I reject 99% of what I pitched to me. In fact I can count on my hands the number of companies that I have worked with simply because so few have ever presented me with anything worth responding to.

For those few who will read this, here is how to pitch me:

1) Contact me personally.

Form letters will get instantly deleted. Making a single reference to a blog post that happens to be on the front page of my site and following the rest with a form letter will get deleted. Providing generic compliments about how you like my “content” will your email deleted.

Anything which smacks of an email that was sent to multiple people is something I’m probably not going to want to be a part of. You can’t separate yourself from the crowd if you are part of the heard.

Write me a personal email. It isn’t hard to tell if it is a cut and paste job. Show that you’ve actually sat down and have gone through my site, you didn’t just get my name off of some list with a number on it.

Even better, make an effort to meet with me in person. I know that isn’t always possible, but it goes a long way. (I’ve had in face meetings with every company I’ve worked with just to give you an idea of how well it works).

2) What is in it for me?

That sounds selfish, but it is far less selfish than a for profit company begging for free publicity. I didn’t get started blogging so I could promote companies for free. I know damn well what you want. You need to give some consideration to what I’d want.

Most pitches I get provide no reason whatsoever as to why someone would ever want to accept it. I recently got one that pitched an ambassador program. Ok, fine. Why would I want to be an ambassador for your company? There was nothing in the email to indicate there would be any upside to me whatsoever. They just wanted “ambassadors”.

If there is at least something in your initial pitch which would at least indicate there is a benefit to me in partnering with you, there is no point in sending it.

3) You almost certainly cannot provide me any exposure

Unless you happen to be a major media company, you can’t provide me exposure. No one is going to visit your company blog. If they were, you wouldn’t need me. Your link is meaningless. I’m not a freelancer. Go to oDesk and hire someone to write $5 articles for you if that is all you want.

If you are a start up, you especially are in no position to provide “exposure”.

Unlike some writers, I’ll happy provide free content, but only if you are a major media outlet that actually can provide exposure.

4) If all you care about is SEO, move along

If your title has anything to do with “search” or “SEO”, I know all you care about is a link and I’m not going to work with you in any fashion. Period.

5) Do something for my readers

Me promoting you isn’t doing something for my readers. What would really be nice is if you provide some sort of deal/coupon/download/contest which was only available through my site to my readers.

6) There needs to be more than an affiliate link.

Affiliate programs are very lopsided. I promote you for free and then only get credit for sales from my website. I get zero credit for any other sales which might come through different channels. The only sort of affiliate program I’d enter is for products that I’d be linking to anyhow, usually for companies that sell a wide range of products (aka Amazon).

In summary, if the only thing you can tell me is how you will benefit from a deal, it is a deal at all. Presenting a real win/win is the only way to do business.

I’m shocked that most people don’t know that.

I think he makes a valid point. If you are writing about the Russian winter, then the story is about the Russian winter. He backed this up by confirming what I’ve been saying for years; no one reads the byline on articles. No one knows or remembers who wrote anything.

Online, however, people often do remember who wrote something. They follow individuals on Twitter and subscriber to the blogs of particular individuals. There are many individuals who have personal followings larger than some media outlets. Online it seems, personality isn’t only important, it is really important.

So how do you resolve these two seemingly contradictory things? Just because you read something in pixels instead of ink doesn’t mean that the rules of telling a good story have changed. Likewise, the tendency of people to follow individuals online should be obvious to everyone.

The answer lies in understanding the difference between a story and a meta-story.

Most readers have no idea what they are getting when they receive a new issue of a magazine or a newspaper. They didn’t subscribe because there was an article on a particular subject scheduled at some point in the future. They subscribed because the publication made a promise as to what it was it was about.

National Geographic is different than People Magazine. Most people would call this branding. It is the implicit promise of what you are going to get in the future. I can be almost 100% certain that the article about ivory poaching will appear in National Geographic and the one about Kim Kardashian’s baby will appear in People.

In a publication, people are interchangeable. Most people have no clue who the editor or publisher is of any magazine they subscribe to. Even if they see a byline on an article, they have no idea who the person is or what their back story is. Moreover, if that person is a freelance writer, there is no way they can follow that person to read more of them even if they wanted to.

Online, that all changes.

If someone reads a post from me on my blog, they can easily find out more about me. They can read articles on similar subjects that I’ve written about. They can see my face and hear my voice.

