Here is a transcript of Patrick and my communications on this subject to date.
Originally Posted by Patrick
Hello everyone! Superb MACNA this year! Just got home from Houston! That means it is time to plan for next years.
Will Reef Aquarium Guide be invited and provided a complimentary booth once again?
I have your banners already to go, just let me know what our status is.
Also Adelaide Rhodes is interested in being a speaker again for next years MACNA. We discussed it on Sunday.
Thus, you may want to contact her.
Best Wishes,
Patrick
Originally Posted by Steven Pro
We have not worked out the details of what we are going to do with messages boards. There were too many other things to get done. But thank you for contacting us. Could you please send along advertising information for your site? How much are banners? How many views do you get? Stuff like that.
Originally Posted by Patrick
Steven,
Actually since a separate club does MACNA each year, I find it easiest if no money exchanges hands. In the past we have done complimentary banners, direct mails, and of course the webcams in exchange for the complimentary booth and room.
The webcams were a huge hit this last year. They topped two TERABYTES in only 3 days! Two terabytes in 3 days with crappy optimized webstreams is huge!
Originally Posted by Patrick
Steven do I email you to pick our booth site or have you not gotten us figured out yet?
Originally Posted by Steven Pro
Send me an email, please.
Originally Posted by Steven Pro
Hello Patrick. I wanted to touch base with you again regarding getting a booth. Based on your questions in the thread on RAG it seemed you were interested. I hope my questions help to further fuel your interest. If you want to talk further about a booth, let me know.
Originally Posted by Patrick
Greetings Steven,
I had thought you had forgotten about us. Yes, we are still interested in the complimentary booth and room for RAG.
Patrick
Originally Posted by Patrick
Email sent on December 16, 2006 at 1:18pm
Have not received a response yet.
Originally Posted by Steven Pro
I didn't get your last email. Did you send it to XXXXXXXXXXXX? If not, try there.
Yes, it was sent to that address the last email I received from you was:
Hello Patrick. I wanted to touch base with you again regarding getting a booth. Based on your questions in the thread on RAG it seemed you were interested. I hope my questions help to further fuel your interest. If you want to talk further about a booth, let me know.
Originally Posted by Steven Pro
Well, that is weird. I don't see anything in my spam folder either. Maybe we should just stick to PM's right now.
I know there was all kinds of trouble last year and that was something we desperately wanted to avoid. I don't need the drama. I have enough going on with family, work, the new greenhouse, and now handling my MACNA duties, so I would prefer everything to be easy. To that end, our MACNA committee looked at the last year's issue to try to identify the problem. It seemed MARSH tried to create a uniform policy in dealing with the various message boards. I totally agree with this idea in principal. As I understand it, MARSH's solution though was to give everyone the same deal, a booth with two registrations. While that is necessarily equal, I don't believe it is fair. Any jerk can start a message board tomorrow. That person should not get the same deal as someone with a large established board, in my opinion. But, that means negotiating individual deals for each and every board, which would be frustrating and time consuming. So, we thought long and hard and I believe we have come up with a simple solution. A dollar for dollar exchange.
Booth prices and registrations tickets have been set based upon past attendance figures. Basically, the free market has dictated over the years what these things are worth. If the pricing was too high, few people would attend. But we know that both attendee and vendor numbers have increased every year. Similarly, if prices were too low, a MACNA would be overrun and have to turn people away. That has not happened.
By the same token, your banner ad pricing has been determined by the free market. A fair number of companies have determined that X dollars per month is a good investment given the visibility of the banners and the use of your forum to answer questions and in general let people know about them. So, I say we work from there. Determine our advertising needs and then give you a similar dollar for dollar exchange in booths and registrations. What do you think?
Originally Posted by Patrick
I guess my feelings are to keep the big 3 that have been around since before 1995 as a complimentary booth and two conference passes. This has always worked well in the past having Reefs.org, Reefcentral.com, and ReefAquariumGuide.com getting this deal as they are the biggest and have been here since the internet revolution and have an EXTENSIVE userbase and database and 99.9% of the people visit these three. Additionally most of the other boards have started as an offshoot of these boards.
As for the market share, there is a reason I do not have many sponsors nor charge even close to what RDO and RC do. Basically, I do not do this to make money, if the server fees are paid, I am happy. Plus, there is no way in HECK that I want to deal with all these vendors whining about each other etc etc.
