explanation you can give for your wander lust. People want to travel because they want to grow.

We travel to grow- to grow our ideas of other countries, to grow our ideas of the world, to grow our ideas of what it means to be human, and most of all to grow our conception of who we are and what we want out of life.

Thinking in Cycles

If we travel to grow then it makes a whole lot of sense why indefinite travel tends to lose its appeal over time. After a couple of months of traveling, you will hit a peak. You will have learned everything you’re going to learn from the trip you’re on and you will have settled into a new routine, a new set of expectations, a new perspective that will eventually become just as rigid as the one you developed back home.

Humans are adaptable, and while the thought of being able to live out of a single bag in a country where no one speaks your language may seem like the height of adventure before you leave home, after a couple months backpacking in Cambodia you’ll settle into a life that once seemed an insurmountable challenge.

Once you hit that wall in your travels you’ll return home and find home life to be challenging and foreign and filled with opportunities for growth and appreciation you never noticed before you left on your adventure. And then, after a few months pass you by, you’ll feel locked into a stultifying routine once more and ache to push yourself by hitting the road once more.

The answer to how often you should travel sits within the rhythms of growth and adaptation lying within all of us.

Finding the Right Pattern

While everyone is unique and everyone follows slightly different flows of exploration and consolidation there are two patterns for alternating between travel and home life that seem to strike a chord within the greatest number of people.

2-3 months at home followed by 4-6 weeks traveling. Spending 2-3 months at home gives you the time you need to focus intensely on work, on home life, on building relationships, on seeing friends and family, and other similarly domestic activities. 2-3 months in one place also tends to be the amount of time it takes until the average traveler starts to feel the itch to explore once more. 4-6 weeks of traveling is a good amount of time to gain a good feel for one or two locations, making this pattern good for people who are happy seeing a small handful of new locations every year.

6-9 months at home followed by 2-3 months of traveling. This pattern lets you focus very deeply on a specific work project or other types of a consolidation-oriented task whose completion you then reward with an extended period of perspective-shaking overseas travel. Even the most ardent travel nut seems to find it relatively easy to stay in one place for 6-9 months when they have a passion-driven project to focus on. Once you leave home again 2-3 months is enough time traveling to either get very deep into a new culture (it’s an especially good time frame for learning a language) or to visit a couple new countries in one trip.

No matter which pattern you choose, no matter if you make up your own pattern, just know that travel is part of a larger life cycle, so find the right cycle that meets your particular needs for both adventure and security.

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myupdatesystems-blog · 8 years ago

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The Joys (and Sorrows) of Travelling Alone

New Post has been published on https://myupdatesystems.com/the-joys-and-sorrows-of-travelling-alone/

The Joys (and Sorrows) of Travelling Alone

There is no one “right” way to travel, especially when it comes to the number of partners you choose to travel with as you explore the world. Yes, if you travel with others, you should only travel with those whose presence you enjoy. And yes, I’d argue you’ll have a lot more fun by travelling with some close and adventurous friends rather than travelling through a foreign destination with a group of tourists who barely want to leave the hotel. But, assuming you make a few wise choices regarding the company you keep, there are unique benefits hidden within travelling with one person, with three people, or with a dozen people.

Not that you actually need to travel with anyone else. In fact, the intensity of travelling alone often outclasses anything you’ll experience travelling with others- intense in its highs and its lows. Intense in its connections and its loneliness. Intense in its opportunities for building confidence, and intense in its opportunities for dealing with doubt and fear. And it’s this intensity of often-conflicting experience that makes travelling alone for an extended period of time an absolute necessity for each and every one of us.

Travel is About Growth

A quick aside.

Some people may be put off by the idea of intensity I’ve used to drum up travelling alone. I understand this. An intense experience can be uncomfortable to think about. But in reality, an intense experience is often more uncomfortable to think about than it is to actually live through. But our discomfort surrounding intensity lies at the heart of every growth opportunity we ever encounter. We grow the most when we feel most alive and when we push through vague anxieties to expand our sphere of comfortable action.

In other words, you shouldn’t avoid the intense experiences and the discomfort they temporarily produce- you should run towards them. Sometimes travelling is about just enjoying yourself, but at its heart travelling the world is about running towards intensity, embracing discomfort, and expanding the world you inhabit.

So yes, the thought of travelling alone can sometimes feel scary. That’s sort of the point. Don’t use this fear as an excuse to live in a smaller world than you need to.

Others

When you travel alone your experiences will swing wildly back and forth between being deeply social and deeply lonesome. Often the tone of your experiences changes overnight. One night you meet some new friends you spend hours and hours with as you talk, as you explore, as you bare your souls- as you get drunk together and dance together and as you wander foreign streets late at night together, invincible in the moment. The next day they leave and so does the last person you know in your current location and you’re alone again. In that moment you can be active and reach out and meet others, but you’ll feel shocked how often, in that moment, you’d rather spend your time totally alone.

Through expat bars and hostels and alternative tours, travelling provides you with a never-ending opportunity to meet new people. When you travel by yourself you’ll only ever be as alone as you want to be. You’ll be able to meet others without preconceptions, without strings attached, without checking in to see if everything’s cool with your friends and without worry what others will think about the relationships you build and leave behind. When it comes down to it travelling by yourself provides you with the social freedom you could never experience back home or travelling with others.

And that includes the freedom to truly be by yourself. The relief of occasionally spending a day on your own when you back home do not, and cannot, compare with the depth of the solitude you will experience when you are alone for hours, days, or weeks at a time in cities, countries, and cultures far from your everyday experience. These silent, lonely moments will make you feel so many things, they will give you the time to process and to question and to answer, it’s in those moments of total separation from everything and everyone related to home that you can gain the most perspective on your life and make the hard decisions about who you are, what you want, and how you’re going to get there- decisions you just can’t make when you’re grasping on to even the slightest thread of connection to the life you used to know.

Yourself

I hope I don’t sound like I’m bearing down negatively on others. So many of your opportunities for some semblance of enlightenment will come to you in the company of others. We are intensely, and intrinsically, social creatures. As E.E. Cummings said, “We are for each other,” and every nugget of insight you learn as you travel by yourself exists for the sole purpose of helping you better serve the world and the others who live in it. I’m merely suggesting there are benefits and insights out there in the wild you can only gain when you disconnect completely in the way you only can when you vacate normal life and search for something else on your own.

If you need any greater indication that humans are truly social in nature consider the powerful feelings of doubt and fear you’ll feel when you cut yourself off from others. Even thinking about travelling alone you’re probably thinking that it isn’t something you could ever do. When you leave home on your own you will feel incredibly scared of what you’ll find way out there and whether you’ll be able to handle it. Travelling alone you will repeatedly question pretty much everything about yourself and whether you can even survive, in a basic mental and emotional sense, without continuous close contact with others.

And moving through these cycles of fear and doubt you will learn something- that you can handle it. You cannot only survive but you can thrive. You learn how tough you really are, how little you really need, and with that knowledge of your own inherent indestructibility and with that understanding that life can be great even if you lose everything, you will gain the confidence and courage to actually act on the dangerous insights you accumulate while you travel. Travelling alone not only lets you see what difficult choices you need to make when you return back home, travelling alone lets you know you’re strong enough to risk it all and act on them. Travelling alone makes you both a wiser and a stronger person in a way travelling with others never, ever could.

Yes, travelling alone is more difficult than travelling with others, but at times, especially during those times when you don’t know what to do with yourself or your life, travelling alone becomes absolutely necessary.

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myupdatesystems-blog · 8 years ago

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Travel Health Insurance

New Post has been published on https://myupdatesystems.com/travel-health-insurance/

Travel Health Insurance

Of the concerns people have when the topic of world travel rears its exciting head, few feel as serious as the concern of getting sick or hurt in a foreign country without any form of health insurance to take care of the problem. Compared with the fear of running into serious health problems abroad, the concern of not knowing where to travel, or the worry about getting scammed, or insecurities surrounding your ability to make the money necessary to travel all seem trivial. None of those fears can kill you- getting sick or hurt abroad without any form of health insurance can.

Most forms of health insurance are nationally based, they are domestic, which means the insurance you use at home isn’t going to do much of anything for you abroad. Thankfully, getting health insurance while you’re traveling, or getting insurance that will cover you as you travel, is a lot easier than you think and it doesn’t need to cost an arm and a leg.

An Important Question

Before we get into the nitty-gritty of how to acquire health insurance that will keep you secure and feel good during your travels you need to ask yourself a single important question- do you plan on traveling to one country or multiple destinations?

The answer to this question will determine what sort of insurance you will need. If you’re traveling all over the place then you need a more comprehensive, far-reaching insurance. If you’re traveling to a single city or country and setting down roots for a few weeks or a couple months then you only need to get health insurance valid within that country.

Even though you should avoid overly-detailed travel planning to figure out the answer to this question before you leave home, it is a good idea to plan your health insurance needs.

Single-Country Insurance Strategies

As far as insurance goes, if you’re traveling to a single city or country you have it easy– though it’s important you act fast for peace of mind and safety’s sake. You should purchase local insurance the first day you arrive.

Doing this not only makes sure you’re protected no matter what happens, resolving to buy insurance your first day in a new country is also the best way to be sure you actually get it done. It’s easy to put off chores and busy work, the less sexy elements of travel when you’re excited to be in a new country and itching to start exploring. Getting all the boring stuff out-of-the-way as soon as possible protects you against the dangers of procrastination- dangers that are potentially lethal when it comes to medical coverage.

But how, exactly, can you find local insurance?

Well, you have two options.

You can spend hours trying to research local medical coverage plans online, often browsing through poorly translated websites in an attempt to compare one plan with all the others. Or,

You can take the easy route and just ask an employee at your hostel or your hotel what local health insurance they have and what insurance they think you should sign up for. Then find out if their insurance coverage is available to visitors. Hospitality workers are there to help you out, and the more personally owned and operated your lodgings the better the chances of receiving some good advice from them.

Multi-Country Insurance Strategies

Owning local insurance in addition to global insurance is almost always a good idea. After all, it’s a safe bet local hospitals will accept your local insurance card but there’s no guarantee local hospitals will accept your international coverage. That being said, if you’re traveling to a large number of different locations, you don’t really have much of a choice. You need to get the most comprehensive global health insurance you can afford.

When it comes to global health insurance you have a couple options at your disposal.

1) First, you can take a look at your existing domestic health insurance and determine whether it provides any sort of worldwide coverage at all. The bigger the insurance carrier the more likely it will provide something for you when you’re out crisscrossing the globe. If you don’t know where to look and you’re unsure about your current coverage you should get on the phone with a representative and start asking questions.

If your current coverage won’t help you overseas you need to ask whether there’s any plan provided by your carrier that will help you out as you travel. If there’s an upgrade to your insurance available and if the upgrade will cover you abroad you’d be wise to pay a little extra to make sure you’re secure. Acquiring traveler’s insurance isn’t really difficult but ultimately it’s a lot easier to stick with the carrier you already have than to unnecessarily jumping ship.

2) If your current carrier does not provide travel coverage while you’re traveling and if they do not offer any sort of upgrade, add-on or package that will cover you abroad, then you need to locate a new carrier.

You can either switch over to a large carrier who provides a wide range of insurance options, or you can just sign on with a carrier who specializes in traveler’s insurance.

3) Travel Health Insurance is a LOT more common and a LOT cheaper than you’d think. Don’t be surprised if you find travel health insurance that is considerably less expensive than what you’re paying for your existing domestic coverage. Not only that, but travel health insurance tends to be extremely flexible. You can purchase insurance for a single trip, you can purchase insurance for trips of varying lengths (such as 30, 60 or 90 days) and you can purchase insurance for those times you’re going to travel indefinitely.

So how cheap can travel health insurance be? How do less than $1,000 dollars a year sound to you? Compared with the normal $300-$500/month you’d pay for your own health insurance, if it’s not covered by your employer’s travel insurance, this represents a really, really good deal.

What Types of Travel Insurance Do do You need?

When you start researching travel insurance you’ll soon realize there are many types of travel insurance out there, all covering a different corner of the traveler’s experience.

The average traveler simply needs to purchase the most comprehensive Travel Health Insurance they can find. But if you’re traveling to snowboard the alps or something else that may be considered risky, then Hazardous Sports Insurance might also be worthwhile.

Evacuation Insurance might make sense to help get out of countries if political or environmental situations turn ugly, but only if you are in a country where you could reasonably assume you could be evacuated by helicopter.

You can purchase Identity Theft Protection in case someone swipes your passport and credit cards.

You can purchase Cancellation Insurance to make sure you end up at your destination even if your airline starts messing with your reservations or some other unforeseen problem arises.

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myupdatesystems-blog · 8 years ago

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Travel Pre And Post Internet

New Post has been published on https://myupdatesystems.com/travel-pre-and-post-internet/

Travel Pre And Post Internet

I’ve been traveling for over 40 years – by thumb in my early days, by boots in the Scouts, a Lambretta came next and then my first old banger followed by newer old bangers to the beaches of the Costa Brava.

My thumb, boots, bikes and bangers took me all over Europe and the UK before finding that a charter flight to Spain on an old ‘Connie’ could get me to the beaches and bars a lot quicker and allow more time to enjoy the local travel opportunities by horse and cart and the occasional bus and train.

‘Go West and Prosper’ seemed to be a good idea so instead of taking an 8-hour flight I took an 8-day transatlantic crossing from Tilbury to Montreal on the Stephan Batory of Polish Ocean Lines ensuring that jet lag did not trouble my travel plans. Some years later I crossed the pond again on a ship but this time it was 5 times bigger and I traveled in style on the QE2 and died in the Queen’s Grill somewhat removed from my earlier experience. I highly recommend ocean voyages but cannot see myself on one of the modern cruise ships going from port to port with constant line-ups to get on and off to buy t-shirts. However, I have done 10 Windjammers and a Star Clipper cruise in the Caribbean which were all memorable (let’s hope Windjammer Barefoot Cruises recover from their woes). But I digress.

