Posted by Denny Hatch
A
Billion Dollar Website
Waiting to Be Discovered!
Waiting to Be Discovered!
SERENE. Length: 439.30 Ft.
Owner: Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman
Owner: Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman
Personal Note: Two Online Photo Galleries
With 1500+ Ship Portraits by Denny Hatch
https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/photos/by/copyright:Denny%20Hatch?order=date_uploaded
https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/photos/by/copyright:Denny%20Hatch?order=date_uploaded
This
all began with SERENE.
A number of years ago Peggy and I sailed
into the harbor at Valletta, Malta on a Viking ocean cruise ship. Docked nearby was
the eye-popping yacht above.
After visually drinking her in, I ducked
down to our cabin to go online and see who she was. I discovered:
• SERENE
was owned by Russian vodka (Stolichnaya) oligarch Yuri Schefler.
• She is the 16th largest
private yacht in the world with two helipads, three swimming pools and a crew
of 52 looking after the ship and its maximum of 24 sleepover guests.
• SERENE
was chartered by the Bill Gates family for a cruise off Sardinia. The tab: $3.5
million a week (plus expenses).
• Several years later—in mid-2015—SERENE was sold for $438 million to
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (the notorious MBS), alleged murderer of
Jamal Khashoggi, columnist for The Washington Post.
More
on SERENE:
https://www.charterworld.com/index.html?sub=yacht-charter&charter=motor-yacht-serene-6298
https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/details/ships/shipid:384469/mmsi:319021900/vessel:SERENE/_:dc8a31a81d27b8a7220e3b11e3dfcf13
https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/details/ships/shipid:384469/mmsi:319021900/vessel:SERENE/_:dc8a31a81d27b8a7220e3b11e3dfcf13
In
Our Cruise Ship Cabin, I Found www.marinetraffic.com—Everything
Needed to Become Billion-dollar Website!
This
extraordinary website tracks 550,000 ships worldwide in real time—freighters,
tankers, cruise ships, tugs, river boats, ferries, private yachts.
A boat of any size—from 15 feet to over
1,000 feet with a transponder sending a signal up to the Automatic Identity
System (AIS) satellites—shows up on the MarineTraffic.com map of the world.
Among the smallest and largest vessels tracked by the amazing MarineTraffic.com website:
Among the smallest and largest vessels tracked by the amazing MarineTraffic.com website:
Here's How www.MarineTraffic.com Works
Right now I’m on my iMac in
Philadelphia, Monday, March 4, 2019 at 08:30 hours. Below is Malta on the MarineTraffic website:
Every
dot represents a ship.
• Green Dots: Cargo/Container Ships
• Red Dots: Tankers (Oil and Chemicals)
• Dark Blue Dots: Passenger Ships (Cruise Ships, Ferries, etc.)
• Light Blue Dots: Tugs, Military Vessels
• Lavender Dots: Private Boats and Yachts
•
Muddy Orange Dots: Fishing Boats
The big cluster of dots just to the right
of “Malta” are ships in Valletta
harbor and the Malta Yacht Marina. Enlarge the map and it reveals around 100 individual
ships and boats of all sizes.
Pass your computer cursor over any dot and
basic information appears.
In the Malta map above, SEE
GREEN SHIP OUTLINE AT LEFT—MSC HAMBURG, Panama registry, speed 20.2 knots,
Destination ESBCN—ES (Spain) BCN (Barcelona).
Double click on MSC HAMBURG green ship outline above left and
here’s what pops up.
Double click on Vessel Details (green
box above) and you
hit the info jackpot—basic data plus specs.
Click on the blue bar at bottom right ("Ship Photos 55")—and you’ll discover 55
gorgeous photographs of MSC HAMBURG
in ports all over the world!
This trove of data (and photographs) are
available with a few clicks on your desktop, iPad or Smartphone—24/7 for
550,000 vessels anywhere on the planet!
Let’s say you have friends or family at
sea or on a river; simply enter the name of the vessel they’re on and it will
pop up on the map, so you can see precisely where they are!
This is dazzling technology!
While there are modest charges for
advanced professional information, the basic service is Free!
