Introduction
Welcome to the BoardingArea Network and thank you for being a part of our team! We are glad to have you and look forward to working with you. This blogger handbook was developed to give you important information regarding partnership policies and procedures, blogger responsibilities, and the services available to you.
Please read carefully and if you have any questions, contact us at help@boardingarea.com.
Our Mission
BoardingArea’s mission is to provide unique and timely informational content for travelers across the world. We can only successfully achieve this by hosting some of the best travel bloggers (psst, that’s you).
And our team goal is to provide our bloggers: with sufficient support, management, and guidance in a positive and fun environment.
Our Duties
BoardingArea will provide the following to our bloggers:
We can host your blog on WordPress Engine.
We will provide access to Google Analytics with support and reports.
We will provide technical and web design support.
We will provide social media, marketing, and search engine optimization (SEO) support and advice at your request.
We will provide advertising reports, support, and advice.
Blogger Duties
This is all we need from you:
Create rich, informational, and timely material that is their own.
Post frequently and consistently, see Best Practices: Posting.
Manage your blog's social media posting and newsletter blasts.
Inform the BoardingArea team if you need assistance with anything. We can be reached at help@boardingarea.com.
Read more on our Knowledge Base:
What You Need to Know
Self-Hosting
You can choose to self-host your blog on a provider of your choice. If you choose to self-host your blog, then it will be your responsibility to maintain your blog's maintenance and support since we have no control over your host and environment. This includes keeping your plugins and theme up to date.
We can provide tech support for your self-hosted blog if you request it.
Hosting with BoardingArea
BoardingArea can host your blog on our WordPress Engine account. Hosting your blog with BoardingArea allows us to provide backend support for your blog. For example, if your blog loses functionality, we can get in quickly to restore functionality. Hosting with us saves you time and money!
We utilize WordPress as the blogging platform for the BoardingArea network. Occasionally, there will be WordPress Engine updates that are out of our control. When these things happen, we will notify the bloggers promptly.
Admin Access to Your Blog
Whether you choose BoardingArea as a host or to self-host, we will need a WordPress admin account and FTP access. You will need to add webmaster@boardingarea.com with the username ffsadmin to your blog's admin users (instructions). This is so we can help you and provide backend updates as needed. Please do not remove admin permissions for webmaster@boardingarea.com while you are part of the BoardingArea network.
Google Analytics
Blog stats are tracked by Google Analytics. If you do not have Google Analytics set up, we set it up for you and give you access to view and monitor your stats.
If you have Google Analytics set up, we require access before migration to establish a baseline of your blog's analytics and make sure the analytics account is integrated correctly.
Our team spends time reviewing your analytics each month to help you. For your tracking, we highly recommend using these stats versus the JetPack plugin on WordPress.
Read more on our Knowledge Base:
BoardingArea Facebook Group
Every blogger will receive an email invitation to join our Facebook group. The group is there for bloggers to communicate with us and other bloggers, in a community format. We encourage bloggers to share and learn from each other. You can also find promotional and exposure opportunities in the group.
Bloggers often post questions and suggestions for educational feedback. It’s a positive environment and we encourage bloggers to use it to interact with each other.
Posting
Frequency
We strongly encourage daily posts. Those who post daily, see greater success. But just like you, we are human, and we completely understand that life can get in the way. If you can’t post daily, consider reviewing your analytics and seeing which days and times your posts do best. Or use the schedule feature and schedule posts in advance to help keep your blog active. However, with that said, do not push content just to meet the daily goal.
If you find yourself not able to post consistently, please see the Sabbatical section below.
Content Restrictions
We do not support any material that is hateful or offensive to BoardingArea or its partners or the travel community.
Read more on our Knowledge Base:
Headlines, Titles, & Images
We highly recommend using featured images and photos in your posts. But be sure they are appealing. The images should be colorful, clear, and vibrant. Always remember to credit the photos if you use from another source other than yours, please see Plagiarism and Fair Use.
We suggest a featured image size of at least 1,200 pixels on the longest side.
Here is a great article about fair image use practices, where to find images, and other best practices.
Headlines are what get your reader interested and clicking on your post. Remember you are competing with articles across the world. Here are a few things to keep in mind when creating a title or headline for your blog post:
• Keep it simple
• Keep it short (according to Google: if you keep your titles under 55 characters, you can expect at least 95% of your titles to display properly.)
• Keep it exciting
• Don’t give too much away
Your title will also affect your SEO or Google ranking. When creating your title use keywords that someone searching would type. Think like the reader.
Read more in our Knowledge Base:
Content and Rights
You will maintain ownership of your content. BoardingArea retains the use and distribution rights to content published while on the BoardingArea network.
