Simonseeks Seeks To Be iStock Of The Travel Market

A new travel website, Simonseeks.com, launched last week – offering its writers a share in advertising revenue. Created by Simon Nixon, the guy behind price comparison sites moneysupermarket.com, it aims to make “high quality, independent mini travel guides freely available to everyone”.

Calling itself the “YouTube of Travel”, Simonseeks is a community where “travellers, journalists and celebrities” can write guides and get paid half the revenue created by a user clicking through from your guide to make a holiday booking, or clicking on an advert. Like YouTube, content is reviewed by other users, meaning that popular guides get bumped up the Top Rated list and the likelihood of making money from your guide increases.

In many ways Simonseeks is a good concept. Nixon certainly seems to think so – given that he’s confidently aiming to position the site as one of the 10 most popular British travel websites within a year (and with a track record like his, it’s hard not to believe him). Editorial credibility comes to the project in the form of Telegraph travel writer Nick Trend as editorial director, and Simonseeks also promises that all guides will be checked to in-house editorial guidelines before they are published. At time of official launch last Thursday, the site had over 1000 articles, and contributions from over 300 professional travel writers.

Nixon predicts that within a year, “there will be professional ‘simonseekers’ who have been able to give up their day job and earn and income from their travel writing”. Writers will become part of a “digital cottage industry” of workers earning from home, with professional writers and travel enthusiasts sharing revenue generated by site visits.

But whether the website will continue to attract professional writers is questionable – given that the income from articles is likely to be small in relation to the payment they would receive for a newspaper or magazine article. And they’re actually mixing their messages somewhat – they’re trumpeting the guides as being professionally written, but also as: “Independent travel guides. For you. By you.” What is nice though is the promise of nurture: “If your writing isn’t good enough to be used on Simonseeks, we’ll let you know. If we can, we’ll try to suggest ways in which you could improve.”

There has already been some discussion on the topic between established online travel writers, many who aren’t that sure about publishing their work alongside articles from the general public and Cliff Richard. While having high profile figures writing for the site will undoubtedly have whipped up interest, it seems that the website is really best suited to ‘travel enthusiasts’ eager to make a bit of money on the side. That’s certainly the line some national travel sections are taking – pitching it as an opportunity for travellers to get paid for something they’d probably be willing to do anyway on websites such as virtualtourist.com or tripadvisor.com. Is this going to turn into the travel equivalent of iStockphoto, where amateurs end up squeezing the professionals out of the market with their willingness to work for very little pay?

However, the real issue is that of how the payment gets weighted: inevitably, popular destinations with mainstream hotels are going to get the most hits, and consequently make the most money. Nixon admits himself that those who write guides about the most unusual places won’t be the people that are interested in making money: “If your favourite place is the Himalayas and you write a passionate guide on the Himalayas, then it’s going to be more of a niche interest. There aren’t many hotels, so there’s not much monetised value for that. We give people a list of all the places that are making a lot of money – like Paris and London – in our weekly email. But we also say that if people still want to write about other less-popular places then they will be published, because it’s not all about money: people still want to do research on the Himalayas.”

People are sure to be driven by the bunts to some extent; how can Nixon expect people to be able to give up their day jobs otherwise? So if this potential cottage industry of travel writers is really going to take off, the danger is that we’re going to have a site with a narrow range of popular content as everyone strives to create the ultimate statement about a romantic weekend in Paris.

And how much ad revenue is Nixon really expecting the site to make? Surely there’s a subscription model that could easily be dropped in here, even if only for heavy users. Nevertheless, it’s an exciting idea, and a quick and easy way to claw back some of those weak pounds frittered away on the continent.

Posted by Ruth Stokes in Creative Economy | June 25, 2009 12:53PM |