Half a year with a blog, whoooohoooo! While I told myself that this wasn’t just a short term hobby, deep down, I don’t know if I believed in myself. After all, I have started a bunch of stuff (piano, journals, scrapbooks, photo albums) only to quit when my heart really wasn’t that into it. Like before, this is a non-fancy (no pictures) update about what it going on with Travel World Heritage.
1) Kingdom Animals is on hold. I tried to spin off a nature based photo blog to show off my animal photography. I figured that it would be easy because all I had to do was post a picture and write a sentence or two. With considerations to SEO, photo watermarking and re-sizing, uploading, choosing the right picture in the first place, etc, it proved to be too much work. I want to focus on this site first and foremost, so for now, it will remain on hold.
2) We are now one of the top 200,000 websites in the world!
Although it doesn’t really mean much, I remember how excited I got when Alexa finally ranked me for the first time. I was #9,500,000 and felt pretty good about it. Hitting the top 200,000 has been a long term goal as it is one of the requirements to make it into Nomadic Samuel’s Top 100 blogs. Hopefully I will be in by the end of the year. We have also ranked as high as #1500 in South Korea… pretty good.
3) My mobile site sucks. When you read Travel World Heritage on your phone, a stupid pop-up of the share bar loads up. I actually was unaware of this problem until today, and will get on it. It had effectively made it unreadable on mobile.
4) The money is finally rolling in! Well, by this I mean, I have finally received some offers for advertisement on the site. After reading other sites on this matter, and Nomadic Matt’s book about how to make money on your travel blog (a good read btw), I’ve decided to hold off until I reach a certain traffic goal. I don’t currently need the money, so it’s one less thing to worry about for now.
5) The YouTube channel is up, but it sucks. I actually have 0 subscribers (be the first) and I think I know why. The videos are very choppy and to be honest, not the best quality. I shoot with a Sony a33 camera, making the format .MTS. For years, I have tried to find a way to convert them or find a hosting site that will play them properly, but no luck. If you have some solutions, I would love to hear from you.
6) Social Media – Maybe you already know this, but you can find me or this site on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google Plus, and Stumble Upon. Personally, I am a big fan of stumble upon and will work on making my profile better for that.
7) Posting frequency has been erratic. Like I promised in Website Update #1, I have tried to post every three days. However, I had a trip to Peru for a few weeks, followed by being really sick soon after returning that threw it off. I also have a trip tomorrow to Komodo, Indonesia, so blogging should return to normal after that. My bad.
8) Requests – I do take requests for posts, but have only gotten one once ever, and that was the UNESCO site of Nazca. If you would like me to write about something sooner, just ask. Here is a list to choose from.
9) The South Korea Travel Guide is up. This has been one of my long term goals ever since I started this site. I have made a complete guide on South Korea and I challenge anyone to find something better for free online. It has taken a month of hard work and cross referencing both expats who have lived here for years, and Koreans who have been here… well, their whole lives. It has practice itineraries, things to do, food to eat, a history on Korea, and over a hundred links to other useful sites. Check it out.
10) Make a Difference is about tourism that cares. Everyone supports travel companies that either pay them to do it, or that make their lives as travelers easier. I understand the need for both of those, but what about the local people of the places where we are traveling? Especially in developing nations, it is important to support those who need it most. Make a Difference is a page on this site that will list companies, individual services, or organizations who support the very local people who need it the most.
11) Page and Domain Authority has gone up. The page authority of the homepage is 39 while the domain authority is 29. Besides increasing these, it is my hope to finally get page ranked by Google. These things take time, I know, but it is driving me crazy!
12) Pictures are mostly my own. While I don’t always have a picture to go along with a post, I am trying harder these days to use mostly my own pictures. One sure way to know if it is mine is if it has a watermark (for new posts), as I always watermark my pictures now.
13) Suggestions and Cursing – Aside from requests, I am open to any and all suggestions from any reader of this site to make it better. Just leave it in the comments or send me an email. I have also noticed that I have been cursing a lot more on my posts. My bad.
14) I am reworking the UNESCO World Heritage Rankings. You might have noticed that I haven’t posted too many UNESCO World Heritage evaluations on this world heritage website. That is because I am in the middle of reworking the formula to have a more uniform way of evaluating each site. I am convinced I can get this down to a science, but again, with the Peru trip and being sick hiccups, I’ve been a little slow on this.
15) Thanks again – Especially to those people who have helped and supported the site, and to my #1 fan and girlfriend Sidney Choi who has followed and supported me with genuine interest since the beginning.
[Note: No animals were harmed in the posting of this article.]
16) I almost forgot, little anecdotes like that note are an attempt to add a bit more of a personal flare to this blog. It has been suggested that I am too methodical and mechanical in my posts. I guess that is why most of my views come from search engines.
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