Tiny Company, Giant Website
• Exmile Solutions
Limited, dba MarineTraffic.com
• Been collecting
data since 2009.
• Incorporated 2012.
• 3,500+ AIS
(Automatic Identification System). Stations in 140+ countries run by volunteers.
• Tracks 550,000
ships of all sizes.
• 6+ million monthly
unique visitors.
• 1.1million
registered users.
• 2+ million ship photographs.
• All photos
automatically © copyright in photographer’s name.
Latest Financials—Year
Ended Dec
2017
• Total
Assets £2.83m
+£680.81k (+31.63%)
vs previous year
• Total
Liabilities £-2.12m
-£283.05k (-15.4%)
vs previous year
• Net
Assets £712.82k
+£397.76k (+126.25%)
vs previous year
• Cash
in Bank £1.62m
+£495.36k (+44.12%)
vs previous year
• Employees
Unreported
• Turnover
Unreported
• Debt
Ratio (%) 74.84%
-10.52 (-12.32%)
vs previous year
If the numbers above (and I have checked several sources)
are accurate, next to Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, WeChat, Instagram et al.,
MarineTraffic is huge web service and a financial pipsqueak.
Why
Do I Give a Hoot About MarineTrafic.com?
Fast
Forward Three Years. Peggy and I downsized to a
2
BR apt on the 30th floor overlooking the Delaware River
I
am now hooked on ships—giant cargo vessels, tankers, yachts, sailboats, tugs—pretty
much anything that floats and carries people.
Okay, I confess.
I bought a Nikon camera and am one of MarineTraffic.com’s
29,000+ avid volunteer ship photographers worldwide.
The portrait of STOLT KIRI above was taken from my living room window.
The gray warship in the background is the 888-foot WWII battleship/floating museum USS NEW JERSEY, the most decorated ship in the history of the US Navy. At left is a section of I.M. Pei’s iconic “brutalist design” Society Hill South Tower completed in 1964. The two tan smokestacks at bottom left are on OLYMPIA (launched 1892). She is the oldest battleship afloat in the world—famous as Commodore George Dewey's flagship in the Battle of Manila Bay during the Spanish-American War in 1898.
The gray warship in the background is the 888-foot WWII battleship/floating museum USS NEW JERSEY, the most decorated ship in the history of the US Navy. At left is a section of I.M. Pei’s iconic “brutalist design” Society Hill South Tower completed in 1964. The two tan smokestacks at bottom left are on OLYMPIA (launched 1892). She is the oldest battleship afloat in the world—famous as Commodore George Dewey's flagship in the Battle of Manila Bay during the Spanish-American War in 1898.
I have around 500 photos on the
MarineTraffic.com Website. (It contains 2+ million ship images from all
over the world.)
When we go on cruises, fellow passengers
take photos of friends, family, historic sights and sites. I take boat pictures.
The
Glory of the Great Ships
Often,
I go down to the Delaware to get close to these aristocrats of oceans and
rivers. Here’s INDUSTRIAL SONG after
passing under the Ben Franklin Bridge.
Many
of the ships I photograph are giant rust buckets. Yet they radiate majesty—the
largest moving objects on the planet that account for 90% of world trade
amounting to $4 trillion annually.
These breathtaking ladies (all ships are
“she”) get beaten up in rough seas in all weather. Yet they soldier on. On
arrival in port, the crews—many of them Eastern Europeans and Asians who speak no
English—are forbidden to leave the ship for fear they might become illegal
aliens. Many speak no English. They live a lonely, isolated existence à la Henry David Thoreau on
Walden Pond.
Of all my photos, here’s one of my
favorites:
In
good weather I spend $7 for a ride this little guy and take ship pictures from her deck.
In short, I’m in love with vessels great
and small that that traverse the seas and the waterways that make up 71% of the
earth’s surface.
My opinion: MarineTraffic.com could
become a billion-dollar website—the digital epicenter of the multi-trillion-dollar
behemoth that is the world Maritime Community:
•
550,000 vessels worldwide. Every one of them should have its own website.
•
1.6 million professional seafarers on merchant ships.
•
250,000 cruise industry crew members.
•
28 million annual ocean and river cruise passengers.