I had read that Canada is a spectacular country, from sea to shining sea, and my entrance into the St. Lawrence River to Montreal and then heading west in an old Econoline van from the Great Lakes, across the Prairies to the Rocky Mountains before ending up whale watching off of the Pacific Coast of Vancouver Island was a trip of wonder to a bloke from London. Today the scenery is still spectacular and the best way to go is still by road so rent or buy a car, motorhome or motorbike, take the train or tour bus but remember the maps, a fly rod, good boots and take your time.

Part of Canada / USA for adventure travel has to be Northern BC / Alaska, to hike the Chilkoot Trail in the steps of the gold seekers of 1898. The Northwest Territories to canoe the Nahanni River and the Yukon to drive from Dawson City to Chicken, Alaska. If you like the outdoors and can put up with a few bugs, cast a fly and scale a few hills or drive on endless dirt roads sharing the space with moose, caribou, elk, bears and eagles, then these are the places to put on your list. The pleasures and experiences in driving to Inuvik on the Dempster Highway or to Prudhoe Bay on the Dalton Highway or even the Canol Road can only be felt by doing them. I would have mentioned the Alaska Highway but now it is an easy drive unlike the aforementioned.

Today the costs of driving these distances may mean that sharing the journey with others is required, but RVing or simply canning and camping is a great way to see beyond the horizon. Some en route adventures now need to be booked in advance whereas when I hiked Denali and the Chilkoot Pass it was just a case of turning up, registering with the local ranger office and heading on out. A little more forward planning is needed for today’s traveler and cost considerations of lengthy flights or drives have to somehow be countered with more careful planning. In the days of reasonable gas prices, I would not even consider the driving or flying costs and have driven to Key West from the northwest coast, down the west coast to the Baja and to the west coast from New York. I once even flew my 1946 Fleet taildragger from the Pacific to the Atlantic and back using around 5 gallons an hour of avgas. Before the oil and credit crisis, I drove from Rio de Janeiro to Lima, down to Tierra del Fuego and back to Rio covering over 15,000 miles of spectacular scenery and with no consideration of the cost of gas. South America should be on your itinerary too! Some other memorable drives that may now require a mortgage with the gas companies include London to The Nordkapp, Norway, Skippers Canyon in New Zealand and the loneliness of the far north of Australia and the amazing coast of Western Australia stopping by at Monkey Mia and Wave Rock.

We tend to forget that the real cost of traveling is often less today than over the 40 years of my travels. In 1977 my round-trip airfare from Canada to Australia cost over $1700 in 1977 dollars so today it is far cheaper to fly, even with the airlines gouging for fuel, extra baggage, no service and no pleasure. The ‘Big Mac’ method of price comparison as developed by The Economist newspaper gives us a good gauge for most expenditures of today compared to yesterday but my $1500 cost to get a private pilots license in the 1970’s seems cheap by comparison to today, but obviously not when using this Big Mac principle. Other travel costs are also far cheaper today but this should not mean that travelers should disregard the many methods of saving costs that can then be put to extended or improved travel experiences

Travel Post-Internet:

In my 40 years of travel, I have had to use travel agents to make even the simplest of reservations and buy tickets, not even thinking to ask them if they had “been there, done that?” It was just a case of there being no other options to buying travel. Now we have unlimited choices and can seek out better travel agents, better prices, better selections and information about anywhere in the world for our travels – without even leaving home.

The Internet now gives travelers ideas and options of Where to go, When to go, Why to go, What to do, Who to book with and How to save money and offset costs. We can search and find experts for every travel option. If we are comfortable with the Internet we no longer have to go to a travel agent to make reservations and buy tickets except to book with some of the larger travel companies that still produce glossy brochures and offer all inclusive packages or tours that only sell through the agency system. The Internet also allows those of us who are smart enough to know when to seek out a top travel agent with knowledge, experience, and expertise (KEE skills) of destinations and activities about where to find them. There is no longer any need to only use our local agents when we can find one somewhere else in the world. When we do not need ‘the knowledge’ and can do it ourselves we simply surf the web so that we can.

Some travel agents operate their own tours, some are both wholesale and retail, some limit consumer selection by only selling their ‘preferred’ suppliers and some have professional consultants with years of experience invested in gaining knowledge, experience, and expertise and are worth their weight in gold to the savvy traveler. Beware though, as some are also called destination specialists and some of these designations merely require the agent to take a rudimentary test offered by tourism offices, destination marketing groups or even tour operators and in my opinion can harm the reputation of the travel industry. A specialist is not necessarily an expert.

Travel is probably the most used commercial aspect of the Internet and if retail agents want to harness this exciting medium to offer ‘the knowledge’ and their ‘key’ skills to a global audience, not just their local community, they must embrace the changes that are happening. Travelers now have the ability to seek answers to the 5 W’s of travel and the important ‘How to’ save money and offset costs by having information just a click away.

And then it occurred to me that even internet travel prices often include a commission element even when sold directly to the consumer. A dilemma for the operator is that to show a both a retail and a cost price option could deter many agents from selling the services as travelers could use an agent for free advice. Obviously, this two-tier pricing is not often available but travelers who do not need advice should also not be penalized by retail pricing. A new way had to be found and I think I have found it!

The need for fairer fare prices is why I developed the Top Travel Voucher program at The Top Travel Club and I even found a dot com for it. All travel selections on the site are at ‘net of commission’ prices for members who handle their own travel arrangements directly with the operators linked on the club website using our voucher program.

I am inviting travel operators from around the world to join this program. Adventure Operators who want to promote their products and services to travelers who are comfortable with direct bookings and reservations.

I am also inviting Travel Agents with knowledge, experience, and expertise of destinations and activities to showcase their skills to a global audience of travelers and to the members of this new travel club. I am leery of ‘specialist agents’ and only want experts to showcase their services.

This opportunity is available to the travel trade at no cost except for them to offer net, wholesale or outlet prices to club members and visitors to the website using top travel vouchers. I believe this program offers fairer fare prices to direct-booking travelers. The operator would normally be paying commission anyway but now travelers get the savings because they make their own arrangements.

The Top Travel Club opened in mid-April 2008 offering thousands of top travel vouchers for travel in over 70 countries with around 150 travel operators onboard. Every week we add more travel operators with more choices for members. Currently, you can get savings on accommodations, adventure travel, boat charters, culinary tours, hike, bike and dive tours, auto and RV rentals fishing lodges and guides, safaris, vacation rentals, single travel, women only and dude ranches. Members get the vouchers free of charge by paying an annual membership fee and non-members can buy the vouchers on the internet at Top Travel Sites at deeply discounted prices to the face-value. The future growth will include restaurants, travel clothing, travel insurance and the opportunity to access air ticket consolidators who want to deal directly with consumers.

The way I have traveled and the way I see travel is that consumers should have unlimited access to every travel opportunity with the ability to do their own due diligence or to find a professional who can offer quality advice and services at fair prices, and to find all of this without needing endless hours of searching.

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myupdatesystems-blog · 8 years ago

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Get the Most Out of Your Travel Agent

New Post has been published on https://myupdatesystems.com/get-the-most-out-of-your-travel-agent/

Get the Most Out of Your Travel Agent

Booking air travel, making hotel reservations and arranging vacation travel, in general, has changed completely with the advent of the internet and many people try to be their own travel agents. While you can arrange seemingly most of your travel yourself, you can’t do as well as your travel agent in a long run!

Travel professionals, whether your local travel agent, tour operator or destination specialist still possess contacts that you as an industry outsider do not have. As in a number of other professions, travel agents, whether in a shopping center near your home or an online agency, wherever they may be located, do know something you do not, have a way to book and arrange travel for you in ways unavailable or unknown to you.

Traditionally you could contact a travel agent and ask for a quote, whether a price of an air ticket, hotel or a vacation package. For the most part travel agents still provide that kind of information, although there is a limit how much information they may disclose as not all information is readily available to them.

First of all, most travel agents indeed may have at their fingertips routine cost of air ticketing, hotel rates or certain vacation packages available and will be happy to provide the price information to you instantly when asked. But once your travel request will need to be somewhat customized, whether tailored to your dates of travel or your other travel preferences, to find a relevant answer will be time-consuming. Because of this time element involved, do not automatically assume an agency is keen to spend the time to furnish the information you seek when there is no commitment you will travel at all.

Look at the situations from the following perspective. In the old days, if you had a problem with your car, you’d drive it to your neighborhood car mechanic and asked him to see what was wrong with it. You would drop the car off at the garage, the mechanic would have a look and tell you what the problem was. He would also give you an estimate and it was up to you to decide if you wanted him to fix it right then and there, wait or seek another opinion and another quote. His services cost you nothing.

But not anymore. These days, no garage, no car repair mechanic is willing to spend time trying to find out what’s the problem with your vehicle without charging you at least one hour labor upfront. Pay and he will look and tell you. Up to you if you will decide to take your car to another shop or have him fix it, he has covered his time spent diagnosing what’s wrong with your car.

Similarly, many travel agencies and professional travel planners and tour operators will charge you an upfront travel planning fee if you are requesting travel arrangements that first of all are time-consuming, or there is no guarantee you will book anything. All you are after are essentially private tailor-made travel arrangements and there are no simple answers or options to give you, and the only way to find out will be for the agent to dig and consult all sorts of different sources he has at this disposal and then present the travel alternatives to you for you to decide upon.

When working with a travel agent, travel planner or any other travel professional such as a knowledgeable destination specialist, keep in mind that a certain protocol will assure you will get not only the kind of travel arrangements you want in general but also you’ll gain a true partner that will always work in your best interest whether you’ll travel away from home on business or for pleasure.

1. First of all, when contacting a travel agent, whether in person or online, don’t hesitate to give them your name – don’t worry, most agents won’t spam you back. Without your name when you’re asking for a valuable travel advice most agents won’t take your request too seriously. Call if you wish but most agents prefer not to take notes, email is a way to go and for an agent to look up a fare often a time means he has to plug in a name, so might as well that name will be your real name. If you decide not to accept the booking the reservation will expire and no harm was done. If you decide later to purchase the reservation the agent does not have to rekey it into the system all over again.

2. If you’re trying to be you own travel agent, even in part, say you plan to book your own hotels online, disclose it to the agent you are contacting for assistance, he/she may still be interested in helping you with the rest of your travel arrangements. Don’t hide your intentions from the agent as agents don’t like to be used for information gathering purposes only.

3. If at all possible, always contact your travel agent or destination specialist as soon as you know when and where you wish to travel, not last minute before your intended departure. That is even more important when you’re planning a trip to a lesser frequented destination.

4. Don’t book your flights and hotels online and ask a travel agent to do the rest, namely the difficult parts, such as complex transportation connections, travel arrangements in remote locations or to book segments that you just feel are not safe for you to book online yourself. Give your agent to design and book your entire trip for you. The worst you can do is design your own vacation package, then copy and email the same request to dozen different agents to see who may be the lowest bidder. Yes, the internet is perfect for that kind of information gathering but look at this from a perspective of a travel agent. If he/she knows you are sending the same request to dozen agents many of them will not be too interested in dealing with you. Then again, telling them the truth they will appreciate knowing what you are doing and approach the whole thing quite differently and in the end, they just might offer you a deal.

5. If you’re after booking shoe-string cost of travel, for example wishing to book the lowest type of accommodations, best be your own travel agent. Do realize that agents can’t book services that are simply too cheap to begin with, not to mention that that kind of suppliers do not pay agents any kind of commission. The agent may still help you but keep in mind he will be doing you a favor and will be working for you at no charge. If so, appreciate it, email your thank you.

Do realize that to ask an agent million questions, get all the answers, including time-consuming quotes, only for you to never replay again is definitely rude and turns agents off completely. If you are polite and respectful many will often work without any commitment on your part, providing you with the information you need, working for free. But because of those that just siphon info out of agents so they could possibly book travel on their own leaves not only a sour taste in agent’s mouth but certainly induces the decision to charge an upfront planning fees when a next inquiry comes.

6. On another hand, when it comes to upper-end accommodations keep in mind these hotels routinely offer discounts to agents that agents can markup and still offer you room costs below hotel rack rates. The genuine agent is not interested in selling you a higher end hotel in order to make a higher commission but to tailor in a better trip experience for you where he deems it desirable.

7. Keep in mind that there is a difference between a travel agent and a so-called Destination Specialist. Most travel agents use online reservation systems to book transportation, hotel, and vacation packages. They essentially book or resell ready-to-sell travel offers from a variety of suppliers that do not require more than filling in your name and dates of travel. When it comes to you needing to be customized arrangements, they will need to contact tour operators and destination specialists that are either part of their consortium or a network they belong to. Depending on the connections they have they will or will not be able to help you.

8. Destination Specialists pride themselves in really knowing their destinations. Many of them have indeed not only traveled extensively but know a particular destination inside-out so they can arrange travel logistics for you based on knowing, rather than looking it up in a brochure or some kind of database. Many Destination Specialists specialize in difficult, custom designed itineraries and do not sell travel packages. Often a time though not always that kind of service reflects higher markup.

9. Last, please note that many destination specialists, as well as travel agents, work 110 or more hours per week because especially custom-design travel is indeed very time to consume. Being good at travel logistics does take experience and while with the internet it seems second nature to be able to arrange travel on your own, many travels professional are indeed very good at what they do! They do know more about travel than you, give them a chance, they can save you not only money but also many headaches and above all, they can assure not only that you’ll travel worry-free but that you may have a trip of your life! Keep in mind, a good agent is not after selling you a single ticket or a package tour, they want you to become a repeat client, their go-to travel professional for rest of your life.

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myupdatesystems-blog · 8 years ago

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Elements of a Strong Corporate Travel Program

New Post has been published on https://myupdatesystems.com/elements-of-a-strong-corporate-travel-program/

Elements of a Strong Corporate Travel Program

In order to make the most of your corporate travel budget, it is critical to plan for leveraging your program for all it is worth. Telling travelers to select the lowest logical airfare is just not enough. Here are the elements that should be considered when planning or evaluating your travel program.

1. Travel policy

A well written and disseminated travel policy is the foundation of any good travel program, and I am consistently amazed that so many corporations have such an outdated and poorly conceived travel policy, if they have one at all. It is not difficult to find a well-written policy. One can be found online quite easily. All that remains is that it is edited to reflect corporate culture, and disseminated within the company so that everyone understands and agrees to follow it. For this reason, it is a good idea to have everyone sign a copy of the travel policy to ensure that it is read, understood and owned by all company staff. I suggest that everyone in the company signs a copy of the travel policy, whether they travel or not. They may change positions in the company later and be required to travel. A travel policy need not be long or complex. Some of the best travel policies I have ever seen were only a few pages long.

