I’m not sure how, or even if, this applies to a website like this one. After all, Vegas4Visitors.com is not really a “blog” per se – I’m not passing myself off as an Ordinary Joe that likes to go to Vegas and then tell people what he thought. Instead, I am a travel writer offering my expertise and opinion with reviews of the hotels, shows, restaurants, and attractions that I visit.

But the new FTC guidelines made me think it would be worthwhile to discuss how travel writing works, just so there’s no misunderstanding or, you know, fines.

First, it’s important to know that I am not paid by any company, organization, or person that I review. Any travel writer, website, or guide book that accepts payments from the subjects they are writing about is, generally speaking, not to be trusted.

So how do I make money doing this? Well, most of my income from travel writing is generated through the advertising that you see on Vegas4Visitors.com. The key difference with my site and most others is that I do not accept or negotiate the advertising directly and have absolutely no contact with the advertisers. Everything is handled through a third-party provider (Google) that puts the ad spaces on my site up for bid and interested advertisers purchase the spaces through them. So I have no control, ultimately, over whether you see an ad for a Las Vegas casino or an ad to lower the interest rate on your home loan.

Likewise, the hotel reservations system on Vegas4Visitors.com, from which we get a commission for hotel bookings, is also handled by a third party, so I do not deal directly with any of the hotels to negotiate rates or availability.

This is significantly different from most popular Las Vegas websites. Most of them sell advertising or promotional placements directly to the hotels, shows, etc. that are featured on their pages or negotiate revenue sharing deals with them. So when you read a favorable “review” of a show, for instance, and you click on that “buy tickets” button, they are making money, directly from the show, for every ticket sold.

Whether or not this means that all you’ll read is positive, PR fluff on many other Vegas websites is not for me to say, primarily because I don’t want to get sued. What I will say, however, is what I’ve always said: don’t trust any one source of opinion, especially on the web, not even mine. Do you homework and get multiple opinions and always try to know who is writing what you’re reading, or more specifically, how they are getting paid.

So that’s income; in the next section we’ll talk about expenditures.

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Freelancers, on the other hand, generally do not get reimbursed for the money they spend on the things they are reviewing. This is true of most guide books (I’ve written several) and many websites, including Vegas4Visitors.com.

Since there are no reimbursements, most freelancers, including myself, make media arrangements through PR companies or departments to visit either for free or for a reduced rate. Obviously, this is where it gets sticky.

There are many travel writers out there who will accept free hotel rooms or meals in exchange for a positive review, the very practice that the FTC is trying to regulate with its new guidelines. However, there are a lot of travel writers out there who do not allow the fact that they got something for free influence the content of the review. But how do you tell one from another?

This is another instance when doing your homework is important. If you’re on a website, read as many of the reviews as you can. If all you see are positive raves, you may want to be leery of trusting those “opinions.”

If, however, you see both positive and negative reviews, you should feel more comfortable in believing what you’re reading.

This is not quite as clear cut in guidebooks, which often don’t have the room to include a bunch of bad reviews. In the books I have written, I tended to leave the bad stuff out unless it was something so high-profile that its exclusion would be a glaring omission.

So as all this relates to Vegas4Visitors.com and me, specifically, as a travel writer, the short version is this: I rarely pay for hotel rooms, shows, attractions, or meals in Las Vegas, but that does not factor into my reviews. Spend some time on this site and you’ll see plenty of negative reviews of things – those shows I gave C, D, and F grades to? Those tickets were just as free as the ones I received for the shows to which I gave A and B grades.

If I don’t like something, I will tell you about it whether I paid for the ticket/room/meal or not. This has not always made me the most popular person in Las Vegas. I gave an especially bad review to one show (because it really, really sucked) and the people involved with the show sent me hate- and obscenity-filled e-mails on a fairly regular basis for years. I even got a death threat once. I probably would’ve been more concerned if they had spelled mutilate correctly.

On the other hand, if I love something, I love it because of its merits and not because I experienced it for free. It gives me great pleasure to tell my readers about the things I really like in Vegas. I can’t tell you how much I enjoy getting e-mails from people who say that they visited a restaurant or stayed at a hotel or saw a show based on my recommendation and loved it as much as I did.

So, again, I don’t know if the FTC guidelines for bloggers applies to me or not, but I hope this satisfies them just in case.

More importantly, I hope it satisfies you, the reader. For more than 11 years, Vegas4Visitors.com has been proud to provide honest, critical reviews of Las Vegas hotels, shows, attractions, restaurants, and more and I hope that you continue to trust us as your primary resource for Las Vegas vacation planning.

If you do, spend some more time browsing around the site. Sign up for our free e-mail or RSS feed. If you see an intersting advertisement on the site, click on it. Oh, and tell your friends about us, okay? And your family. Even the ones you don’t speak to very often. Have the neighbors over and show them Vegas4Visitors.com instead of your home movies. Stop random strangers on the street and ask them to use Vegas4Visitors.com. Skywriting is good. Maybe a blimp?

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