I do not know, but what really annoys me, is the show is gracious enough to give these booths to people and the booth has a few flyers on the table and a banner hanging up. No one even mans the booth, meanwhile I make sure and try to do all kinds of things like bring the popcorn machine, or web cams or some other crazy thing. By having an empty booth with just a banner hanging and some papers on the table, that is just a slap in the face to the people putting on the show.
Anyhow, I think there are a lot more things to take into consideration that just market value of an advertising rate.
Originally Posted by Steven Pro
It does annoy me to no end when no one is manning a booth. I just don't know how to force people to take advantage of an opportunity given to them.
Also, there are additional complications. One board was asking for much more than a booth and two registrations. They wanted 30! So, we had to come up with a formula. We could have based it on number of registered members or threads or posts, but that seemed more complicated than the dollar for dollar exchange.
Originally Posted by Steven Pro
I see you banner rates are $75/month. I know you give discounts for longer subscriptions, but lets stick with the $75 as it works in your favor. If you start running our banner now, that would be just shy of 9 months. Nine times $75 is $675. Our booth rates are about to go up, but I would give you the early bird discount, $900. That would be a difference of $225 for a booth, all your drayage, electricity, water if you want to setup an aquarium, and two full registrations. While you may have gotten a booth and two registrations for free previously, you probably paid for electricity and drayage to the hotel. This could still work out even because of our packaging.
Originally Posted by Patrick
Let me put this succinctly, IMAC gives us whatever we like, and we do not abuse it, I usually have one other person there besides myself and we spend 99% of the time in the booth and not attending speakers. The quality of speakers are not sufficiently advanced enough to warrant me taking the time to attend them.
Generally this has included a free booth, with electricity included. During the last two shows, we have been given a room because of the webcams and managing the internet connections.
If MACNA cannot come close to these simple accomodations in relation to the things we do for these shows, then quite simply we will not promote the show.
Honestly, all the advertising for these shows are internet based. That is a given. This is an internet show, very little advertising except for flyers put up by the local club at the local fish store is done except for the internet.
I am not asking for 30 registrations with banquet like the other board, where these 30 people sit in the bar and drink between speakers and just use and abuse the show. We actually man the booth, and serve out TERRABYTES of webcams during the show. The last webcams were larger than the previous even considering that RC removed every thread about them on their boards during the show.
Why should I groom my members to go to these shows, promote these shows, use my bandwidth and my business just to turn around and spend thousands of dollars more just to attend a show that has attendees that are already on my board? Wouldn't I be better off spending that money on more SEO(search engine optimization) and an ad in magazines like we are running now than to come and talk to my members at a show whom I can already communicate with here on my board?
So, the question still is as posted, will RAG be part of MACNA in 2007?
Originally Posted by Steven Pro
I think it would be best to have a reality check at this point. RAG is not the third largest message board:
Board Members Threads Posts
ReefCentral 142,885 980,341 8,719,274
reefs.org 32,971 ? 1,132,238
Saltwaterfish 31,118 234,740 1,813,512
TheReefTank 18,311 87,903 928,753
ReefFrontiers 15,172 20,590 233,426
AquariumAdvice 12,691 ? 754,618
Reefland 9,097 18,827 139,011
RAG 8,721 42,676 364,192
Of the boards I am aware of, it is 8th in terms of membership, 4th in threads, and 6th in total posts.
But, as I said previously, I don't want to have to try to assign a value to any message board. I much prefer to use the values that the administrators of said boards have determined. Additionally, in every instance, I used numbers that are in your favor in determining the dollar for dollar swap (9 months versus 8 1/2 months of actual advertising and $75/month versus the discount rate). I do this so as to help everyone as a courtesy and to get the greatest number of participants. I would like to see everyone involved in the largest marine aquarium related event in the US.
But the larger issue is that this series of communications is precisely why we came up with the policy that we have Everyone is treated the same. Now I understand that you will man your booth at all times and do things like the popcorn machine. To that end, there is some wiggle room. I can make sure you get a premium space in appreciation of what you do in comparison to other message boards.
I believe I have layed out our policy as clearly and politely as possible. Whether or not RAG plays a part in MACNA is entirely up to you. I hope you will consider being part of the show, but in the event that you chose not to, I miss you my sincere best.
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