The Core

Why We Are Here => Water Cooler => Topic started by: Mackin USA on May 03, 2017, 01:07:02 PM

Title: National Park Maps
Post by: Mackin USA on May 03, 2017, 01:07:02 PM
This site currently has 1,608 free high-resolution national park maps to view, save, and download.

http://npmaps.com

LUV the domain name

In honor of our resident ranger
http://npmaps.com/wp-content/uploads/yosemite-valley-map.pdf
Title: Re: National Park Maps
Post by: rcjordan on May 03, 2017, 01:22:48 PM
It's good. I sent it to one of our local tourism guys a few days ago for, ummm, re-purposing.
Title: Re: National Park Maps
Post by: ukgimp on May 03, 2017, 01:44:31 PM
That needs robbing, I mean saving for later use
Title: Re: National Park Maps
Post by: Mackin USA on May 03, 2017, 01:50:46 PM
YOU MFs
;D ;D ;D ;D
Title: Re: National Park Maps
Post by: ergophobe on May 03, 2017, 04:27:01 PM
Quote from: ukgimp on May 03, 2017, 01:44:31 PM
That needs robbing

How do you rob something that is freely given? These are NPS maps, which means they are public domain. All of these are freely available online without usage restrictions. What they've done here is two things:

1. collect them in one convenient spot (is it robbing if you use this to collect your own PD archive? Maybe... but it isn't hard to find these resources for your area.)

2. create a store that makes physical product from these public domain resources. Basically, the website is lead gen for their Zazzle store. Good idea.

A fellow ranger became a ranger after selling his 200-person software company (he had always dreamed of being a ranger, but then went and had six kids, so needed to build a business and sell it before he could afford to pursue his dream job). He floated a similar idea to me. He wanted to collect all the public domain items pertaining to a park and package them into a book because, as he noted, people love those materials, but they are damn hard to find for the average visitor. We were too lazy to do it, though he put together a good collection before getting sidetracked.

This makes me think it's time to revisit that idea.
Title: Re: National Park Maps
Post by: ergophobe on May 03, 2017, 04:36:20 PM
Oh, and htey have a nice little Amazon affiliate thing going...

Poking around the site a bit more, this is a really good site.

Doesn't appear to be a flood of traffic yet though according to SpyFu traffic was essentially zero in October and is now 10K/month
https://www.spyfu.com/overview/domain?query=npmaps.com

For what it's worth, its Alexa ranking would suggest a lot more than 10K/mo though
http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/npmaps.com

No SEM Rush data...
Title: Re: National Park Maps
Post by: Travoli on May 03, 2017, 11:11:47 PM
Great resource, thank you Mackin.