When you read an article in a travel magazine, you usually have no idea how experienced a traveler the writer is. On my site, you can see a full list of every place I’ve ever been.

The decision to follow someone online is similar to the decision to subscribe to a magazine or newspaper except instead of the promise of a brand, there is a meta-story.

Meta-story is the term I’m using instead of brand to describe individuals. The idea of a brand really doesn’t apply to people, despite the attempts of social media gurus to apply it. A meta-story is exactly what it implies. It is the backstory to you and your life. It is the collection of your values, priorities, personality and history that makes you who you are. Meta-story is a rather vague term that can apply to any number of things, all of which result in a reader wanting to hear more from that person in the future.

The resolution to the conflict I described above is in understanding the nature of a story vs. a meta-story and the difference between playing the role of writer vs. that of publisher.

Individuals have followings online because of their meta-stories. What makes a good story, however, hasn’t changed.

We have all read articles online that did not result in following the author to read the next thing they published. Being a good storyteller and having a good meta-story are two different things.

I’m sure that the vast majority of the people who follow me do so because of my meta-story. A guy who travels around the world full time is inherently interesting. That doesn’t necessarily make me a good storyteller, however. I’ve had to work hard to become a better photographer and I’m still working at becoming a better writer.

Likewise, being a good storyteller doesn’t mean you have a compelling meta-story. There are plenty of good writers I’ve met who provide no compelling reason for people to follow them. Even if there is a compelling meta-story, a vehicle has to be in place for people to discover it. A byline just doesn’t cut it anymore.

A good story isn’t about the writer, but a good meta-story is.

Good storytelling hasn’t changed, but publishing has. A good story can bring people in and a good meta-story can keep them coming back.

I’m going to purposely slow down this year and focus more on creating content and getting the word out.

My biggest failure in 2012 was with my email newsletter. I didn’t send out a newsletter for FIVE months! My subscribers stagnated and it is pretty easy to see why it happened.

It isn’t enough just for me to set arbitrary goals anymore, I also need a corresponding plan.

Email/RSS

I lump these two together because they both show up in my Feedburner count, but in reality almost all the growth is in the email newsletter. In fact, in the minor site redesign I recently did I deemphasized RSS and put more emphasis on email.

I also released a new incentive ebook and the results have been pretty good. The open rate has been high (65% so far and I sent it on a holiday) and the click rate has been insane. Almost 85,000 clicks so far. How did I get far more clicks than subscribers? Simple. People sending the email to their friends so they can download the book. Also, I had links to 2 ebooks in the email, so it is still may 10’000′s of people who downloaded the new ebook alone.

My goal for 2013 is more modest than last year. In fact that goal is exactly the same: 30,000 subscribers. Breaking this number down, it is 800 per month or 27 per day. I am already getting 20 subscribers per day on most days, so it isn’t that crazy of a number.

I ended up gaining about 5,000 new subscribers in 2012, which is more subscribers than pretty much any other travel blog has in total, save for one. Despite the number, it is still only a 33% increase and far shy of my 100% goal for last year.

A 50% increase in 2013 will still represent a big improvement over 2012.

We have to promote the newsletter more across my other channels as well as just being more diligent about sending it out.

It is entirely possible that if I do a few things correctly, I could blow past this number. I’ll just have to wait and see.

Facebook

I made my goal for Facebook fans. Once I hit 30,000 fans I started testing Facebook ads and we had some success. We (Amy and I) cut off ads in December but are going to start them up again soon. The goal for 2013 is to have 125,000 Facebook Fans by the end of 2013. This amounts to 6,000 new fans per month which should be easy with smart advertising and current organic rates of growth. I’m also going to be doing more live updates this year now that I’ll have access to internet in more places (unlocked GSM phone). That type of content tends to do well.

After email, Facebook is by far my top priority. I get more engagement on Facebook than all other social platforms combined. It isn’t even close. I could probably spend all day answering questions on Facebook if I wanted to.

I should also note that another important metric isn’t just raw followers, it is engagement levels. Given the nature of Facebook, only a small percentage of people will actually see what you post. I shoot for a 5% rate of engagement, which is pretty good. People aren’t just viewing content but are actively commenting and/or sharing it with their friends.

