Frequently Asked Questions

We are looking for people who are experts on the city they live in. We need travel writers who have a passion for their city and are interested in posting at least twice a week on their Blog.

Signing up is easy. Just fill out our Sign up form and let us know what city you want to Blog about. We will then send you an email to confirm that you can post at least twice a week and provide you with some additional information. If you accept the terms you simply reply to that email and we will start setting up your very own Blog. Sign up now!

The system is really quite simple. After you have a personal Google AdSense Account set up, and you've added the requested Google Information to your profile page, anytime anyone clicks on an ad on your blog you get a set amount of money.

The only way to make more money is to get more traffic.

We prefer that the Blog posts are in some way travel related, and fall within these categories:
Hotels, Restaurants, Bars & Clubs, Shopping, Entertainment, Spa & Beauty, Events, Things To Do, Attractions, Top Ten's, and News

Here are some example city blogs:

Here is an example of a great post:

We were hoping you would ask. There are a number of ways to get more traffic:

• Post, post, post

  Posting to your Blog creates more opportunities for people to find your Blog. For example, if you live in New York City and you know its 10 best restaurants you should write about it. Our general rule is if you don’t post about it they won’t find it.

• Link to your Blog

  We don’t allow spamming or other questionable techniques but we do highly recommend linking to your Blog from other websites you may have. It is also a great idea to link to your Blog from your friends’ sites. If you don’t have many friends with websites do some searches for other bloggers in your city and see if they want to link to your Blog. If you have a well-written Blog they should be very willing to work with you. Remember, each post on your Blog has its own page. Thus, if you want someone to link to your post about “the best restaurants in New York City” then give them the link to that specific page, not the homepage of your Blog.

• Watch your titles (or what are people searching for)

  When trying to understand what a good title is think about what you would search for. A good example is "10 Best Restaurants in New York City". Always include the city name, otherwise your title would read “10 best restaurants”. Although this is fine for people already on your Blog who know it is about New York City, this title will never draw new visitors there in the first place.

• Contact your local newspapers, TV networks, and tourism board

  You are creating a very valuable resource for local tourism. You are encouraging people to visit your city and writing daily about all the great things there are to see and do. Local Newspapers have travel sections and they are always looking for interesting things to write about. Perhaps they could use some of your information to write a weekly column about what to do in your city. Also, the local tourism board might be very excited to learn that someone is pushing tourism online and may want to link to you. This is one of the best links you can have.

If at any point you lose or forget your password please follow the 'Lost your Password' link found on the login screen. You will then be sent a set of insturctions to automatically reset your password. If this does not work contact us for more assistance.

Yes, infact we encourage you to post pictures with your articles. It always makes what you write that much more interesting to read. Just remember you have to be the owner of the photo or have permission to use the photo.

Post a picture is very easy. I've broken it down into 7 easy steps:

1. Scrolled down to browse photo box located below the posting box
2. Browse your computer for the photo you would like to use.
3. Upload your photo
4. Choose your perfered file size settings: size-full if you want the full sized image displayed, thumbnail if you would like a smaller version of your image displayed.
5. Choose 'Link to: file'
6. Press the 'send to editor' button
7. Publish your article.

HotelsByCity Blogs use WordPress to power our blogs. Within WordPress there is a category system in place to better organize you posts and the default category is Attractions. Go to our tutorial for further instructions: How to change the category of your post.

For tracking purposes the username you log in with cannot be change. You may however change your nickname and display name.

To change your nickname do the follow:

1. Log into your WordPress Dashboard, and press the update profile link.
2. On the 'Your Profile and Personal Options' page locate the 'Name' sub-section.
3. From here you may edit your First name, Last name, and nickname.
4. You can also choose what you would like to display as your author name on all your posts by using the "Display name publicly as:" drop down menu.
5. When you have completed all your changes make sure you press the 'Update Profile' button at the bottom of this page.

To add a link to your website follow these steps:

1. Highlight the text or image you would like to make into a link.
2. Press the link button () found in the Write Post toolbar.
3. A dialouge box will pop up on you screen. Fill out the required information.
   

   Link URL: Your link (example: http://www.hotelsbycity.net)
   Target: Open link in a new window
   Title: The name of your link (example: HotelsByCity.net)

4. Press the insert button. The dialouge box will dissapear and your link should now be highlighted and/or underlined.

All comments for every HotelsByCity City Blog go through an approval process. We receive hundreds of spam comments we have to sift through just to get to the good ones. Don't worry though. Your comments will usually show up in at least 24 hours.

There is no set length for a blog post. We suggest no more than 3 or 4 paragraphs though. When reading text on a computer screen it is always best to keep the information as concise as possible. If you write a longer post, lets say two pages, most people will skim or only read the first couple of paragraphs before they move on.

That being said, if you feel that you need to write a longer post to share the important content you should feel free to do so. In the end it is important to keep your posts interesting and relevant to the city you are writing about, no matter what length they may be.

Submitting material indicates you allow HotelsByCity and its representatives to publish, and use your content in any manner for this and future projects without payment or fee. By submitting, you indicate that you are the creator and owner of the content.

You will however retain copyright of your content.

This problem occurs because Wordpress has interpreted a character in your title incorrectly when it was building the link to your article. You can remedy this problem by going back into the edit post screen, look on the right sidebar for the post slug box and check to see if you find any strange characters. It will usually look something like this: Farmer&58649s.
The Post slug is what Wordpress uses to build the link to your post. It is be in lowercase and have dashes in between each word (example: my-cool-blog-post-title). While the title of your is post what readers will see on the website (example: My Cool Blog Post Title).

Simply remove the extra characters from the post slug and press save. Your post will be fine after that.

If you can keep a subject relative to your blog's city you may write about the surrounding area. Try giving direction from your blog city to the new destination, this is a good way to keep things relevant, be informative, and make your blog unique compared to others.

There is no set limit to how many words or characters you can use when you write an article for your HBC Blog. This means it can be as long or as short as you want, but you will want to keep this in mind: If you write a 2 sentence post no one is going to read or search it out, there will not be enough good information in it. At the same time if you write 3 pages you may have the information, but it will be harder for you to hold the attention of your readers. Try to keep your articles to 3 or 4 paragraphs.