•
650,000 Americans in the US Maritime Industry.
•
13 million registered boat owners in the U.S.
•
Millions more boat owners all around the globe.
•
Countless sailors in the world’s navies, port and warehouse workers, shipping companies executives, et al.
• MarineTraffic.com could become the first place to click on for anybody interested in the trillion-dollar universe of ships, boats and yachts: buying, selling and servicing them, chartering them, looking for jobs on them and, of course, traveling on them.
• MarineTraffic.com could become the first place to click on for anybody interested in the trillion-dollar universe of ships, boats and yachts: buying, selling and servicing them, chartering them, looking for jobs on them and, of course, traveling on them.
So,
how does a lone-wolf geezer
with
a dynamite concept get in the door?
I
tried and failed.
As MarineTraffic.com
photographer, I would love to meet some of my fellow camera fiends. I’d like to
watch them work, learn from them, swap yarns, compare cameras, hoist a few with them and
join them for some exotic travels and cuisine.
So I dreamed up a little side business to prime MarineTraffic.com's diversification pump:
Dear Denny Hatch,
As an official MarineTraffic.com ship
photographer, you should know how proud and grateful I am for your contributions.
As well as creating an historic legacy,
the ship photography project has given a dramatic new dynamism to MarineTraffic.com.
Thank you!
About ISWSP
I am anxious for all ship photographers to
have a home base at MarineTraffic.com where you can showcase your unique
artistry.
With that in mind, I am launching the
exclusive International Society of World Ship Photographers and am pleased to
invite you to become a Founding Member.
Annual dues: $20. (As a Founding Member,
your dues will never be increased.)
Benefits of Membership
• Your own email address at MarineTraffic.com.
—I
have taken the liberty of assigning you the address:
With your acceptance below, this will be activated, and you will be “open for business.”
• FREE Web Page on the MarineTraffic.com
Website
—A Website that is
uniquely YOURS!
—Your photographs
showcased in format you choose.
—Show non-ship photos
you are most proud of.
—Describe
professional philosophy goals.
—Your equipment and
how you work.
—Share stories about
your experiences and challenges.
—Private invitations
to tour ships docked in your area.
—Send and receive
email.
—Your privacy
guaranteed.
• Weekly eNewsletter
—News, How-to
features, 10 Best photos of week
• Ship Photographers Idea
Exchange (SPIX)
—Ask questions,
contribute answers, start discussions.
• Photographic expeditions to harbors and rivers all over the world with private tours of port facilities, cargo ships, cruise ships, tugs and yachts.
• Photographic expeditions to harbors and rivers all over the world with private tours of port facilities, cargo ships, cruise ships, tugs and yachts.
Again, my thanks for your wonderful work.
I look very forward to welcoming you into the
MarineTraffic.com family.
Sincerely,
Click Here to activate your Founding Membership in
The International Society of World Ship Photographers
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
The arithmetic: if 25% of their 29,000 ship photographers
join, that’s 7,250 members x $20 = $145,000 revenue. Half the photographers
would generate $290,000 revenue. Not chopped liver. Worth a cheap-o email
to their own list? Sure.
I
sent the proposition to MarineTraffic.com three times—by snail mail and email—to the address in London.
Never
heard back. Nothing. Nada. Zip. Bupkis.
Here are others that do roughly the same thing.
• www.vesselfinder.com (Bulgaria)
•
http://maritime-connector.com (Croatia)
•
https://www.fleetmon.com (Germany)
•
https://www.marinevesseltraffic.com (Bulgaria)
With the exception of Fleetmon.com in Germany,
these folks are all in the boonies, probably techie geeks who have no idea how
to leverage their genius and make so much money they could charter SERENE with 22 of their family and
friends for a month every summer.
Maybe one of these companies has an ambitious and energetic associate with knowledge, people skills and marketing savvy who could honcho this idea and perform a huge service for the trillion-dollar b2b, b2c and c2c maritime communities.
Maybe one of these companies has an ambitious and energetic associate with knowledge, people skills and marketing savvy who could honcho this idea and perform a huge service for the trillion-dollar b2b, b2c and c2c maritime communities.
