Davidsbeenhere Interview by David Lee Travelblogsuccess.com

Hello everyone, this is David Hoffman from davidsbringer.com and today I have some exciting news for you. I was just interviewed by David Lee, RTW Dave on Twitter. He is the owner of Go Backpacking and Travel Blog Success and David right now he's in Peru and he asked me if I would like to be interviewed on how to get press trips and how to get guides on the Kindle and Nook store, so how to make your guides electronic for Kindle and Nook. We had about a 45 minute conversation this morning and I basically shed light on how I go about getting press trips and how to explain to the tourism boards what I can do for them, send them pitches, letters, proposals, etc. and how I get my guides onto Kindle and how I get them ranked on Kindle. So right now I'm going to show you the interview, it's about 45 minutes, so just sit here, get ready to hear it. Dave is also going to have it on his website and on Travel Blog Success and Travel Blog Success, just so you know, that's a website you can sign up, you can become a premium member for $129, that's a one-time fee and he basically tells you how to create a better blog and how to make money on your blog and how to get press trips, etc. and that's why he interviewed me today. Alright, get ready to hear this. Peace. Hello Dave. Hey David. Hey, what's up man? Ready? Okay, so it's 10 o'clock, so I'm thinking this will go until about 10.40, but I usually just sort of see how it goes, so it could be a little longer or a little less depending on how we're going. Okay, perfect, yeah, I don't have anything else scheduled, so. Excellent. I'm just going to keep the introduction really, really short and then I'll just ask you to give us some background since you'll be able to better speak about what you've been up to and how long you've been doing it and all that. Okay, great. Alright, okay, so, hi, this is Dave from Travel Blog Success and I'm here with David Hoffman of davidsbeenhere.com. David recently joined Travel Blog Success and we got to talking and I realized that he's actually got a wealth of experience regarding travel blogging, writing e-books, going on press trips and I thought he would be the perfect person to talk to for our latest interview. David, why don't you tell us a little bit about how you got started with travel blogging and what your focus is in terms of your blog or putting out your e-books and stuff like that. Okay, great. Thanks, Dave. Okay, well, my name is David Hoffman and I started a travel company called davidsbeenhere.com in 2007 and what I, what my idea was, was to create videos showing different locations pretty much showing you what there's to do in each city through hotels, restaurants, attractions, nightlife and day trips and I did this for about two years and after two years, you know, it didn't really go as planned. We didn't understand how to make the money that we needed to keep this dream going so I had to, you know, go through a lot of ideas and try to figure out, you know, how to make money with travel blogging and blogging and after, you know, two years doing that, I had about a six month, you know, time frame where I just, you know, started making ideas and thinking of how to get everything else moving so we can make money and obviously keep the brand growing and keep moving and I came up with the idea to create a city guide showing people what there is to do in each city and its surroundings and basically what I was trying to focus on, what I do focus on is going to cities where people don't really know about so like right now I'm going to Galicia, Spain and I'm doing five different city guides and it's locations that people, I mean, if they go to Spain, most likely they won't go to these places if it's the first time in Spain but that's what I'm trying to bring out. I'm trying to go to the places that they don't really know about and I also create an unplugged series, a video series called David's Been Here Unplugged which is a reality series of me traveling from Miami to these locations and each series is for each country or region that I visit and during this, while I was doing this, we, you know, we try to figure out, you know, how do we maximize each e-book and how can we get it to the public in, you know, all the different ways there is available at the moment and we, you know, we focused on getting it out on Kindle and that's what we did last year in March. We put the first guide on Kindle and at the moment we have 34 guides on Kindle and we're about to get everything else, all the guides on the Nook now starting in February and that's pretty much, I'm just going through everything I'm doing but I know you're going to ask me a bunch of questions so, sorry Dave. Yeah, a lot of stuff. 34 guides? Yeah, 34 guides and well, the guides, most of them I did this year and then I am also redoing the guides that I visited before but I didn't actually create guides during those 2 years of traveling so I'm redoing those guides and putting them together so we can have them out there for the market, okay? And did you write each, are you the one that's writing each guide? Well, no, my fiance is writing them. I am sitting with her and going through each section of the guide and pretty much I'll give her my input of let's say the hotel or the sites and then we'll also go on and search, you know, what information there is about it. Obviously, for locations that I'm going like right now, I'm going to Guatemala, all the information that I create through videos and everything I write down is what we use to create the guide. Obviously, old locations, we go back and we try to figure out, you know, more information in case we're giving too little information and we try to expand on it. And obviously, I give my input and, you know, tell them, you know, if I think it's a place that they should visit or not visit. So you're using, you're basically, you're leveraging one format to put that information in another format, you're creating