Read more in our Knowledge Base:
Best Practices: Sabbatical
To keep BoardingArea Network with fresh and unique content, we recommend that our bloggers post regularly, please see Best Practices Guidelines: Posting. If the blogger is unable to meet the guidelines, a blogger is placed on a sabbatical.
After 45 days if there are no posts, the blog will automatically be placed on sabbatical.
While on sabbatical:
Blogger commission changes to 0% during a sabbatical.
If the blogger is a ‘featured’ blogger on BA they will be removed.
Bloggers will be taken off the Featured Rotation list while on sabbatical.
Design requests and major technical requests will be put on hold.
It is up to the blogger as to when this sabbatical will end, and they must notify BoardingArea Network when they are ready to start blogging again.
We understand that life can get crazy and encourage you to communicate with us to help you. Whether you are on vacation for several weeks, personal or have professional commitments, please let us know and we will be happy to work with you. And rest assured that many of our bloggers have been or are currently on sabbatical. Everyone else does it, and so can you!
Please note, for those who repeatedly go on sabbatical, we will schedule a conversation to reevaluate our relationship to best fit both parties' needs.
Read more on our Knowledge Base:
Best Practices: Plagiarism and Fair Use
We do not tolerate and accept plagiarism. In a case where plagiarism or an un-proper citation is suspected, the BoardingArea staff will investigate and take necessary actions, which could result in removing the blogger from the BoardingArea partnership.
Plagiarism
The practice of taking someone else’s work or ideas and passing them off as one’s own.
Steal and pass off (the ideas or words of another) as one’s own
Use (another’s production) without crediting the source
Commit literary theft
Present as a new and original idea or product derived from an existing source
Correct Citation
Borrow words or ideas, you need to acknowledge their source. The following situations almost always require citation:
Use quotes
Paraphrase
Use an idea that someone else has already expressed
Make specific reference to the work of another
While we do not recommend posting more than three lines of material from other sources, we understand that it may sometimes be necessary to support your article. If you choose to post more than 3 lines of material, please be sure that your original content is at least double the number of lines used.
If you are quoting more than 3 lines of material, you should do the following:
Change the font to one noticeably smaller (in a document that is mostly 12-point font, you should use a 10-point font, for example)
Double indent the quotation -- that means adjusting the left and right margins so that they are about one inch smaller than the main body of your paper.
If you have this option in your word processor, “left-justify” the text. That means making it so that each line begins in the same place, creating a straight line on the left side of the quotation, while the right side is jagged.
Do NOT use quotation marks for the entire quotation -- the graphic changes you have made already (changing the font, double indenting, etc.) are enough to indicate that the material is quoted. For quotations within that quotation, use normal quotation marks, not single ones.
Whenever someone else’s work has been critical in developing your ideas.
What is Fair Use
In its most general sense, fair use is any copying of copyrighted material done for a limited and “transformative” purpose, such as to comment upon, criticize, or parody a copyrighted work. Such uses can be done without permission from the copyright owner. In other words, fair use is a defense against a claim of copyright infringement. If your use qualifies as fair use, then it would not be considered an illegal infringement.
So, what is a “transformative” use? If this definition seems ambiguous or vague, be aware that millions of dollars in legal fees have been spent attempting to define what qualifies as fair use. There are no hard-and-fast rules, only general rules, and varied court decisions because the judges and lawmakers who created the fair use exception did not want to limit its definition. Like free speech, they wanted it to have an expansive meaning that could be open to interpretation.
Most fair use analysis falls into two categories: (1) commentary and criticism, or (2) parody.
Commentary and Criticism
If you are commenting upon or critiquing a copyrighted work — for instance, writing a book review — fair use principles allow you to reproduce some of the work to achieve your purposes. Some examples of commentary and criticism include:
Quoting a few lines from a Doja Cat song in a music review
Summarizing and quoting from a medical article on prostate cancer in a news report
Copying a few paragraphs from a news article for use by a teacher or student in a lesson, or
Copying a portion of a Sports Illustrated magazine article for use in a related court case.
The underlying rationale of this rule is that the public reaps benefits from your review, which is enhanced by including some of the copyrighted material. Additional examples of commentary or criticism are provided in the examples of fair use cases.
Parody
A parody is a work that ridicules another, usually well-known work, by imitating it comically. Judges understand that, by its nature, parody demands some taking from the original work being parodied. Unlike other forms of fair use, extensive use of the original work is permitted in a parody to “conjure up” the original.
If at any time you find that your content or images have been used without your permission, contact us immediately and we can help.
Read more on our Knowledge Base:
Social Media Platforms
Always invest some time in Facebook and Twitter, these are great for reach. If you don’t have time to be so active on both, pick one to be the focus of interaction and set the other up with notifications when a follower messages/comments on a post or tweet.