P.S. After shoddy treatment by the editors at marinetraffic.com I switched to vesselfinder.com.
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Great post Denny – thanks for sharing your struggles with people who refuse to pick up money that's staring them in the face. I like how you wrote the "thank you" email in Stasinakis's voice as part of the pitch along with the website mock up. Vision drives decision, and you really painted a crystal clear picture!
ReplyDeleteEric, Thank you for your kind words. The photographers' society is an offer I would love to receive and an organization I would join in a nanosecond. What I do is pure fun! (And it gets my head out of all the crappy news of the country and the world.)
DeleteHeard back from Marine Traffic.com who liked the blog post. Here's my letter back to them:
Thank you for getting back to me and for your kind words.
And thank you for sharing it with your team.
I urge you to share this blog with your management.
MarineTraffic.com has a fantastic service of dazzling, world-class excellence that is the underpinning of what should become a huge website of enormous value to everyone involved in the world of water borne transportation and pleasure—professionals and consumers.
Right now your competition is made up a VesselFinder, Shipspotter, and 3 or 4 others. Your system is the best, easiest to use.
I honestly believe MarineTraffic.com could become the center of the maritime universe—up there with Facebook, Linkedin, and the other billion-dollar internet giants.
Right now, your real competition is Google. Its universe is the world—all businesses, all industries, all manufacturers, all scientists, all voodoo practitioners, all scam artists as well as consumers and professionals like you and me.
Google ranks and skews its information by the amount of money spent in a particular area. It is basically a dishonest cash machine that can put bad guys at the top of the list for whatever is being searched.
And then selling the people who search—you and me—to advertisers who show up on our computer screen, iPad or smartphone.
Here are two blogs about how your life is being stolen out from under you:
Marketing Partners in a Plot to Steal Your Life
http://dennyhatch.blogspot.com/2018/04/2-oath-451-marketing-partners-in-plot.html
All your emails are being stolen and sold all over the world
http://dennyhatch.blogspot.com/2018/08/20-all-your-emails-are-being-stolen-and.html
Imagine if you could peel away from Google the multi-trillion dollar maritime universe and turn MarineTraffic.com into the size of Facebook.
What should be the very first place a person—professional or consumer like me—should go to find reliable specialized information on anything to do with oceans, seas, rivers and waterways?
It could be MarineTraffic.com.
My opinion (no pun intended): MarineTraffic.com is missing the boat.
The future for you folks could be thrilling, vast and enormously valuable to all who come to your website.
MarineTraffic.com has a tiger by the tail.
MarineTraffic.com is an investor’s dream!
Go for it.
I love you. I’m here to help.
Good hunting.
Cheers.
Denny - you raise 2 valid points. Many places that Phoebe and I go we find owners and managers doing what I call "leaving nickels laying on their floors." I was recently encouraged by a good friend to start a weekly video "rant" about the oversights. I haven't yet decided whether or not to do it.
ReplyDeleteSecond - I am equally enthralled by PlaneFinder.net. One quick glance will give you an amazing perspective of how many airplanes there are in the sky at any given moment. They have equal information, and it's always fun to track friends and business associates flights to and from Tampa. Check it out!
As always another thought-provoking and informative blog from our friend Denny Hatch! Thank you Denny!
Will,
DeleteThanks for writing and for your kind words.
1. Your line: I was recently encouraged by a good friend to start a weekly video "rant" about the oversights. I haven't yet decided whether or not to do it.
My advice: If you have a list of friends, colleagues, business associates, hell yes, DO IT! You’re a smart guy and they would probably love to hear from you periodically and would benefit from your wisdom. (Put me on your list! If you want the nitty-gritty of how to get your blog up and running, give a shout. I’m here to help.)
2. Yeah, PlaneFinder.com will blow your mind. Seeing that vast assemblage of planes in the air and knowing they are being guided by technology that needs serious updating is fascinating/horrifying. Where maybe there are 100 models of aircraft currently flying, I love the ships thing because they go by my window, the system tracks 550,000 of them—each different, each with a different pedigree and history, and all of them the largest moving objects on the planet.
Do keep in touch!
Cheers.
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ReplyDelete