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douwanto

The New Skyride??????

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WTF? His DZ takes the certificates, so does Perris, Elsinore, Holister, and Lodi, Brown, Byron, San Diego, and Sacramento - and that's just California.

I'm heading off to the 100-ways at Perris in a few weeks. I presume you'll hold them to the same standard?

Regardless - attempts to paint ProSkydiving and Skyride with the same brush is wrong. Separate people, separate businesses, separate everything. Thank god, because Skydiving needs SkyRide to go away, but I've heard that ProSkydiving is an answer some DZO's are looking for.

You can keep saying the same thing over and over again, but you're still wrong. ProSkydiving is not Skyride - they're completely different, the businesses have no connection, and if you continue to make that accusation I can only assume that your motivation is malice, rather than ignorance. And honestly, that's just pretty lame.

_Am



and you continue to ignore the fact that Doug runs CSC (a skyride dz) and ProSkydiving.




Something to consider is market politics. I run a dz that DOES NOT take shitty skyride certificates. But for what it's worth, it's costing us massive amounts of business and it has cost us lots of experienced jumpers. Honestly, most people who work in the sport don't care where the money they make comes from (im talking at the staff level) because they make so little money anyways that they need what they can get. What Andyman has said is true too, in the greater chicago market, skyride is making a lot of money, they started a whole dz up here basically from it. (Which was subsequently sold to someone else, and they are still making a ton of money)

What are we supposed to do about it? There really isn't anything we can do except roll over and lose lots of money for not taking the certificates which is what my dz does, but we don't have mouths to feed since we are a club, we can get away with taking massive losses.

The only thing we can really hope for is that the big DZ's like SDAZ can put enough financial pressure on skyride to make them go away.


(Edited to add: Just to be 100% clear, I in no way support or condone the actions of Skyride and pretty much hate all that they are and have done to this industry. Wanted to add that because I know how anal and crazy people on here are about picking apart posts. I pretty much hate everything that is skyride, just wanted to point out that it's a situation kinda like you have within driving distance of ASC, there is at least 1 dz here who wouldn't stop taking it, regardless of what everyone else did) (or at least that is my understanding of the situation historically because no one has suggested that the status quot has changed)
~D
Where troubles melt like lemon drops Away above the chimney tops That's where you'll find me.
Swooping is taking one last poke at the bear before escaping it's cave - davelepka

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You know, my home dz does not take shyride gc's and they seem to be doing quite well thank you. It is about marketing yourself, look at how much you could make if you would just do that. (I know you are just a club and don't care.) It is unbelievable to me that someone would outsource their marketing after seeing how much you can make by merely doing it yourself.


"Don't! Get! Eliminated!"

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Something to consider is market politics. I run a dz that DOES NOT take shitty skyride certificates. But for what it's worth, it's costing us massive amounts of business and it has cost us lots of experienced jumpers.



How do you quantify the business siphoned off by Skyride? The Sky Knights performs great in natural searches, does a real person answer the phone when customers call? My experience is that the majority of folks are not quite as stupid as we give them "credit." They'll very often smell the fish when connected to the Skyride boiler room folks. If when they call the real brick and mortar DZ, get someone who isn't constantly pushing for a credit card number, they'll end up with you. I'm sure that you can also tell when you get someone who just got off the phone with the boiler room.

The DZ might consider spending $50 to $100 a month in pay per click advertising with Google and Yahoo (take back one or two tandems a month, and it's paid for). That's where Skyride is getting %100 percent of their suckers, get in the middle of the middle man business! That said, nothing like natural search results. When shopping for something local I'll very often skip right over the paid listings. My theory has been that anywhere one of "my" customers finds a boiler room pay per click ad, I'll be right above or below. If they find Skyride, they also see me!!
Experience is what you get when you thought you were going to get something else.

AC DZ

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The site is CLEARLY identified as a "National Dropzone Connection", and clearly distinguishes between member DZ's and non-member DZ's.