Twitter

No goals at all. I annualized out my 2 month rate of growth on Twitter. Assuming current rates of organic growth I’ll wind up with around 130,00 followers at the end of 2013. That is fine. I don’t put much effort into Twitter. Since I got Twitter verified my organic growth rate has gone up a bit, which is good enough.

Instagram

I have paid almost no attention to Instagram until recently. The last few weeks I did a promoted post on Facebook to let my fans know about Instagram and that netted about 2,000 new followers. I also talked to a guy on online who has a huge Instagram following and he promoted a few of my photos which netted me several hundred more fans. I’m current sitting just below 5,000 followers. I’m not sure it is worth putting that much effort into it. I have recently tied my Instagram account with my Facebook Fan Page, which I assume will help organic growth on Instagram the more I use it.

Google+

I have 7,000 followers on Google+. I have no idea how or why. I get little in the way of engagement. However, there are some photographers out there who do fantastic on Google+. I’m not going to abandon it, but I’m not sure what to do with it. Maybe do more Google Hangouts. I’m open to experimenting and will welcome it if something happens, but this isn’t goal worthy.

YouTube

I think I can do a LOT here. I simply haven’t bothered to do video, but this year I want to make some changes. I am basically starting at zero (112 subscribers). I have some ideas and I think that I’ll be able to develop a style that will work well, but I’ll have to test it. I will also probably need to hire some editing help, perhaps in the form of a VA. Stay tuned.

The more I think about it and the more I research people with large YouTube followings, the more important I see YouTube being. It is possible that it could be the most important thing I have listed here (but I’m not confident enough to stay that conclusively yet).

Conferences

I’m going to cut down on conferences this year significantly. I’ve already finished NMX in Las Vegas. The only other ones I’m planning to attend are ITB Berlin and TBEX in Toronto. I might go to TBEX in Dublin, but that is probably it. I didn’t get much value from World Travel Market. It just isn’t set up for media. If they do speed dating at ITB, that should be more than enough to keep me busy. Those three events (ITB, TBEX, TBEX Europe) are spread far enough apart during the year that I wont feel rushed in attending them all.

eBooks

I’ve had great success with my photo ebooks. I’m going to make more. They can serve as both a monetization strategy and a way to grow my audience, and if done correctly they can do both at the same time. Bigger items tend to do better than any individual blog post.

My biggest goal for 2013 is to write more.

This has been a big problem for me. I often wait for my photos to get edited before I write about a place, and it often takes months to edit my photos. By the time the photos are edited I have an enormous backlog of other things I have to deal with and little gets done.

Writing is a habit. The more you write, the more you write. Moreover, the more you write, the better you will write. Like anything else, writing is a craft that improves the more you do it.

One thing I’ll be doing is writing more here, just because it is another outlet for me. I feel less pressure posting here than I do on my main site.

I’m not going to try to post every day. I’ve tried doing that over a single month and it just isn’t possible.

I also think I’ve been censoring myself too much. I’m going to go off reservation a bit on what I blog about on the main site. It will still have a world focus, but maybe not travel per se.

There are certainly many different ways to go about monetizing and working your blog as a business. However, as the options available increases it is becoming more important to know what you are not about as much as you know what you are going to do.

It is all a matter of focus.

There is nothing wrong with any of the options I listed above, but each one has an opportunity cost in terms of what you are NOT doing. You can’t do everything and even if you could, you’d still want to focus on whatever derived the biggest benefit and stop doing things which didn’t have a big payoff.

I’ve spent the last few months trying to focus and cut back on what I do. This exercise has been primarily one of figuring out what I’m not going to be doing. Here are some of the things I’ve decided to not focus on:

• I am not a consultant. I put a lot of thought into how I can use social media. I have no idea how a tourism board or a hotel should use social media. If you aren’t a photographer traveling around the world, I’m not sure if I can help you. Moreover, having run a consulting firm in the 90′s, it isn’t something I ever want to do again.
• I am not a social media/blogging/personal growth/entrepreneurship guru. Despite occasionally sharing things on this site, I don’t want to get into the business of telling people how to live their life. I’m not comfortable in that role and I don’t think I have the stomach for it. I tried helping some bloggers in the past, but most of my advice is ignored or they end up just copying what I do and trying to compete with me. Either way it isn’t worth my time. I also am not going to create an ebook or course telling people how to create a travel blog.
• I’m not a spokesman for travel blogging. I don’t want to be the guy who does presentations to the greater travel industry about blogging. I don’t want to serve in any sort of official capacity for any blogger/writer/photographer organization. I’ve quit all the travel blogging forums I was a member of in 2012 just so I could remove the distraction and focus.
• I am not a freelancer. There is nothing whatsoever wrong with freelancing. In fact, if you are starting out I think it is a great way to bring in money. However, I’m not sure that writing for other publications will do anything for me in terms of building my site. There are some benefits to strategic guest posting, but that isn’t really a moentization scheme. I would actually consider doing some selective freelance articles for magazines/newspapers, but it would be more to build social proof than it would be a career choice. It would basically be glorified guest posting. I’m also not going to go out of my way to get photography gigs either, but if someone wants to run a photo I’ve already taken, I’m open to it.

Once I’ve whittled away everything I don’t want to do, what I do want to do becomes much clearer. I want to focus on what got me into this business to begin with.

I want to focus on my readers and focus on creating content. Not just writing posts and taking photos but also expanding into other areas as well: books, video and podcasting.

For the record, there is nothing wrong with any of the things I’ve decided not to do. They just aren’t the things want I want to do.

No matter what you want to focus on, you have to explicitly know what business opportunities you are going to avoid in order to excel at what you choose.

AVOID Blogging Contests

A few times a month some company launches a “contest” where bloggers have to post something to have a chance of winning some prize. These are totally absurd and should be avoided by all bloggers. The odds of winning are miniscule and the company running the contest gets links from hundreds of bloggers for very little cost. If you are going to write a post promoting someone, at least get paid.

NEVER Take Part In Online ‘Awards’ That Involve Voting

These too are just scams to increase pageviews by whoever is hosting the award. Actually, it is wrong to call them awards because they aren’t awards are all. Awards are awarded. These are nothing more than contests. They aren’t even popularity contests because they tend to attract people who are desperate more than popular. You only have so much social capital you can spend on your audience. Why waste it on meaningless contests??

DO NOT Autofollow People Who Follow You

I used to do this on Twitter. I saw the Robert Scoble’s and Guy Kawasaki’s of the world do this and figured that is just how you do things on Twitter. Two years ago I actually attempted to look at the Twitter stream of people who I followed and it was incomprehensible. An endless stream of crap. I made the decision to unfollow everyone and start from scratch, just following people who I was interested in listening to. I lost about 30,000 ‘followers’ and was better off for it. Since I did that I gained back all 30,000 and plus about 10,000 more. Autofollowing crappy accounts wasn’t necessary at all. Don’t worry about taking a hit in the number of followers, because anyone that unfollows you weren’t really paying attention anyhow.

DO Experiment

Every bad thing I mentioned here came from me experimenting. As in science, most experiments fail. However, you can learn some very valuable things if you are willing to see what works. The trick is to be willing to abandon ideas which don’t work quickly. Don’t get attached to any idea unless you have some data to back it up.

DO Put Effort Into Improving Your Craft

When I began traveling I knew nothing about photography. I can’t express just how ignorant I was. I didn’t know what ISO meant. I began a methodological effort to improve the quality of my photography. As the quality of my images has improved, most people view them and share them. You need to start with an honest assessment of your abilities and then seek to improve in every area. It doesn’t matter if it is photography, writing or interviewing.

REMOVE Distractions

I found myself engaging in many things which were doing nothing for me. Attending meaningless conferences and getting into arguments online about blogging were two big ones. Now I try to think if something is going to actually do anything for me before I commit to something. I can only do so much, so I want to make sure that what I do advances the cause.

It actually had nothing to do with the quality of the conference. I enjoyed myself and had fun meeting other bloggers who I seldom get to see. The problem is that it was a week taken out of my life and I’m not sure I got a week’s worth of value from it.

World Travel Market is a big event. Technically, it isn’t really a conference so much as it is a trade show. No one is there to meet with bloggers and the vast majority of the journalists who are there are there to cover the show and the announcements which are being made. Because the show isn’t oriented towards people like me, finding the right people to meet with is like searching for a pistachio nut in a big full of shells. If they created some sort of tool to get interested people in touch with each other, it might make the show more worth while.

That being said, I did have several productive meetings, but they all could have been done in the space of a single day.

It brings up the larger question of just how many and which conferences I should attend in a given year. In 2012 so far I’ve I’ve been to events on 5 continents. I was a speaker at all but one.

