question for Rob

[Irine]

First off this board is awesome thanks for all the hard work you do.

So, my wife and I travelled to Jamaica several times before we found this board. I see a few people on the board that haven't gone and are asking questions before they go for the first time and that's great. Are you trying to get the word out about the board by getting some add time on the travel sites? If you are maybe I just never noticed. I just think that this board should be mandatory reading for all newbies. Can't tell you how much it's improved our trips since we found it.

[Rob]

Irine,


Thank you for the kind words. Since conceptualizing the site back in '93 and '94, and then fleshing it out in 1995, Negril.com has been a labour of love. This site has allowed me to get to know thousands of great Jamaicans and meet in person tens if not hundreds of thousands of our visitors.


The mission statement of Negril.com has always been to promote Negril and Jamaica in a fun, friendly and truthful way. We have always striven to provide the best information anywhere about Negril. Because of this goal, Negril.com has always been ranked if not #1, then in the top 3 of all the search engines. This is our main way for visitors of Negril to find us, by using the search engines.


Over the years, we discussed getting links, banners and/or mentions on various travel sites and have had limited success. The costs for most of the popular airline/hotel sites such as Expedia, Booking.com, etc. is in the thousands of us$ per month. To keep our advertising sponsorship affordable, those costs are simply too high. After all, we need to have a site that is cost effective for all our Negril and Jamaican businesses. We were actually able to reduce our sponsorship costs since 2009 and the costs have remained the same since 2011 although our site traffic has grown. By utilizing the continually new technology, we are reducing our cost of doing business and we also help to assist our business sponsors to do the same. The way business was done in 2010 is no longer applicable today.

We have spent time in the past forging relationships with very notable and popular websites such as the Travel Channel, Caribbean Magazine, USA Today and High Times to have Negril.com linked to their more visited (more popular) websites. We get a fair amount of traffic from these very popular sites each month. This was accomplished by simply assisting them with their Negril focused stories or shows and nothing exchanged hands. We did it because we felt it was best for Negril and they in turn thanked us by providing a link to Negril.com. We do want to thank these four in particular for the great times we had with all of them. What a ride!


We have had thousands of requests for what is known as "reciprocal links" from many websites and bloggers. This is an arrangement where you place a link on your site to their site, and they do the same. As we always let our sponsors know before accepting these links, the source is checked out thoroughly. Sometimes the reciprocal sites are not Jamaica focused and simply are looking for more web traffic or spamming opportunities. Some have been Jamaica related but are out of date or have incorrect information, and others are trying to promote their own interests and using a more popular (more visited) site to accomplish this goal. We refuse these links as well as let our sponsors be aware of similar activity. Unfortunately, scamming comes in many forms....

Thanks again for your kind words. We do strive to provide what cannot be found anywhere else - fun, friendly, truthful and the best Negril, Jamaica information available anywhere!

See you soon!

[Irine]

Pretty awesome legacy if you ask me.