The best new websites for details on campgrounds and campsites will be linked to social media

The best new websites for details on campgrounds and campsites will be linked to social media

Hello:

My name is Sean Murphy and I want to tell you about the latest changes in campground listing sites on the internet. Until a few years ago socialnetworkingdid not exist and as such no one would have even bothered to search the terms "campground ratings" or "campground reviews". However since about 2005 the interest in these two keyword pairs and many like them has exploded. The advent of social networking and websites like Trip Advisor and many others has led people to expect to be able to find ratings websites for just about anything from merchandise to all inclusive vacation packages. In the last couple years the market has responded and a flood of new websites has hit the internet. However there are still needs not being met...

On a cold winter day in 2009 I was hosting a party at my home in Smyrna, Georgia. My guest and I werehuddledclosely around a fire pit discussing various issues. I had just returned from a week long camping trip to Cayo Costa State Park in south Florida. I wasexcitedly telling my neighbor and friend Andy Ford about an idea I had for an internet business focused on camping. Mr. Ford is a website developer and owns DesignLogicCreative.com and my idea was based on building a website that reviewed and rated campgrounds and campsites in particular.

You see, I'm one of those people always dreaming of ideas to make money and most of them usually end up falling by the wayside and never amounting to anything, but this time it was different. I had a good idea and several of my friends agreed.

The ideastemmedfrom my search to find a campground in a warm climate that would have the activities I wanted and the privacy I desired. As a Florida native I grew up camping and living in a tourist town. I hated crowds and I despise camping in campgrounds where people are camping right on top of one another with no privacy. In my opinion it defeats the purpose alltogether. In my search I turned to the internet. After several hours of researching I was extremelydisappointedin what I could or more appropriately could not find on campsites.

Sure, there were plenty of websites with lists of varying qualities and details but none had more than a few photos, basic details and contact info. Not one had any indication of the level of privacy offered at the campsites, the quality of the campsites, or any user posted content. The best websites were those by the states. Those at least had few photos. However, I found that many showed old outdated photos from the 70's and later. This proved to be very important in my visit to Cayo Costa, as a recent forest fire had destroyed much of the trees that used to shade the beachside campsites.

I had been intrigued by Cayo Costa and was not satisfied with what I found on the state's website so I had researched the campground on the world wide web and found some very good information in a private blog detailing a certainadventurer'skayak trip to the island a few months earlier. Here in his blog I found veryrelevantand up to date content, including recent photos of the camp area and a personal account of the facilities in great detail.

This was great, it was a revelation to me and it was the catalyst to taking our trip. Why couldn't a website combine this detailed personal user contributed content to a database of campgrounds with detailedinformation on all the amenities. And further couldn't user's rate individual sites in a campground by quality and privacy, two of the most important things to most campers. So, I set out to search and see if there was anyone providing this kidn of content. Now mind you, this was the end of 2008 and a lot has changed since then. But back then, I could find nothing that was a match to what I had in mind. While I did find camping sites, none had ratings, reviews, photos, etc. None was melded with social networking as I had desired.

So that takes me to my discussion with Mr. Ford. After talking about the concept and not really taking myself to seriously, apparently Mr. Ford did. That is to say he did take me seriously, and in the course of the next few months he mulled this idea over in his head. Then on June 30th 2009 Andy decided to consult a friend and local expert Gelnn Orton who was a manager at High Country Outdoors. Andy inquired if Mr. Orton had knowledge of any such site and Mr. Orton responded in the negative. So the game was on and Andy contacted me to tell me he wanted to consider taking this rough idea to the next level and so began the development of www.netcamper.com.

A few weeks later I met Andy over a cold beer and we nailed down our mission: To be the most respected provider of campground details and ratings in North America. We also found what we believed to be an excellent website name in www.netcamper.com. It was about as close to a top tier site name as one can get without spending several thousand dollars to buy one.

From there we set out to develop the site. Now here is where it gets really interesting to you campers. We wanted to provide content not offered by anyone else, and over the next 12 months competition crept in and was beating us to be the first. In fact, by 2010 we were way behind and several competing sites were offering nearly the same content that we had planned to provide. But that has not dissuaded us because we still have content to offer that no other site currently has. In fact we plan to not only provide a general rating of the overall campground but also of individual sites within. The idea is that for any given campground that has a number of sites, some of those sites are much better than others and some may be terrible. I am reminded that once as a child my family camped in a site that was apparently at the convergence of an overland storm water route that nearly washed us out of our tent at 3am. However, providing this level of detail will be a challenge though, as it may take several years for many campgrounds to build up enough reviews of individual sites to start to make the ratings statistically valid and worth posting. However we plan to post them as soon as we get them. So soon you will be able to not only look into the overall picture of a campground but also get a general idea which sites are better, have better views, more privacy, etc.

In addition to individual campsite ratings we will have privacy ratings for the entire campground, proximity of sites to one another, very detailed amenities list foreverythingfrom hot and cold water in the showers to access to wi-fi, water views, rv hook ups and more. Add to all this a social media side with users being able to upload current photos and a backgroundmanagementsystem that keeps only the most current photos and we will have a very valuable tool for all campers in Canada the United states.

The site is currently in development and beta testing and projected to go live in January of 2011. Please drop in and check out this new site. Or if you want to get on the list to be notified when it goes live, "like us" on facebook and twitter, etc.

We welcome thoughts on content that a campground site should have to make users most satisfied.

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