the, or you're planning for and then you're producing these videos and then you're using that same information to create the eBook guides. Yes, correct. And are you, are you able to make any money from the video work that you do because that's actually, I'm not sure if that's exactly how I discovered you but I do remember when I was in Ecuador in 2011, I was searching around YouTube for videos of Cuenca nightlife and I came up with one of your videos and I thought, wow, there's someone actually out there who's been to this, you know, medium-sized city in Ecuador that not a lot of people know and got into the trouble of producing a video about the nightlife. I thought that was, that was pretty cool. Thanks. Yeah, well, at the moment, what we're doing, the videos that we're doing, it's me basically filming myself with small HD cameras, Amino HD, I have a GoPro and I have the iPhone but what I did in the first two years is I created those videos as you saw the Cuenca nightlife and the footage that we have from those videos, we actually made a byproduct with it and we sell the stock footage on Thought Equity Motion and BBC Motion. I got a deal with them in March of 2009 and that's how we, you know, made a product out of the footage. Now, we also make money off the videos. If you put a video on YouTube and you get an X amount of hits, you become a partner or they'll give you a deal to make money on that video. So, I do have a Google AdSense partnership or YouTube partnership and we do make money with the videos through ads. So, you're actually able to sell stock footage. That's definitely a good reason to be filming or taking video in high definition, right? Yes. I imagine they're not interested in lower quality. Well, yes. The thing with them is that they're interested in super high quality and luckily, my partner, he has very good cameras. So, you know, you can't just sell any type of footage. It has to be certain, you know, type of camera you're using. You know, they want to see the quality. They want to see how cinematographer, the eye he has. So, luckily, he's a really good cinematographer and we create really nice footage with it. And, I mean, we have other ideas on different things we can expand with the footage but that's a future project that we're thinking about. Do you have any aspiration to be on mainstream TV? No, I actually don't. The only reason I say I don't is because I want to be my own boss. I want to just be able to, you know, make money, enough money to be able to do this full time forever and obviously, I want to expand. There's a few different projects that I want to expand on within the industry, creating documentaries and, you know, maybe creating a documentary on just travel loggers like you and me and, you know, Nomadic Matt and everybody else wandering the world. So, there's a lot of different ideas but I don't really want to go TV just because I already know what comes out of TV. Yeah, you become a celebrity, etc. But you also have to sacrifice a lot and be able to go and sacrifice most of the time of the year, you know. So, that's the only reason why I stay away from TV. Yeah, I guess sometimes the grass is greener on the other side. You see people that have gotten TV shows or are doing a lot of TV work and you think that that's sort of the ideal place to be but then you don't really know what they have to give up in terms of control over their own travel schedule. And, I mean, on top of that, you know, when Antti Bourdain, when he travels, if you see how many people travel with him, it's about a crew of nine and I don't know about you but I can hardly travel with more than two people. So, you know, traveling with a crew of nine is very difficult and that's the only reason why I think that I wouldn't go that route just because, you know, I need to be able to go to a location and, you know, explore and see things and having, you know, three, four, five, ten people with me at all times would be difficult to do what I really want to do which is explore cities and towns beyond, you know, the original format of, you know, go to Peru and you go to Machu Picchu, Lima, Trujillo and that's it, you know. Like, I like what you're doing and you go in depth into locations and that's the only reason why I would stay away from TV. You know, obviously, it depends how much money they're offering, you know, what they're offering. I mean, there's a lot of different ideas. I had an idea of just doing a show just on festivals, you know. I mean, travel for, I don't know, two months straight going to twelve different festivals and there you have a show. So, it really depends, you know, on what the idea would be with the producer but, I mean, I'm trying to stay away from it at the moment. You know, if somebody approaches me and says, hey, you know, we'd love for you to make this type of show, then I would be, you know, ready to hear what they have to offer. Do you do the editing yourself or you said that you have a partner who does, it sounds like he's the cameraman, he's got the… Yeah, well, he edits but I don't actually have him as my editor. I have another editor, a friend of mine that was editing for me in the past and he edits for Univision, which is like the Spanish channel here in Miami. And, I mean, he just edits for me part time right now because I don't really need to produce one video per week. So, we have, you know, part time with him. I want to get into press trips or how you can kind of negate some of the travel costs so that you can get to these locations. Okay. When did you start proactively approaching tourism boards or companies and looking for opportunities to exchange services, your ability to promote their locations or company for free travel? Okay, well, a year ago, it was September of 2009, I contacted the Portuguese tourism board and I already had a ticket bought to go to Spain and I contacted them and I told them what I was doing and they offered me, you know, free entrance to basically every museum, establishment and also