2. Centralized travel internally and externally

Many companies do not centralize their travel program, and they pay a price in terms of a loss of expense reduction opportunities and internal efficiencies. Many companies that do not centralize travel have a fear of requiring travelers to do something they may not want to do, along with the idea that centralizing travel will require hiring a Travel Manager. Both of these may be legitimate concerns but they do not have to be in most cases. By requiring travelers to book centrally, you are not necessarily causing them to lose flexibility. You can centralize travel while still allowing travelers to book on their own, either with a travel agency of your choice or online through a provider that you have partnered with and have confidence in. By assigning someone with the responsibility of overseeing travel, you are getting a single point of contact both internally and externally for travel issues. If your company spends less than $1 million in air travel, you probably do not need a full-time travel manager. In these cases, travel oversight can be given to the finance department, human resources, or even an executive level assistant. Here is a look at the advantages to be gained by centralizing travel.

When you centralize travel with a single agency, you gain in a number of important ways. You will have a single point of contact for problems while travelers are on the road, and you will have one entity to go to for all your travel needs. This eliminates the problem of consolidating a travel report from among several sources. By bringing travel together, you will gain significantly from economies of scale. If you can measure total travel among various divisions or locations, you can get more for your money from travel suppliers. This will allow you to gain more from airline soft dollar programs, which means more free tickets and upgrades, get a higher percentage discount from our preferred airline, and get better-negotiated rates from your and car contracts. Your fulfillment costs will decrease as well, as your travel agency will often discount their fees for a higher overall volume of travel.

3. Mix of online booking and personal service

This is an addendum to the previous element, which calls for centralizing travel with one travel agency. This is important, but in doing so, you need not require travelers to use an online booking system, and you need not require travelers to call the agency directly. By offering travelers the option of doing either, you are accomplishing several goals. You will reduce your fulfillment costs, as online booking is cheaper in terms of a service fee. By giving travelers the option, you are giving them a sense of control, thereby increasing morale and standing a better chance of a high adoption rate. Thirdly, you leave open a best practice of using your online booking engine for less complex itineraries, and allowing senior executives, frequent travelers, and complex itineraries.

4. Look under every stone

While the bulk of most travel programs revolve around the air budget, there are several other areas one can investigate to find savings opportunities. There are a couple of more obvious areas to look, or car rental discounts with a favored supplier. Often your travel agency will already have discounted rates through consortia affiliations and agency car contracts. There are also some less common areas that should be investigated. For example, if ground transportation is a concern, most suppliers will offer discounted rates and a direct billing option. Direct billing arrangements with hotels and car rental agencies are also a great way to increase efficiencies and make the job of the accounting department easier.

5. Leverage hard dollar and soft dollar contracts

Most major airlines today offer hard dollar discounts as well as soft dollar incentives in exchange for company loyalty to their product. If your travel program is over $1 million in air spend, you can secure a discount off of the lowest fares of your carrier of choice in return for a market share commitment. For your secondary carriers, or if your volume is less than the minimum required by the airline, you can enter in to soft dollar programs for free tickets and free upgrades, as well as traveler status enhancements or airport club passes. These programs require little in the way of volume, but they are not well publicized so you may need to hunt for them or ask Baker Travel or your current agency to point you in the right direction.

6. Do not neglect hotel volume

Hotel volume is sometimes overlooked but it should not be. Negotiated rates can be had through your travel agency or directly with the hotel properties of your choice. Individual

7. Have at least one car rental contract

Rental car contracts are easy to enter into and require little in the way of commitment from the corporation. Choose a partner that has airport locations and a reputation for excellent customer service. You can save 5-10% very easily and can also negotiate frequent renter membership for all your employees. This will make them more efficient and enhance morale. You can also enter in to direct billing agreements at the same time that can make the jobs of your travelers and accounting staff much less stressful.

8. Understand group and meeting contracts

Airlines and hotel will discount your fares and rates when you have groups traveling together or meeting at a single destination from multiple points of origin. These meeting contracts can bring you airfare discounts of 2-10%, and if you have enough travelers on a single airline, you may be able to negotiate for free tickets to be awarded at contract completion. The minimum requirement is usually 10 travelers going to the same place at the same time. Some airlines have higher minimums so be sure to ask before a contract is generated. Hotels will discount their rates in a similar way with a minimum of 10 room nights. These discounts can range from 10% to a much higher discount depending upon occupancy rate and seasonal variances.

9. Use reporting to consistently improve metrics

Well managed travel programs require constant monitoring and financial controls to be properly leveraged. Insist on timely and customized reports that can be designed to bring you the information you need most. By receiving regular reporting on traveler behavior and provider contract performance, you will be in a better position to fulfill contract obligations, achieve cost reduction objectives and see where opportunities for future savings may lie.

10. Use all avenues to enhance traveler comfort and efficiency

Lastly, any well managed travel program will take in to account the comfort and productivity of their travelers. When travelers are comfortable, they can focus on their main priorities that help propel your business forward. If travelers are happy, they perform at a higher level. Ask if your travel agency can upgrade traveler status on a preferred airline. Look in to purchasing blocks of airport club passes so they can be used strategically during long and complex itineraries. There are many ways to reward travelers for the difficult and often grueling chore of travel. These kinds of rewards generate feelings of loyalty and increased productivity and efficiency.

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myupdatesystems-blog · 8 years ago

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Base Tendriling Travel Expenses

New Post has been published on https://myupdatesystems.com/base-tendriling-travel-expenses/

Base Tendriling Travel Expenses

As business travel expenses nose upward, companies are realizing that better cost-management techniques can make a difference.

US. corporate travel expenses rocketed to more than $143 billion in 1994, according to American Express’ most recent survey on business travel management. Private-sector employers spend an estimated $2,484 per employee on travel and entertainment, a 17 percent increase over the past four years.

Corporate T&E costs, now the third-largest controllable expense behind sales and data-processing costs, are under new scrutiny. Corporations are realizing that even a savings of 1 percent or 2 percent can translate into millions of dollars added to their bottom line.

Savings of that order are sure to get management’s attention, which is a requirement for this type of project. Involvement begins with understanding and evaluating the components of T&E management in order to control and monitor it more effectively.

Hands-on management includes assigning responsibility for travel management, implementing a quality measurement system for travel services used, and writing and distributing a formal travel policy. Only 64 percent of U.S. corporations have travel policies.

Even with senior management’s support, the road to savings is rocky-only one in three companies has successfully instituted an internal program that will help cut travel expenses, and the myriad aspects of travel are so overwhelming, most companies don’t know where to start. “The industry of travel is based on information,” says Steven R. Schoen, founder and CEO of The Global Group Inc. “Until such time as a passenger actually sets foot on the plane, they’ve [only] been purchasing information.”

If that’s the case, information technology seems a viable place to hammer out those elusive, but highly sought-after, savings. “Technological innovations in the business travel industry are allowing firms to realize the potential of automation to control and reduce indirect [travel] costs,” says Roger H. Ballou, president of the Travel Services Group USA of American Express. “In addition, many companies are embarking on quality programs that include sophisticated process improvement and reengineering efforts designed to substantially improve T&E management processes and reduce indirect costs.”

As companies look to technology to make potential savings a reality, they can get very creative about the methods they employ.

The Great Leveler

Centralized reservation systems were long the exclusive domain of travel agents and other industry professionals. But all that changed in November 1992 when a Department of Transportation ruling allowed the general public access to systems such as Apollo and SABRE. Travel-management software, such as TripPower and TravelNet, immediately sprang up, providing corporations insight into where their T&E dollars are being spent.

The software tracks spending trends by interfacing with the corporation’s database and providing access to centralized reservation systems that provide immediate reservation information to airlines, hotels, and car rental agencies. These programs also allow users to generate computerized travel reports on cost savings with details on where discounts were obtained, hotel and car usage and patterns of travel between cities. Actual data gives corporations added leverage when negotiating discounts with travel suppliers.

“When you own the information, you don’t have to go back to square one every time you decide to change agencies,” says Mary Savoie Stephens, travel manager for biotech giant Chiron Corp.

Sybase Inc., a client/server software leader with an annual T&E budget of more than $15 million, agrees. “Software gives us unprecedented visibility into how employees are spending their travel dollars and better leverage to negotiate with travel service suppliers,” says Robert Lerner, director of credit and corporate travel services for Sybase Inc. “We have better access to data, faster, in a real-time environment, which is expected to bring us big savings in T&E. Now we have control over our travel information and no longer have to depend exclusively on the agencies and airlines.”

The cost for this privilege depends on the volume of business. One-time purchases of travel management software can run from under $100 to more than $125,000. Some software providers will accommodate smaller users by selling software piecemeal for $5 to $12 per booked trip, still significant savings from the $50 industry norm per transaction.

No More Tickets

Paperless travel is catching on faster than the paperless office ever did as both service providers and consumers work together to reduce ticket prices for business travelers. Perhaps the most cutting-edge of the advances is “ticketless” travel, which almost all major airlines are testing.

In the meantime, travel providers and agencies are experimenting with new technologies to enable travelers to book travel services via the Internet, e-mail and unattended ticketing kiosks. Best Western International, Hyatt Hotels, and several other major hotel chains market on the Internet. These services reduce the need for paper and offer better service and such peripheral benefits as increased efficiency, improved tracking of travel expenses and trends, and cost reduction.

Dennis Egolf, CFO of the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Louisville, Ky., realized that the medical center’s decentralized location, a quarter-mile from the hospital, made efficiency difficult. “We were losing production time and things got lost,” he says. “Every memo had to be hand-carried for approval, and we required seven different copies of each travel order.” As a result, Egolf tried an off-the-shelf, paper-reduction software package designed for the federal government.

The software allows the hospital to manage travel on-line, from tracking per-diem allowances and calculating expenses to generating cash advance forms and authorizing reimbursement vouchers. The software also lets the hospital keep a running account of its travel expenses and its remaining travel budget.

“Today, for all practical purposes, the system is paperless,” says Egolf. The software has helped the hospital reduce document processing time by 93 percent. “The original goal focused on managing employee travel without paper,” he says. “We have achieved that goal, in part due to the efforts of the staff and in part due to the accuracy of the software.”

With only a $6,000 investment, the hospital saved $70 each employee trip and saved almost half of its $200,000 T&E budget through the paper reduction program.

Out There

Consolidation of corporate travel arrangements by fewer agencies has been a growing trend since 1982. Nearly three out of four companies now make travel plans for their business locations through a single agency as opposed to 51 percent in 1988. Two major benefits of agency consolidation are the facilitation of accounting and T&E budgeting, as well as leverage in negotiating future travel discounts.

A major technological advance that allows this consolidation trend to flourish is the introduction of satellite ticket printers (STPs). Using STPs enables a travel agency to consolidate all operations to one home office, and still send all necessary tickets to various locations instantly via various wire services. As the term implies, the machinery prints out airline tickets on-site immediately, eliminating delivery charges.

For London Fog, STPs are a blessing. London Fog’s annual T&E budget of more than $15 million is split equally between its two locations in Eldersburg, Md., and New York City. Each location purchases the same number of tickets, so equal access to ticketing from their agency is a must. With an STP in their two locations, the company services both offices with one agency in Baltimore. Each office has access to immediate tickets and still manages to save by not having to pay courier and express mail charges that can range up to $15 for each of the more than 500 tickets each purchase annually.

Conde Nast Publications’ annual T&E budget of more than $20 million is allocated among its locations in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, New York and Detroit. Since 1994, travel arrangements have been handled by a centralized agency, Advanced Travel Management in New York City, by installing an STP in each of these five locations. In addition to increased efficiency due to consolidation, Conde Nast now has the ability to change travel plans at a moment’s notice and have new tickets in hand instantly.

The real benefit is that the machines are owned and maintained by the travel agency., so there is no cost to the company. Due to the major expense involved, however, STPs remain an option only for major ticket purchasers. “STPs are a viable option in this process for any location that purchases more than $500,000 per year in tickets,” says Shoen.

As airfare averages, 43 percent of any company’s T&E expenses, savings obtainable through the various uses of technology have become dramatic. For example, the ability of corporations to collect and analyze their own travel trends has led to the creation of net fare purchasing-negotiating a price between a corporation and an airline to purchase tickets that do not include the added expenses of commissions, overrides, transaction fees, agency transaction fees and other discounts.

Although most major U.S. carriers publicly proclaim that they don’t negotiate corporate discounts below published market fares, the American Express survey on business travel management found that 38 percent of U.S. companies had access to, or already had implemented negotiated airline discounts. The availability and mechanics of these arrangements vary widely by carrier.

What’s the Price?

Fred Shaffer, the transportation manager for Hewlett-Packard and a strong advocate of the net-pricing system, has pioneered the concept of fee-based pricing with travel-management companies under contract with H-P. He states that H-P, which spends more than $528 million per year on T&E, plans to have all air travel based on net-fare pricing. “At the present time, we have several net fares at various stages of the agreement,” he says. “These fares are negotiated with the airlines at the corporate level, then trickle down to each of our seven geographical regions.”

Frank Kent, a Western regional manager for United Airlines, concurs: “United Airlines participates in corporate volume discounting, such as bulk ticket purchases, but not with net pricing. I have yet to see one net-fare agreement that makes sense to us. We’re not opposed to it, but we just don’t understand it right now.”

Kent stresses, “Airlines should approach corporations with long-term strategic relationships rather than just discounts. We would like to see ourselves committed to a corporation rather than just involved.”

As business travel expenses nose upward, companies are realizing that better cost-management techniques can make a difference.

As companies look to technology to make potential savings a reality, they can get very creative about the methods they employ.

The Great Leveler

“When you own the information, you don’t have to go back to square one every time you decide to change agencies,” says Mary Savoie Stephens, travel manager for biotech giant Chiron Corp.