Does Priceline, Orbitz, or Travelocity show airlines, hotels, or car rental companies they don't do business with?



The problem with that is that consumers have very little knowledge of this industry, and how things work. Using the terms 'member' and 'non-member' DZs makes it sound like this is an organization, ala USPA, and not a for-profit business. It gives the impression that 'non-members' are lacking in something besides their willingness to part with half of their profits.

While not of the same caliber and scale of the deception carried out by Skyride, it does leave the door open for consumers to believe that the non-members DZ are 'something less'. Priceline, Orbits, and Travelocity customers are well aware that Holiday Inn and Hilton are individual businesses, and that even if DoubleTree and Motel 6 don't appear on those sites, they are credible businesses who simply chose not to do business with those booking services.

I would almost venture to say that the inclusion of 'non-member' DZs is a backhanded way of downplaying their status to the consumer, creating an artificial bias where none would have previously existed. So while there may be a DZ an hour away, they are not a member of 'Pro' skydiving.com, and in turn must be less-than 'pro'fessional.

There simply is no room for a booking service in this industry. Travel is a different animal, catering to national businesses and national customers, but DZs are local businesses seeking only local customers. With or without the booking service, the DZ and their customers would come together, only competing with other local DZ, and as such the size of the market would dictate the size of the marketing effort required to deal with such competition,

I've said it before, but Proskydiving could make a mint offering secure online payment and reservation solutions to DZ. If they were absent from the equation until a DZs customer hit the 'Buy now' button on the DZ website, at which point Proskyidving took over and handled the administration of the sale, that would a legit business, and one that virtually everyu DZ would take advanage of because it does not come between them and their customers.

I outlined earlier in this thread how such a business could be run on a flat monthly fee, and easily generate upwards of $75,000 a year. That's $75k a year for operating a website, all the while leaving ample time to run CSC and make whatever profits are to be had there. That would be a legitimate business, and that would be an asset to the industry.

Instead, greed has once again been the victor. Doug has set his sights on the high six-figure range far what he wants to extract from this industry per annum, and nothing is going to stop him. Not that fact that all of the money is no longer going to the DZOs who actually provide the service, and rightfully earn it.

Not the fact that with all of that revenue going into his pocket, it's not available for upgrades to tandem and student gear, upgrades to aircraft, or upgrades to the amount of food in the cupboards of some DZO's homes.

None of that matters to Doug becasue he's a greedy parasite, looking to drain this industry of money it can't afford to lose. Some people work their whole lives to make $75k per year, and even though he's got a chance to make that by doing very little work and not interfering with his existing business, he's going to take a pass, and shoot for the big time.

The only difference between Proskydiving and Skyride, is that Doug had the benefit of seeing Skyride's mistakes from the outset. Skyride set the bar for how low you could go, and Doug had the advantage of being able to come in just above that position, and claim to be the 'good guy', and while in some areas he may be a 'better guy' than Skyride, at the end of the day all he did was just barely clear a very, very low hurdle.



Are you still jumping at your home DZ which is a Proskydiving DZ?

If Skyride and Proskydiving are basically the same thing(not my belief) and many people say that they would not jump at a DZ that accepts Skyride, how is it justified to jump at a Proskydiving DZ?



Any comment Dave?

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Without hunting it down, we had this same exchange up thread.

Part of my beef with any of these 'services' where they corner a local market, and then force you to play ball or they pass the customers on to your competition is that it forces the DZO to do business with them, and accept losing a hunk of their profits.

I've likened it to mafia strong-arming a business owner for 'protection'. You don't buy their service, they become the thing you need protection from. A legitimate securoty service will offer to protect your business, and if you decline, they will move on and have no further interaction with your business.

