About
arubabeaches.net started in May of 2007 on a sub page at Blogger.com. The only topic at that time was beaches only. The site had a sorry life for weeks on end with only a few visitors a day. The post frequency was irregular as well. Then something happened that put the site on the map. Somewhat. Hurricane Dean was threatening to hit Aruba.
It didn’t. It surely brought a lot or rain to Aruba and big parts of the island flooded. Following the storm I noticed that information wasn’t best. There weren’t lots fresh pictures for example. This was a good opportunity. I started writing about the storm, consequently received more visitors. The posting frequency went up and lots of fresh pictures were uploaded. It resulted in lots of new visitors. Though, soon after the storm passed, seemingly it took the visitors with it and things cooled down considerably.
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After learning about the potential, this blog was moved from Blogger.com to its own domain. At first the topics remained closely linked with the beaches. That became old however. It was difficult to continuously coming up with stories about beaches. The topic of Aruba beaches are now meant more like a metaphor about this island.
The topic base was expanded with real estate, condos, resorts and weather. Since then, the visitor amount rose. This website serves thousands of page views per month, which for a small site without any marketing is pretty decent. It’s been growing month to month with about 5 to 10 percent and year on year with 100% plus. Our Flickr page – flickr.com/arubabeaches – has over 900 photographs, with almost 18.000 picture views.
arubabeaches.net
To further enhance the user experience, a new, much simpler, web re-design has been unveiled on February 24, 2010. Videos will become more prominent as well. The posting frequency will continue to be four-weekly as that seems to work best. Posts will continue to be mostly short, containing an image or video as the introduction, followed by three paragraphs of text.
I am Gabriel, married, father of a girl and a boy, both whom I adore. I’m a tourism professional born and raised in Aruba. I have a college background in economics/real estate and have a passion for tourism, technology and entrepreneurship. If you would like to contact me, please use below form.
Updated on February 24, 2010
Note: Please don’t hesitate to contact with any questions and/or inquiries. I’ve helped numerous of people throughout the years.
