What is Jaxbend

Create an Account

Before you can start your first trip, you'll need to create an account. All accounts are free and give access to the full trip planning system. Trips are private and only available to individuals who you choose to share it with. The only way this changes if it you choose to sell your itinerary on the Jaxbend Marketplace. Not only is it free to publish your content, all profits from the sale of your trip are split 60% to you and 40% to Jaxbend. You can learn more about this here.

Create a Trip

With an account, start a new trip. A new trip will require you to provide a trip name, select the centerpoint for the trip on the map, and provide a start and end date. To do so, you'll engage with the Jaxbend Editor system. Click the Edit Icon near the title to update the trip name. Click "Place Marker" in the trip overview box and then click on the map where you would like the centerpoint for this trip to be. This will set the Latitude, Longitude, and Zoom for the trip whenever it is loaded in. Lastly, use the date-picker system to select your start and end dates. These interactions will give you a basic understanding of how the Jaxbend Editor system works before engaging with the full editor when planning your trip.

All of the information you provide can be changed later, so it doesn't have to be perfect to get started.

Plan the Trip

The trip planning system is designed to be flexible to allow you to organize and communicate information for the trip in a meaningful way. Each trip starts out with one "Content Group". You can begin adding Text, Events, Images, and Videos to this immediately. You can quickly add more content groups as needed. Oftentimes we've found that one Content Group per day works well, but more or fewer may be more appropriate for your trip. Events elements are the bread and butter of the trip planning system. Each event can have a number of informational pieces associated with it. The include map markers, directions, website links, date/time notes, expenses, and email reminders. These allow for your users to quickly identify the itinerary for the trip and plan accordingly.

Text elements allow for additional content to be created in association to the day's events. Consider using text when something is important to relay to your guests, but not critical to the trip. For example, in this golf trip being planned -- we're leaving the final day of the trip fairly open in case we need to reschedule anything due to weather. A text block here helps clarify the plan for the day and how it may change if needed.

More likely to be used for trips being published, the Image and Video elements allow for additional media elements to highlight the trip. There is a 50mb limit for media for each trip to limit the cost of hosting each trip, so photos and video should be edited in a way to minimize size. Videos can be posted using a YouTube link instead to preserve media space for the trip. When adding media to a trip, think beyond the artistic images that may display the beauty. Trail markers and conditions, parking, restrooms, and other general information about the trip can often be best represented by additional media. You don't have to be a professional photographer to take highly informative photographs of your adventure!

An additional use for the "Content Group" system is to create variations for a set of plans. On a vacation, your party may split into two groups to do different activities. Create a different Content Group for each set of activities so that users can see a clear plan for each path.

Invite Users

When you are ready, you can invite any number of people that you want to include in your trip to join you. Clicking the User Icon while viewing the trip will allow you to add email addresses. If the user has an account on Jaxbend it will add it to their account so they can view & edit it when logged in. If the user is not part of Jaxbend, no worries! They will recieve an invite with an invite code. When the access the trip with the invite code they will be able to see a "Read Only" version of the trip. Only users with an account have the ability to edit a trip that has been shared to them.

Publish to the Marketplace

After you've experienced your trip you can publish it to the marketplace to help others who may be looking to do something similar. Only the owner of a trip can publish it. If you don't want to publish it, but a guest does -- you can transfer ownership of the trip through the User Manager for the trip. Before you publish the trip will need to complete a few steps to become a creator so Jaxbend can pay you for any sales you make.

To publish a trip, we'd recommend the following steps:

• Make a "Copy" of the trip. This way you can alter the content of the trip without impacting the original copy of the trip in case you want to use it again in the future.
• Remove any identifying information. Address specific map pins for people should be updated to be general map pins. Names should be removed.
• Update the content to speak to the general audience instead of to the guests of the trip. Include any notes regarding major success or failures to inform others.
• Add informative media to highlight any notable things you experienced on the trip.
• Set a "featured image" for the trip that will be used when others view it in the marketplace. (Found in Trip Settings)
• Set a "description" for the trip that will be used when others view it in the marketplace. (Found in Trip Settings)
• Set a select number of elements to be "public". These will be available to any user who views your trip to give them an idea of the content you provided that is available to purchase. You can see what this "before purchase" view of the trip looks like by viewing the "Summary" of the trip.

When a user purchases your trip, they will gain access to a "Read Only" version of your experience. They can make a copy of it for their own use, but a copied trip cannot be published later.