The whole point of this is that DZOs are not making these choices of their own free will, they're being forced into it, or risk losing a significant part of the market share. Let's say they give up 50% of their profits on 50% of their business, that's an overall loss of 25%. Now if they refuse to play ball with the booking service, who will send 50% of their business across town, that's a loss of 50%. They've got the DZOs over a barrel, and that's one of my main points of contention.

As such, I don't hold much umbridge for the DZOs themselves. They would rather have nothing to do with it, but at the risk of losing a signicant, maybe critical, percentage of their profits, they do what they have to do. I've never siggested that anyone 'in business' with Skyride or Proskydiving be demonized. The people actually running those outfits are another story, but the DZOs forced into are victims like anyone esle (maybe even above anyone else as they take the biggest loss of all the 'victims').

Furthermore, we're talking about DZs, not pizza joints. There aren't DZ on every street corner, and sometimes you don't have much of a choice besides jump at DZ 'A' or don't jump at all.

Would I jump at CSC or ASC? I don't think so, because that put's you directly 'in bed' with the main players in the game, but to hold it against a guy who'd getting ripped off for half of his profits, I don't see the merit in that.

Besides, fun jumpers only have so much 'power' in this game. If every fun jumper deserted a Proskydiving DZ, it's not going to shut down the DZ and remove a revenue stream from Proskydiving, it's just going to make the planes fly faster. Even if it did shut down a Proskydiving DZ, they would just take ther strong-arm tactics across town to a competing DZ, and make their money there.

So if my choice is to jump at a Proskydiving DZ, or quit jumping which will have no effect on Proskydiving, I'm going to keep jumping.

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I really don't know how to take this one other than to say this is just going too far into some other DZO's marketing territory. While we the jumpers know the difference, the wuffo probably don't. This one may not be considered "As deceptive" as the 1 800 Skyride sites or as sleezy as the PROskydiving sites, but I think it's still one DZO's rogue marketing tactics. Deception is deception!
http://www.skydivecsc.com/skydiving/skydive_kentucky.php

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There's quite a distance between CSC and Kentucky. It looks to me like another greedy marketing tactic.



May be, but its not deceptive.



BULLSHIT!! I remember when area dropzones worked together, not against each other. Charactor and honesty can not be barganed or rationalized. Period!
Birdshit & Fools Productions

"Son, only two things fall from the sky."

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I don't think that's deceptive at all. They clearly state they are not in kentucky but provide reasons why someone might want to travel to them. They have the million $ plane, not the closer cessna dropzones. Why shouldn't they advertise it?

Dave



It's deceptive because of the following statement:

"because we are the biggest, best, and safest skydiving school serving Kentucky skydivers"
...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

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There's quite a distance between CSC and Kentucky. It looks to me like another greedy marketing tactic.



May be, but its not deceptive.



BULLSHIT!! I remember when area dropzones worked together, not against each other. Charactor and honesty can not be barganed or rationalized. Period!



Times change. I don't like the dirty marketing either but its how things are these days. I don't care for it.
1338

People aint made of nothin' but water and shit.

Until morale improves, the beatings will continue.

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>Times change.

No, they really don't. There have always been scumbags and good guys. Generally people who think people were better when they were younger just hadn't gotten to know the scumbags yet.



Well that and the skydiving wasn't always the main source of income for some dz's. :P
Stupidity if left untreated is self-correcting
If ya can't be good, look good, if that fails, make 'em laugh.

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this is when it sucks to make your living thru a sport that you love and have to make the money.( those that see the internet billing you know ) Local advertising is better.


( edited to add that haven't seen an invoice from Proskydiving )
Darwin's Watching!

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There's quite a distance between CSC and Kentucky. It looks to me like another greedy marketing tactic.



May be, but its not deceptive.




You say that is not deceptive, what about this one? http://www.skydivecsc.com/skydiving_mexico/

And NO, that's NOT New Mexico?
Refuse to Lose!!!
Failure is NOT an option!
1800skyrideripoff.com
Nashvilleskydiving.org

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How is it deceptive? They don't recommend themselves. They list a few dropzones in Mexico.

