When it comes to content, Jeff Tucker and Rob Kvidt are hyper-focused on one topic: Hawaii travel news.
Over ten million visitors come to their site, Beat of Hawaii, every year to better understand what’s really happening when it comes to Hawaii travel, from airlines to accommodations and etiquette to short-term rental laws.
But that hasn’t always been the case. When Jeff and Rob launched Beat of Hawaii in 2007, they clocked 37 visitors on one of the first days. That modest readership made them wonder if blogging wasn’t a lot more complicated than people realized.
As it turns out, however, they were on to something big—but it took putting in the work and a little bit of help from one well-known guidebook author to bring it all together.
Finding their beat
Back in the early days of blogs, Rob was working as a college admissions director while Jeff was in technology. “The first time I saw a blog, I thought, oh, this looks really weird. I showed it to Jeff, and he said, ‘I don’t really know what this is.’”
The concept of a blog sparked something in Rob’s imagination, so when they headed to Australia for work, he started a blog about the trip for his family. When they came back home, they were looking to make a change.
“When you live in Hawaii and you want to work for a living, you have to be super creative,” said Jeff. “It’s not a place where you find normal work.”
So Rob started thinking more and more about blogs.
“I found out people were living on the mainland writing about Hawaii,” he said. “So I said to Jeff, ‘you know, we’re right here. We’re in Hawaii. Maybe we could do something with this.’”
He came up with the name Beat of Hawaii.
“That’s our news beat—Hawaii. So we started it, and oh my gosh! We had 37 people on the site in one day. And I thought that was pretty good.”
Jeff wasn’t so sure.
“I thought it was a waste of time at that pace.”
How Arthur Frommer put Beat of Hawaii on the map
So Jeff started paying attention to what else was out there in the world of travel news. What were people writing about? Who was pulling in an audience? In his research, he came across famed guidebook author Arthur Frommer.
“He was the father of modern-day travel,” said Jeff. “Before the internet, you would go to a bookstore to get a Frommer’s travel guide.”
Jeff started leaving thoughtful comments on Arthur’s articles. “He was a funny curmudgeon similar to me, and I wondered if he’d ever read my comments because there hadn’t been a response back.”
Six months after launching Beat of Hawaii, they had an answer.
“We woke up one morning and the website had crashed because there were so many people trying to visit,” said Rob. “We didn’t know what was going on. Until we realized, Arthur Frommer had featured Beat of Hawaii in his column and shared it globally.”
“He said ‘if you’re a fan of the Hawaiian islands, rush quick to Beat of Hawaii,’” said Rob.
“I still feel emotional about that,” said Jeff. “It was a big deal.”
That moment started a real-life friendship with Arthur. Rob and Jeff appeared on his weekly radio show and Beat of Hawaii earned a mention in some of his books.
“He actually put us on the map,” said Rob. “We started with 37 people in a day. Now it’s not even noon, we’ve already had 75,000 pageviews, and we have more articles coming out.”
Getting started with advertising
Of course, not every site that reaches this level of notoriety is able to sustain its traffic, or try to monetize it. And for a while, Jeff and Rob weren’t sold on ads.
“For the first few years, we had no advertising at all,” Rob said. “We didn’t even want any.”
But once they built a community of engaged readers, advertisers came to them. “A guy contacted us from Hawaiian Airlines and said, ‘Could we advertise on your website?’ So we thought, well, I guess we could try it.”
“It was a novel idea,” said Jeff.
Jeff and Rob stayed with affiliate advertising for a long time. “As a destination site, we could make five figures a month easily, just with Hawaiian Airlines. So it wasn’t like we weren’t making significant money,” Jeff said.
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