The cost for this privilege depends on the volume of business. One-time purchases of travel management software can run from under $100 to more than $125,000. Some software providers will accommodate smaller users by selling software piecemeal for $5 to $12 per booked trip, still a significant saving from the $50 industry norm per transaction.

No More Tickets

In the meantime, travel providers and agencies are experimenting with new technologies to enable travelers to book travel services via the Internet, e-mail and unattended ticketing kiosks. Best Western International, Hyatt Hotels and several other major hotel chains market on the Internet. These services reduce the need for paper and offer better service and such peripheral benefits as increased efficiency, improved tracking of travel expenses and trends, and cost reduction.

With only a $6,000 investment, the hospital saved $70 each employee trip and saved almost half of its $200,000 T&E budget through the paper-reduction program.

Out There

As airfare averages 43 percent of any company’s T&E expenses, savings obtainable through the various uses of technology have become dramatic. For example, the ability of corporations to collect and analyze their own travel trends has led to the creation of net-fare purchasing-negotiating a price between a corporation and an airline to purchase tickets that does not include the added expenses of commissions, overrides, transaction fees, agency transaction fees and other discounts.

Although most major U.S. carriers publicly proclaim that they don’t negotiate corporate discounts below published market fares, the American Express survey on business travel management found that 38 percent of U.S. companies had access to, or already had implemented, negotiated airline discounts. The availability and mechanics of these arrangements vary widely by carrier.

What’s the Price?

Fred Swaffer, transportation manager for Hewlett-Packard and a strong advocate of the net-pricing system, has pioneered the concept of fee-based pricing with travel-management companies under contract with H-P. He states that H-P, which spends more than $528 million per year on T&E, plans to have all air travel based on net-fare pricing. “At the present time, we have several net fares at various stages of agreement,” he says. “These fares are negotiated with the airlines at the corporate level, then trickle down to each of our seven geographical regions.”

Frank Kent, Western regional manager for United Airlines, concurs: “United Airlines participates in corporate volume discounting, such as bulk ticket purchases, but not with net pricing. I have yet to see one net-fare agreement that makes sense to us. We’re not opposed to it, but we just don’t understand it right now.”

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myupdatesystems-blog · 8 years ago

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Top 12 Blogs For Travel Bloggers

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Top 12 Blogs For Travel Bloggers

This is a list of creative travel blogs that I read and follow. They are written by independent travel writers, the list includes those that I consider as heavy-weights in travel blogging. These bloggers are associated with large travel sites/blogs but their focus is on living a unique life (getting to see the world around them) and be insightful writers. All of them are fun and inspirational to read.

Blog: Everything-Everywhere

Writer: Gary Arndt

Gary has been on the road since 2007 as a professional traveler. On the blog, you’ll find interviews with leading figures in the industry like Laura Bly from BlyOnTheFly.com. The posts are factual yet personal as they include Gary’s insights and reasons for visiting each of the destinations. Everything-Everywhere is the top travel blogger on Twitter according to its Klout score.

Most recent post: This Week In Travel – Episode 152

Blog: Nomadic Matt

Writer: Matt Kepness

Matt offers practical and tactical advice about how to travel better, cheaper and longer. The blog gives down-to-earth details about the best ways to explore the world. The blog is more of a collection of useful tips rather than a chronicle of Matt’s adventures although there is a travel guide section with info gathered from Matt’s travels since 2004. The site includes videos and a list of resources.

Most recent post: How To Travel Anywhere For Free

Blog: Go-See-Write

Writer: Michael Hodson

Traveling since 2008 he circumvented the globe without getting on a plane. The blog includes Michael’s adventures and experiences as he goes through each of the travel destinations. Dubai travel is included in the long list of destinations you can read about and there is a section of travel destination tips. The blog is a personal journey of a solo adventurer exploring the world.

Most recent post: Visiting One of the World’s Highest Lakes

Blog: Fox Nomad

Writer: Anil Polat

Chosen by the Huffington Post as one of the top travel writers to watch Anil is a full-time traveler but a gadget geek as well, so the focus of the blog is often on the technical aspect of travel. He often visits countries which are off-the-beaten-track and gives practical advice about how to cope in places like Yemen and Iraq. On the blog, you’ll find destination tips, tech posts, resources and insights into green travel and culture.

Most recent post: The Landmarks To Look Out For When Flying Into Istanbul

Blog: Legal Nomads

Writer: Jodi – A former Lawyer from Montreal

She has been traveling and eating her way around the world since 2008 and the blog focuses on food, culture and her adventures. One of the plus points about this travel writer’s blog is that it is ad-free (except for Amazon links) which makes it a very clean-cut blog to look at. This is a good blog to watch if you’re into food related travel, the blog is on the MSN list of top travel blogs.

Most recent post: Thrillable Hours: Doug Barber, Co-Founder of Mania

Blog: Almost Fearless

Writer: Christine Gilbert

One of the top ranking travel & leisure blogs written by a mother traveling with her family since 2008, this blog has beautiful photography and the blend of family, self, and travel. The family travel focus can be seen by the blog sections – life, kitchen, photos, and kids. You’ll find some useful destination tips but more general life insights.

Most recent post: How I Spent 10 Years To Get Where I Started

Blog: Camels and Chocolates

Writer: Kristin Luna

One of the top travel writer blogs according to Elliott.org and other “top” lists due to the well-written text. The writer is a professional journalist, has interviewed the stars and in addition is a travel addict. She covers a long list of travel destinations recording her adventures with the occasional travel destination tip thrown in. The blog boasts many photos of the travel writer in the various travel destinations.

Most recent post: Photo Friday: Columbus, Ohio

Blog: Johnny Vagabond

Writer: Wes

Another of the Huffington Post picks for best travel writer blogs, the charm of this blog is in the well-written descriptions of the writer’s adventures. Wes is traveling around the world on a tight budget and taking brilliant pictures as he goes. The writing is engaging, intelligent and entertaining as well as giving you plenty of info about the travel destinations.

Most recent post: A Love Letter from the Philippines

Blog: 48 Hour Adventure

Writer: Justin Morris

A very useful and highly practical blog where each post is dedicated to a 48-hour plan of what to see and do in various travel destinations. What makes this travel & leisure blog stand out is its no-nonsense usable quality. You’ll find a “48 hours in Dubai” post if you’re interested in Dubai travel, listing sites, how to get around, orientation and plenty of large photos.

Most recent post: 48 Hours in Reykjavik

Blog: Global Grasshopper

Writer: A team of travel writers Gary and Becky

Unlike many of the blogs on this list, it is not a chronicle of any one person’s travels but rather a collection of inspirational travel stories and travel destination tips written by travel writers. For example, you’ll find “top 10” lists, cool hotels and beautiful places as well as the section for travel snobs!

Most recent post: 10 of the Best Travel Destinations

Blog: Travel Business Success

Writer: Tourism Tim Warren

Since 1994 Tourism Tim Warren works to inspire, guide & connect tourism pros’ to realize their dreams. From Michigan to Mongolia, Baja to Bolivia, “Tourism Tim” Warren has helped 1000’s of small start-up tour operators to international business development agencies increase sales, arrivals, and profits via his book, online courses and webinars. An entrepreneur at heart, he enjoys helping current & future travel entrepreneurs succeed financially following their passion of a profession in tourism.

Most recent post: 5 Travel Website Sales Tips

Blog: Y Travel Blog

Writer: Caz & Craig Makepeace

Caz & Craig originally from Central Coast of Australia alongside their daughters have been traveling around the world. Y Travel Blog was started in April 2010 as a way to share personal travel tips and stories to help others live their travel dreams. There consistency, dedication and global travel knowledge make their travel site one of the best.

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myupdatesystems-blog · 8 years ago

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Confused With All the Travel Information on the Internet?

New Post has been published on https://myupdatesystems.com/confused-with-all-the-travel-information-on-the-internet/

Confused With All the Travel Information on the Internet?

There is so much information available on the internet right now regarding travel. There are online travel sites for cruises, hotels, air, trains and any other type of travel. But what is the correct product for you? Is the location of the hotel where you want to be? Is the type of room or cabin the right fit for you? Is that cruise line the one you should be booking? Not all products are created equal nor are the products right for everyone. How do you tell? Contact a travel professional.

Do travel agents exist?

There have been multiple articles, and even the President of the United States has said travel agents don’t exist or are going away. In a way they are right. Travel agents in the past were just someone who booked a trip for someone who called or came into the storefront office of a travel agency. Storefront travel agencies are few and far between nowadays as most of the “travel agents” have gone home to work. Even the term “travel agent” is going away because what they do now is different than what they did before.

Travel Professionals/Travel Counselors

Travel Agents are now more a counselor and an adviser so they are now called Travel Professionals or Travel Counselor. Even the travel industry is trying to get away from using the term “travel agent”. They no longer just book a trip for someone, they know more than what is available to the traveling client. The travel professionals now are constantly learning, constantly traveling, receiving input from other travel professionals about where they have traveled and are a resource for what is required to travel nowadays.

When you use an online travel agency like Expedia, Travelocity, etc. you aren’t able to have someone protect your back. They book the travel for you and then you are pretty much on your own. Say your flight gets canceled, who is going to book a replacement flight? You are, not them. If you use a travel professional that travel professional will do it. If something goes wrong on your trip if the room you booked is not like what you thought it would be, who is going to make it right? A travel professional will also check constantly for price drops before final payment and whether a new promotion offered would be more beneficial than what was booked with a deposit. All these things can be addressed before final payment.

Travel professional works with you from the time you first talk to them until you are home safe and sound and any and all problems have been solved or addressed.

It Costs More to Use a Travel Professional

This is not always true. True, some travel professionals charge fees but not all of them do. This is because some vendors, like airlines and some hotels, don’t pay commission or some of the vendors have decreased the number of commissions paid to the travel professional. In order to make ends meet, some travel professionals charge fees. I charge $50 per person for airline reservations domestically and $100 for airline reservations internationally. I will also charge a fee sometimes for hotels for the same reason or if I am putting the various sections of the trip together myself. If I book a cruise or a tour, I don’t charge a fee as the vendor pays me a commission. Remember, whether you use a travel professional or not the commission is still being paid as it is automatically included in the price from the vendor. So, why not use a travel professional and avoid the hassle and save your time?

The rules for traveling are constantly changing and it is the travel professional who is able to keep their clients on track with them.

Examples: Passports

For instance, did you know that come January 2016 you may need a passport to travel by air domestically? This is due to a law called the REAL ID Act. This requires all travelers to have a REAL ID-compliant identification that includes all of these fields: full legal name, signature, date of birth, gender, unique identifying number, a principal residence address and a front-facing photograph of the applicant. Unfortunately, there are still a handful of states that are non-compliant. Do you know which states are compliant and which aren’t? Your travel professional does. By the way, outright non-compliant states/territories are American Samoa, Louisiana and New Hampshire. The states of Minnesota and New York offer an optional Enhanced ID at a cost, so because it is optional, a large percentage of residents don’t have one. Some states have applied for additional extensions, but it is unclear if those will be granted. Currently, only four states (Louisiana, Minnesota, New Hampshire and New York) and American Samoa are technically non-compliant.

Also, we still don’t know if January 1, 2016, will be the date of the requirement or will it be later? Because of this law, the passport processing time for all will be affected. All the passports issued in 2006 to meet the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative that went into effect in 2007 are now expiring, causing a slew of renewals. So, because of those renewals coupled with the possible REAL ID enforcement, passport waits are expected to further increase. As of October 11, the current wait has already increased a week to four to six weeks for standard passports and three weeks for expedited. Expedited in person could be up to eight days based on travel need.

Ultimately the REAL ID Act will require all state-issued drivers’ licenses to include “machine-readable technology” or chips to help keep us safe and secure while traveling. For more information on the REAL ID Act.

Also, passports are recommended for cruises just like they are required to fly outside of the United States. The reason being is if you do need to fly back to the United States from a foreign port you have a passport to do so. Just because you are on a cruise leaving a United States port, technically you are traveling internationally just as soon as you step on the ship as most ships are registered outside of the United States!

Example: Visas

A travel professional would be able to help you determine if visas are required to travel to where you want to go. If they don’t know for sure, they know where to send you for that information and get confirmation that you do or don’t need one for the type of travel you are taking. For instance, for most cruises, if you leave a U.S. port and return to the same U.S. port you probably don’t need a visa to visit the ports. This is called a “closed loop” trip. But, again, most of the cruises. Always double check to see if one is needed.

Example: Travel Insurance

Again, not all travel insurance is created equal. Should you purchase travel insurance? Absolutely!!! I recommend to my clients not to purchase travel insurance, for the most part, from the supplier of the cruise or product. The reason being the coverage is not as comprehensive as third party policies. Travel insurance is not only purchased for travel delays, luggage lost/damage or cancellation protection. Some health insurance companies do not cover you when traveling outside of the United States. Medicare does not. Travel insurance will act as your primary health insurance during your travel, from the time you leave to the time you return to your home. Also, it provides emergency evacuation for health reasons and protects you for other items. Always read the policy and information provided by the issuer of the travel insurance to see what is covered. Your travel professional will know which is a good travel insurance issuer.

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myupdatesystems-blog · 8 years ago

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What Travel Agents Need to Know About Corporate Travel Today

New Post has been published on https://myupdatesystems.com/what-travel-agents-need-to-know-about-corporate-travel-today/

What Travel Agents Need to Know About Corporate Travel Today

This is rightly named as the age of traveler-centricity and with the evolution of the new era of personalized travel; it is leading to research and development of a host of new so-called intelligent services. The command-and-control perspectives of traveling have changed a lot from the past and the focus has shifted more on the traveler and the productivity of each trip. It has become essential to maintain that the travelers have the greatest return on investment on each trip. New generations of young employees and managers, who have been growing up and dwelling in a digital age, are moving up the ranks as travelers. It has become essential to recognize the need for greater flexibility acknowledging that the employees who travel on corporate trips also consider a percentage of their trip to be a leisure outlet. With increasing globalization and rise of companies sending their staff overseas to network and connect with their offshore prospects/customers/suppliers, corporate travel is a highly profitable tourism segment. Before we talk about how tourism companies can better cater to business travelers, let us first look at why they prefer to use specialized corporate agencies over traditional agents.

