Beautiful World - New baby Rebuilt

[Admin]

One of the sites I bought this year from an Acorn member is www.beautifulworld.com - a guide to some of the most beautiful places on our planet and a nicer place to read about them than wikipedia.

The site was a custom php job and hard to manage and develop further. We (that's me and the wife) have moved it over to wordpress manually. We launched the new site yesterday, some of the features:

- responsive, mobile / tablet friendly
- all unique content (variable lengths, some needs developing)
- 20 new destinations / locations
- a page for every location
- a page for every country that has a location
- a page for every continent
- tags and filters used to show all locations by feature 'national parks', 'waterfalls', 'caves' etc
- filters to show all locations by 'activity' e.g. diving, skiing, walking, safari
- 10 most beautiful pages
- google map with pins integration on each featured location
- key facts box for each location

Lots to do and no shortage of material. Thoughts, feedback, ideas all gratefully received

 

[ian]

Really nice website, I could probably spend hours in there dreaming if I had the time. Not much in the way of feedback, aside from I'd maybe widen the main frame, as it all feels a bit squeezed in with a lot of spare real-estate for the background image. Also, no mention of my favourite place on earth, Maldives, where I could, and have, whittled away many a day/week/month!

 

[martin-s]

Looks great Steve, good job. Reminds me a bit of probably my favourite website design right now - https://maptia.com/

 

[Admin]

Thanks Guys, @ian ..yes agree re. the Maldives, we went ( a long time ago..) and I just loved it. No shoes...no news as they say. Must get a page up on the Maldives!

 

[Admin]

Just finishing off 'Yosemite national park' which we visited in June, plenty of photos to pick from

 

[Murray]

My first reaction to the idea was how is this going to be different/better than https://www.reddit.com/r/EarthPorn/

Clicking on it I find the site a bit dull and static, small pictures , I don't click on it and think "wow", just looks boring to me

If you look on the reddit they're mostly high quality big files that you can enlarge and enjoy

The pics on your site aren't that kind of high quality that I'm checking

I don't really know what you could do it to make it better than /r/earthporn but that's your competition

 

[Admin]

My first reaction to the idea was how is this going to be different/better than https://www.reddit.com/r/EarthPorn/

Clicking on it I find the site a bit dull and static, small pictures , I don't click on it and think "wow", just looks boring to me

If you look on the reddit they're mostly high quality big files that you can enlarge and enjoy

The pics on your site aren't that kind of high quality that I'm checking

I don't really know what you could do it to make it better than /r/earthporn but that's your competition

Eh? That's just a photo gallery without any content?

 

[Murray]

Eh? That's just a photo gallery without any content?

So you're thinking people will be coming to the site for the content? rather than the pictures

Looking at the above the fold content on the homepage it's just pictures, so aren't people clicking for the pictures? what would they be clicking through to read? there's no clickbait text, just the picture and the place name.

 

[boxfish]

Who is the site aimed at?

 

[Admin]

Well it has both, its not one or the other. But anyway, yes because its about ranking for keyterms and then giving them the information they want about the Amazon rain forest http://www.beautifulworld.com/south-america/brazil/amazon-rain-forest/ and then getting an ad clicked. We have page 1 and page 2 rankings for some places on Google.com. The new articles should have better pictures than the inherited articles. I dont think Reddit is going to rank for Angel falls with just photos is it? I cannot compete with the brand so cannot get traffic on my famousness, I have to rank.

 

[Admin]

Who is the site aimed at?

Just everyone in the world searching the internet for keyterms about these locations.

https://www.google.com/?gfe_rd=cr&ei=aJsTWNG9GsiT8QeP-b-ADQ&gws_rd=cr&fg=1#q=angel+falls&start=10

 

[Admin]

So you're thinking people will be coming to the site for the content? rather than the pictures

Looking at the above the fold content on the homepage it's just pictures, so aren't people clicking for the pictures? what would they be clicking through to read? there's no clickbait text, just the picture and the place name.

96% of the sites visitors aren't arriving at the homepage but the page about the place they searched for

 

[Murray]

So people will be coming for the content? which is just wikipedia rehashed no

Seems like a tough prospect to get pages above wikipedia and prexisting websites dedicated to that one place.

Have you had success doing something like this before?

 

[Admin]

It's a little disrespectful to call the content wikipedia rehashed lol. But I get you dont like the site and thats fine. This is not spun crap, its original writing on these destinations. Yes its hard to outrank wikipedia but I do it and when i dont you still get a slice of the pie if you are close by. Not everyone wants the dryness of wikipedia.

Heres an example where we rank number 1 on Google.com, thats above wikipedia and we even get knowledge graph highlights

https://www.google.com/search?q=o&p...MyQgAaio5aICA&fg=1#pws=0&q=namid+desert+facts

Yes I have had success outranking wikipedia before.

 

[Murray]

"its original writing on these destinations"

Oh yes each page was written by a local or visitor to that perticular landmark was it

It's borrowed pictures & rehashed content from other websites

it's not going to attract links naturally or any social sharing.. so you will have to get links artificially

If it's not a labour of love wouldn't your time be better focusing on a higher earning niche?

^ Maybe you have a previous experience or good reason to believe I'm wrong, I may well be, but that's my impression atm

 

[aZooZa]

Bloody miserable lot here. Nice site. Could include animals as well as places, given the remit of the domain name. I know there are animals referenced by locations, but e.g. an article about tardigrades wouldn't be out of place.

 

[Edwin]

Bloody miserable lot here. Nice site. Could include animals as well as places, given the remit of the domain name. I know there are animals referenced by locations, but e.g. an article about tardigrades wouldn't be out of place.

Taking that thought further, it could be like TVTropes.com where every article references many, many other articles. As long as everything being added to the site is genuinely "beautiful" there's no reason not to include animals, statues, buildings, etc. etc. Basically a Wiki of beauty. "Guaranteed loveliness in every click" (well, there's probably a much better slogan than that to be had, but you get the idea...)

The most important thing is not to compromise. If you start with 100% beautiful things but over time the % drops, then even say at 90% visitors clicking around are going to come across something they don't see as particularly beautiful and go elsewhere (this could be the photography too, of course - a great photo of something enhances it; a poor photo of something tarnishes it)

 

[Murray]

Bloody miserable lot here.

When did realistic become miserable

Could include animals as well as places,.

Is the site a good enough idea to be bothered to sit and google pictures of animals and then have to rewrite facts about them? sounds laborious

Or would you pay someone to do it? and how much would you have to pay to not just end up with a badly rewritten stolen piece of content from somewhere else

The only way I can see a picture/information site like this doing well is if it already had a lot of good links (so whatever you post ranks) or you could get people to submit content for you

All I'm saying @admin is that I imagine there are more profitable uses of your time

From your reactions here you obviously didn't want or appreciate any (hopefully) constructive criticism, just a pat on the back' sorry I've tried to be helpful beyond "great site!, well done!"

 

[boxfish]

Just everyone in the world searching the internet for keyterms about these locations.

Oh, right.

I was going to say it's all very generic reading, but I suppose that's because of who it's targeted at.

 

[DomainManage]

This is an exceptional name, with massive potential.
I'm sorry to say to write Beautiful World off based on comparing it to this (which is just hacky sub page (that gets some traffic) and completely the wrong demographic), would be naive and show a lack of understanding of the long term strategy being played out here. There is no doubt the site needs continuing investment to take it further, but the scope for monetization is tremendous.