Our Thoughts and Prayers go out to the Survivors and Victims in Italy’s Earthquake
Apr 9, 2009 17:28 - By: asullivan
RealAdventures sends out our thoughts and prayers to the survivors and victims of the recent earthquake in L’Aquila, Italy. The devastation killed more than 279 people, injured another 1,500 and left 17,000 homeless. The loss of loved ones, homes and medieval monuments brings tears and sorrow to thousands more. Pictures of the devastation do not come close to capturing the pain and loss felt by the residents.
Italian Red Cross volunteers and police have been working around the clock looking for survivors, tending to the injured, setting up tents and caring for the residents. Additional offers of support and aid has been pouring in from around the world. I’m always amazed and proud to see the compassion and care we show for each other in the times of our greatest need.
There are a number of travel services from this region that advertise on the RealAdventures site. As they rebuild their lives and towns, we will be reaching out to them to offer assistance where we can.
Anyone wishing to donate to the relief efforts is encouraged to do so through Red Cross International’s website.
Sincerely,
Vik
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RealAdventures Staff Contributes to TripYak Travel Blog
Feb 19, 2009 17:27 - By: RealAdventures
The RealAdventures staff is passionate about all aspects of traveling - and it shows. They travel every chance they get, they love sharing their pictures on online communities and they write tirelessly about great destinations and travel plans.
Anna Sullivan & Felicity Tan from RealAdventures marketing team, contribute regularly to a new travel blog called TripYak. Check it out, you might find some cool places for your next vacation.
We understand that TripYak is looking for freelance travel writers. If you love writing about travel, contact them via their “contact us” page and let them know your story ideas.
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Travel & The Global Financial Crisis
Oct 21, 2008 11:30 - By: Vik Kachoria
It has been quite some time since our last blog post and I hope everyone is doing well in spite of the global financial crisis.
Earlier this year, when fuel prices and airline fares went up drastically, I expected visitors to the site to drop off dramatically. I also expected to see the number of inquiries to our advertisers to correspondingly decrease. But it looks like the troubles in the financial markets are not detracting visitors that use RealAdventures to plan their vacations. Visitors to the site and the number of inquiries being sent every month is actually increasing.
Glancing at our internal reports, customer inquiries range from last-minute vacations to travel planning 6 months or a year in the future. A large percentage of inquiries are being sent by visitors traveling to other countries and other continents.
Looking into the future, if the financial rescue packages have their intented effects, travel forecasts for the next 3 & 6 months look very promising. We expect to continue to experience significant growth over the next year and look forward to sending travelers your way. Please share your experiences with us. Are you booked for the upcoming holiday season? What are you experiencing in terms of slow-down or growth?
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Blog, IM, Forum, Twitter, Flickr, Facebook, MySpace, Email…
Jun 20, 2008 18:10 - By: Vik Kachoria
There are so many different places you can spend your time online. You can easily spend hours bouncing between blogging, posting to forums, twittering, flickring, updating Facebook, MySpace & LinkedIn pages and responding to customer emails. All of this is just the work stuff. Then you can spend more time playing games, looking for movie times, planning vacations, buying gifts and sending personal emails. There is no reason to leave your PC anymore. Heck if you take it with you aka iPhone/Palm/Blackberry you can do this while you walk, drive or scooter around.
Coming soon, do this all in your sleep….
Anyone else finding the range of online activities entirely all-encompassing?
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Get RealAdventures Updates Via Twitter
Apr 26, 2008 15:22 - By: RealAdventures
I’ve been hearing a lot of people raving about twitter, so I decided I had to check out what the buzz was all about. Interesting service that lets members provide quick updates about the latest to their friends or anyone who wants to know.
I signed up for the service and added a couple of quick entries to test it out. Let me know what you think about twitter and if you plan on following our activities.
Check out RealAdventures page on twitter
Or right here on our blog at: http://www.realadventures.com/blog/twitter-updates/
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Check Out RealAdventures’ Page on MySpace.
Nov 14, 2007 18:12 - By: Elisha Sawyer
We just created a profile for RealAdventures on MySpace, check it out at: http://www.myspace.com/realadventures.
Its our of connecting with young folks that love to travel, explore the world and enjoy new experiences. The page will feature some of the coolest travel photography, hot destinations and general discussions about travel.
Check it out, add us as a friend and let us know what you think.
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RealAdventures Travel Newsletter
Oct 25, 2007 13:16 - By: Vik Kachoria
Its been quite sometime, but we have finally released our latest travel newsletter. The delay was due to the site conversion that we started in July and implemented early September. Unfortunately, some aspects of the site were not fully converted by September and putting them in place took a bit longer than I had hoped.
Going forward the newsletter will emailed to all current subscribers every two weeks. You can check out the latest editions at the following link:
http://www.realadventures.com/php/newsletter.htm?mOption=NewsLetterIssues
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Don’t Buy Or Sell Text Links
Oct 25, 2007 12:46 - By: Vik Kachoria
Lots of articles, blogs and forum discussion on the very harsh penalty Google is imposing on websites that buy or sell text links. See the following article on how it has affected major sites like Forbes, Washington Post and others: http://searchengineland.com/071024-093938.php
I haven’t been checking the SEO forums lately and missed out on this development. Catching up on some emails, I came across an article in an e-zine discussing this issue. Normally I would have skipped it over, but Dan Sullivan wrote the piece and I thought I would check it out.
Before Google penalizes RealAdventures, all paid text links at the bottom of our pages have been removed. We will no longer offer paid text links to pages outside of our site.
I would recommend that you think twice before you buy or sell text links on your site. It no longer is a viable means of boosting your PageRank and improving search engine visibility.
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RealAdventures Affiliate Program Now Multi-Tiered
Sep 22, 2007 16:45 - By: Vik Kachoria
We’ve just upgraded our affiliate program and created a new way for affiliates to earn commissions. We have added a very exciting ”Multi-Tiered Commission Structure”.
Affiliates will still earn 25% on all new travel advertisements, plus commissions on travel arrangements made by visitors they refer. We still track their visitors with a cookie for 14 days.
But now, they will also get 10% of the commissions their sub-affiliates earn. What is a “Sub-Affiliate”? Simple, they are affiliates that sign up for the program through a referral by current affiliates (’Master’). There is no limit to the number of sub-affiliates a ‘Master’ affiliate can have.
Affiliates don’t need to do anything special to participate. Of course, if they really want to benefit from this program, they’ll start getting their uncles, aunts, daughters, son’s soccer coach and everyone else to sign up as an affiliate.
» Filed Under Affiliate Program | 1 Comment
Rolling Out RealAdventures 2.0
Sep 21, 2007 14:09 - By: Vik Kachoria
Starting August 28, 2007, we quietly started rolling out the new RealAdventures. Day by day we have been refining the system, addressing the inevitable bugs and continuing to work on some very nice tools & services for our visitors & clients.
The rollout has been fairly smooth but for the first couple of weeks, we did experience a very significant drop in visitor traffic and inquiries. This has leveled off and is building back up to previous levels. It looks like the traffic drop is due to the new URLs for our summary pages. We have been working with Google and other search engines to remove the old URLs and add the new ones to their directories. I expect in another week or so, traffic will be climbing to new heights.
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