Eleven Years! 1998-2009
Please contact The Maritime Heritage Project to request a detailed proposal or with any questions you may have about the Project.
More than 20,000 hours have gone into the project at this point (not including 40 years of travel and research: Refer to Bibliography), but much more can be and should be added to the site.
For more than a decade, the site has been considered a valuable reference, receives more than 20,000 visitors with 47,000 page views and 125,000 hits per month. The body of work is well-regarded by researchers, educators (4% of all page views), genealogists, and professionals in the maritime field. Comments include: "There is no other site like it in the world," "I use your site as a resource for our docents," "my students research your site for their history papers," and "I've been searching for my great-great-grandfather for years; I found him on your site."
The Maritime Heritage Project honors men, women, captains and their ships and crew for enduring commitment in protecting shorelines and in moving merchandise, livestock, and people around the world under historically unpredictable and often dangerous conditions.
The site also illustrates that America belongs to everyone; the health and wealth of this nation was formed by individuals from every nation who migrated to its shores seeking refuge and opportunity.
Thus, Angel Funders/Sponsors/Contributors are needed.
Site Statistics (as of January 5, 2009)
237,000 visitors per year.
Statistics are supplied through Urchin (charts available for verification upon request)
and Alexa.com
Average Monthly Visitors: 19,791
(up from 19,590 in September 2007)
Average Monthly Page Views: 47,553
(up from 33,660 in September 2007)
Average Monthly Hits: 125,362
(up from 88,200 in September 2007 and 117,719 in August 2008)
As of August 2008, 66% of visitors were from the United States; the remaining 34% were from:
Netherlands: 6.4%
U.S. Government: 3.8%
Germany: 3.8%
New Zealand: 2.9%
Australia: 2.8%
Educational Institutions: 2.6%
France: 2.5%
Non-Profit Organizations: 2.1%
India: 1.3%
Brazil: 1.2%
. . . and Belgium, Spain, Greece, Poland, Italy, Czech Republic, Switzerland, Thailand, Mexico, Argentina, Colombia, Japan, Singapore, South Africa, Malaysia, Pakistan, Turkey, Moldavia, the Faroe Islands, the Russian Federation, and the U.S. Military (and other countries).
Visitors view as many as five pages and a significant number stay between 5 and 30 minutes.
The site was reworked and content added beginning November 2007; by March 2008, accesses climbed by 47%.
Products and Services
Reference Site: The focus will continue as a free content/reference site for maritime history in and around San Francisco Bay and will focus on the build-out of specific areas, i.e.:
- Captains
- Ships: Hundreds of people have asked for images of a given ship, captain or personage arriving in San Francisco during the mid-1800s.
- Civil War Troop Ships in San Francisco
- Passengers: Additions to the lists, valuable to genealogists around the world, an increasing number of which are arriving from Australian's seeking ancestors;
- Routes and Ports
- What They Found On Arrival
- VIPs with details of their contributions to the State of California
Publishing and the Internet have become intertwined as a method of marketing and distributing books, both as hard copies and as eBooks to be downloaded at low cost. ePublishing is a growth industry. Manuscripts will generally be under 100 pages and in 8-1/2x11 format. Hundreds of thousands of people around the world want the information provided on the site, and because of distance from original sources, they do not have access to original manuscripts. Prices will be $5-$20 each depending on the amount of time into each publication and costs of reprint rights for images.
Sponsorships
From maritime-related entities, i.e. shipping lines, cruise lines, maritime products, etc., which have resulted in logos placed on the site
Residual Income
Affiliate Marketing partners such as Amazon.com, Ancestry.com, InternationalHarbors.com, each of which has provided modest (but growing) income to The Maritime Heritage Project through online purchases through the site.
Marketing Plan
Due to strong site access, a portion of the marketing is built-in. Additionally, The Maritime Heritage principal is certified in ePro Marketing, which has proven viable and valuable, with a solid proven track record of successes.
D.A. Levy has every eMail ever sent to The Maritime Heritage Project and will develop a monthly newsletter once funding is intact.
The principal has two other personal web sites pointing to The Maritime Heritage Project and the site is listed on major maritime search engines around the world, including maritime museum sites, shipping lines such as American President Lines, and merchant marine sites. The Maritime Heritage site is also used as a training/reference site by the San Francisco Maritime Museum and J. Porter Shaw Maritime Library in San Francisco. Thus, new eyes visit the site daily.
The market is international: Given the aging of America, family historians/genealogists are blossoming. San Francisco Bay Area has 6,605,428 residents, many with ancestors who arrived by ship. Internationally, 72 cruise ship lines carry more than one million passengers annually and that industry is growing (travel revenue is expected to exceed oil revenues). Thousands of families have an "historian" (one genealogical library received 30 million viewers, although a timeframe was not given nor numbers substantiated).
Operational Plan
Operations are minimal, requiring only a small office and equipment such as an up-to-date computer (with relevant software), printer and scanner. Day-to-day operations entail ongoing research, defining information to be included on the site or in eBooks, imputing and uploading information.
Management and Organization
The Maritime Heritage Project is a U.S. registered 501(c)(3) tax-deductible nonprofit charity established in 1998. It has had a governing board. The site speaks to dedication to the original mission which is to provide free information to researchers seeking ancestral travel to the West Coast of North America.
It is the intent to keep this organization just as it has been with the addition of a fact-checker and a few products to offset expenses. The Maritime Heritage Project is the work of D.A. Blethen Adams Levy, started in honor of Captain James H. Blethen. It grew as fascination with sea history and as inquiries continued to arrive from around the world, along with accolades for this body of work.
It is sans levels of bureaucracy and should be kept that way. D.A. Levy is the executive-everything: manager, director, developer, researcher, web designer/coder, typist, etc. More time needs to be devoted to development as it has been a part-time project since inception. A fact-checker is warranted given the importance the site to individuals searching to document historical information.
Expenses and Financial Plan
Anticipated expenses include salary for the project director and fees for copying, travel (mostly local to/from historical societies), acquisition and/or reprint rights of prints, maps, etc., i.e.
- $157,000 annually offset by escalating income through affiliate marketing and other projects.
2009-2010 Budget Upon Request - 1998-2008: All expenses covered by personal income
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