discounts on certain locations. And that was the first time I contacted a tourism board. And while I was in Portugal, I started contacting different tourism boards around the globe. There's a site called TOWD, which is Tourism Office's Worldwide Directory, and there you could basically find every country's tourism board phone number. So, I started contacting tourism boards through there and I contacted the Jordan tourism board and I told them what I do. I basically break everything down in an email and then I also, after they tell me, you know, please send us more information, I send them a PowerPoint breaking down everything, statistics, exactly what I'll do for them, how their country will be promoted, what's the reach and then they'll come back to me and say, hey, you know, we love your stuff and Jordan did and they were the first tourism board who invited me completely. So, they paid for my tickets, they paid for my hotel, they paid for everything basically except tip. So, everything I had to tip at a restaurant, I had to tip the driver and that was my only cost on that trip. And then after that, I contacted, you know, I've been contacting tourism boards basically every week, just contacting as many as possible and seeing who says, hey, we might be able to do something or who, you know, would just invite me because a lot of people would say, hey, you can come now, you know, if you just buy your ticket and that's what happened with Sri Lanka. In August, they, I went to Sri Lanka and they told me, you know, basically we'll do everything for you except pay for your ticket. So, I had to get my own ticket and get my own lunch and the lunch was very cheap. I was spending about $2 a day for me and my driver to eat lunch but I was eating in little Sri Lankan restaurants in the streets and that was the first, that was the beginning of contacting tourism boards. And now, I have about six scheduled tourism board trips or press trips and the main thing with contacting tourism boards, I know you're going to ask me a few questions about it but it's just telling exactly how you can help them and what you want to do. So, when I contact them, I tell them, you know, I can't do four days in your country. I need this much time. If you can't get me this, I can get this. So, I pretty much make it easier for them so I can possibly get there. Yes. So, for Sri Lanka, I had to cover my own airfare and lunch and that was, that was basically it. Everything else was covered. I think six of us. We all had to cover the airfare ourselves and then once we were in the country, everything was covered. Transportation, lodging, the activities which included checking to see the mountain gorillas which alone would cost $500. So, yeah, that seems to be the standard is if you can get yourself to the location that the tourism boards are then, well, depending on the country, will then be able to help you in some way if you've convinced them that you can help them. Exactly. Yeah, I mean, some tourism boards have more money than others. I mean, that's what I've noticed. You know, smaller African countries, most likely they will not be able to pay your airfare. Middle Eastern countries, most likely they will. So, it really just depends. You know, European countries, it's hard to get longer press trips or it's even difficult just to get any press trips because they have so much tourism, especially the Western and Northern European countries. I've noticed that it's basically impossible to do a press trip like to go to Scandinavia. It's, they told me three days and I was like, how would I fly from Miami to Finland for three days? You know, I mean, and I would have to cover my own airfare there. So, there's certain locations where are easier than others, especially, you know, if you want the whole thing covered. Okay. I've noticed with Mexico specifically, lots of trips are offered, but they're usually just weekend trips, like three or four night stays. And I personally prefer to spend at least a week in a location if I'm going to be paying airfare out of my own pocket to get there. You know, not something I planned on doing in the first place. Yeah, I mean, you'll see that with Mexico just because of the distance. You know, it's a quick flight. For them, it's just another blogger from the US, you know, they have a lot more exposure to the Mexican, you know, the Mexican country. It's just, I mean, how much, what's the percentage of the Americans that go to Mexico, you know? So, for them, it's, for them, you know, you're just another person, I feel. That's how I would put myself in their shoes, you know. They get so much promotion already in the Mexican government. If you're going to a country maybe like Bhutan, it's probably a lot easier to get the trip, and obviously you'd have to get the airfare, though. I know. I think that's part of why when I got to Colombia, I just, I started the blog about living in Medellin, and I was just kind of waiting and looking for the country to sort of, looking for signs from the country's tourism board, or it's called ProExport, that they were interested in working with bloggers. I didn't really hear anything good in terms of people that had been proactively approaching them, but in 2012, we're recording this in January 2012, they're launching a, like an official blogger program whereby 30 bloggers are going to be kind of official Colombia travel bloggers, and they're going to have, in exchange for submitting content onto the Colombia travel portal every month, they're going to have the opportunity to get some benefits, which includes coming to Colombia. So, I'm looking forward to kind of being in the pilot group for that program that starts February 1st. Even though I'm not in the country, I do plan to go back for a few months, and hopefully I can go somewhere for free within the country to take advantage of that program. Definitely, I mean, that sounds amazing. Yeah, it's, and I think when I got to Colombia in 2009, of course it wasn't really a popular