They have a page for every state too. They list real dropzones in those states. It's clearly a starting point for ProSkydiving but it's not deceptive at all.

Dave




Where are the links for the dropzones in Mexico? The only links I see on that page are the names of the cities in Mexico, and says something about "Skydiving in Cuautla, Mexico" or "Skydiving in Puerto Escondido, Mexico". Those hardly do the REAL DZ's any justice if there are DZ's in those locations. It looks like just another website to get in the way of the DZO getting their rightful customers. A DZ in Chicago has no business having a website that has anything to do with Mexico or any other place outside of their geographical marketing area unless he/she has a DZ there.
Refuse to Lose!!!
Failure is NOT an option!
1800skyrideripoff.com
Nashvilleskydiving.org

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As I have said multiple times in the sLyride thread, there's no need for any DZ to use a third party booking agency. $15 to $25 a month for hosting, a $10 a year domain and some SEO and any DZ can have all the business they can handle. And the best part is that they don't have the middle man skimming off the top and often more than they should be.



You right a little bit of SEO will go a long way. Not really hard to get good local placement on Google with the right SEO. Another option is to join a solid online business directory as well.
Dom


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As I have said multiple times in the sLyride thread, there's no need for any DZ to use a third party booking agency. $15 to $25 a month for hosting, a $10 a year domain and some SEO and any DZ can have all the business they can handle. And the best part is that they don't have the middle man skimming off the top and often more than they should be.



You right a little bit of SEO will go a long way. Not really hard to get good local placement on Google with the right SEO. Another option is to join a solid online business directory as well.



There's plenty of free ones out there. Start with Google and Yahoo Local business listings, then move to the Google and Yahoo blogs and be sure to add a text link for the DZ's website's home page.
Be sure to use your keywords in the text of your site and "Alt" text behind the images. It's really endless what you can do.
Martin had mentioned before that he has a pretty good page rank, I can assure he didn't get there by doing nothing with it. Do a google search for these words and see how many links go to Martin's site,
"site: aircapitaldropzone.com" He has done a real good job of doing his SEO. Kudos to Martin!
Refuse to Lose!!!
Failure is NOT an option!
1800skyrideripoff.com
Nashvilleskydiving.org

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How is it deceptive? They don't recommend themselves. They list a few dropzones in Mexico.

They have a page for every state too. They list real dropzones in those states. It's clearly a starting point for ProSkydiving but it's not deceptive at all.

Dave




Where are the links for the dropzones in Mexico? The only links I see on that page are the names of the cities in Mexico, and says something about "Skydiving in Cuautla, Mexico" or "Skydiving in Puerto Escondido, Mexico". Those hardly do the REAL DZ's any justice if there are DZ's in those locations. It looks like just another website to get in the way of the DZO getting their rightful customers. A DZ in Chicago has no business having a website that has anything to do with Mexico or any other place outside of their geographical marketing area unless he/she has a DZ there.


You are funny. :D

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If any DZO's are reading this, here is a good blog about simple things you can do to your website to help with SEO

Very simple steps for your webmaster to follow if they are not already doing it.

http://asimplerway.com/effective-seo-the-only-5-things-that-matter/

Oh and a plug for my companies online directory. We really dont do much for your website, as our focus in getting our listings ranked for you, but we are a really good resource for small local businesses to get exposure.

www.dnb.powerprofiles.com

Last time I checked we had a page rank of 6 or 7

Remember that most people dont really pay attention to the to the Google maps listings. I forget the % numbers, but the VAST majority of your clicks will come from the Organic listings (everything under the map).

