Your guide handbook for all things Guide Book.
The basics
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Guide Book is a platform that was built by professional fishing guides for professional fishing guides. Our mission statement and core focus as a company every single day is to “make guides’ lives better.” We do this by offering guides the backend tools necessary to manage their entire business in one place. We offer free tools for schedule management, client management and communications, reviews and payment. We are actively working on many other tools we are excited to roll out in the near future as well.
In addition to being a place to run the backend of your business, our team is also working on an aggressive marketing strategy to put more eyes on the trips you offer. Through a mix of paid marketing (SEM) and search engine optimization (SEO), we are working hard to bring you more business. And we are transparent with these efforts! If you want to know what results we are driving for you, just ask.
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Great question. We have built a schedule management system so you can manage the trips that we generate, the trips that you generate on your own, or the trips that other services generate all in one convenient place.
This means that if you book your own trip or get a trip from somewhere else, you can add it to your calendar on Guide Book. Now you can see your full schedule in one place, message with clients, and if you would like, we can send reminders and update emails on your behalf with no cost to you!
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No, your business is your business. You should have your own social media presence and if you want your own website we don't want to stop you from doing that either. If you get the majority of your trips from a local shop, an outfitter or a competitor of ours, we will not stop you from using our platform. We simply want to be a benefit to your business in whatever way we can.
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Signing up, creating your profile, listing your trips, and getting eyes on your business is totally FREE! We only charge a commission on trips we generate for you.
SIGN UP PROCESS
It’s simple, go to Guidebookco.com and click sign up.
-Create either a Guide or Outfitter account.
-Tell us a little about you and your business.
-Our Customer Support team will review your application.
-Once approved you can create your Stripe account so you can receive payment.
-Finally you can list your trips and start getting your name out there!
WHAT IF I DON’T HAVE TIME OR NEED HELP?
No problem, we are here to serve. One of our team members is happy to make an account for you, setup up all your trips offerings, and then send you a link for your approval. Beyond that, if there is ever anything else you need, just ask! We can make updates and edits, or just provide general help to make sure your profile and trips look great and generate lots of interest.
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Our founding team is a group of professional fishing guides and avid outdoorsmen who encountered first hand many of the issues that Guide Book is working to solve today. We are based out of Kentucky, so if you ever find yourself up this way, we would love to grab a bourbon with ya!
Financial info
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We weren’t kidding when we said we are focused on improving guides’ lives. At Guide Book we take an industry low 8% commission only on trips we generate with a monthly cap of 15 trips. We know two things are true about guides and booking services:
You have to make money: You have to be priced competitively to win business. If you are paying 30% to your booking service, how can you afford to make a living? So we set our commission rates as low as we possibly could where we can still make money to operate our business and spend money marketing yours. We don’t want to rip you off.
You have your own clients: You don’t want to pay a commission on trips that we didn’t get for you. We want you to have the option to manage your entire business here and simplify your operation. So we only charge commissions on the first 15 trips you have booked each month. Everything else after that is 100% FREE. That way if you want to move your entire business to Guide Book you can. Or you can just use our other free tools and continue managing your other business however you see fit.
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STRIPE
We use Stripe to facilitate customer payments. Stripe is a highly secure and trusted payment platform utilized by millions of businesses worldwide, offering state-of-the-art encryption and fraud protection to ensure your financial information remains safe.
To learn more about how to setup your Stripe account, click here.
THE PAYMENT PROCESS
When you sign up for an account, you will be asked to sign up with Stripe or link your existing Stripe account as well. When a client books you, they will pay their deposit and authorize future payment for the full amount of their trip. Guide Book takes our commission from the deposit and the balance of the deposit is sent directly and immediately to you. We don’t handle your money or keep it for any period of time. On the day of the trip, the balance of the payment is charged to the customer and sent directly to you as well.
TIPPING
Once your trip is complete, your client will be prompted to review your trip, leave a tip, and asked if they would like to rebook you for a future date. Tips may also be handled through Stripe. We provide the client with suggested tip amounts, they can leave a custom amount, or indicate that they left cash. We didn’t do any of the hard work to get that tip, so 100% of that tip belongs to you.
CREDIT CARD FEES
We have talked to guides and outfitters who are paying thousands or tens of thousands of dollars in credit card fees every year. No other industries do this. We wanted to change this. So we pass along credit card fees directly and transparently to clients. We also offer them the option of paying ACH to significantly reduce this fee. escription
Marketing questions
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Great question. We use a number of methods to get your name out there in front of lots of people.
YOUR NAME & BRAND
At Guide Book, we don’t make you just some anonymous trip. You won’t appear on our site as “Full Day Trip for Tarpon” next to 500 other trips with the same name. We want to promote you, and if that means that the occasional guide or clients goes around us to get a trip, then we are willing to lose that trip if it means it gets your name out there.
WE’RE NOT PAY TO PLAY
We think if someone is searching for a trip in your area, the best guides should show up at the top of the search results. Not some doofus, who decided he wanted to be a guide yesterday and borrowed his brother’s boat. So, we promote all our guides based on their reviews. If you get good reviews, you are at the top of the list. If you get bad reviews, then you are at the bottom. It’s that simple.
MARKETING
We are spending time and money to promote guides… really. We are using a combination of for paid marketing, social media, search engine optimization (SEO), email marketing, and partnerships in the outdoor space to promote you and your trips!
CONTENT GENERATION
Want even more exposure? Help us generate more outstanding content! We want articles about fishing your local waters, the crazy things that have happened to you, or about your favorite fishing trips that we can share with our customers. We want great pictures from your trips and adventures. We also want fishing reports from you! So if you want to get plugged in or have other ideas we want to hear from you.
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No, but you can if you want! - If you want your own website, you should have one. But we don’t require guides to have their own website. Your profile on Guide Book can serve as your website, or you can keep yours totally separate. We don’t want to put our fingers into business that you worked hard to get yourself. But we will offer you the free tools to manage business you get on our platform with… for free!
More questions? Any other way we can help?
Reach out to our Chief Growth Officer, Ben Roberson. He’d be happy to show you how Guide Book can transform your guided fishing business.