Hi, I’m Sandra Friend, publisher of FloridaHikes.com and a lifelong hiker. In addition to being an outdoor writer like my husband and partner John Keatley, we are travel writers, too, which is why we need to be transparent about our business activities: not just to make the Federal Trade Commission happy, but to let you know we’re the good guys.
Now and again, we’re provided free admission, free lodging, free meals (rarely) and sometimes free transportation to visit places to write about. It’s a norm of our business, since getting reimbursed for the expenses of travel research is a rare thing. We don’t let these perks color our coverage. We tell it as we see it – or leave it out of the book (or article) altogether if we think you won’t enjoy it.
And yes, we really DO hike the hikes, ride the bike trails, and paddle the paddling trails. We shoot our own images and video. We have a small, selected pool of trusted outdoor writing colleagues who freelance for us and do the same. Their articles are filed on this website under their own names in the author archives. Otherwise, the information you read here comes from us. We use a handful of licensed Adobe Stock images that were nicer than ours.
As freelance writers scraping together a living from many little scraps, we do try and make money from this website. Once in a rare while, we’ll be asked to write a little something for pay. You’ll see the words “sponsored post” in the tag if we do, and we’ll mention our sponsors in the post. We are sometimes asked to review products that are sent to us at no cost. We are sure we make you aware that the manufacturer reached out to us and asked us to review the product and provided it to us.
We receive income from click-throughs as well, also known as affiliate links. For instance, if you click on a book cover image and end up on Bookshop (an independent alternative to Amazon that we, as authors, prefer) or Amazon.com, they pay us a little something above the buck or so we earn in royalties on each book. Some affiliates pay us a little percentage of the overall sale if you buy something from them through the links we provide.
Note the emphasis on the word “little.”
I established this website in 2006. It took nearly 14 years to cover its annual operating costs and the costs of doing research to share new trails across the state. Yes, we added advertising and we know it can be annoying. We try to minimize the annoyance factor, but to pay for the overhead, the ads are essential. Books don’t make a lot of money.
This is not a nonprofit effort, although certainly it felt like it for a long time. We have volunteered for and still actively financially support many nonprofits that help keep Florida’s outdoors a pleasant place to play. We’ll continue to do so as long as we show at least a little profit off sharing our finds with you.
Thanks for visiting, and remember – a day in the woods always beats a day in the office!