The novelty of speaking at conferences has worn off for me. I don’t want to be the face of travel blogging to the travel industry. There are only so many places I can visit in a year and we’ve already created a sizable database of PR/marketing people for destinations around the world.

The opportunity cost of not creating content is getting larger and larger for me as my audience gets bigger and bigger.

Several conferences which I have been very pleased at attending in the past (Canadian Media Marketplace for example) I still might not attend going forward just because there isn’t much left for me to do there.

Here is what I’m thinking will be the events I’ll be attending in 2013. This is of course subject to change.

• New Media Expo, Las Vegas – January 6-8
• ITB, Berlin – March 6-10
• TBEX, Toronto – June 1-2
• TBEX, Dublin – October

I’m sure a few other opportunities will come up, but unless it is something special I’m not sure I’d accept an invitation.

This is all part of a larger movement on my part to cut away everything which doesn’t matter and doesn’t advance the cause.

Myself and many, many other have gotten sidetracked wasting time worrying about the community and the industry. Those things are not going to get you anywhere. In the end it is audience, audience and audience. Anything which distracts you from that is counterproductive.

I considered writing it earlier but have been putting it off until now. This a response to an article written by Alastair McKenzie at Travelllll.com: Why Community is Crucial for Travel Bloggers. Read it now if you haven’t.

I like Alastair and I consider him a friend. I also totally understand where he is coming from. Applauding the benefits of community is like extolling motherhood. Not many people are going to argue with you.

However, I have found the focus on “community” that many bloggers develop is ultimately distracting and counterproductive to what they are trying to do: create a successful blog.

Let me back up a bit.

Last year, immediately after Facebook launched their groups feature I started a group for travel bloggers. The group grew quickly and became the largest group of its kind for the travel blogging community.

Eventually, however, I realized something. I was spending more time on the travel blogger group than I was on my own Facebook page or my own blog.

• I was getting sucked into arguments that didn’t mean anything.
• I was letting myself get agitated over things that shouldn’t have mattered.
• I was answering questions from people who didn’t bother to take 5 seconds to do a Google search to find basic information. They wanted everything handed to them.
• I didn’t know most of the people in the forum. They were part of the “community” but they weren’t my friends. I’ve never spoken to most of these people nor had they ever introduced themselves to me.

None of this was helping me move the chains forward on my own stuff. (that is a euphemism from American football that means making progress).

I’ve noticed that there are a lot of bloggers who have replaced the “community” with making progress on their own site. The spend more time talking to bloggers, commenting on other blogs and talking about blogging than they do actually building and engaging with their audience.

I know many people who are considered respected travel bloggers who seem to mostly engage only with other bloggers and have never built up an audience outside of that community.

Back in March, without any fanfare, I left the travel blog group I created on Facebook and all other blogging forums.

The amazing thing was, no one noticed. I didn’t get a single comment or question about where I was or what was going on.

I was able to take all that time I spent on the “community” and put it back into my own projects. The result was a net positive for me. I got more work done and didn’t have my blood pressure rise every time someone said something stupid.

It isn’t just forums, however. Professional organizations have been about as unproductive. I’m a member of SATW, NATJA and IFWTWA. Has there been any real benefit to being a member? No.

As a blogger I’m not looking for freelance work. The conferences they put on offer very poor professional development, usually on topics that have nothing to do with what I do. I’ve never been contacted by someone in the industry due to my membership. At best they offer discounts on some services, but that is it. (Why am I a member? Good question.)

I have many friends who are bloggers. I like talking to other bloggers and I enjoy answering questions about blogging. I even have attended conferences like TBEX for the last several years.

However, bloggers are not my business. Too many people use community as a substitute for an audience. They start a new blog, get involved in the community and then get sucked into it. Other bloggers are the low hanging fruit to get traffic and comments, so that is where they start and where they stay.

I’m all for community, but not when it gets in the way of what matters.

You aren’t going to make a successful blog by pandering to the community. You needs to reach out and engage with people who don’t have blogs.

This month I’m going to be in one spot. That means no moving around and more time to focus on writing and getting things done.

One thing I’m going to try and do this month is to post something beyond my daily photo every single day in October. Podcast, photo essay, article, whatever.

I have some suspicions about what will happen, but I’ll talk about those once the results are in next month.