If you enjoy another social network (Instagram, Pinterest, Snapchat, TikTok, YouTube, etc.), tie it to the blog and use it regularly. Make sure to include your blog's link in captions, so users can click on it after viewing a post. Some of these aren’t great for a clickthrough to the blog, but they build your brand and can lead to a dedicated group of regular readers. I mean who doesn’t love photos of your airplane food?!
Active on more than one? Make sure to cross-promote them. Note which networks work well together and utilize them (Ex: Instagram/Facebook or TikTok/Instagram Reels/Facebook Lives).
Please note that any negative feedback on social media that reflects poorly against BoardingArea will be subjected to sad faces and a review of our partnership.
Auto-Posting to Social Media
There are several auto-poster plugins available, and it is up to you if you use a plugin and which plugin you choose to use.
The BoardingArea Twitter and Facebook social media accounts use an auto-poster called dlvr.it. dlvr.it checks for posts every 5 minutes. The BoardingArea homepage feed checks for posts every 7 minutes. Posting times may be delayed and not instantaneous depending on when the feeds sync with your post's publish time.
For your own social media feeds, you can set up connections in WordPress. WordPress Support has more information about the Connect feature. You could also use the JetPack plugin for social media accounts to automatically post blog entries on your social media. The free version limits posts to 30 monthly.
If you use an auto-poster, be sure to go into the settings of the social media networks you set up and schedule the posts to go out at a delay since BoardingArea will also post them on the BoardingArea Facebook and Twitter social media accounts. People sometimes follow both your blog's social media and BoardingArea's social media but won’t always be online to see one or the other.
Disclaimer: Auto-posting your blog's posts to any social media site without making your social media engaging will not result in growth for your blog. Avoid making your blog's social media into a news feed. Instead, aim to market your blog by engaging your audience.
Read more on our Knowledge Base:
Newsletters
Newsletters are very important in helping drive readers to your blog. Customizing your newsletters to provide engaging content will help with engaging your audience. It is up to you to manage your newsletter. We can help set up the subscription form widget on your blog. We recommend against using MailerLite as it does not work with WordPress.
Read more on our Knowledge Base:
Design
Blog Redesign and Logo Requests
BoardingArea Network is proud to have great designers on staff, but with our many different bloggers and blogs, they can get busy. We are happy to work with you on a design and redesign, but timing is key.
For minor design requests: help with an image, logo, or icon we will be able to assist promptly.
For a full redesign, every blogger has an opportunity to work with our in-house designers after six months or once the blogger has reached the 1K milestone. Best Practices: Growth.
Submit your design request to help@boardingarea.com and a BoardingArea staff member will contact you and guide you through the process.
Read more on our Knowledge Base:
Best Practices: Growth
Featured Blogs and Rotations
Rotating Featured Blogs
Most of our active blogs are on a rotating schedule as features on the BoardingArea homepage feed. A scheduled rotating featured spot is not permanent, and we reserve the right to remove a blogger from their position at any time. We will remove blogs from the rotation schedule if they are not active. To be considered active, they should have posted within the previous 45 days prior to their scheduled rotation.
We have created a scheduled rotation to give each of our bloggers a chance at the featured spot on the homepage of BoardingArea.com for 6 days. Featured blogs will go live at 12:01 AM EST on the day they are scheduled to start their 6-day feature.
If you would like to change your featured scheduled start date, please notify help@boardingarea.com ASAP. We will be happy to arrange a new start date fitting your schedule.
Blogs that have not been active for 45 days can rejoin the featured rotation by reaching out to help@boardingarea.com to discuss being added. We will help you set personal goals before being added to the rotation. Typically, the goals will be that you post bi-weekly up to your blog's featured start date and post daily during your blog's featured time.
Permanent Featured Blogs
We are always looking to help our bloggers and promote those who have done a job well. Many aspects are in place before we consider moving a blog to be permanently featured on the BoardingArea homepage feed. It’s a discussion that can take place, but generally, we review the following criterion: time with BoardingArea:
The quality of posting, the number of posts
Traffic
Enthusiasm
Growth
A formulated decision among the BoardingArea team.
Read more on our Knowledge Base:
K Club
Blogging is hard work and everyone here at BoardingArea recognizes this. That’s why we think you should be honored for special blogging milestones. We have created milestones that recognize your progress—like a loyalty program’s status levels. We have 1K, 2.5K, 5K, 10K, 20K, 30K, 40K, 50K, and 60K levels (and hope to one day award even higher milestones).
The BoardingArea team will manage and track these milestones for you and notify you when you have successfully reached K Club status.
These milestones represent a blog’s ability to grow its readership to the next level. For example, the 1K club represents that a blog has at one point achieved 1,000 sessions/visits daily for a continuous period of seven days.
The idea is to have some fun, recognize the steps in success with your blog, provide visual goals in identifying traffic accomplishments and provide encouragement.
BoardingArea will be announcing new K club members and honorable mentions at the beginning of each new month.