tourist destination, and I tried to help change that because my experience is there, but I think that also makes it a lot easier for you to make a name for yourself and for you to establish yourself as an authority on a particular location, and that can in turn lead to opportunities down the road, whereas if I went to France or to London or someplace like that, you know, I've just, like you said, sort of just been another blogger that was there. Much harder to set yourself apart when it's a really, really popular destination that everyone already knows about. Exactly, yeah. I mean, what I've found is that the more remote or the less promotion that country has, the better your chances of getting there and getting things covered by the tourism board, if they have one. You know, some places don't even have it. So, like Bolivia, I've been trying to get there and they don't have any tourism board, or I can't find any information on tourism board. What, can you give us an idea of kind of your success rate in terms of what percentage of pitches or if you make an outbound contact, what percentage of those come back and you actually get something that results from that conversation? Yeah, I mean, I'd say it would be a low percentage just because there's so many tourism boards and I've contacted like over a hundred at least, and I'd say maybe like a, you know, 30%, 40% of what I contact, they'll get back to me and then from that maybe another half will say, hey, we can do this or we can do that. You know, it just depends because I started contacting tourism boards back in October. I started really actively contacting, I have a list right here of a book and it says Senegal, Zambia, Peru, Finland. So, I have everybody's number and then I'll literally just go through each one, contact every single person by phone. Obviously, I want to, you know, talk to somebody. I don't want to just send an email. And then once somebody says, hey, you know, send us an email with your proposal, we're really interested, then I'll move forward like in that direction and then some people say, hey, we can do this or, you know, are you going to be in the area? We could probably get you the tickets. So, it just depends because like last month, I had no idea I was going to go to Cyprus and now I'm going to Cyprus and it was just, you know, telling them, hey, I'm going to be already in Malta, you know, do you do tourism board, do you do press trips, excuse me, do you do press trips? And they were like, yeah, we do, you know, we can't cover you from Miami and then I was like, oh, but I'm going to be in Malta, can you cover us from there? And they were like, yes, we can do that. So, it really depends, I mean, and also where you are is a big thing because if it takes them too much, you know, too much money in terms of flights, then most likely they're going to have to ask you to cover the flights. So, I'd say a very low percent but, you know, there's over 100 tourism boards so I would contact as many as possible unless you want to go to a specific place then you're going to have to be flexible and go by their rules and, you know, maybe go for less time. It really depends on the location though. Have you found that it's easier to get, has it gotten easier for you in terms of talking with, I think, sort of fear of the unknown might be a barrier to some bloggers who have a sufficiently large enough audience to start approaching tourism boards and leverage that, their blog or their audience. Have you found that it's gotten easier the more you've done it? You kind of sound like a pro at this point. Yeah, I mean, it's gotten easier just because I already know the routine. I already know that some people are going to tell me, hey, just send us an email and I already, you know, I go into calling every tourism board with no expectations at all. You know, I had no idea that Jordan was going to just say in one week time you're coming, here's your tickets, let's go and then, you know, some people that I really want to go like to Zambia and they don't even get back to me. So, I would say don't have any fear about doing it, you know, just try to get out there and call as many as possible. This website, TOWD, that's the perfect site and just go through the list of locations that you really want to explore that you think that, you know, your audience will like and all it is, is presenting them with, you know, the idea, how you can promote them exactly each thing. If you can make videos, show them where your videos are going to be posted. If you're going to do blogs, show them where your blogs. I mean, you just got to show them all the stats and show them what you're doing and why they should, you know, allow you to come and promote their country. I personally, at this point, I'll call every single tourism board and I'll just keep calling in some locations. I just got to cross them off the list and say, you know, I'll go there when I can afford to just pay everything myself because they're not going to bring me. So, a lot of Caribbean countries, they have no press trips because they already have so much promotion. So, I'm sorry, I'm going a little off, David. No, it's fine. Obviously, I've been at this for a little while, so you got a lot of good information to share. How long do you wait before you follow up with a tourism board? I usually wait about two weeks and then I'll just say, hey, did you receive my email? You know, I've never received a reply or has anybody taken a look at it? So, I mean, two weeks is the max I'll wait. Usually, people wait, you know, a week, but I'll just give them some time. Sometimes, somebody's out of the office, you know, they're on vacation. Some countries, you know, they have holidays every day. So, it really depends on the location. So, you're in Sri Lanka and you're going to Cyprus. What are some of the other destinations that you've been to and Jordan, some of the other places that you've been to that resulted from these discussions? Well, those are the only two that I