Traveling Webmaster: Tips on how to arrange trades with hotels/ hostels for free accommodation
Tips and Advice from Hobo Pato on Arranging Traveling Webmaster Trades:
Hello,
My name is Wade (Hobo Pato) and I have been traveling the world and living for free by putting up web-pages for hotels on Hobohideout.com. What follows is a description of how I have been arranging these trades with hotels and hostels. Feel free to be creative and to try other ways of arranging 'website for free accommodation' trades other than what I outline, and please tell us of your experiences at the Help Center. Thanks!
To begin living for free as a traveling webmaster you must first
make an arrangement with a hotel or hostel to upload internet pages for them on Hobohideout.com.
Once you have secured a 'website for free accommodation' trade, go this page,
http://www.hobohideout.com/interactive/owner/signup/select-country.php
and follow the prompts to begin loading up the hotel pages.
I have
predominately been contacting hotels in two ways:
1. Face to Face Contact- Walking into hotels or hostels unannounced and
offering a 'room for website' trade in person while explaining and showing Hobohideout.com on my computer.
2. Email Contact- Writing emails to hotels/ hostels in advance of my arrival and sequentially scheduling trades along my proposed route of travel.
Suggestions and tips for making contact with hotels:
Face to face- It is my impression that this is is the best way to initiate Hobohideout.com trades. I believe that face to face contact with hotel owners and managers gives me a better opportunity to explain how pages on Hobohideout.com can benefit their establishment as well as give them confidence in the site that I propose to make for them. I have also found that people are more willing to take me and Hobohideout.com more seriously if I am standing in front of them and actually showing them the web-pages that I can make (I also believe that it is far more difficult to simply brush off someone in the flesh than it is to just delete an email).
When I use this tactic of proposing Traveling Webmaster trades, I simply walk in to hotels/ hostels and talk to the manager/owner directly, while showing them the saved pages of the Hobohideout.com site on my computer (I have the pages saved in advance and my laptop set to standby and I just open it up and exhibit). I think this is the best way to trade for a bed in countries that tend to have a low English speaking proficiency (Latin America, Africa, Asia) as I can actually show them directly what I propose to do and explain the site through visual means. During this time I show them the pages and tell them the benefits of having their hotel included on Hobohideout.com.
I usually say that Hobohideout.com is a massive collection of
hotels from all around the world that acts as a "one-stop" site for people to
plan their accommodation while traveling. I then explain that visitors to
Hobohideout.com can simply type in any city in the world where they wish to
travel, and then take virtual tours of hotels in and near this city prior to
their arrival. Basically, I just explain the
site and a little of how it works.
I then explain how Hobohideout.com is an easy to use site that comes up well in the search engines
(Google), and that if someone was to do a
search for "XX city (the location of the hotel you wish to make a
pages for)" there is a good chance that a Hobohideout.com pages would come
up very highly in the results.
I then continue to tell the hotel owner/
manager the current visitor/page view stats of Hobohideout.com. To find out this
information, go to the bottom of any page on the site and click on the this
little square
. This will take you to Hobohideout.com's site meter. The last time I checked it (July 15, 2008), Hobohideout.com was getting over
7,000 unique visitors a day (200,00 a month.
This is a ton of traffic and proves that people are really using the site. I
sometimes (if appropriate) then go into explaining Hobohideout.com's Alexa
ranking, page rank, and what all of this means for their hotel or personal
website.
In point, I am just honest and say that putting their hotel on
Hobohideout.com is essentially a free promotion for their business and that they
only have to keep keep me around until I finish
making the site (around 7-10 days). I usually try to go for ten days because it takes a
while to make these web-pages well, and I feel that there is no point in
traveling cheaply if I am just looking into a computer screen all day. I
generally set aside around 2 to 3 hours a day for making the Hobohideout.com
pages.
Email Contact to Arrange Traveling Webmaster Trades-
The other way that I have arrange Hobohideout trades is by sending hotels/
hostels
emails in advance explaining the specifics of my proposed trade, the benefits of
having pages on Hobohideout.com, as well as the logistics of when I wish to
arrive and leave their hotel. This is good secondary method of arranging
Traveling Webmaster trades because you can send similar emails to a lot of
different hotels of a generalized location and make arrangements before arrival.
While this way saves
you from haphazardly walking around a random city going from hotel to hotel, I
have found that it is not nearly as effective a method as face to face contact.
In point, it is all too easy for hotels/ hostels to ignore or delete emails. The usefulness of
setting up Traveling Webmaster trades through email also greatly
diminishes in non-English (or whatever other language that you can speak)
proficient countries that also tend to have a low technological aptitude. I think that it is best to walk in and talk to the
hotel managers face to face and really show them what you can do.
But I have had some success in setting up Traveling
Webmaster trades through email in advance.
This is a sample letter that I
email to prospective hotels. Feel free to use any part of it
that you wish:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hello XXX Hotel,
- 60 photos of the hotel and the surrounding city/ tourist attractions.
- 60 well written photo descriptions of your hostel and the surrounding area.
- Multimedia video tours of the hotel or hostel.
- Interviews with the hotel/ hostel owners and staff.
- Lots of text describing all aspects of the hotel, nearby tourist attractions, and the surrounding area.
- At least 21 internet pages full of photos, videos, and information about your hostel
- 70 separate internet files that are properly keyworded and titled for search engine (Google) proficiency to attract visitors to your hotel as well as web-site (put in URL if applicable).
I offer you my services completely free of charge, all that I need is a bed to sleep in for 10 days- which is the amount of time that it will take me to complete your Hobohideout.com site.
Thank you very much,
I usually send adaptations of the above letter to many different hotels in
cities along my route of travel and then see what I come up with. Sometimes they
respond, sometimes they don't. It is my impression that face-to-face contact is
best, but emails can also be used as a secondary resource.
If you have any questions feel free to ask on the Hobo Help Center or send me, Hobo Pato, and email at Vagabondsong@gmail.com
Thank you for considering becoming a HoboHideout.com Traveling Webmaster.
Walk Slow,
