Simonseeks.com launches this week. It’s a travel review / inspiration site which promises to split commissions (from their travel company partners) with users in return for quality content. They already have quite a lot of content which has come from professional travel writers as well as celebrities so they are setting the content standard high to start off with. As it looks now, there are no strong calls to action, deal feeds or text links to partners in the articles but I’m sure that can come later when the traffic is established.
Trivago launched four or so years ago and does a fairly similar thing – they have a “shares” system – you can earn shares for uploading photos, adding reviews and information and they split the total revenue for the site with all the shareholders.
Apart from the obvious competitors in the travel UGC sector, there’s also wikitravel which doesn’t reward users for content and seems to exist from Ad Sense PPC, and another new site on the way called Answerhero which isn’t a travel specialist but looks likely to go down the rewarding users for content route.
One challenge sites that reward their users in this way face is to stop the users getting lazy in pursuit of the untold riches they think they can earn. Members may be tempted to steal content from other sites which may result in search engine penalties and also put the publishing site at risk from copyright infringement. They will also have to ensure they are not being “used” as a platform for others who are charging .e.g bars and restaurants for a listing.
They will also have to keep their users motivated to keep creating great content (which also converts to sales!) which may mean they should run competitions with grand prizes as some members might get disappointed with one 12p commission for a sale for their first article.
Me ?, I think that anyone with a passion and expert knowledge for a travel destination should have a look at sunpress or get in touch with me since I would be happy to give a professional travel writer 100% of commission (because they would be contributing to the long term value of my domains / sites).
What do you think of simonseeks.com ? Can anyone shift trip advisor of the podium ? Will “policing” a site which rewards users for content take a lot of hard work ? Will simonseeks.com be able to monetise their traffic and become a super affiliate site ? More comment / analysis from Jeremy Head and Alex Bainbridge
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