officially went on a press trip. Now, I'm going in February 10th to Guatemala and then from there, I'm crossing the border into El Salvador and both those countries cover me completely within the country. The only thing is I have to get my ticket to get there. So, I combine the trips. So, I have, you know, going in to Guatemala, I have to pay that and then coming out of El Salvador. So, that was basically my only cost and then when they drop me off, when Guatemala leaves me in El Salvador, I have to get my first night because if I didn't get my first night, then I would cut an entire day off. So, I had to pay the hotel for the first night. I mean, that's basically my only cost and then after that, I come back to Miami and a week later, I'm going to Galicia, Spain and the tourism board basically could help me with everything except they couldn't pay for anything. So, they can give me, you know, all the passes for all museums, you know, castles, etc. and then they gave me contacts for hotels, restaurants, etc. and then I have to contact everybody from there. Okay, and then after that, I'm going to Malta for sure. That's confirmed with the tourism board and they gave me a certain amount of nights on Malta and then I wanted to go to Gozo, which is the second island and they couldn't give me any extra nights. So, I contacted a hotel there and, you know, I do exchange services, you know, I promote you in this way and you give me X amount of nights and that's one of the ways I've been able to, you know, travel extensively because I've been able to get the free hotels, get, you know, cover the food through restaurants, promoting them, you know, through a video, you know, putting them in my guide. So, that's basically how I've broken it down and those are the... So, right now, it's Guatemala, El Salvador, Malta, Cyprus and I'm going to Andorra and the tourism board also there. They didn't offer me anything. They gave me free entrance and they gave me contacts. So, that's how... So, that's why I said European countries is a lot more difficult to get like a press trip but at least they can help you and point you in the right direction. Maybe they can tell you the contact and then you just say, hey, you know, I'm doing a trip with the tourism board. They told me to contact you, you know, this is what we need. So, just... You just got to... You got to just figure out how you can, you know, obviously some people don't want to promote hotels. I'm into that, you know, I like it and especially because I stay in great places and I don't pay for it. That's a benefit, you know. If you're going to pay for your hotels and your food at all times, it's a little difficult to travel extensively. So, it's just, you know, you got to call the tourism boards and just say this is what I can do. This is how we can promote your country, your region and then work with them. Okay? And that's the number one thing. You just got to be patient because some people, especially the Spanish, took them a month to get back to me but then they were like, hey, you know, we can help you. This is the context. These are the hotels we suggest. This is the places and these are the names of the managers. So, it really... It just... You have to, you know, get ready to adapt to every situation. Can you give us an idea sort of what kind of coverage or a typical hotel would want in exchange for staying there for free? Like, what's the bar set at in terms of... Is it just mention them on Twitter and Facebook? I know you have a big Facebook following. How much do you offer them to get those yeses? Okay. Well, the success rate with the hotels is about a 30%. So, out of every three that I contact, I'll get one. So, I always try to have a list for each city. And then what I'll... What I offer is that I'll put them in my guide exclusively. That's, you know, that's the biggest benefit for them, being in the guide exclusively and then being featured in the video. So, when I'm, you know, when I'm traveling, making my David's Been Here Unplugged series of, let's say, Galicia, Spain, in the video of, I don't know, Orense, like, I basically make a video per day. So, I'll film a little bit of the hotel and then maybe get, you know, the manager or the owner to speak about the hotel and get an interview and he'll be included in the video series. And, you know, the main thing I've noticed is people, they really want to see what you have done. So, at this point, I can tell them, you know, I've been to X amount of cities and this is how many hotels I've been to. This is where they've been featured. And then being able to show them, like, I send them samples of all the hotels from, like, five different guides. And then they see, oh, okay, this is, you know, this is very beneficiary. It's like being featured in a magazine. This is all we have to do. We have to just give X amount of nights free. And another thing that I haven't mentioned is that I tried to go to places in off season because in high season, it would be impossible to get the free hotels. Like, I already know that from experience. I went to Morocco and it was almost impossible to get free hotels because it was the perfect time of year for everybody coming from France. So, everything was booked. Right. That's a good point. In terms of time and gear, time of year visits or your plan or what you're planning to do. Exactly. I want to switch gears to your e-guides and the self-publishing you've been doing on Kindle. You said that you started there, was it in 2010 or just last year, 2011? Yeah, it was last year, 2011. It was, I think, March was the first e-book was published on Kindle. And now you've got 34 for sale. How did you go about, I guess, and before that, they were available in PDF? Yes, they were available in PDF. My new website with the store wasn't released till December so I basically didn't even have them for sale. So, I went the Kindle route to start so I can start getting them moving, getting them out there to the public. We went through a lot of