Flightster
Vote for Who Will become the next Flightster
- by Srinivas Rao
- on August 10th, 2010
- 36 Comments
First I want to start by thanking all of you for your participation in the contest. If you’re new to our blog, go and check out our first roundup of aspiring Flightsters. I thoroughly enjoyed reading through all the submissions. There were certain ones however that really got my attention and I narrowed it down to 8 finalists.
- Nomadic Chick: Jeannie did an excellent job of staying on our radar by not only publishing her post on traveling as a female, but a video, and continually interacting with us on twitter.
- Fabian Kruse: Fabian’s post on the voyage that never ends was a completely different look at travel and one that really stood out.
- Suzy Guese: Her post on the 5000 year old iceman and all of her previous content which I spent time perusing made it easy for me to include her as a finalist.
- Sabina Lohr: Sabina wrote a great piece on how to sleep on a plane, but she continually stayed on my radar with many tweets.
- Lauren Rains gave us a really well put together travel video along with her post on 5 Ways to Rock Your Own Travel Lifestyle Experience
- Chanelle’s rules for public transportation also stayed on my radar throughout the contest
- Matt had a great post on the 7 Reasons to Start a Travel Blog and from the looks of it, it was quite popular with his readers.
- Jools Stone’s article on train travel was another one of those that really stood out in my mind because it was quite different from the other travel blogs
For those of you who have been selected as finalists, the remainder of the contest is pretty simple. As you’ll see below, we’ve included a poll that will enable people to vote for you. We’ll run the contest until Friday August 20 and shut off voting at 5pm PST that day. Whoever gets the most votes will be our next writer
Recommendations for How To Get Votes:
Most of the recommendations below are going to be pretty obvious to most of you since you are bloggers, but I figured I would include them anyways.
- Twitter: I think it goes without saying that sending out a tweet with a link to this post is going to be one of the easiest ways to get votes. With the millions of people on twitter every single day, I would say this could be the biggest source of votes for you.
- Facebook: With Facebook you’ll be able to reach friends, family and anybody else who doesn’t get what all this 140 character nonsense is all about.
- Your Blog: In my mind this is really the ultimate place to get votes. If people read your blog, then they like what you do, and they’re probably among the most likely people to cast a quick vote and read everything you write here at Flightster.
Good luck to all of you and I look forward to seeing who will be our next Flightster
More articles by Srinivas
-
8 Essential Items that Long Term Travelers Should Look for When They Rent an Apartment
-
7 Signs That You're Truly an Expat
-
Mistaken Identity, Bus Schedules and the Pura Vida Spirit
-
Things We Take for Granted in the USA
-
Difficult Goodbyes
-
Lost Souls Living in Paradise
-
Patience, Perspective, and Insignificance
-
The Draw of Nature's Spectacle
-
The Solitude and Soul of the the Long Term Traveler
-
3 Steps to Language Hacking with Google Translate
-
Traveling by Bus in Latin America? Dress for Winter
-
4 Unexpected Ways That My Spanish Has Improved
-
The Soul Searching Travelers of the Pura Vida Hostel
-
Why Minimalism Makes Sense Complete Sense for Long Term Travel
-
How To Conquer Pre-Trip Anxiety
-
A Beginner's Guide to Surfing in Southern California
-
The Reverse Culture Shock Experience
-
Are World Travelers Running From Something?
