How well do you know what FishingBooker really does? We’ve gathered some of the most common questions and misconceptions about what we do as a business and are ready to reveal all! Read on: Some of the answers might be surprising…
Myth: FishingBooker promotes captains who pay the most commission.
Reality: Yes, the commission influences how visible your listing is. But it’s not the only – or even the most important – thing that our site looks at when choosing who to rank in the search pages.
Get this: 80% of the most booked captains invest 20% or less. Don’t believe us? Check out how Captain Steve gets 160 bookings a year while investing just 10% commission.
If you’re wondering why this is, imagine carefully selecting the trip of your dreams, securing your date, and then finding out it’s not going to go ahead as the trip was double booked. This is a disappointing experience, and something we want to avoid for our customers.
This is why we track how often each captain accepts trips and how often they cancel them due to avoidable reasons like being double booked. In other words, our ranking algorithm favors captains who are likely to actually take customers out.
We also look at reviews and boost captains who have a track record of providing a great experience. Instant Book contributes to how well you rank too, as it means you’re committed to accepting trips.
If you invest the highest commission percentage but don’t have great reviews and only accept a fraction of the trips we send, you won’t rank as high as someone with the lowest commission, excellent reviews, and a history of accepting bookings.
That’s not to say that investing a higher commission is useless. If you want to give yourself a temporary boost in the rankings, you can up your commission for a chance to get ahead of the competition. Whenever you change your mind, you can always lower it back.
Myth: FishingBooker promotes fake guides (and pushes part-time guides above full-time captains)
Reality: We’re serious about promoting legitimate businesses. That’s why our verification process includes credentials checks that show customers that you’re qualified. This also means that you don’t need to compete with unlicensed guides for business.
As we work with fishing businesses all over the world, one of our biggest challenges has been to create a system that highlights licensed captains, regardless of their country, state, and type of waters they fish.
We’re proud to say that we’ve introduced credentials checks as a mandatory step for all new captains. In the Gulf of Mexico for example, we also make sure to differentiate listings that are state licensed vs. those who are federally permitted.
Worldwide, our team is quickly expanding the same vetting standards as we currently have in the US. We will continue to work on applying a verification system that’s fair and safe for everyone we work with.
Here’s what our verification process includes across the globe.
When it comes to new and part time guides, we believe in giving everybody an equal chance for success. As long as you have the correct credentials, you can work with us. But part-time guides aren’t specifically ranked or promoted above full-time captains – this simply isn’t how the site works.
Myth: The money FishingBooker takes from commission is far more than what they give back as a booking platform
Reality: Well, this one is up to you to decide. But here are some of the benefits we provide as soon as you hit “publish”:
- Online advertising – our marketing experts optimize your listing for maximum exposure and a chance to tap into a clientele you wouldn’t normally reach.
For extra exposure, you can write fishing reports which we will advertise to customers on our reports pages. - Business management – tools like the calendar enable you to track and schedule bookings. You can handle customer communication through the Instant Messaging tool, and we take care of all booking and payment reminders to save you time.
- Growing your reputation online through reviews – we invite all your FishingBooker customers to leave reviews for you. You can even invite your own customers to grow your reputation further.
- Keeping track of your documents – we send you renewal reminders when your documents are about to expire. You can track your documents’ status yourself through your profile.
The best part is that you get all of this regardless of how much you invest. Whatever your commission percentage, we provide all of this with the promise that if we don’t get you out on the water, we won’t make a cent. We don’t take any additional charges other than our commission on successful bookings.
Worth paying commission on successful trips you wouldn’t otherwise get? We think so.
Myth: We don’t let you talk to the customer over the phone before the trip
Reality: We’re a bit confused about this myth. You can find your customer’s contact details in our Messaging platform, by checking out the Booking Details. We encourage you to talk to your customer before the trip so you can both get the most out of your day!
And yes, as long as your customer has an upcoming booking, you can share any additional contact details over Instant Messaging, too.
Myth: FishingBooker doesn’t work for my business. They only care about captains in the US, and captains who fish saltwater.
Reality: It’s true that we work with a large number of captains from the US – and yes, they mostly fish in saltwater. But we welcome captains from all over the world. We work with people everywhere from Australia to Norway, and have hooked customers up with incredible fishing as far away as Kenya and Argentina.
Think we’re just about the Speckled Trout and Tuna? Think again – we’re talking Golden Dorado, Paddlefish, Alligator Gar, Payara, Arapaima… the world’s five continents have some really cool fish to offer anglers, and it’s our mission to make all of this easier to get out and explore.
We get it though – sometimes it’s hard to fit all of this onto our listings, which are predominantly designed for people who fish with a boat out of one fixed location. But our content marketers, business development specialists, and captain coordinators are always ready to put the extra time in to find a solution that fits your business. You just need to give us a call!
Myth: FishingBooker takes control away from you about how you market your business.
Reality: We sometimes hear this from captains who’d like to be able to edit or change their listing more easily. We’re going to be honest – this used to be completely justified!
It used to be that once we’ve optimized your listing description text, new edits were only possible if you requested a change.
Why was this the case? We work on keyword optimization so that each listing gets the highest chance of ranking highly on search engines like Google and Bing. This includes nailing the best wording so that your description can get seen by as many customers as possible.
Doing this also allows us to keep our writing standards up across the board. Unfortunately, asking captains to post description change requests meant that you weren’t able to make edits immediately.
While we were always doing our best to act on change requests quickly, we understand how this created a less than ideal experience.
Having heard captains’ feedback, we’ve made the listing descriptions accessible for all new captains so that you can customize them to show exactly what you’re all about. We’re quickly working on expanding this to all of our existing partners, too.
While you’ll be able to make edits whenever you want, we’d recommend keeping them small and focused on accuracy (e.g updating things like your boat info, targeted species, trip seasonality etc.) rather than the structure and the wording of their descriptions.
We’ll still be here if you want to post a request for more substantial changes, or if you simply don’t feel like writing!
Myth: FishingBooker is based in Russia/Syria/China… I don’t know, but they’re not from around here!
Reality: FishingBooker is an incorporated business registered in the US, with an address in Norfolk, Virginia. Our legal structure is made in alignment with American laws, we pay US taxes.
At the same time, we’re not in Silicon Valley, and we’re not pumped full of money from investors. We’ve had to work hard to get where we are today.
And where are we calling from? Our operations are based out of Serbia, a country in southern Europe. We’re not surprised if you haven’t heard about Serbia before. Granted, it’s small! But we recommend you come pay us a visit. It’s famous for its generous servings of BBQ food, amazing culture, as well as for some incredible fly fishing.
Serbia is also known for its great thinkers. Mihajlo Pupin, one of the founders of NASA, came from here and went on to perfect the telephone. Nikola Tesla, who discovered how to harness electricity for modern use, also had Serbian heritage.
At FishingBooker, we’re not forging a path in physics, but we do start every day by driving to work on roads named after people who changed the world for the better. And we’re constantly inspired to do the best that we can do, too.
Myth: The people who work at FishingBooker don’t fish. Myth or reality?
Reality: While some of us have been passionate anglers for years, plenty of FishingBookers never caught a fish before their first day with us. But whatever their previous experience, everyone in the company gets to wet the line sooner or later.
And no one goes without catching a fish for long. Every year, we run a company-wide fishing tournament to brush up on our skills. Attendance is expected!
So, is FishingBooker legit?
In business since 2013, FishingBooker has helped millions of people connect with great fishing guides all over the world. On average, customers rate their fishing experience with 4.8 out of 5 stars.
A BBB-accredited business, FishingBooker is also highly rated on third-party review websites like Shopper Approved, Trustpilot and Sitejabber.
We’re proud of what we do and how we do it. And we want to talk about it! So – what would you like to know? Get in touch via the comments below.