trial and error through figuring out how to get it up there, what's the best way and what program to use to convert it into an HTML because that's what you have to do. You have to use Adobe Dreamweaver and you have to convert, you don't convert it from PDF, you convert it from a text document, from a Word document. And you asked me a question about the pictures and having pictures and what I do is that everything that I include, so if I'm including a site, a restaurant, a town, a day trip, etc., I always try to include pictures and now that the Kindle is in color, you have to have some type of color in there. And so that's what we've been doing. We've been putting everything together through Dreamweaver. There's a lot of testing involved at least in the beginning, seeing how it works, what's the best way to outline your guide and Dreamweaver makes it very easy. Once you create the first one, you basically have a template and then all you have to do is copy paste and change pictures and just move things around. So it's not so difficult once you already have a template designed and put together. After that, all you have to do is create guides. That's the only thing left after that and then you can just keep pumping them out. What we're doing right now is we're getting about two out a month. We have a bunch of cities that we have from the past and things that we haven't done, especially like now we're going to go, I'm doing this five or six country trip and I know it's going to be about 15, 20 guides that we have to put together between right after and the end of the year. So every month we have to at least produce two. It's a lot of information. I'm sorry, the thing is that I read a bunch of your questions and now I'm thinking I know he's going to ask me this. That's fine. It just seems like you're very productive in terms of being able to not only do the videos but also be putting out several eGuides a month. Yeah, well you know what I've been doing is I've been sitting down and saying okay this is what I have to do so let's say I went to Sri Lanka. Right after Sri Lanka the guides that we have to get out are the Sri Lankan guides. We can't wait on that especially because we already promised the tourism board we're going to have this out soon. I don't want to delay things and have things pushed months and months later and that sometimes happens with my videos because I have so much content already stacked up and I have to get the editor in here so we can edit all these videos and it takes a while. So at least with the guides we try to get that out right away once we get back from the country and then right now I don't have any guides from any country I've been to recently to produce so I have a list of old guides especially the Ecuador guides and I'll go through and see is there anything that I missed did I not go to a town that I should promote so certain things maybe I didn't go there I still got to produce it but we're trying to get as much information into a guide because the main thing is not making a shitty product I'm sorry that I said that but not making a product that's not worth anything if I didn't include it we got to include it and then now we're producing older guides or guides that I visited a year and a half ago so we have to still go through and figure out what's not there anymore maybe night life has changed so certain things change and we got to adapt to what's happening there What do you price your guides at? Well on my website there's okay so there's two different prices on the website it's a lot higher than on the Kindle store and the reason why we sell it on the website in a higher price is because it's a PDF and it can be redistributed so let's say you buy one of my guides for $10 $20 or $30 that's the differences a mega guide is $30 a full guide is $20 and a mini guide is $10 and the reason I charge that is because you can send it to anybody you want so you could buy my entire Portugal guide book like all six guides and you can send it to everybody you want because it's a PDF so I really can't control people redistributing my product obviously hopefully no one is selling it to somebody else and they're just passing it around and at the same time that's promoting you your name is getting out there even though they didn't pay for that guide and then on the Kindle store we price everything between $2.99 and $9.99 and the reason we stay in that range on Kindle is because if you go under $2.99 or if you go over $2.99 $9.99 sorry it's you make 35% of the revenue and if you keep it within $2.99 $9.99 you make 70% okay so that definitely explains why I imagine the majority of books in the Kindle store would be in that price range under $10 $2.99 $9.99 yeah because in Kindle people want to get something quick and they don't want to pay a lot for it so if you price at $9.99 you might not get any sales but you might price at $2.99 and get you know a thousand sales and it's you know it's better for you to lower the price than have it too high you know there's a few people on Kindle not guidebook creators but just a you know indie book creators and they sell millions of dollars in Kindle guide or Kindle books and they have their books at $2.99 you know they make the 70% of that and they sell you know a million copies they make you know X so it's definitely worth it you know people people go on Kindle and for the for the travel market I think people would buy the guide because they're going there or possibly you know thinking of going there you know some people they'll buy you know all the the Portugal all the Spain series just because they want to learn about it you know some people it really depends so and some people go on there and just like okay let me buy this one let me buy this one and they're just sporadic and they're just you know going on buying you know just like an iTunes people buy songs sporadically and you don't really understand why but they're just you know they're just buying them because it costs that price you know