Campendium T-Shirt Fundraiser

Jul 20, 2015 | About

Campendium T-Shirt Fundraiser

By Campendium

The T-shirt fundraiser has been running for the past week, and so far we’ve raised 70% of our goal. The generosity and encouraging words from the donors has been really inspiring. We can’t thank you enough!

Backstory
We first hit the road full-time in 2005 and found that camping resources on the web were outdated and the information fragmented. At the time we were interested in playing poker, so instead of building a camping website, we built a website for finding poker games called PokerAtlas.

We spent 2 years on the road, and the following 4 years in a house. When we returned to the road in 2011, we hoped to find that our options for finding campsites had improved, but they had not.

Development
In November of 2012, we set up some basic database tables along with an admin interface to populate with campground information. After about a year of research, we got serious about development. We set a budget based on how much we were willing to spend, plus how much we were willing to get into debt, and hired a company with whom we had a long working history to do the programming. With a limited budget, the priority was to make a usable site so we could share it with the public.

Campendium Goes Live!
When Campendium went live on Tuesday, January 27th, we were officially out of money and there were issues needed to be addressed as soon as possible. Site speed, search, pagination, and a way to generate revenue beyond advertising all needed to be addressed.

We went to some close friends who are also our business advisors, and explained what needed to be done, and how much it would cost. Their immediate response was to help and after signing some agreements, we got back to work.

RV Parks for Sale
Sometime in August we’ll be launching a classified listing section for RV Parks. It’s not an exciting feature for those looking for cool places to camp, but it seemed like an easy win with approximately 8% of all RV parks currently for sale and our existing architecture.

(It’s also interesting to note that Google Analytics reports that after RV’s and Travel, the next area of interest for visitors to Campendium is Real Estate.)

Once we complete RV Parks for Sale, we’ll have spent all the money our advisors gave us. Thirteen RV parks would have to sign up for a year long listing in order for us to do 40 hours of development. There’s no telling how quickly we’ll be able to ramp up, and to start with, the first 25 RV parks for sale to fill out this form will get a free listing.

User-Oriented Features
Meanwhile, wouldn’t it be great if we could improve the user experience on Campendium? Every day we get emails from people suggesting new features, so we compiled the requests and have made a survey. Please help us prioritize our next projects!

Campendium Fundraiser
We can’t continue development without raising money, so for one more week we’re having a fundraiser where you can buy a Campendium T-shirt. If you don’t want a T-shirt and are still interested in helping out, you can make a donation, or if you’re feeling especially in love with the site you could do both!

Our goal is $8,400 which would equal 80 development hours and, depending on the User Features that get voted on, we should be able to knock out a bunch of them.

The fundraiser ends a week from today on Monday July 27, which will mark Campendium’s 6 month anniversary live.

Thank you all in advance, we really appreciate your support!

Buy a T-shirt
Make a donation
New feature survey

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