SEM is good if you are tracking conversions and not just throwing money at keywords. i see small businesses do that a lot and they wonder why they are spending so much for so little. SEM can make or break you, so use Google Keyword tracker and watch your spening limits
Dom


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If any DZO's are reading this, here is a good blog about simple things you can do to your website to help with SEO

Very simple steps for your webmaster to follow if they are not already doing it.

http://asimplerway.com/effective-seo-the-only-5-things-that-matter/

Oh and a plug for my companies online directory. We really dont do much for your website, as our focus in getting our listings ranked for you, but we are a really good resource for small local businesses to get exposure.

www.dnb.powerprofiles.com

Last time I checked we had a page rank of 6 or 7

Remember that most people dont really pay attention to the to the Google maps listings. I forget the % numbers, but the VAST majority of your clicks will come from the Organic listings (everything under the map).

SEM is good if you are tracking conversions and not just throwing money at keywords. i see small businesses do that a lot and they wonder why they are spending so much for so little. SEM can make or break you, so use Google Keyword tracker and watch your spening limits



Something ironic about Search Engine Optiomazition, at least ironic to me. The USPA site has a google page rank of 6, my site has a 3, it's logrithmic, for ever number as I understand the algorithm the site is 10 times "better" more links out there pointing at it, more traffic, etc. So the USPA site is 100 times more "powerful" than mine, great resource right!?! Wrong! They let some automatic meta generator build all the data that the search engines look for (crawl). The USPA titles on every page are "U.S. Parachute Association", now as long as a prospective student is searching for the words US Parachute Association, they'll find it right off! The USPA site could out perform every god damn skyride and proskydiving site on the internet with only a little simple, serious idiot high school kid work. For instance there should be a separate page for dzs in any given state, and the meta data should have words like "kansas, skydive, parachute wichita, topeka, etc." I've for multiple years asked them to work on it, they don't really give a shit about out performing Skyride, they don't give a shit that the USPA site does not come up in searches. "Let's sue them!"

Fuck, pay Jan Mayer her standard fee to do this and it would help more than any "USPA Training Center" promotion every will. And, it would help drive customers to real USPA drop zones, and away from the scumbags!

"Stupid is as stupid does."

Thank you for your time.
Martin

edit to add, I know that bitching here doesn't do a damn thing to affect change at USPA headquarters. But several years of "encouragement" directed at USPA staff and BOD members had the same affect. Bitching here at least helps me vent.
Experience is what you get when you thought you were going to get something else.

AC DZ

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They are using the "Dotnetnuke" site builder. It is nice to work with because it takes a lot of work off the "do it yourself" webmaster with limited or no website building skills because it does like you said, It generates the keywords and the other meta tags for each page once you enter the info in to the "Site Settings" menu. That program also offers the option to add the Keywords, description and titles for each individual page as you need to add them or make changes. Which comes back to what you said about the USPA being the title for all the pages. That looks like the webmaster just didn't take the time to do the tags for each page individually.
Another nice feature about that program is that it automatically generates and updates the XML sitemap as pages are added and generates the sitemap URL that you can submit to the search engines. It even has an option to submit your site to the search engines and lots of other features. The problem with the USPA site is that whoever they are paying to do the site probably got paid to ONLY do the site. I don't know what arrangement USPA has with the webmaster, but I would assume that SEO is NOT part of the deal. Overall, it's a nice program for low or no experience webmasters, but the more advanced webmasters do like it. They prefer to use PHP for their sites because they require a much smaller file size.
Their site is www.dotnetnuke.com if anyone cares to check it out or use it.
Refuse to Lose!!!
Failure is NOT an option!
1800skyrideripoff.com
Nashvilleskydiving.org

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I made a call to 1 800 505 JUMP today and told the lady that answered that I had a GC and wanted to schedule my jump for this afternoon in Waverly, Tn. She said they had a "beautiful sunset load with a couple of openings left" and went on to say that "I need to hurry up and grab a slot before someone else does because the sunset loads fill up fast". When I asked about the tornadoes and storms in the area, she told me they were not near Waverly and they were no problem. Anybody watching the weather knows that the storms are grounding most every DZ in the region.
To no one's surprise, this is still happening.

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