it's not too expensive it's less than a cup of coffee at this point in age you know right so people I think what people including myself because I actually want to put out my first e-guide this year need to think about is making money from volume as opposed to making money from a higher price point with regard to Kindle is that sort of what you mean yeah exactly I've actually bought several e-books quite a few actually that I've never even opened I think it looks like an attractive offer maybe there's a sale going on it's a topic I'm interested about say travel photography I buy the e-book it gets saved in some folder on my computer thinking I'll look at it some other day and then you know a year goes by and I still haven't opened up that e-book that I spent ten dollars on so I definitely think that's happening too it's just so easy to buy it and if the price is not too much then people will buy it and they won't even care if they ever read it exactly and that's what's happening on Kindle too it's actually better to put it on the Nook or it's at the moment Travel Guides are selling more on Nook we've noticed that we put one guide out there and it's sold a lot and we don't even have reviews we don't have tags there's a few different things in order to get your guide ranked or your e-book ranked and on Nook we've noticed that it sells and we haven't really been promoting it as much as we do on the Kindle what are some things that you've done in terms of once you've got the e-book listed in the Amazon Kindle market what are some things you've done in order to promote it or to improve its ranking in terms of where it comes up for that particular location okay well one thing about putting it on the Kindle and the Nook is that you have to also see the competition so if you're going to put out a Rio de Janeiro guide there's probably another hundred guides out there of Rio de Janeiro so if you're putting out let's say Trujillo Peru there's probably one or two so for you to get ranked really high for Trujillo Peru it's going to be a lot easier than Rio de Janeiro and okay so what you have to do is once you get it out there you should try to get the guide to as many people as possible at least you know give it free to you know ten people and ask them you know to read it to study it and then if they can leave a review the more reviews you have per product the higher your sales will be just because people want to see reviews you know I whenever I buy anything on Amazon I read reviews and so that's that's one piece of the puzzle and then another piece is doing adding tags within each product there's a it's pretty much adding keywords so you go to the bottom and you say you know Trujillo city guide Trujillo guidebook Trujillo travel guide Peru travel guide Peru ebook Peru so you just add as many keywords as possible and you get other people to tag it so you just ask you know those people that you gave the guide to that they you know they reviewed it they left a review ask them to also tag it so the more tags you have the more reviews you have the higher your your ranking will be for that for that word or for you know for that guide and then your sales will go up okay and and also I mean there's there's a few different things I could speak about I just I guess I would have to go on and look at Amazon and show you but um so that's basically the main thing to starting getting its sales because if you don't add reviews and you have no tags you basically won't sell anything okay so basically you won't be found unless you have the only one of that of that city or location and even that if you don't have the tags you might not pop up you also have to have a description within the page that that has those words so if you don't have tags and you don't have description you're not gonna be I mean you're gonna be invisible you know how many products are there are there on Amazon right now millions and millions and millions what are some other tips if any that you have if someone wants to self-publish an e-guide on the Kindle or for the Kindle I would say study the competition first um go on and probably buy a few different guides you know I did that I bought a few different Rick Steves and um a few different other guide books uh cause on Amazon.com hold on a sec sorry let me see something so on Amazon.com on the Kindle store if you go to um travel hold on let me sorry Dave give me one sec sure okay let me see so if you go to the Kindle Kindle section um on Amazon and you go to the left to the bottom it's gonna say travel books and then within there it's gonna say uh browse by guides and then there's adventure guides destination guides DK eyewitness guide dolphin travel guide I mean the list goes on and on Michelin Guide Lonely Planet Fromers so you should go on and you know at least buy one of each you know try to go for the lower price ones don't go for something that's $9.99 obviously you don't want to spend too much money um just starting the market and what I did is I went in and said okay what does this guide have that it's worth this you know this money okay so I I went through each thing what does it have you know X wrote it all down and compared it to my guide you know is my guide worth you know $9.99 you know maybe it is maybe maybe it's better to have it lower just because we'll get way more sales you know so at the beginning we you know we try a lot of different prices in the beginning we had it all at $9.99 and we were getting sales but sales started to slow down because that price was way too high and then we dropped everything just to $2.99 and $3.99 and then sales blew up so I mean if you look at how much my sales have increased in the past three months alone just because the price differences we've doubled and almost tripled now just because of the little changes in price so a dollar can you know maybe for you and me it's no big deal but for somebody else paying two bucks or paying six bucks can be a big deal so that that's what I'd say at least try to start