Ever since I won my first fully-sponsored vacation to South Korea (Asian on Air 2012) and my bloggers-invite to Kota Kinabalu by Sutera Harbour and Sabah Tourism Board, I’ve been wanting and dreaming to transform my passion for traveling into something profitable like a travel start-up. Months and years went by and it was still an unfulfilled dream.
Few months back, I wanted to “cash in” my blog viewership by going into a .com. Three months down the road, I have yet to accumulate $5 from Google Adsense in my two domains + youtube account. (Minimum withdrawal is $100) My investment to date is about $80 which includes 1-year web hosting, 2 domains purchase and wordpress re-direct services.
Right now, I’m all focused on making my blog search engine friendly by improving my google page rank (currently unranked) and alexa ranking (currently 1,404,943). My aim is to reach an alexa ranking of less than 1,000,000 by 2015. I hope it is feasible 😉
Anyway, as I strive to recoup my initial investment of $80, I’m constantly on the lookout for growing travel-start ups which offers monetary incentive for my contribution. I used to be a crazy participant on Qiito (Quick, Interesting & Interactive Travel Organizer) which rewards contributors with Capitaland Vouchers. However, I have decided to halt my participation as the “contest” was getting meaningless as the moderators do not vet the tagged locations. It resulted in participants tagging nonsensical places like HDB blocks or even NTU Halls which was totally irrelevant to the entire travel community. Their last facebook status update was more than 2 months ago (13 August 2014) and I have yet to receive a reply from their admin with regards to their future. It might be a case of a forgotten start-up which did not make it through its Beta stage.
Well, I’m happy to bid farewell to those Capitaland Vouchers and I’m also glad to have discovered a South Korean Travel Start-Up which has the interface of my ideal travel search engine, albeit only in South Korea.
(Read till the end to find out how to earn your rebates.)
Well, the idea behind trazy was that it wanted to introduce local hideouts to tourists, staying true to their tagline “Travel Korea Like A Local”. I stumbled onto this website while searching for the Tallest Oreo Pakbingsu (Shaved Ice) at Pop Container, in Sinchon.
It not only has an English description of the place (with prices), it has its opening hours, an embedded Google Map AND English Directions to the place!
It’s kind of sad that such an awesome website isn’t receiving as much as it should have as KTO entries area always top in Google. But let’s compare the display interface between KTO and Trazy.
From KTO:
From Trazy:
The thing I really like about Trazy’s interface is that it presents the important information very neatly, with google map embedded into the page. Furthermore, its “Review” function and “Wanna Go” button makes it somewhat like tripadvisor. To sum it up, it infuses the functional aspect (info & directions) of KTO and the 3rd party contribution aspect of tripadvisor into the same page.
The next aspect that I enjoy about Trazy is that they have themes recommendation, neatly embedded and labeled in Google Maps WITH STREET VIEW function.
Of course, my favourite theme list would be All about K-pop in Seoul and One of a Kind Cafes in Seoul. Now that autumn is round the corner, don’t forget to check out the autumn foliage locations! Do explore the other theme lists, it can be a great temptation to fly to Korea immediately.
The third aspect of Trazy (something which I haven’t gotten the chance to try) would be booking one of their unique experiences.
There are cooking classes, ferry cruise, pub crawls, K-POP Dance Lessons and even booking popular musicals like JUMP, at a discounted rate!
Last but not the least, trazy rewards their contributors with Amazon Gift Cards and PayPal credits! Can you believe it? The winner for this week received $45 for her contribution!
How does this Top Trazy Contributors work?
It is a bi-weekly contest whereby you need to be the top 3 contributors. Each point equates to $0.20 (yes USD).
- 3 points (60 cents) – Posting a new spot (tagged with location and address) with adequate information
- 2 points (40 cents) – Leaving a review on the spot
- 1 point (20 cents) – Uploading a picture for the spot
Other terms and conditions: http://www.trazy.com/reward/faq
Well, here’s an example to show that there are moderators/active contributors doing their job:
I added this location 10 months ago and my entry has been edited and the directions portion had been filled up by a helpful someone 🙂
If you’ve been to Korea, taken a lot of photographs and visited many interesting places and you would like to share your experiences, what are you waiting for?
Share your Discovery, Discover new places, Book unique experiences and earn your rebates!
Sign up and be a trazy contributor today!
FYI: Trazy’s Google page rank is currently “4/10”, a link-back would definitely be beneficial! I’m determined to earn back my $80…..