Why do businesses use Corporate Travel Agencies?

This might be the most basic question for a travel agency as to why they need to use agencies specializing in corporate travel when there are plenty of regular travel agents in the market. Here is the importance of corporate travel agencies who have online systems which allow business travelers access to their complete itinerary.

The following information is at the fingertips of the CTAs:-

full business itinerary details

up-to-date tracking details of flights (including delays or rescheduling)

transparent details about additional costs such as baggage fees or in-flight fees

travel alerts, if any, in the destined area

complete and up-to-date details about the visa procurement policies and identification required

currency requirement and conversion rates

What do corporate clients expect from Corporate Travel Agencies?

Negotiated Fares

The Corporate Agencies tend to have tie-ups with hotels, car rentals, flights etc. giving them access to lower fares which can be used only by the frequent business travelers. Discounted prices are not the only advantage though as they also offer flight upgrades, room upgrades, and VIP check-in lines as required.

In-depth information about the travel industry

Corporate travel agents have access to many travel resources and most importantly, quickly than any other leisure travel agent. Additional information helps to make the business trips convenient and comfortable.

Changes in Itinerary

When an airline ticket needs to get rescheduled or canceled, chances are the airline or the online service provider will charge lofty fees. When booking with a corporate travel agent, most of the times schedule changes can be done at zero or minimal extra charges.

Viable emergency contacts

It is important for the business travelers to reach the correct person at the need of trouble. Corporate travel agents have the experience and professionalism to relieve stress for both the traveler and the company.

What do you need to consider as corporate travel increases?

Business Travel Barometer reported that corporate travel is witnessing an accelerated growth. However, when poorly managed, it may be no longer an advantage to companies and may, in fact, become a burden. There are some factors which the corporations and CTAs must consider to get the best out of the time spent traveling.

Adopting a travel policy

The corporate must define a travel policy which is applicable to and respected by travelers at all levels. This policy should be used to establish the standards which will help to track the improvement of business travel. It will eventually help to reduce the costs of the entire package.

Do not limit the traveler’s autonomy

The management is responsible for budgeting the travel policy which helps to improve cost management however, it is also essential to give a degree of autonomy to the traveler. The policy should be flexible enough to allow the employee to adapt the trip as per the situation.

Traveler’s security should be a major concern

Business travelers need to have security in place. The company needs to stick to its definition of standards to ensure the employee’s integrity. The CTAs should have reliable partners (travel insurance, airlines, hotel chains etc.).

Mobility and automation

To optimize time and ease the processes, the administration of management platforms should have automated processes. This means they should adopt mobile solutions where search options, travel alerts, ticket reservations etc. can be accessed quickly, easily and on the go.

Corporate Travel Trends in 2016

Corporate travel trends tend to change regularly. 2016 has also not been any different and the travel management companies (TMCs) and corporate travel agencies (CTAs) are quite focused to provide steady if not strong axis all over. A growing MICE sector, investments in mobile and big data and enhanced focus on duty of care are some of their areas of focus.

Rising prices

The consolidated buzzword among global suppliers, airfares, hotel rates etc. is the rising fares. It is sometimes the move of the suppliers to generate discounts which encourage travel if there is a strong decline in demand. A positive 2016 world economy has been bringing an increase in air fares of a few percentage points, hotels are expected to see 4%-6% rise in average global rates and the competition will remain moderate in the car rental services.

Duty of care

Risk management is one of the major points of emphasis for corporations. Corporate customers are allowing new policies and improved technologies to monitor employees’ location in case of an emergency, especially when they are traveling to foreign destinations. For instance, Concur Risk Messaging helps to identify the travelers moving around in the world and alerts them with alternate travel arrangement as and when needed.

Focusing on MICE

The meetings industry is a major growing sector and the corporate travel trend is developing on it. The corporate travel agencies should better start aligning the various meeting procurement methodologies with its transient travel sourcing. One of the ways could be to broaden the variety of meeting services by incorporating incentive trips within it.

Investing in technology

A sharper focus on increasing value and becoming more traveler-centric can be done by bringing in mobile friendly technologies. Mobile and big data are definitely the two most significant technological investments which any corporate travel agency must focus to make their platform more appealing.

Business travel analysis after Brexit

Following Brexit, ACTE and CAPA shared their speculations. According to them, the greatest short-term effects on the travel industry will come from the weakening of the pound against other world currencies. Greeley Koch, executive director of the Association of Corporate Travel Executives said that the business travel industry will trend on currency fluctuations; with some companies taking advantage of the weaker pound and traveling more, while others may withhold business travel until world markets find their own level.

Impact of terrorism on corporate travelers

Travel policy makers and administrators need to be guided by rising terrorism scare. For executives and staff undertaking travel on behalf of businesses, the travel agents and corporate travel agencies (CTAs) should prove the reassurance for their safety through the travel policies. It is more than likely that the surveys conducted over corporate travelers reflect the general concern of the global business travelers about the spate of terrorism. However, there is no denying the fact that terrorist threat is changing the patterns of business travel. The key impact of this is to keep in mind that the companies providing travel services for business travelers need to enhance their focus on security and the associated risks in delivering the services to corporate clients. According to a recent finding, travel managers have the higher estimation of their policy’s effectiveness in addressing risk compared to skeptical business travelers.

Concluding

Although the corporate travel sector has continued to progress, there are a plethora of challenges faced by the industry. A rapidly changing consumer market, the emergence of new business models, the impact of technology, man-made and natural crises are some of the fulcrum points that need to be considered before planning corporate trips.

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myupdatesystems-blog · 8 years ago

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WordPress WordCamp 2008

New Post has been published on https://myupdatesystems.com/wordpress-wordcamp-2008/

WordPress WordCamp 2008

Matt Mullenweg, one of the founding developers of WordPress was the keynote speaker at Saturday’s WordCamp event in Provo, Utah. His speech included a summary of WordPress developments this year and included a large list of what’s next for the fast-growing, free blogging service.

The WordPress blogging service started with only 5 developers and 2 blogs. In the beginning, the developers focused on building a system for friends who were not technical in order to help them join the web community. The goal was to develop something that was both simple and user-friendly. Currently, WordPress.com has about 4 million new posts and 6.5 billion page views per month. WordPress has had a strong development schedule which has continued to accelerate.

WordPress 2008 Year-in-Review

In 2007 there were 1090 commits made and so far in 2008, there are already 2840. WordPress has made 11 releases in the last year alone which is much higher than normal. The WordPress team also just added 3 new core developers increasing the development team back to five full-time members. The upcoming WordPress 2.7 release is currently scheduled for November 2008.

In the year 2007 there were 2,849,349 downloads of WordPress tracked and in 2008 they have already surpassed 11 million downloads. This number does not include the number of downloads and installs from hosting companies which would significantly increase that number.

Combating Blog Spam

Over 5 billion spams were caught in the last year with 99.925% accuracy using the WordPress Akismet plugin. This shows that Akismet is staying very high on accuracy. There is a new type of spam that is now getting through due to spammers being very clever. They are starting to copy comments on other posts and change the URL referenced to gain a free link. Spammers are also paying people to go in and leave relevant comments and spam you with their links in them. The most common are spammers leaving kind remarks and compliments and having the webmaster approve the messages due to them feeling flattered by the positive remarks.

WordPress Mobility

Due to the website friendly nature of the iPhone and the success of the iPhone application (over 100k installs) WP is considering the creation of some new apps for other platforms as well including the blackberry and other mobile handsets.

WordPress Plugins

WordPress plans on improving their observance of plugin stats. Mullenweg mentioned there is a plan to watch the bottom 1000 plugins to find the new and upcoming trends. It is easier to see what is gaining fast popularity when monitoring the tail end of the plugins. He also mentioned the use of intelligent tails or the monitoring of the use of plugins and packages in order to gain valuable intelligence from the free market. Currently, there are a huge number of features brought in via plugins. He mentions a few examples such as one that does real estate management and another that is an independent record label system.

Thoughts on PHP5

Matt Mullenweg predicted that PHP5 would fail early on due to its lack of major changes. He was wrong and fully admits it. PHP5 is now being used to host WordPress in 79% of WordPress installs. This means that when PHP4 usage falls below 10% or so they will pull the trigger and move ongoing development and support to PHP5 only. This will allow them to speed up and optimize the WP system.

The Future of WordPress – WordPress 2.7 Live Demo

Included during his speech was a live demo of WordPress 2.7. Version 2.7 is expected to be released sometime during November of 2008 and currently has 13,000 blogs testing it.

One of the key features of 2.7 will include a dashboard redesign. Mullenweg began by apologizing for a lack of tests regarding usability with a previous dashboard redesign. This time there is much more focus on ensuring that there won’t be issues such as a large number of user complaints which came with the removal of the edit feature in comments.

Version 2.7 also introduces a number of major changes with one of the largest being the dashboard navigation being moved to the left-hand side. This new navigation has expandable categories that can be viewed in real time when you click them (i.e. no waiting for the page to reload etc.) The right side of the default dashboard setup has a quick blog post and the center features an inbox. The dashboard still has stats and other dashboard features WordPress blog owners will be familiar with. The whole dashboard has been built in ajax which allows changes to be made on the fly. Users will, therefore, be able to, for example, drag a section in between columns to move stuff over and around as well as the ability to hide or show specific sections.

Other key changes include:

New sticky posts feature which will allow bloggers to keep important or interesting posts at the top of their blog’s homepage.

An insert media button has been added which allows for one-click uploading of pictures, video, audio, etc. WordPress will automatically know what to do with the media uploads and will set them up appropriately.

Inline editing – you can see your actual blog and quickly edit tags, categories etc, or mass edit an entire batch of posts at once to add new tags etc.

Comments API – most commonly people edit comments and check stats, now you can moderate, approve, delete etc. and reply to comments via your mobile phone as well as the dashboard. Comments can now be threaded (you can enable it and have limits set etc.) which allows you to have conversations without the current hacks that people do to keep a conversation linear.

Keyboard Shortcuts introduced for moderating comments

Automatic plugin installation and upgrades via the browser. This includes the ability to search, upload, upgrade, install, and manage plugins from within the dashboard. It will also allow for one click installs for plugins that are in the WordPress.org library. Mullenweg also mentioned a goal of including this same feature for themes in the future (i.e. search, install, upgrade etc. all with a simple, intuitive interface).

Upgrades – one click installers built into the WordPress.org website.

Security is an increasingly important aspect of WordPress development. Currently, there are over 20 US government entities using WP including Air Force, Army-CIA, Coast Guard, Department of Energy, Homeland Security, State Treasury, DEA, Marine Corps, FBI, National Security Agency, Navy, National Reconnaissance Agency, Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, and the Defense Intelligence Agency.

Mullenweg also discussed what he considers to be upcoming blogging trends. The use of media, namely photo galleries and videos are going to become more mainstream in blogs. Additionally, this includes bloggers making posts that can just be a comment, a video or some small item on its own, and the ability to include the media content inline with your post. This will allow WordPress become a complete hub of information.

He continued to discuss WordPress as a hub noting that people’s blogs will become their best possible social profile and they intend to make it so when you post something on another social site such as Twitter or YouTube it will work on WordPress. Of important note there he mentioned that your data will live on your blog and in your database so you don’t have to worry if the other site goes down, you will still have all the data and stay in control. This hub system is a long-term goal of their team.

BackPress is another system he discussed which will help show the underlying framework for WP and Theme Press, their user systems, internationalization, security systems, etc. making it easier for developers to make use of the WordPress base.

Another exciting development in the works is BuddyPress. This will allow users to have to take a group such as a Boy Scout, church, or team and build a small “Facebook in a box” type of system in which you can have a full set of plugins and extensions that build a small social network with activities, profiles, interests, photos, groups etc. – all in a small private group. BuddyPress will allow small groups the ability to develop their own public or private social-networking site.

Mullenweg also discussed an improved feedback loop – trying to incorporate user feedback and testing earlier in the process of making updates. A core goal with this is the desire to incorporate more “normal” people in the process of development.

Mullenweg also mentioned how he feels that this is the year of themes. While everything used to be plugin driven, themes are really taking off with new automatic plugins built into them. They are being used for things such as a monotone theme which can make your site change the backgrounds to be complimentary to the photos you are updating.

What Else if Coming Up for WordPress?

Launching sometime in the near future will be WordPress.tv which will be a video site with screencasts that will show WordCamp videos including key speakers. This service will be searchable, include tags, and will also include HD video content.

Some Interesting WordPress Statistics

WordPress Usage Statistics: 5,671,649 WordPress.org Blogs – also includes WordPress.mu (multi-user version that hosts multiple blogs) 4,831,429 blogs on the system have run updates are now using the most up to date version.

WordPress Plugins

The average WordPress blog has 4.96 active plugins per blog.

Some Popular WordPress Plugins

Some of the currently most popular plugins are: 1. Akismet (anti-spam) 2. all-in-one-seo-pack 3. google-sitemap-generator 4. nextgen-gallery 5. stats 6. wp-db-backup 7. wp-cache 8. WP Automatic Upgrade 9. wp-polls 10. cforms (contact forms)

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myupdatesystems-blog · 8 years ago

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Blogger Or WordPress - How They Compare

New Post has been published on https://myupdatesystems.com/blogger-or-wordpress-how-they-compare-2/

Blogger Or WordPress - How They Compare

Bloggers: Should You Use Blogger.com or WordPress?

Blogger.com (also known as Blogspot) and WordPress are the two most commonly used blogging platforms today. Blogger.com was a pioneer in the blogging industry, allowing users to set up accounts and blog for free beginning in 1999. Blogger.com was purchased by Google in 2003, which enabled it to grow using Google’s resources. Today, Blogger.com has an undisclosed number of millions of users blogging on their system.

WordPress began in 2003 as the successor to another (now relatively unknown) blogging system. It has since become the blog platform of choice for most blogging professionals. There are currently over two million people who are active users of WordPress.com, and there are millions of others who have downloaded various versions of the WordPress code.

Using the Blogger setup mandates that your blog be hosted on their servers. In comparison, blogs running on WordPress’ platform can be hosted at WordPress.com, or the WordPress software can be downloaded and used on your choice of web hosts. Below are some of the key features of Blogger.com versus the two versions of WordPress setups.