at the competition see what they have see their price ranges and then you know see try to evaluate what is yours worth would you pay X you know you don't want somebody to pay $10 get your guide and say this is not you know this is just like Wikipedia you know so you don't want any of that to happen so actually on Amazon right now looking at some of this where you just suggested in terms of the Kindle travel books but and I saw one review for a view to genero guide where the person said basically it was useless they gave them one star and that was the only review for the e-book so that's exactly what you don't want to happen does does pricing lower reduce the chances that someone's gonna leave a negative review what do you think yeah I'm pretty sure I mean if somebody pays $9.99 for something and they think it's useless they'll definitely leave a bad review you know one thing you have to understand about Amazon that if somebody loves your product most likely they won't leave a review if they hate it they will leave a review so you might see a lot of products with you know 10 bad reviews and the problem is that it's probably sold way more times but whoever has you know enjoyed it they might not leave a review so and it definitely affects sales I've seen it some mine that got bad reviews we you know we saw it we understood we read the review we went through the guide understood where the problem was and now we're gonna take it down redo it and put it back out there so you know there's so you gotta basically you have to see what you know what the you know what everybody thinks about it you know get sold first see what they think about it see and that's why I say try to get it to as many people as possible first for free and then to see what they think about it you know you don't want to put something out there that they think is garbage is there anything you can do about a negative review once it's out there the only thing you could do is try to get some positive reviews and you know if you get more negative reviews I would say take it down have it off you know Amazon for at least a few weeks and then you know fix it up and put it back out there because if sorry I'm just gonna say when you take it down and then you sort of you fix the issues that you think are causing the negative reviews and then you put it back out there are you still is it sort of are you still putting it back it up up there with the reviews no no because the because once you close that page like once you don't have the product for sale anymore that that page pretty much dies and then once you upload the new one it'll be a different different page so you have you start off again with zero reviews zero tags zero everything so negative reviews really really kills I mean I've I've noticed a huge difference ones that sold and they got better reviews they didn't sell anymore okay okay yeah there's a lot to it but basically I'm trying to break everything down as much as possible are there were there any any websites or ebooks you bought specifically for learning how to publish and market on Amazon there wasn't but I know of one book that I'm actually going to buy my cousin was telling me about it last week and I'm going to buy it now it's called how I sold 1 million ebooks in five months and it's by John Locke and basically what this guy figured out is he figured out how to get a following of of people through Twitter Facebook and YouTube and mix all of them together so basically he was making a video for each one telling everybody hey my next book is coming so basically getting everybody ramped up and I mean right now I'm looking at it and the book the book is hold on one sec sorry let me see so right now it's the fourth it's ranked four thousand three hundred and fifty one in Kindle store and that's another thing that you could you could see you know what year your book ranks and that's that's fantastic because then you know you know it's selling a lot and then it drops off and then you know something's wrong so but this book alone I heard that's really really good and it can really help you at least start at least getting everything you know moving okay and yeah I see and now I'm reading and this is another thing is that when you start seeing a lot of bad reviews that are like the latest reviews that can really kill a product this one she has great reviews and then it has a bunch of bad ones so yeah I and it's priced at $2.99 yeah see so I mean you know for me I see bad reviews but you know I want to know how I can sell 1 million ebooks in five months right and it's only $2.99 yeah three dollars even if the you end up agreeing with the bad reviews you're you're not that much money like you said a cup of coffee yeah it's worth the risk right I think so well we've covered a lot we've only talked to you for quite a bit longer I'm really glad that you joined Travel Blog Success recently and I hope that you get a lot out of it as much as we're going to get out of this interview is there anything else that you'd like to add I don't know well I would love for anybody who wants to see a guide just email me at David at David's been here and I'll send you a guide for free just if you want to see any of my guides and see what they're what they look like and yeah just keep traveling you know never stop traveling it's it will change it to the core that's what it's done for me I know it's done that for you Dave so that's that's what I'm going to leave off with okay awesome excellent thanks again David for taking the time to talk to us about what you've learned the last few years no problem Dave thank you so much for having me you're welcome thanks alright so I hope you enjoyed the interview you can hear on travel blog success or gobackpacking.com follow Dave RTW Dave on Twitter and Facebook.com slash gobackpacking he's a great guy awesome world traveler he's doing South America for the next year plus so follow him and you can see what South America is all about alright thank you so much Dave peace