Foreign Perspectives

Now that we’re into the lull in bookings characteristic of weeks 2 & 3 of September every year, we’re resuming our weekend daytrips aimed at seeing the region properly and adding to our stock of photos for the guide.

Why the lull? Well, the French stop taking their holidays at the end of the third week of August more or less en mass which gives us a drop in bookings in the fourth week. That changes dramatically in the first week of September when Visa pour l’Image (the photojournalism festival) is on in Perpignan as it pulls in vast numbers of both tourists and photojournalists from around the world. For the 2nd and 3rd week of September most of the hotels around the beaches are still open but there aren’t so many tourists about so occupancy drops. By the end of the 3rd week they’ve pretty much all closed but the number of tourists hasn’t dropped much so we usually get a fair jump in bookings from then.

But what about the daytrips? Well, yesterday we were off to see Lastours which is a Cathar castle that you rarely hear about. It’s quite unique too as it’s the only one where construction was started by the Cathars and finished by the French (three of the four towers are Cathar). Along the way we managed to call in at Aquilar (the smallest of the Cathar castles), the abbey of Lagrasse and even Carcassonne not to mention fitting in a brief stop along the Canal du Midi. Quite a full day for sure but one which has let me add articles on Carcassonne and the Canal du Midi to Whole Earth Guide this morning.

We’re hoping to get to the other end of the Languedoc in the coming week to see the Pont du Gard, Aigues Mort and one or two other things around the Nimes area.

If you’re a blogger you certainly should because growing numbers of your colleagues are in jail in China.

Have you ever called for the government to change? That’s what Guo Qizhen did and he’s been in jail for the last year because of it with no real prospect of release before the Olympics are over.

Many bloggers will have their little rant now and again about something annoying that their government has gotten up to. That’s OK in a democratic society but try it somewhere like China and you can easily end up in jail.

Run a political blog? Not an option in China unless it’s one that consistently supports the government.

So, if you value freedom of expression, make a point of saying so now and again.

As we move out of the Summer, the number of opportunities available on the pay per post sites is increasing quite rapidly as indeed is the range to choose from.

Surprisingly, included among this increased number is a large number of tourist/travel related ones which is perfect for me as they’re by far the easiest ones to write and they fit well into the overall theme of this blog too. However, it gets better because a number of them are in areas which I’m developing for our Whole Earth Guide ie people are paying me to write stuff that I’d be writing anyway!

What would be really nice is if I could get some of these folk paying for individual posts to sponsor the guide but perhaps that’ll come in due course. After all, I’ve only just started the first phase of promotion for the guide.

I’ve been writing more articles for Whole Earth Guide and it’s starting to pay off in terms of traffic coming onto the site.

Already, I’m sitting at number two when you search google.co.uk for “giants causeway pipe” for instance. Now, that might not sound like a terribly common search and you’d be right in thinking that, but on the other hand WEG doesn’t even have a pagerank yet so it’s darned impressive that it’s coming out at number two on anything at all.

I’m hoping to keep plugging away with around three or four articles per week over the Winter with the latest being our first draft of what will eventually become a major article on the Cathar castles.

Coming soon are the first of the regional guides for the site which I’ll be adding to as I work my way though the various articles planned for the site.

I’ve already added the first of the invited articles (on Hawaii) and hope to collect a whole lot more of those as the site grows. Why not be the author of the next one? All that I need are about 300-400 words plus a photo on a city or attraction somewhere amongst the countries presently supported for the site which can be added here; you will, of course, receive credit for the article.

One of the odd things that I’ve noticed since I’ve started doing the paid posts on a more serious basis is that there are quite a number of pretty much insignificant websites which are trying to promote themselves via paid posts.

Where on earth are they getting the money to do it? We’re not talking websites run by anyone famous, just those run by ordinary people like myself.

It costs an absolute minimum of $10 per post that they pay for yet some of the promotions have ran for a week or more over which time presumably dozens if not hundreds of blogs have taken them up on it. Now, I’ll grant that all of the personal promotions that I’ve seen have stuck to that minimum, but even so 10 blogs taking them up means $100.

Can it really be so profitable in terms of the additional traffic (and hence advertising revenue) that paid posts bring for even a personal blog to do such things?

Not that I’m complaining of course. After all, the $5 or so that I receive for writing 50 words for one of those may as well be in my pocket as someone elses. I am curious though as to the economic viability of the whole thing though and may well dip an experimental toe in the water to try it out for some of my listings sites at some point.