-
How To Plan A Sabbatical
-
The Case Against Travel and How to Beat It
-
Living Life Under Erupting Volcano Tavurvur - Rabal - Papua New Guinea
-
Top 4 Travel Apps I Could Probably Live Without, But Choose Not To
-
10 Flightster Favorites from 2010
-
The Frequent Traveler's Guide to Traveling Better
-
The Annual Flightster Holiday Party
-
5 Travel Related Twitter Hashtags You Should Follow
-
40 Flightsters You Should Know About
-
Puerto Rico (The Island of Enchantment) awaits
-
A City of Strangers Becomes a City of Friends
-
Why Las Vegas is No Longer a Budget Travel Destination
-
Tres Taxistas: My First Night in Sao Paulo
-
6 Life Lessons From 6 Months Abroad
-
Top 10 Reasons to Go to Burning Man
-
Sedona Arizona- A Spiritual Traveler's Journey
-
Congratulations to the Winning Flightsters
-
LosAngelisms: A Look at Life in the City of Angels
-
A Roundup of Aspiring Flightsters
-
Editor’s Weekly Picks: Week of July 25
-
10 Travel Tips in 140 Characters or Less
-
How to Become the Next Paid Writer For the Flightster Blog
-
Editor’s Weekly Picks: Week of July 11
-
The 7 Most Useless Things in the Skymall Catalog
-
Sitting Next to the Passenger from Hell
Excellent choices! I’ve enjoyed reading your articles and watching your videos. Good luck to everyone!
This is great! I was excited to see the announcement of this on FB! Anyway, Good luck to everyone!
In the mean time – Happy, Crazy Travels whether you’re Abroad or at home planning your next trip!
Your video seriously made me want to split the country
. I think I’ll be planning my next trip based on that.
Thanks again for shortlisting me Srin, as a relative newcomer I’m seriously chuffed about this! Good luck to all the other entrants, I think this’ll be fun!
(Oh yes, and to everyone else reading: vote me for me please, there’s a chap and chapess!)
Cheers, Jools
Glad to have you my friend. I think you’ve got a very interesting angle on travel.
Srinivas – I’m so happy you selected me as a finalist! I think this is a great contest and fantastic opportunity. Thank you!
Sabina,
You stayed on my radar throughout the process so that was definitely a good sign
. Part of my selection process was seeing who was active on twitter and you kept us aware of all of your current posts.
Cheers for the opportunity! I’ll say the competition is quite fierce! Glad to be included in such a great list of bloggers.
Congrats Matt. It’s great to have people like yourself on this list. This contest is probably the first of many things that we’ll be doing to get the travel blogging community involved. We have lots of other promos/contests that we’re holding off on until the booking engine launches.
Tough choices! I know 4 of these people, and they are all great!
Love Suzy’s blog, she got my vote!
Matt’s blog is such great advice for travellers’, he got my vote, i can’t wait to read more!
Certainly no fillers here! I would propose you guys to just get eight new writers instead of one!
Good idea Fabian! Or at least say 3…
Hey I like that idea! Lol!!
Hey Flightster and flightster fans, have you seen my latest bog post with the 49 reasons to vote for me yet? I think you should maybe check it out…
Jools
I like Fabian’s idea above. Everybody wins! Thank you for selecting my piece and the opportunity!
C,mon give Sabrina some love, vote for her!
I’m so excited, and I just can’t hide it, I’m about to lose control and I think I like it, oh yeah!
Vote for me by 4pm today GMT and win a return trip to Paris, including ticket for Rock En Seine festival, yes really! Remember to leave a comment on my blog to let me know you’ve entered.
Hey Jools, hope you win, good luck is on it’s way I feel (probably coming by train!!)
Seriously? Is that really fair? Offering a trip to people who vote?
I have to agree with Carly…definitely seems like cheating.
@Carly and Ashley Yes it is fair. I asked Flightster a while back what the contest rules are. Was told there aren’t any really, just whoever gets the most votes. You may call it cheating, I call it offering a good incentive! If anyone from Flightster would care to confirm this I’d be grateful. Thanks.
I don’t think it’s cheating. I mean, essentially, this part of the competition is about marketing yourself efficiently, and getting your blog seen by as many people as possible, and since offering an incentive is a really standard marketing tool, I think it’s absolutely fair enough!
Hey Guys,
Sorry for the delayed reply. I want to chime in with a few words on this. I will say this. When I saw that Jools was offering a trip in order to get votes, I wasn’t crazy about the idea. I actually did feel like the results were being manipulated.