Read more on our Knowledge Base:
Advertising
We do not require our bloggers to sign a contract, but we do have to get something in return for our efforts to support your blog. In exchange for all the benefits joining BoardingArea provides, we will own the following 6 spots for advertising on your blog:
1 Above Content/Header & 1 Below Content/Footer
1 Footer Adhesion
3 Sidebar
Examples of Ad Sizing and Placements
Please reach out to us to discuss if you would like any of these ad placements removed. If ad placements are removed, BoardingArea will still maintain ownership of the placement area.
BoardingPack Plugin
Ads will be provided utilizing the BoardingPack plugin that displays ads using the BoardingArea ad network. The advertising department will in good faith negotiate ads to be run on the BoardingArea Network.
BoardingPack is a plugin that must be kept on your site while you are part of the BoardingArea network. It is our network plugin that we implement advertising to the site among other various utilities that are available for use. BoardingPack unleashes the power of BoardingArea onto WordPress. Keep your site secure, increase traffic, engage your readers, and monetize your efforts with BoardingPack, the definitive WordPress plugin for BoardingArea bloggers.
BoardingPack Plugin Utilities
Content Filter provides a way to add unlimited global disclosures to posts you select without having to edit or update disclosures one by one. Create content filters that are executed on select posts and pages to filter the content after it is retrieved from the database and before it is printed on the page. The content filter behavior is in the manner of WordPress's the_content() filter. Filters are non-destructive and do not affect files or databases. To undo changes, simply remove the filter.
Find and Replace provides a way to change the text to posts without having to edit or update the text one by one. Create a mapping of PHP regular expressions and/or strings to replacement values which are executed on all HTML after WordPress finishes generating the entire page. The pattern and replacement behavior for PHP regular expressions are in the manner of preg_replace(). Mappings are non-destructive and do not affect files or databases. To undo changes, simply remove the mapping.
Read more on our Knowledge Base:
Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is permitted on BoardingArea. Affiliate links cannot replace the BoardingArea display ad units without prior approval from the BoardingArea Advertising department. Bloggers keep 100% of their revenue generated from affiliate advertising.
Direct Sales
Bloggers need to discuss any advertiser direct sales they would like to make with us before moving ahead with the sale. Any direct sales put in place by a blogger will require that all details of the said agreement be provided to BoardingArea before finalization. Revenue generated using direct sales will be subject to a 50/50 revenue share with BoardingArea.
Sponsored Blog Post
Bloggers will have the opportunity to learn about sponsorship opportunities. All potential sponsorships will be communicated through the BoardingArea Facebook group and MailChimp newsletter.
Ad Revenue Reporting
Reports will be provided every 60 days. Reports will provide a breakdown of gross revenue, net revenue, and page views.
Read more on our Knowledge Base:
Compensation
All bloggers will be compensated for their posts and pay is based on monthly analytics within the advertising department.
BoardingArea revenue share is 50%.
100% of revenue generated by affiliate marketing is retained by the blogger.
Any direct deals negotiated by the blogger are subject to the BoardingArea revenue share.
Bloggers are paid by direct deposit or PayPal
To get you paid, please be sure that your contact information is always up to date in our system. If you move, please notify us ASAP.
For all questions related to compensation, please email accounting@boardingarea.com.
Read more on our Knowledge Base:
Leaving BoardingArea
What happens if down the road you decide BoardingArea isn’t working out?
Since we have no contract and we don’t cache or own any of your content it’s pretty easy to hand over your site to you. For us, it’s a small matter of removing our network plugin, packaging your site into a zip package, and providing you a download link.
To make the transition away from BoardingArea smooth, we recommend:
Initiate a content freeze before we create your site's package zip file, so you have the latest and most accurate representation of your site. The package will be a snapshot of a moment in time, so it may be out of sync if the site changes in any way after the package is created.
Downloading the package before the link expires. The download link expires 7 days after it is created.
Your BoardingArea hosting will expire 30 days from the date we are notified you will be leaving the network. This means that your site will be removed from BoardingArea's WPEngine host and all of your site's data will be permanently deleted.
We understand that not all partnerships work out, so we will do our best to maintain a positive line of communication along the way to leave things on a good note.
BoardingArea Office
The entire BoardingArea team can be found at the BoardingArea office in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Often our bloggers come to visit, and we welcome them with open arms! We will arrange meetings with each staff member vital to your blog, so that way we can all plan, discuss and reflect.
If you are interested in stopping by the BoardingArea office, please notify help@boardingarea.com at least 2 weeks in advance, so we can prepare for your arrival.
Hours
Monday-Friday 9:00 AM - 4:00 PM MDT
But of course, our staff will be on call when an emergency arises. Our priority is to make sure that your blog is alive and well.
Read more on our Knowledge Base: