We Don't Sell Ads

Not since about 2012. Here is the whole story, including the part where we did.

If you came here to buy advertising on BootsnAll, the answer is no, and it's been no for well over a decade. That is the short version. The longer one is more interesting, because we didn't always feel this way.

We started without ads

BootsnAll launched in 1998 as somewhere independent travelers could swap notes about places they had actually been as well as a member database well before couch surfing was a thing. There were no banners on it, mostly because nobody had worked out how to put banners on something like this yet. That turned out to be a feature.

Then we sold ads for a while

Starting in about 2003 or so: Banner units, sponsored placements, the standard package everyone was running. It paid for servers and writers, and it looked like the normal cost of keeping a site free to read. For a few years it was worked.

Then the internet got messy

The networks got hungrier. Interstitials, autoplay video, retargeting that trailed you around for three weeks because you once read a piece about buses in Laos. Anyone who was online then remembers what reading a travel site started to feel like.

The worse problem was upstream of the ugly formats. Once the ad slot is the thing paying, you start writing to fill the slot. We were rewarded by the algorithm and played to it…

We publish the roundup because it monetizes, not because somebody planning a trip needed it. You stop writing the piece that tells a reader the trip is a bad idea, because that piece doesn't sell anything. The reader quietly stops being who you serve and becomes what you sell. Ugh.

In about 2006 or so, BootsnAll Co-Founder Sean was in London meeting with travelers and walked into an Internet cafe that had 100 terminals. What he saw, shocked him. Facebook was on 90%+ of the screens. FB: the ultimate seller of the audience was still young…

Sean knew he could not compete with them and did not want to. Looking back from 2026 perspective, he was right.

What we do instead

A small number of relationships, all with brands we use or build ourselves:

  • AirTreks - multi-stop and round-the-world tickets. BootsnAll and AirTreks share a co-founder, which is the first thing you should know when you read us recommending them.
  • Amazon - books, and only books somebody here has read.
  • We have a newsletter, better to subscribe there and we wish substack was around when we started.

That's the list. If you buy through one of those links we might earn something, it costs you nothing extra.

What we won't do

  • Sponsored posts, however they're labeled.
  • Paid placement in a guide or a list. Where something ranks isn't for sale.
  • Link insertions into old articles, which is a whole industry now (TripAdvisor founders used to ask us to buy link well before they were a public company) and the reason half the travel web quietly rots.
  • Handing your attention to an ad network to resell. (Notice - no ad banners)

If you wanted to reach our readers

Share something with us that is quality driven first. If it resonates with our principles even better.

Write something worth their time and pitch it. We read every message, and a good story about a place you actually went will always get further with us than a media kit.

Questions about any of this? Get in touch, or read more about BootsnAll.