Sunday, October 23, 2011

Interview: Craig Martin, The Co-Host of Travel Podcast Blog

An interview with a Co-Host of an Award Wining Travel Podcast Blog “Indie Travel Podcast - Craig Martin. He and his wife Linda is running this blog since 2006. They share their tips to the travelers for better and less price traveling experiences, in their blog…
indiepodcast
They traveled more than 40 countries and has far better experience in travelling… Here in this interview, i got to know many new things about how they started this online radio show blog and at end of the interview he also shared “traveling safety tips”… Don’t miss it!

The are featured in PC Magazine, Podfinder UK, Alltop's travel section, the final ten of travel section in the Podcast Peer Awards, top 10 for the Bloggers Choice Awards for Best Podcast and won the the Best Podcast category in Lonely Planet's travel blog awards. -Great!!!

The interview begins, Enjoy!

Why you thought of taking the blog platform to conduct your online radio show or online podcasting?
We started Indie Travel Podcast in 2006 after we had spent six months traveling around Europe. We considered starting a magazine site or a blog to share our tips and what we learned, but we decided to make it a podcast because not many people were making travel podcasts and it sounded interesting. We chose WordPress to create it because of some excellent podcasting plugins and integration options.

I found that you traveled many places... Did you traveled those places only for your blogs content or for spending Holidays?
It's not really work or holidays; it's our lifestyle. We have been traveling full-time for over four years now and visited over 40 countries. We're always taking photos and video, and using the internet to publish our stories and audio programmes. It's good fun.

Do you feel like a RJ, when you are talking in the internet radio show?
Not really. It's very lo-tech! We have a portable microphone and we often sit in a hostel room or sometimes outside and just talk about that day's topic. We also use Skype to interview other travelers and interesting people around the world.

What type of advertisement you mainly use on your blog to earn money? Any Voice ads?
We use banner ads, affiliate programmes and Adsense/Chitika as well as audio spots on the podcast. Since we won the Lonely Planet "Best Podcast" award, we have had lots more interest from new audience members and from worldwide travel advertisers.

You And Linda is running this blog... but who first got the idea of this "Travel" Blog Topic?
I think that was my idea, but Linda really helped bring it to life, along with another friend Paul. Paul created the first version of the website for us and provided free hosting for our first year or two. Now, I'm still the driving force, and Linda the balancing force.

Common Tips you like to give the readers about "traveling safely"... Traveling safely?
I think a little common sense plus research can be really helpful. We were recently "attacked" in La Paz, Bolivia, where a man threw a gel on my friends' bags then a man in a suit told them their bags were smelly and they should take them off. Because we had all read about this scam (the criminals would steal the bags when they took them off ) they were able to keep moving to a place of safety. In general, the world is quite a safe place: don't panic about leaving home! Go and explore! We try not to put ourselves in danger, and seldom have had any problems in over four years of travel.

http://www.indietravelpodcast.com
http://facebook.com/indietravel54
Craig Martin : http://twitter.com/craig_martin
Linda Martin : http://twitter.com/lindajmartin

I really had a great interview with Craig and i must appreciate that he has gave me the interview replies very fast. So, stay tuned with this blog for more expert interview. Arijit Das