That being said, I didn’t put any restrictions on how people get votes. So, it would be completely hypocritical of me to disqualify him based on this. The key was simply to get as many votes as possible and market yourself. If offering an incentive was what got the votes then so be it. The strategic thinking is something that I wanted in a writer. So, I have to give him credit for that. I’ll be glad to answer questions.
The only reason I disagree is because the cost of the vote is not the same for all contestants. I think Jools wouldn’t be willing to give incentives for each article he makes for the Flightster, so his current numbers seems to be off
.
With that being said, I must say that I agree with those who do not approve this. It would be fair if all contestants would be given the same opportunity, to offer exactly the same incentive to their voters. Perhaps some of them would do even a better job on using their resources
Thanks for responding Srin,
Just wanted to add one more thing to make it clear where I was coming from. I won the Eurostar trip in a competition myself but unfortunately none of my friends could make it on such short notice. I didn’t want the tickets to go to waste so thought this would be a good way of giving them to someone who could use them. As it happened, nobody could, so they didn’t actually influence the vote at all! And I certainly wouldn’t have offered them as an incentive if I thought it would be frowned upon. Hope that clears things up…
This is what one of those competeing posted in the wordpress.com support forums.
This was my reply:
If you think this this “contest” is teaching any valuable lessons in how to promote a blog in an ethicaal maner, then I disagree.
Marketing yourself is one thing…selling yourself is another. The incentive for votes should be your voters really like your blog – not what you can offer them!
What about this?
“Hi
Anyone here want to swap posts and cross promote etc? I’m in a blogging contest
My entry is at:
http://www.flightster.com/2010/08/10/vote-for-who-will-become-the-next-flightster/
Vote for Jools Stone and I’ll promise to vote for you! Also, where else do contest junkies hang out?
Thankls
Jools Stone”
http://contestjunkie.blogspot.com/2010/08/if-you-are-thinking-of-holding-or.html
You guys should have some rules, really.
Whoever voted for Jools didn’t care about his submissions. They probably didn’t even read his entry or even knew who organised this! What marketing?
Then again, if you don’t want to vote, you don’t have to, so…
I’d like to contribute to the debate (raging…)
I think that on the basis of the quality of all the features-its a very tough call to make for Srini here, I wouldn’t want to be his shoes.
I am guessing here, but part of the package for being the next Flightster is not only being able to write good quality content but also being able to promote, share your content and boosting its viral potential so that as many people read it.
I think Jools has been quite savvy in the way of how he’s promoted his entry and hey I am all for anyone showing entrepreneurial skills to find ways fo expanding their popularity and readership.
The reality of the modern day travel blogger or writer is a tough one- there are lots of great writer, bloggers who offer great content and put in a lot of effort…..but often their posts are rarely read because they don’t know SEO skills or haven’t built up a big enough captive audience.
You need to know how to market yourself as a travel blogger. End of the day ‘you’ along with your writing skills are part of the attraction- you have to know how to sell yourself along with your writing skills.
Kash said it really well!
Kash,
Thanks for your support and constructive comments. Without a doubt, this has put me in an odd position. I set myself up for this and it wasn’t something that I anticipated by any means. But to your point a person who can market themselves and get people to read their content here at Fligshter is something that I definitely wanted in bringing on a new writer. That’s how I staffed the blog originally.
We actually did a few searches on Jools this morning and it turns out he has been in forums promoting himself and plugging himself across the web. It’s also worth nothing that almost nobody could claim his prize that he’s offering because most people are not located where he’s at. Fortunately it’s looking like we’re going to be able to add the top 2 writers to our staff. Once we’re all done with everything I’ll write a “Behind the Scenes” post so I can open up things for feedback and suggestions for how to improve some of our future contests that we are planning.
Jools writes good quality and quirky content about train travel on his blog, as do all of the other blogs in the contest on their travel niche.
And what’s so ironic now, is that no one who voted for him did so because of the free Eurostar trip he offered up. He’s returned the train & festival tickets as no one is available to go.