Blogger.com Features Free hosting for up to 1 GB worth of space Blog content is maintained on Blogger.com web servers Ability to choose and customize templates (limited flexibility) Easy to get started; easy to use Upload and store image files and video files

WordPress.com Features Free hosting for up to 3GB worth of space Blog content is maintained on WordPress.com web servers Ability to choose and customize templates (limited flexibility) Easy to get started; easy to use Upload and store image, video, and other (limited) file formats

WordPress Self-Hosted Features Blog content is maintained on user’s preferred web host Nearly unlimited ability to choose and customize templates and widgets Takes some technical ability to setup and configure Files support limited only by web server, which likely means virtually unlimited

Who Uses Which A quick perusal of a few the various blogs running on the Blogspot.com domain versus those that use one of the WordPress setups (accounts on WordPress.com and self-hosted blogs using WordPress software) indicates that Blogspot.com is more commonly used for people who blog about their families, pets, and other personal kinds of topics. Compared to WordPress users, Blogger.com users are typically not “professional” bloggers, although there are plenty of Common Joe bloggers who monetize their Blogspot blogs and make a living doing it.

Self-hosted WordPress blogs lean more toward professional entities who have an IT person or department who handles their maintenance. They are often more formal. Because WordPress.com is similar in its functionality to Blogger.com, blogs using WordPress.com are similar to Blogger blogs in content, naturally more casual or personal than self-hosted WordPress blogs.

Cost Blogspot accounts are free. So are accounts on WordPress.com. However, if you want to do any significant customization of your WordPress.com-hosted blog, you’ll have to pay to upgrade to their Custom CSS membership, which costs $14.97 per year. WordPress.com accounts can be upgraded to give you additional disk space($19.97/year for 5GB up to $89.97/year for 25GB), unlimited user accounts for your blog($29.97/year), and the ability to add videos (Blogger.com naturally has this support built in.) to your blog ($59.97/year). If your blog runs on the WordPress platform downloadable from WordPress.org, your costs are dependent upon your hosting account, which could cost as little as $5.00 per month or as much as hundreds of dollars monthly.

Flexibility Because WordPress is open source software, it gives experienced bloggers much more flexibility when it comes to customizing a blog. When you download and install WordPress, you have full access to the database and the PHP, CSS, and image files that comprise the WordPress blogging platform. In contrast to Blogger’s platform, having development access to the entire system allows users to be as creative as they want to be. This flexibility does not exist to nearly the extent with accounts that are hosted on WordPress.com. One bonus that WordPress.com does provide is the ability to host files other than simply images. MS PowerPoint files, Word (.doc) and Open Office (.odt) word processing files, and PDF files can be uploaded and stored for use on a WordPress.com account.

Although Blogger allows and encourages users of their setup to customize their blogs adding Google gadgets and changing layouts, I’ve found that there is a lot of guesswork involved when trying to figure out how to manipulate their XML schema, which is used to customize templates beyond adding gadgets and changing layouts. When I customize blogs hosted on Blogger’s system, I often feel like I’m abstracted from their lower level setup. Some of Blogger’s XML tags are documented, but that documentation is sparse. When I’m customizing a Blogspot blog, it’s as if I’m throwing my work over a wall, and then checking to see what I get back. This interface can be frustrating.

A comparison that is noteworthy between each of these blog platforms is the ability to categorize posts. Greater flexibility exists with both WordPress.com-hosted blogs and self-hosted ones using the WordPress software than with Blogger.com. Categories are created using Labels on Blogger.com blogs. This setup does not allow for sub-categories on Blogger account. Sub-categories are a natural part of both WordPress.com and self-hosted WordPress blogs.

Ease of Use For the layman blogger, getting started with blogging on Blogger’s platform is the simplest of tasks. You simply create an account, choose a template, and start writing away. The interface is very straight forward for users of Blogger. WordPress.com are similar, slightly more complicated. WordPress self-hosted blogs require a user to download the software, upload it to a server, configure database settings, and run the installation program included with the software. This process is pretty straightforward for someone with IT experience, but for most other people it is a little intimidating.

Once a blog is setup with any of these platforms, using it is simple enough regardless of which one you choose. However, of all the interfaces, Blogger.com is probably the easiest to understand and navigate.

Security and Updates WordPress has had a history of vulnerability to hacks. To minimize that risk, it is recommended that users of WordPress be vigilant about maintaining their sites. Specifically, WordPress blog owners hosting their own blogs are encouraged to keep up with current updates.

Blogger users can essentially allow the Blogger development team to worry about hacks. Because the blog data is kept on Blogger’s servers, there is much less likelihood that Blogger sites can be hacked.

Which One’s Best for Me If your intentions are simply to publish your information to the world without hassling with intense customization and continuing updates, Blogger.com is the way to go. Because most run-of-the-mill bloggers fit into this category, Blogger has the largest number (although nobody knows how many that is) of blogs in the Internet today.

If you have the resources and desire to be more sophisticated in your blogging habits, WordPress is what you should use. Accessibility to the inner workings of WordPress allows it to be used for much more than just a simple online journal. I recently talked to someone who told me his company uses WordPress software as a content management system, performing many of the functions of a CMS such as Joomla.

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myupdatesystems-blog · 8 years ago

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Build Your Own Website Easily With WordPress

New Post has been published on https://myupdatesystems.com/build-your-own-website-easily-with-wordpress/

Build Your Own Website Easily With WordPress

If you work from home or are trying to get that elusive first project, creating a professional website is an important step. As a home for your business, your website can showcase your skills, provide details of your experience, and give potential clients and customers a convenient way to get in touch.

What’s more, being able to create or work with a website is a useful skill in itself. For many people that work at home, the ability to get a website up and running is an additional service that can be sold to your existing clients.

You don’t need to spend a fortune getting a website developed for you. You can do it yourself, even if you have never had any experience. Thankfully, there is a secret – WordPress. WordPress is a free system that streamlines and simplifies the process of web development and, as you will find out, can still be flexible enough for just about any website imaginable.

What Does WordPress Do Besides Blogging?

Many people have heard of WordPress, but do not understand the full capabilities of the system. Most people think that WordPress is a platform for blogging when, in fact, it is far more than that.

Today, WordPress has grown into what would be called a content management system, or CMS. A CMS is a tool to store all of the information required for your website and present it to your visitors in a professional, organized way. Other content management systems include Joomla and Drupal, but the reality is that WordPress is the easiest to understand, the easiest to work with, and the most easily adaptable.

Let’s look at – in simple terms – how exactly WordPress works once it is installed:

You access a convenient WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) interface to securely work with all of the content on your website

You can create new web pages in a variety of formats

The content that you create is stored in a database

You can use the same interface to edit your content in the database

When visitors access your website, the information in the database is presented to them in a website layout. You can change this layout at any time and your content will automatically adopt the right look

In technical terms, WordPress is fairly advanced. In the nine years since the platform first launched, this advanced functionality has been used in all kinds of exciting ways.

Why Should You Use WordPress?

You may be wondering why people choose WordPress as their CMS. The answer is because WordPress can make just about anything that you want to do easier, quicker and more convenient!

Press agency Reuters uses WordPress to keep journalists up to date with the latest news as it happens. Music streaming service Spotify powers its entire website with WordPress.

WordPress makes creating, editing and organizing your content simple and, as a result, less time-consuming. That gives you more time to focus on other areas of your business. WordPress also gives you the chance to get a professional design to make your website look great – often free of charge.

The best way to see how WordPress streamlines setting up your website is to try it for yourself. WordPress is easy to install on your web hosting or, if you sign up on the WordPress website, you can explore its features with no set-up required.

Installing WordPress Made Easy

There are a few different ways to get started with WordPress, depending on your budget, your expertise and whether you use a web hosting service.

If you are just trying out WordPress and do not have your own web hosting, visit signup.wordpress.com and sign up for a free account. You will be guided through the entire process of creating your WordPress site, which will be stored on the WordPress servers for you. It is also possible to pay for a custom domain name (the address of your website) during the sign-up process.

Alternatively, if you already have a web hosting plan that supports PHP and MySQL, you can install your own WordPress on your server. This can be done by visiting WordPress.org and downloading the necessary files. The website also offers a convenient guide to installing WordPress in 5 minutes.

Finally, see if your web hosting provider offers an automatic script installer such as Softaculous. If so, you will be able to log in from your web hosting control panel and install WordPress in just a few clicks.

Finding A Great Theme

Once WordPress is up and running, you will need to log in with the details that you chose during setup – usually at yourdomain.com/wp-admin. You will see the WordPress dashboard, a control panel that lets you work with your website, and a range of different menu items on the left-hand side. A good place to start is by selecting a theme, under the Appearance menu.

Using the ‘Install Themes’ tab at the top of your screen, you can explore an extensive database of layouts and designs for your website. From conventional business layouts to distinctive and unusual looks, there are currently 1,607 themes available. After finding one that you like, installing is as easy as clicking the ‘Install Now’ button.

As well as these free WordPress themes that are available from within your control panel, many websites offer a great selection of themes – some of which are free, and some of which are ‘premium’ themes that incur a charge. If you are just getting started with WordPress, a free theme is a good choice. Of course, paying for a premium theme guarantees high quality, good performance, and continued support from the theme developers.

For professional WordPress themes, check out these websites:

ThemeForest

WooThemes

GetYourThemes

Once you have installed your theme, you will be able to conveniently customize it to suit your specific requirements. You can do this using widget.

Using Widgets

Many people choose WordPress because there are so many professional-looking themes available for it. However, it can be useful to tweak your chosen theme to make it more individual.

When a developer creates a theme, he will name specific areas of the layout that you can customize. For example, you may be able to change the menu at the top of your layout, a sidebar that runs down the side of every page, or the footer.

Under the Appearance menu on your WordPress control panel, select the Widgets option. On the right, you will see a list of the different areas of your theme that you can customize. On the left, there is a range of included widgets that you can simply drag and drop into the relevant section.

Standard WordPress widgets include Links to other websites, an automatic list of your Pages, and a calendar of when Posts have been published. You can also install other Widgets free of charge, in the form of Plugins.

Use Widgets to personalize your theme. Once you are happy, it is time to start thinking about the most important thing of all – your content.

Pages And Posts

A common obstacle for people that are new to WordPress is the distinction between two similar types of content – Pages and Posts. Whenever you want to publish something on your website, you will need to decide whether it is a Page or a Post and select the appropriate option.

Originally, WordPress only offered the ability to create Posts – a term that is short for Blog Posts. Posts are content items that are time-specific and, when they are created, they have the current time and date attached to them. Creating a new Post causes two things to happen:

An individual web page is created with the content of your post

Your post is added to a single page that collects together each individual post

This is perhaps clearer as an example – let’s imagine you have a blog section on your website, at yourdomain.com/blog. When you publish a new blog post, a single page will be created – for example, this could be yourdomain.com/blog/my-post-name. But, at the same time, your blog post will be added to the central page at yourdomain.com/blog, giving your visitors the chance to see all of your most recent posts in one convenient place.

Posts are also added to your website’s RSS feed – more on that in our next article on advanced WordPress tips. Pages, on the other hand, are static items that do not have a date attached to them. They are the pages of your website that stand alone, offering general information about your business.

If you’re still unsure, ask yourself this question before you create your content – is this something that will stand alone (a Page), or something that is part of a section of the website that I will update regularly (a Post)?

Explore And Learn On The Fly

You now understand the concepts of WordPress, including what it can do, common terminology, and why you should be using WordPress to build your site. So start exploring!

The great thing about WordPress is that it is intuitive and easy to use. Anything that you create can be deleted or edited with ease, so the best advice is to check the menu options included in your control panel and start working on your content right now.

Once you’ve made a start, be sure to read our next article on making the most of your WordPress installation to create a website that really stands out from the crowd.

Visit HomeforBusiness [http://homeforbusiness.co.uk] for more work from home business tips and ideas [http://homeforbusiness.co.uk/category/business-ideas/].

Daughter, Sister, Wife, Mother of three, PR Consultant and Entrepreneur

Like many women, on most days I seem to have to juggle all my roles. On other days just three or four. This is why I founded Home for business. I recognize what it takes to be a working Mum and how to set up an online business from home with all ‘pulls’ of everyday family life and work.

I have always been entrepreneurial and set up by the first corporate communications company, EMA Productions, in my 30s working with big corporate clients such as Texaco, Rank, and Boots. Whilst it was challenging and hard work, it was quickly successful. I could focus solely on winning contracts and meeting the client’s needs without family distractions and with the support of a fantastic team and office.

I feel very passionate about HomeforBusiness as I believe that lots of people want to create a better work/life balance and work from home, either setting up a new business or working as a freelancer. There are hundreds of genuine opportunities for people but often people do not know how to start. I want HomeforBusiness to empower anyone who wants to work from home profitably. With a panel of guest experts, I will share genuine business opportunities, business ideas, advice on running a business, online marketing, and health and wellbeing tips. I have also put together my favorite free online resources.

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myupdatesystems-blog · 8 years ago

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My First WordPress Website

New Post has been published on https://myupdatesystems.com/my-first-wordpress-website/

My First WordPress Website

In this article, I’m going to help you get started on your first WordPress Website. Before we do that, let me explain what WordPress can do for you… If you don’t know what a content management system is (CMS), it is the ability to manage your own content without the need of editing files. Quite simply, it’s the best thing to ever happen to the way we manage our content. There are hundreds of thousands of websites on the web using WordPress as its content management system, and after I get done with you, you’ll have your very own too.

Let’s first get past the whole idea of hiring a web designer, because you don’t need one for this! The best things in life are free, as they say; knowledge is free and lucky for you, WordPress is free too. The first things you need to do are to visit WordPress’s website and download the latest version of WordPress. The download will be a ZIP archive; it will most likely be around two megabytes in size. Remember, it doesn’t install on your computer; it installs on your web host, and I’ll explain next what a web host is, so, for now, all you want to do is download it.

Next, you will need to get hosting for your website. I would recommend something from Godaddy or 1and1 because they have good customer service and give you a free domain or free hosting with the purchase of one or the other. Make sure you get PHP Linux shared hosting because WordPress is written in a scripting language known as PHP. Once you have your hosting, and they’ve told you how to upload your files (FTP), then you should proceed to set up a MySQL database, so WordPress can store all of your content.

