About 8 months ago, a friend and I had an idea for a new website. We worked hard on the project for a couple of months, we experimented, we tested and then, one day while in a cafe in Istanbul, we made the decision to trash the idea altogether.
However, the reason we trashed the idea is that, during the course of our discussion that day, we came up with what we believed to be an even better, more useful project. The goal remained the same – to help all kinds of people receive reliable travel advice directly from experienced travelers. It was just the platform and the method that changed.
Well, we got back to work, brainstorming, experimenting and testing once again, spending long hours for months on end figuring out every detail and turning our ideas into reality. And suddenly, just last week, my friend and I realized that our new project – PLANSIFY – was actually ready to be launched, in its beta form.
So, what’s this project all about exactly?
PLANSIFY – Reliable Travel Advice
Purpose: To connect anyone who needs travel advice with experienced travelers who can provide the most reliable and direct advice possible. And the idea is to make it all happen through an easy-to-use, affordable platform.
How it Works: If you have a travel-related question, or questions, you can search our database of Travel Advisors in order to find an experienced traveler to help you out. Using the search tool, you can sort through our database by country, region and/or certain travel-related keywords such as long-term travel, adventure, work and travel, volunteering, couples travel, expat life, language learning and many more so that you see only the Travel Advisors who are experts in exactly what you want to know about. Simply read each Travel Advisor’s profile and then choose the Travel Advisor you wish to contact.
Every Travel Advisor sets their own rates for either a Skype call (up to 1 hour) or to answer up to 3 questions through our user-friendly online form. It takes just a minute or two to either send off your questions or schedule that call. And just like that, you’re on your way to receiving direct, personal and expert travel assistance!
For more information on how Plansify works, you can check out our How it Works & Help FAQ pages.
Who Can Benefit From Plansify?
Well, anyone with any kind of travel question and anyone who has the travel knowledge to become a travel advisor!
Travelers: If you’re thinking about traveling and you need some answers or you simply have a few questions about anything at all related to travel, this site will ensure you find the right people who can help you out. Who better to answer your questions than those who have already experienced exactly what you want to experience yourself?
You’ll find our current list of available Travel Advisors here: Travel Advisors
Advisors: Anyone can be a Travel Advisor as well, as long as you have some extensive knowledge about a particular country, region and/or aspect of travel. You don’t need a blog or any social media presence to be an Advisor. You just need that knowledge and a willingness to help others achieve their own travel goals.
You can check out the advisor sign up page here: Sign-Up
Try It Out!
Okay, here’s the part where I invite you to check out the site and give it a try. Of course, I only encourage you to check it out if you think that Plansify might be something useful for you or anyone you may know.
Keep in mind that Plansify is still in its beta form, meaning that it has yet to be tested with the general public and is therefore still a bit unpolished. With your feedback, which we hope you’ll provide, we can continue improving the project in order to turn Plansify into one of the most trusted, useful travel tools on the internet!
And if you do find the concept to be useful, we would be most appreciative and honored if you would help spread the word to your own audience, to your family and friends, those you work with, strangers in the street, your neighbors and the people in the car next to you at the red light. We are always looking for more Travel Advisors to sign up as well as more Travelers who need their questions answered!
[…] for a fraction of the price of traditional travel planing services. You can learn the basics here from Wandering Earl (he’s one of the founders), but I also went into a little more detail here on the new […]
Earl, love this idea and am so excited to see how it manifests in its final form. I also love how you’re beta testing and incorporating feedback from users. The Happy Passport is my 4th online business and if I’ve learned one thing through trial and error, it’s that you must TEST TEST and then TEST AGAIN!!
This is an excellent concept, Earl. You’ve essentially created a market for valuing travel expertise. For all those travel startups who want my free time to evaluate their business plan, I’m sending them here.
I love it. I’m sharing on Twitter, FB, etc.
That is a great idea. I’m headed to Indonesia this fall and I’d absolutely pay for a Skype session or email to an expert. On the flip side, I have been working in the AK tourism industry for 10 years and I’m an expert on this great state. I’ll be sure to sign up.
Love the idea! Both for giving and getting advice. Just tried to sign up as an advisor and all good up until the photo stage – then I got an “application error”:
An error occurred in the application and your page could not be served. Please try again in a few moments.
If you are the application owner, check your logs for details.
Sounds like a great idea! I’m going to head over and check it out now – I love when things are new, when you first create something and you never quite know what’s going to happen.
Congratulations on your new venture Earl! It sounds like a really great idea, and a really useful resource for both travellers the travel advisors. I’m definitely going to sign up. 🙂
The supply side of this equation will be fairly easy, especially given your reach with long term experienced travelers. The demand side is quite a bit harder though, especially solving the trust aspect with travelers-to-be. I wish you the best of luck going forward!
Thanks Drew. We have a good strategy in place for the site and while we are taking it quite slow with the launch, we are confident that we’ll get the demand side going as well!
Yes, love the idea and the concept! Best of luck with your launch. And I agree with Jen above, make specialty filter a multi-select. I also recommend sorting by “top advisors”. I imagine that this will be quite popular with the advisors however getting the end users could be another matter…. Either way, love the concept and am looking forward to following along.
I totally dig the idea Earl and I’m looking forward to checking it out both for my planned upcoming trip and to see if I qualify as an adviser from my previous trips.
I’ve been checking out your site for awhile now and haven’t posted anything yet but you can plan on hearing from me again elsewhere on your site in the future. Thanks for all the help you give man, keep it up.
You are probably already doing this but having the Adviser search be merit-based where advisers with highest review ratings in each category are listed first would both increase the quality of advice and service given by advisers as well as increase the inherent trustworthiness of the information given to new customers/travelers.
Hey Jason – Thanks for the comment and suggestions, much appreciated! And yes, as each advisor starts to get feedback and ratings, they will be sorted by those ratings. Since the site just launched and we actually haven’t started the main marketing push yet, there just aren’t enough reviews yet to do this. But there will be soon!
Interesting idea. How corporate is it going to be??
Lonely Planet Thorn Tree is an amazing resource and I’ve used it extensively on my cycling escapades. The thing that really lets it down to the point where I and a lot of other travellers I know will not use it for a lot of information now. The reason, they wont let negative reviews of companys for fear of litigation in a lot of posts.
The Iranian visa post is the best example. You can only leave a positive review. A certain company that is recommended in the LP Guide has been ripping people off for years. Every time someone adds another example of being ripped off by this company the mods delete it.
I hope your travel advisers have the ability to tell it like it is and not have to pander to corporate bs.
I also hope with that in mind that there is a good way to stop people using the site for purely commercial purposes. I’m guessing some sort of feedback system will eliminate most of that.
Good luck with the idea.
Hey Richie – It’s not corporate at all and advisors will simply give the best advice they can give, with no censorship at all. And there is an extensive feedback system in place and all advisors are informed that the site is not to be used to promote their own commercial endeavors.
I love this concept – there are some forums out there but getting that personalized touch (and perhaps a chance to get that one on one advice from a traveller you greatly admire) is a cut above!
Just a recommendation that you make the “Specialty” filter a multi-select. There are so many advisors that selecting one specialty often nets you multiple pages of results with no way to select another specialty to help narrow it down.
This is such a great idea – I get the best advice from expert travelers (usually fellow bloggers), but it would be nice to have it all in one spot. Can’t wait to try it out!
Hi Earl, this is an awesome concept for a website. It helps wannabe travelers just like me where I am at – the planning and idea stage, perfectly. So you will see me in there somewhere as I have signed up as a member. I will pass on the website details to a few friends of mine who love to travel.
[…] for a fraction of the price of traditional travel planing services. You can learn the basics here from Wandering Earl (he’s one of the founders), but I also went into a little more detail here on the new […]
[…] Here’s the official summary from our founder Derek, better known as Wandering Earl: […]
Earl, love this idea and am so excited to see how it manifests in its final form. I also love how you’re beta testing and incorporating feedback from users. The Happy Passport is my 4th online business and if I’ve learned one thing through trial and error, it’s that you must TEST TEST and then TEST AGAIN!!
This is an excellent concept, Earl. You’ve essentially created a market for valuing travel expertise. For all those travel startups who want my free time to evaluate their business plan, I’m sending them here.
I love it. I’m sharing on Twitter, FB, etc.
Thank you for that Brad, much appreciated!
Best of luck with the awesome idea! I’ll be sure to share this shortly.
Will sign up as well, love helping people with travel questions. Great idea!!!!
Hey Kathy – Great to hear and we welcome you to the Plansify!
Congrats Earl! Just signed up – love the idea, and the signup was smooth and easy.
Best of luck with this!
Thanks Nathaniel and it’s great to have you on board!
That is a great idea. I’m headed to Indonesia this fall and I’d absolutely pay for a Skype session or email to an expert. On the flip side, I have been working in the AK tourism industry for 10 years and I’m an expert on this great state. I’ll be sure to sign up.
Hey Jeff – It will be excellent to have you as an advisor as well!
Earl! So happy to be part of Plansify. I thought it was a great idea from the beginning! Will be spreading the word soon myself!
Cheers. 😀
Hey Jeannie – And we are extremely happy to have you as part of it all! Excellent profile by the way 🙂
What a brilliant idea, Earl! Love it!
Shared, tweeted and +google 😉
All the best with this project, I’m happy to be part of it!
Thanks so much Sab!!
Love the idea! Both for giving and getting advice. Just tried to sign up as an advisor and all good up until the photo stage – then I got an “application error”:
An error occurred in the application and your page could not be served. Please try again in a few moments.
If you are the application owner, check your logs for details.
@Tahlei’s Travels – That’s odd, have you tried again? I just tested it and it seems to be working okay now.
This is a great website idea and I’m already registered!
Keep up the great work 🙂
B
Sounds like a great idea! I’m going to head over and check it out now – I love when things are new, when you first create something and you never quite know what’s going to happen.
Good luck with it! 🙂
I love the site design. The colors really pop. Good luck on you project Earl. Did you use a software solution or was the whole thing a custom job?
Hey Adam – The whole thing is custom, built by my business partner/developer.
Congratulations on your new venture Earl! It sounds like a really great idea, and a really useful resource for both travellers the travel advisors. I’m definitely going to sign up. 🙂
Sounds great Earl, I will definitely check it out when I am back in Sydney (Alice Springs has rubbish wifi connection!)
Hey Earl – congrats on getting this live. Looks great.
We worked on a concept very similar at a startup weekend a couple years ago, and shared my learnings from the process here: https://blog.ohheyworld.com/tech-startup-learnings-summary-of-startup-weekend-seattle-travelangel-co/
The supply side of this equation will be fairly easy, especially given your reach with long term experienced travelers. The demand side is quite a bit harder though, especially solving the trust aspect with travelers-to-be. I wish you the best of luck going forward!
Thanks Drew. We have a good strategy in place for the site and while we are taking it quite slow with the launch, we are confident that we’ll get the demand side going as well!
I loved your idea. I’m pretty sure that it’ll be a success. I hope I can use it as soon as possible. I’ll spread it in my social medias! 😉
The layout of the site is amazing!
Yes, love the idea and the concept! Best of luck with your launch. And I agree with Jen above, make specialty filter a multi-select. I also recommend sorting by “top advisors”. I imagine that this will be quite popular with the advisors however getting the end users could be another matter…. Either way, love the concept and am looking forward to following along.
Cheers,
Katie
Hey Katie – We’re working on that now and it should be ready (the multi select option) soon!
I totally dig the idea Earl and I’m looking forward to checking it out both for my planned upcoming trip and to see if I qualify as an adviser from my previous trips.
I’ve been checking out your site for awhile now and haven’t posted anything yet but you can plan on hearing from me again elsewhere on your site in the future. Thanks for all the help you give man, keep it up.
You are probably already doing this but having the Adviser search be merit-based where advisers with highest review ratings in each category are listed first would both increase the quality of advice and service given by advisers as well as increase the inherent trustworthiness of the information given to new customers/travelers.
Hey Jason – Thanks for the comment and suggestions, much appreciated! And yes, as each advisor starts to get feedback and ratings, they will be sorted by those ratings. Since the site just launched and we actually haven’t started the main marketing push yet, there just aren’t enough reviews yet to do this. But there will be soon!
What a great and cool idea! Going to check it out, and maybe apply to be one of advisers too.
Awesome stuff man, it’s really inspiring to see you kicking goals in every part of the travel world
Best of luck with this new endeavor Earl!
You are truly an inspiration you entrepre-curlyhair-globetrotter gringo, you rock.
I hope one day we’ll meet on the road.
Keep on writing!
C.U.
Haha….thanks for that Cris!
Great idea! Sounds like it’ll be enormously helpful–I’ll definitely remember it for the future.
Its an interesting idea…I will surly check it out 🙂
Interesting idea. How corporate is it going to be??
Lonely Planet Thorn Tree is an amazing resource and I’ve used it extensively on my cycling escapades. The thing that really lets it down to the point where I and a lot of other travellers I know will not use it for a lot of information now. The reason, they wont let negative reviews of companys for fear of litigation in a lot of posts.
The Iranian visa post is the best example. You can only leave a positive review. A certain company that is recommended in the LP Guide has been ripping people off for years. Every time someone adds another example of being ripped off by this company the mods delete it.
I hope your travel advisers have the ability to tell it like it is and not have to pander to corporate bs.
I also hope with that in mind that there is a good way to stop people using the site for purely commercial purposes. I’m guessing some sort of feedback system will eliminate most of that.
Good luck with the idea.
Hey Richie – It’s not corporate at all and advisors will simply give the best advice they can give, with no censorship at all. And there is an extensive feedback system in place and all advisors are informed that the site is not to be used to promote their own commercial endeavors.
This is an AMAZING idea! I just signed up as an advisor 🙂
I love this concept – there are some forums out there but getting that personalized touch (and perhaps a chance to get that one on one advice from a traveller you greatly admire) is a cut above!
Just a recommendation that you make the “Specialty” filter a multi-select. There are so many advisors that selecting one specialty often nets you multiple pages of results with no way to select another specialty to help narrow it down.
Hey Jen – That’s a great recommendation and we should have it ready soon!
I love it! Signing up now to be an advisor. I really enjoy travel planning and helping others get out there and travel, so it should be fun!
This is such a great idea – I get the best advice from expert travelers (usually fellow bloggers), but it would be nice to have it all in one spot. Can’t wait to try it out!
So interesting! Great idea. I’d love to advise to India, been living and working here almost 2 years.
Awesome idea! Love the layout and functionality of the site! It’s very mobile friendly as well. Nice!
Hi Earl, this is an awesome concept for a website. It helps wannabe travelers just like me where I am at – the planning and idea stage, perfectly. So you will see me in there somewhere as I have signed up as a member. I will pass on the website details to a few friends of mine who love to travel.
Thank you again – Matthew
Hey Matthew – Thanks for passing it on to your friends and I look forward to hearing about your experience using the site as well!
Very awesome Earl! Wish you the best on your next project….
Absolutely love this! It allows everyone to share their unique background and experience. Good Luck and Namaste.