You will need your MySQL login details. Your login to your MySQL database will be provided to you from your host (user, pass, server, database name). You’re on your way to starting your very own WordPress Website. Fun times! Go ahead and unzip the contents of your WordPress ZIP (the one you downloaded from the WordPress.org website), and begin uploading the files through an FTP software (your host can help you with that). After you’ve gotten your files onto your site, you now need to configure your WordPress installation. And when I say configure, I mean WordPress will do almost all of the work for you.

WordPress makes it too easy to setup. When you go to access your website through a web browser, WordPress will immediately detect if it has been installed, and give you instructions on how to proceed. It will ask you for the MySQL database login, the title of your new website (blog title), and some other minor details. If you had trouble installing, just backtrack to make sure you did everything right (and make sure you uploaded to the right folders!)

Now you have WordPress installed! Excellent work! It’s time to get a little more technical because if you made it this far, I have faith that you can get a theme installed.

The best place to go for WordPress themes would be smashingmagazine.com. Their site may seem overwhelming at first, but you’ll get over it. Look on the right sidebar which has a bunch of links, and scrolls down to the end looking for WordPress Themes. Click the number “1” next to “WordPress themes” to view their first Free Top Rated WordPress Themes. Browse through their themes, until you find the one you really like. All you need to do now is download their theme from the download link (to your hard drive), and then get your FTP software loaded again because it’s time to upload your theme!

In the FTP on your website, you will see a folder that says “wp-content”. Go ahead and open that folder, then open “themes”, and then you will see 2 folders (default and classic). Go ahead and upload your theme’s folder into the “themes” folder, so your newly downloaded theme shows up next to the other folders. Once the theme is uploaded, all we have to do now is activate it in WordPress. Open your WordPress Admin and log in. On the left navigation you will see lots of stuff, like Posts, Pages, Tools, etc. Go ahead and click the “Appearance” button. Do you notice anything in here that looks familiar: Perhaps the theme you downloaded? Click the “activate” link underneath the thumbnail of the template you uploaded, which will then turn into your new WordPress theme. If everything went right, you should now be able to see your new theme on your website!

Alright! So far you’ve learned how to download WordPress and install it…

It’s time to put some content into your theme!

WordPress makes it too easy to add content. Let’s add a new page, called ‘Services’. In the WordPress admin, click the “Pages” button. A new list will unfold under the Pages button, click “Add New”. Type in the title box: Services. And in the big box below it, type in some services you offer. You can put any type of details you want. Once you finish typing in the page information, you should now publish your post so it can be seen on your website. Click the “Publish” button, and WordPress will display a nice little box above your Title box saying that it has successfully saved your page. Too Easy.

Before we continue, let me explain the differences between Posts, Pages, and Categories… Posts are generally used to accumulate articles on your website. If you were to add a new article to your site each day, which people would add comments to, then posts would be the right section to use. Pages are the more general “static” information on your site, such as your home page, about, contact, services, FAQ, etc. Categories are used to organize your posts. Basically, you can setup “Bob’s Blog” category or “Mary’s Blog Spot” category, etc, and store posts in those categories. It’s extremely useful for keeping track of all your content, so I would highly recommend you learn how to use Categories.

It’s easy, let me explain…

To add “Categories”, click the “Posts” button in your admin. In the unfolding menu below that button, you will see the Categories link. Click on it, and then you will see some more boxes asking you to input information. By default WordPress comes with some test categories, posts and pages; and oddly enough you can’t delete the categories, so the best thing to do is just edit the first category item “uncategorized”. Once you’ve created your new category, just go back to the post you want to put in a category and on the right-hand side where the Publish button is, look below and you will see some Check boxes of Categories for you to assign your post. I think you can figure out how to save, add and edit things at this point.

Let’s talk about making your new WordPress website a bit more Search Engine Friendly…

The first thing I do when I install WordPress is turn on Permalinks. If you’re unsure what that is, it’s a tool WordPress includes making your URL’s friendlier.

To turn on “Permalinks”, click the “Settings” button in the admin. You will see “Permalinks” show up in the unfolded menu; go ahead and click it. Where it says “Custom Structure”, put this in that box: /%postname%/ — If you think you’re more advanced, you can view the other predefined structures it has as well, but this is the one I like to use the most, because it’s simple.

So what’s next? There’s a very big collection of WordPress information out there for you to research. If you want to learn about extending your WordPress, visit the WordPress Community on WordPress.org, and browse around the user-contributed plug-ins. Words of advice though, remember to ALWAYS back up your database and site FTP files before you add extensions to WordPress. The author of the extension will warn you as well. Sometimes things just go wrong! Some helpful plug-ins can be found at smashingmagazine.com, the same way you found the themes. They have excellent content and articles!

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myupdatesystems-blog · 8 years ago

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Immediate Website Traffic Methods for Beginners

New Post has been published on https://myupdatesystems.com/immediate-website-traffic-methods-for-beginners/

Immediate Website Traffic Methods for Beginners

Marketing is a bad word. At least, it is to many newcomers in the business world. Marketing can be costly. Worse, you can actually pay for marketing and find that it didn’t turn into a sale. It sounds a lot like gambling, and that can be scary to those who are just starting out.

Alas… I have good news. There are some free online marketing methods that you can use right now, which will bring you some immediate traffic. How immediate, you ask? I have implemented some of these methods when I began blogging on a daily basis and saw traffic within five minutes of doing them. The real question should be, are you ready to convert that traffic. That subject is best left for another article, however.

Let’s take a look at the 5 immediate traffic methods for beginners:

#1) Blog-Hopping

The term blog-hopping means, to locate and comment on multiple related blog articles. You can locate blogs that are related to what you are marketing with some simple Google searches. You do not want to waste your time, however. The only way that this method results in traffic is if people reading it, and its owners are able to find you. That’s why you will want to stick to blogs that have the option to leave your URL in a field under your comment.

You can do the following search in Google to find such blogs:

“your keywords” +” leave a comment”

Change “your keywords” to your desired keywords or keyphrase, and make sure you include the plus sign and the following phrase exactly as is. Make sure there is no space between the plus, and the quotes so that Google knows you are trying to match the keywords that follow.

This search will bring up comments, many of which are using WordPress as their blogging platform. When you find a suitable article to comment on, you will need to make sure to avoid coming off as spam. Your comment should be well thought out and contribute to the discussion in some way. It is always best to read the article you are commenting on first. This way, you will know what to say, and the owner of the blog will know right away that you are not a spam bot.

In addition, it is important to note that you should not advertise in your comment. Let the URL field do what it does best. That is the only place for your link. Placing your link within your comment comes off as self-serving and can end up being rejected and possibly blocked from future commenting.

The blog-hopping method is one which can actually bring in traffic today. If you find that the blog article was written recently, and it has received other comments already, you can be sure that there is active traffic on the page. If your comment was well-thought out, then readers are more likely to follow your link in the URL field and find out more about you.

#2) Guest Blogging

The thing about guest blogging is that it can take a time to be published once your article is accepted. This timeframe depends on many factors, such as:

How many articles are scheduled ahead of yours?

Publishing frequency of the blog/website.

The popularity of the blog/website.

… and others.

Guest publishing on other blogs or websites is worth it though. A few years back, I published multiple guest articles on ProBlogger, as well as a list of other established blogs. ProBlogger accepted my lengthy articles, but it sometimes took a month before I would ever see them published.

When guest blogging as a traffic method, it is wise to diversify your portfolio as an investor would. You will certainly want to benefit from the popular blogs such as ProBlogger, but you need to pursue other blogs that are easier to get into as well.

The criteria you are looking for is:

Relevance to your niche.

Does it regularly publish new content?

Does it have active commentators?

Do they have a clear guest article submission policy?

You want traffic, so you will need to ensure that there are people actively commenting on articles. You will also want to make sure the site is up to date. If it’s currently 2016, and the newest article is dated 2013, then it is not an active blog. Some blogs leave commenting open, so there may well be new comments. It doesn’t look good, however, for your chances of being published as a guest author.

Many blogs that accept guest articles will have a page dedicated to listing their guest author requirements. These are usually a description of what kind of articles they accept, as well as what formatting is required to be published on the website. For instance, some blogs may require you to leave out HTML, while others allow some basic HTML formatting.

As previously listed, here is a way of locating blogs that allow guests by doing a simple Google search:

“your keywords” +” become a guest author”

#3) Press Release Distribution

Press releases are often associated with major companies and big announcements. An example of the major press release would be the announcement of an E3 event for gamers made by Microsoft or Sony. The good thing is, you do not have to be the CEO of a fortune 500 company to use press release distribution to benefit from its traffic benefits.

There are multiple press release websites online, that can be found by searching Google for “free press release”. These websites get a lot of traffic and are used by news networks for syndication. When used properly, your PR may be picked up by a major publication.

You can target specific categories and sub-categories on these distribution websites. Unlike with article marketing, a press release website is all about self-promotion. They do have specific requirements, however, and not just any “fluff” will make it through the approvals department.

In addition to the free options, there are many paid distribution services available. Also, on the free sites, there are often paid upgrade options that allow your content to get an extended reach beyond the free options.

To use such services, you will want to make any noteworthy news a priority for a press release. Got a public event coming up? Schedule a press release ahead of time. Major changes coming to the company? Announce it!

#4) Article Marketing

Getting your brand out there requires a lot of legwork. Sometimes, this means that a lot of time must be spent creating quality text content that can be published on major websites. This is different from guest blogging, however. EzineArticles is an example of an article publishing website, specifically tailored to publishing quality text content.

There are many article websites on the internet, but you want to find ones that rank high on Google and other search engines. You also want to locate sites that have an established reputation with other article marketers.

A good article must be written in a way which will keep the reader interested. One such example is breaking down a topic into a list. You will often run into articles that share a title format. An example would be this article titled, “5 immediate website traffic methods for beginners”. You can do the same thing for your article no matter what the niche may be.

To keep the flow of reading interesting, use numbered or bulleted lists. You can also include a relevant wrapped-image if the website allows it. Various visual elements such as images, bold text, italicized text, underlined text, and headers can help the flow of the article.

There are many writers that publish smaller articles that are in the 500 word range. I, however, prefer to write articles that are 1000 words at the bare minimum. Such articles not only cover a topic in depth but are also a genuine method of creating link-bait. This means that there are more opportunities for syndication, leading to additional traffic.

When writing articles for specialized article marketing websites, be sure to read and understand their guidelines before typing a single word. Self-promotion in an article can be frowned upon, and the site may have an author box or another way of allowing you to promote yourself.

#5) Forum Participation

Forums are pretty old-school. They are websites which allow you to register, and conversate in “threads”. You can create and reply to topics, and be notified when others are participating. There are forums for pretty much anything.

To find forums in your niche, simply search your keyphrase followed by the word “forum” in Google. Often times, the forums with the most traffic will end up on the top of search results. The forum will show the last comment date and time, so you can see how active it is.

The trick with forums is to use the member profile section and the signature section for your promotion. You will certainly want to avoid self-promoting in the body of your post when it comes to forums.

As with blog hopping, you want to avoid coming off as spammy. If you are commenting, make sure it is thought out and contributive to the discussion. If you are posting a new thread, you want to ensure that it follows the forum guidelines to the letter.

You can usually post a signature in your profile which appears whenever you publish something on the forum. Sometimes this signature will show up once for your first post in that thread, while many others will show the signature for every single comment you make. Either way, it translates to traffic.

Conclusion

By using these 5 immediate website traffic methods, you will quickly establish a regular amount of hits to your website. The next item on your to-do list is to ensure that you have your website setup for proper conversion. Hopefully, you already had this done, because these traffic methods are sure-fire.

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myupdatesystems-blog · 8 years ago

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Common Mistakes When Starting an Online Business

New Post has been published on https://myupdatesystems.com/common-mistakes-when-starting-an-online-business/

Common Mistakes When Starting an Online Business

Let me tell you what. Online business can also be frightening, scary and painful at the same time. The ticket to success is not free of charge.

Have you ever wondered how some people succeed with their online business?

So have I. When I started my own online business, I made all 3 mistakes that I’m describing below. Let me explain all of them, so you can avoid them from the start.

I started my online endeavors with no big plan in mind. All I knew was that I want to start an online business and that was it.

I listened to all the amazing stories about people making a fortune online and I said to myself: “What the heck, I will try that too!” I don’t consider myself to be a dumb person. Besides, how hard could it be anyway?

So I started with building my own web page. I was familiar with SEO from my job and I read all the Google SEO recommendations for 2016. I knew that the content is the king. So I started producing content. Nothing out of the ordinary, basically just stuff I learned, while I was still working for others. During my regular employment, I gained a lot of experience in the field of digital project, project management, animation, publishing and so on.

I published a piece of good quality content every now and then. Producing quality content went quite well because I had a lot to share. But soon I realized I’m not getting any readers. I made a Facebook page. I posted links there. I built subscription forms and so on and so on. But not much happened. I wasn’t getting any readers. No one was subscribing to my newsletter.

Then I realized I had no idea what I was doing. I had no plan. So the first mistake I made was:

1. Not having a plan

You don’t need to have a formal business plan or anything fancy like that at all, but you do need a plan. A plan for:

Content creation and publishing – Once a week, twice a week, every day. Anything, as long as you have a plan that you know you’ll be able to follow. Decide what you can deliver and then stick to it. Be consistent. Readers love the routine. If you deliver astonishingly great content every Wednesday, people will expect it. So you better deliver, or they will leave.

Sharing content – Start small and use a social media platform that is familiar to you. Mine was Facebook. I wasn’t there much before, but at least I knew something about it. It would be best though if you concentrate social media starting efforts on the platform where your audience is. Speaking of:

Target audience – Deciding about content will give you an idea of what your ideal audience is or vice versa. Once you determine that, you can research about where they most commonly hang out in the digital world. Is it Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, dedicated forums? Whatever you find out, you need to go there as well. Think about demographics, their interests, their needs and what they can afford.

What products to sell – This is very much related to demographics of your target audience. You cannot sell a $10.000 product to someone who can only afford to buy a $100 product at most. You cannot just put a product on your web page and hope for the best. Again you need a plan.

Further down the line, you will definitely need to adjust your overall plan. But have your initial plan in front of your eyes the whole time. Eyes on the target.

Setting your long-term goals is just as important as setting the short-term ones. Keep them somewhere in front of you at all times, as your constant reminder of what your direction is.

If you find yourself working on something else, look at the written goal in front of you and ask yourself: “Is this activity getting me closer to my goal?” If your answer is no, stop doing it right away and direct your focus to your goal achieving activities.

Another piece of advice. You might want to keep a list of things to do, a schedule of sorts if you will, to keep you on track for the times when you get distracted. And let me tell you from my experience, it happens so fast and covertly as well. You don’t even realize it when an hour went by, while distractions had been occupying your attention.

2. Focusing on little stuff

When I started, I was spreading myself too thin on all the tasks that needed to be done. I’m a designer and animator by profession. The thing is, I haven’t been working in the field for almost a decade. But I tasked myself with making my own logo, designing and setting up my own custom web page.

Don’t do that. Once you start a business, treat it like a business. You’re an entrepreneur so do entrepreneurial stuff and leave the design stuff to designers. I realized I would have never taken off my business if I would have been doing all the work myself. In the end, I decided to use WordPress. I picked a theme I liked and worked with that. It doesn’t really matter how the web page looks like at the beginning anyhow, as long as the content is readable and call to action buttons are visible enough to get users to click on them. Hopefully.

I was very much against using WordPress for numerous reasons, the top one being a lack of control of the coding and SEO. But concentrating on it at the beginning of the business makes no sense at all. I will not be able to compete with organic traffic for a while anyway. So what’s the point?

Just take a look at Google. Do you still remember their minimalistic homepage? Even now, it hasn’t changed all that much from that. But when you look behind the first visual impression, it offers an awesome service. This is something you should concentrate on as well, service, not how to make things look pretty. Unless, of course, you’re a designer and you’re selling your design services online.

Get someone else to do the following stuff for you once you reach that point in your business, but you mostly don’t need it from the start anyway:

design a logo, business cards, stationary (if you use it), pretty web page,

more social media channels coverage, once you outgrow the basic ones,

accounting,

email services,

and so on and on.

3. Underestimating things

Since I can remember, I had issues with setting the correct timeframe for task completion. My tendency to underestimate was enormous. I thought it would’ve taken an hour to complete a task, but it took 3. I thought I could’ve finished all the tasks I planned for the day, but I had been left with more than half of them unchecked.

I underestimated a whole lot more.

I had a vague idea of how online marketing works. I had a slightly better idea of how social media marketing works. Well, I was wrong. I only thought I did.

Nothing worked as I had thought it would. Since the last time I did any of those social activities, a lot had changed. Facebook logic is completely different now. Of course, they want to make money. Google Ads became quite expensive. Organic traffic from Google is impossible to achieve, well, at least for certain keywords. And let me not go into my expectations about timeframe I had in mind for getting results. It’s embarrassing.

Let me tell you one thing I learned, though: “Rome wasn’t built in a day.” And neither will your success. There are tactics you can use to get to your success faster, but even with those, there’s a lot of work involved.

Here are some tips for you:

Don’t think that making money online is easy – You might find some get rich quick schemes out there, you might even earn some money with them, even overnight. But after that scheme is gone, you’ll be looking for a new one. As for the long-term goal of making money online, I’m talking about sustainable income for years, is hard work. And after that, it’s a lot of hard work.

Success will come, just not overnight – If you’re diligent every single day. You produce quality content and get it out there for your perfect audience to see, they are bound to find it. Sooner or later. But don’t expect success overnight. It might have happened to some people, but it’s more likely we just don’t know the whole story of that particular online millionaire. Consistently take action. Every day. Persistence is the key.

Do not multitask, focus instead – Concentrate on one thing at a time. Implement it. Finish it. Whatever you need to do to successfully get it out of your way, and only then move on to the next one. Believing in a myth, that you will achieve more in less time with multitasking, is just plain crap. Maybe multitasking works, but just maybe, if one task is something you do on a complete autopilot and you don’t need any brain power for it, and the other task is something you need your brain for. Like listening to a podcast while riding a bike.

Don’t put too much on your plate – Get what you can eat, finish it and then go get seconds. Or you might even need to digest it first. Don’t take too many things on at the same time. Again, you will spread yourself too thin and you will not accomplish anything with it. Don’t jump between jobs and don’t test multiple income streams at the same time. Pick one or two, get it to work and use it if it works. If it doesn’t work, abandon it and try a new one.

Think big. Grow your ideas. Set your goals. But work on one at the time. You’re in for the long haul. It doesn’t matter all that much that you might need to suffer through first few months or a year. Not if you have you’re why in front of you.

This is my last tip for today. You decided to start your own online business, or you’re in the process of doing so. Think deeply about your why.

Why do you want to have this business?

What is the reason for it?

Think about it long and hard. And you better come up with a pretty damn good answer, one that is so very important to you, one that will keep you motivated, when things don’t go quite as well as you planned, or hoped for.

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myupdatesystems-blog · 8 years ago

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A Crash Course in Optimizing Your Author Blog for the Search Engines

New Post has been published on https://myupdatesystems.com/a-crash-course-in-optimizing-your-author-blog-for-the-search-engines/

A Crash Course in Optimizing Your Author Blog for the Search Engines

For many (if not most) people, Google is the gateway to the internet.

Well truth be told, it’s possibly a tie between Facebook and Google.

But simply put, if your author blog isn’t optimized to get as much traffic from Google as possible, you’re leaving huge amounts of potential unfulfilled. Whether your site is for profit or not, not working to maximize your audience is doing you, your site, and your (potential) visitors, a disservice.

But first of all, let’s consider…

What is the Purpose of Your Author Blog?

Goals of your author blog may include:

To support sales of your books by communicating with current readers, and helping to attract new ones.

If you’re a non-fiction author and have built up a website marketing funnel to profit from your readers (offering courses, consulting, services… ) then your site is essential for turning a book reader into a customer. Plus, it can attract new customers that haven’t even seen your books!

Or you may want to have a site just to talk about the process of writing and publishing, whether there’s anyone reading your site or not! Perhaps just to get your ideas out of your head, or as a great way to network and communicate with other authors.

You may even wish to use your site to build an audience of writers. If you’ve had success with self-publishing, you can use your site to offer them advice, consulting, and services.

But either way, the bigger your audience, the more your site benefits you, and your business.

How to Get Traffic From Google Without Paying

Now, Google of course wants you to pay for advertising. Google makes their search engine as useful and accurate as possibly, but it’s all just a wrapper for the ads they make money from – the ads running across the top and side of the search results.

So Google somewhat reluctantly delivers those organic results (as they’re called). Therefore it’s very important to keep in mind that Google is under no obligation at all to list your site well, if at all.

Remember, they want you to buy ads!

Every time your site appears in the number one spot, or even on the front page, it’s less likely you’ll buy ads. But, Google has to balance that with keeping the organic search results as helpful as possible.

And it’s also worth keeping in mind that Google results are what’s known as a zero-sum game. There’s always results for whatever’s being searched for. So if you’re number one for a while, but at some point Google decides you’re no longer the best fit and banishes you to number 20, the Google results continue quite happily without you, even if your site getting banished to the second or third page devastates your business.

Many a business has been destroyed like this, and it’s largely due to business owners depending far too much on Google for getting visitors and customers, rather than diversifying traffic and customer sources.

What Google Really Wants…

At the simplest level, Google wants to make the experience of using search as positive as possible, for as many people as possible. So what it’s always working on is delivering the best results whatever people happen to search for.

So that’s a question you must ask yourself – is your site the best result? Is that article you’ve just published really the best possible result for someone searching?

Think about that when you’re not getting as much Google traffic as you would like, and your competition is getting listed higher than you. Google wants to deliver quality and relevant results. Is your page, or your site, higher quality and more relevant for that search, compared to all other sites?

So what we’re talking about in this article is SEO – Search Engine Optimization.

SEO includes actions you can take that encourage Google to send you a lot of website visitors, without paying for advertising.

And the simplest way to do that is to provide so much value, that by giving you the number one spot Google is providing accuracy, relevancy, and value to the people searching

So as well as recommending (again and again) that you publish amazing content, this article is a very crash course into some things you can apply to your site to help it get a lot more traffic through Google for the long term.

How to Optimize Blog Posts & Site Pages for Search

To optimize each page or blog post you publish on your site to get as much search traffic as possible, here’s a few things to keep in mind:

First of all, be mindful of keywords. But don’t keep them in mind too much.

If you’re not familiar with exactly what they are, keywords are what people search for online.

For example: cheap car insurance

If you do some research into what people are searching for in your market, it can give you ideas for blog posts and other content. And by naturally (not over-doing it) including those keywords in your content, it may give your site a nudge up the results.

Some keyword research tools to help you understand your market in depth include:

The Google keyword research tool – you’ll need an AdWords account for this but don’t need to actively keep campaigns running.

Wordtracker – offering in depth keyword research and analysis since 1998.

Bing Keyword Research – the keyword research tool from Microsoft’s Bing search engine (yes, Google rules the roost but don’t forget about Bing!)

Now, a single blog post could be relevant for many, many different keywords people could search for, from the very broad (“car insurance” for example) to niche terms, which are also known as long-tail terms (“car insurance for a yellow car with one working brake light”, as a silly example).

Including the main keyword you’re targeting in the title and headline of the page can help, but always keep its use relevant to the content, and if it damages the readability of your content, probably best to leave it out.

You can also make sure you use Heading 1, Heading 2, and Heading 3 tags in your content. If you’re not familiar with exactly what these are, WordPress allows you to apply this easily when creating a page or post.

There’s a lot more to keep in mind when optimizing pages and posts on your site, but really the easiest and most efficient way to stay optimized is use tools that do the analysis for you and then make suggestions.

Here’s a few you can start using right now:

Yoast SEO Plugin – Makes optimizing your WordPress site for the search engines quicker and easier.

Moz On-Page Grader – An instant audit of your posts and pages, letting you know what you’re doing well, and what needs improvement.

SEMrush Site Audit Tool – Automatically helps you find issues hurting your traffic generation.

But a recurring theme I’ll cover here, and really what determines the success or not of your site as regards SEO is making your content and your site so valuable that people want to link to and socially share your site.

Plus, great content means people want to spend a lot of time on your site, which is another thing Google takes into consideration.

All these “signals” your site gives out (links, shares, time on site… etc.) help Google determine how valuable your site is, and this then pushes it up the results.

Optimizing Your Entire Site for Search Traffic

At the simplest level, the better the experience the user has on your site, the more Google rewards you. There’s an awful lot of factors Google takes into consideration, and here’s a few site-side issues to keep in mind and fix to the best of your ability:

Broken Links

For user experience, for your own benefit, and also for the search engines, you really want to ensure there’s no broken links on your site, whether when linking from one page to another, or to external sites.

Thankfully you don’t need to check this by hand! There’s tools that can help you automatically check for broken links including:

Xenu Link Sleuth – Windows based software that very quickly checks every link on your site and gives you a report.

Broken Link Checker – This is one of many WordPress plugins that help you to find and fix broken links.

Link Checker from W3C – This free tool comes from the consortium that works to create web standards that the rest of us use every day!

Site Speed

What’s also becoming more and more important for your visitors, and for Google, is the speed of your site.

If your site is slow and takes a long time to load, not only does it annoy your visitors making them less likely to actually spend time on your site, but also Google measures this and takes this into consideration when calculating where to place your site in the results.

It’s beyond the scope of this article to talk you through how to speed up your site since that subject can get very technical, very quickly.

Which Pages Should, and Should Not, be Indexed?

You also want to make sure you keep certain information out of the search engines. Again, this can get quite technical so you may need to get help with this. And tools like Yoast SEO (linked above) can make it easier.

For example, let’s say you have lots of pages with very similar text. This may then be considered “duplicate or low quality content” by Google, and that’s one thing Google really doesn’t like.

So making sure such duplicate pages don’t end up indexed by Google can be important to the well-being of your site. Effective use of noindex and robots.txt can be very helpful with this.

Does Your Site Work Well on All Screens?

You especially want to make sure your site is fully responsive.

Responsive means that whatever screen size the person is viewing your site on, whether it’s a laptop, desktop, tablet, or mobile, your site looks good.

Many WordPress themes are fully responsive so if you’re using WordPress this problem may be solved for you already. But if you’re not using WordPress, or aren’t sure at all about this process, again you may need to hire some help to help you resolve this.

A quick way to check whether your site is responsive is to simply re-size your browser window and see what happens.

Growing Links and Shares in a way Google Approves Of

It used to be that several hundred low quality links (blog comment spam, for example) pointing to your site was all it took to get your site into the top ten for valuable searches. However, those days are long gone. And the search engine results are much better for it!

That said, links still matter, but they have to come about naturally rather than being paid for, or spammed. And social shares matter too – how many times people share your content online.

But again, fantastic content and deserving to be in the number one spot will often get you there!

So create fantastic content, and promote it. Since then, the more people who know about your content, the more it will naturally get linked to and shared. Because if you’ve written the world’s best blog post but no one knows about it, then no one’s going to share it or link to it! So you may need to start the process yourself initially by promoting your content.

This is a lot easier if you already have readers or an email list, but if you’re starting from scratch, well, building traffic takes lots of hard work, until your site takes on a life of its own.

SEO is now Content Marketing

One way to think about all this is – SEO has really become what’s known as content marketing. Marketing your site through great content, in other words.

And getting the process under way of promoting your content and attracting more links and shares is what’s known as content amplification. Taking your “quiet” content and “raising its volume” (visibility) in your market.

And often, simply seeing which sites are linking to your competition, and seeing which type of content (from your competition) gets shared the most, can give you lots of ideas for both your content creation and amplification process.

The Real Secret to Getting Search Traffic in 2016, and Beyond

Yet again, I come back to the basic truth of how to get more traffic than you could ever want through the search engines – don’t think about SEO, think about creating and promoting your incredible content, to help it reach its audience.

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