Rant About Marine Industry And Marketing 101

[Admin]

Have you ever sat back and wonder why you do something?
I mean this week I had 2 people screw me out of money on this site.
We are not talking like this was big money just stripper money to be honest.
The best was one of the guys made way more then what he screwed me for. God bless you sir.
For all of you that do not understand the internet please read on for those of you that get it close this box and don't bother reading my dribble!
Something I have learned in the last 2 years of the internet about the marine industry.
Now please understand what I'm about to say is not directed at all. Heck you see some ads on this site and they are really great people who can think out side of the box and they are also people who understand what partnerships are about.
So please do not mistake this post for everyone.
One, they like to think they are gods
They are used to not paying bills if they don't want to.
They are used to people sucking their.. Well say toes.
They are really wasteful on spending money.
A lot think they are gods
They spend money with a network of friends instead of focusing on ROI, ahh yes sorry Return on Investment.
Now I hate to bore you as I’m sure you get the point.
Now for example Here is a great question for the members of this site.
I have a company who wants to buy ads on this site to sell fishing reels next year.
Ok cool right? Wrong!
See something the marine industry needs to learn is this.
You hire big fancy ad agencies to deal with guys like me you will find yourself not getting in front of our users.
WHY YOU MAY ASK?
Ok here is some of the things this ad agency wants from me:
How many of you own a fishing reel?
Ok you would think probably close to 100% but hey this is a big ad agency so you can not think this.
You need to pay for demo graphic studies.
The one company they want us to use charges 52,000 to set up and 4,000 a month.
UMMM oh really F OFF! OOPS did i just say that?
Yep I did!
Why? For the pure fact of this
If I would invest my money into tournament coverage, content, videos, photos, features we would get more users.
More users mean more sales for advertisers.
But let’s see if I invest over 100k into this so I can get a fishing reel company on the site we may or may not get the ad?
Humm what shall I do?
F it we don’t need them as a advertiser!
I have more fun investing money into making this place great and allowing you all to have fun and enjoy the site.
Do you guys really think that a company could not spend 10 minutes on this site and figure out that you all fish and buy product?
Am I wrong? Do I really need to buy a Suit and tie to pitch this shit?
I mean we bought cd.com a few months ago and after last week I think my 2 letter domain shows promise. Humm I bet I could buy a new boat this year J


YOU THE MARINE INDUSTRY! WAKE UP! CEO'S CFO'S INTERNAL MARKETING STAFF!
WAKE UP AND SPEAK UP FOR GOD SAKE!

The marine industry is in shambles! DO NOT PISS AWAY YOUR MONEY!

Look for 5 years I have run around spewing my mouth off to this industry attempting to get them to understand social marketing.
Sadly for years it fell on deaf ears.
Now some companies are waking up! God bless you! But please understand this! if you want to win online u have to realize the owners of the sites you NEED TO
be on are not the corporate stiffs you are used to!
Just about every fishing and boating site is owned by a pretty laid back cool group of guys.
Over the last 3 weeks we have watched the marine industry put out press releases about new website launches.
Let me tell you something about the net and fishing and boating.. It’s all about loyalty and roots.
You can not buy much love with the consumers anymore!
They find a home and pretty much stick to it unless WAHOONBOX takes a piss in their cereal bowl.
You laughing? Well sadly it’s the truth!
You consumers are fragmented all over the place.
SportFishermen.com is probably the only fishing site who has fought for 5 years to gain national loyalty!
Fact is this; we are a group of hard working webmasters. Some may say geeks whatever but fact is we have been banging our keyboards for years. Most of us owners also know that you the companies will be fooled by people saying ITS EASY JUST BUILD A SOCIAL NETWORK.
lol good luck, I will be the first to admit that moving fishermen and boaters to a site is a royal ***** and shit I know I’m good at my job.
Fact is all the money in the world can not really buy it. Just hard work, loyalty, good content.
So think about something: this last week we watched some major companies in the marine industry announce they will be launching new social networks here soon.
I will be the first to admit I was a late bloomer in this biz.
I from 2000 to 2004 I was busy making money hand over fist online before I started this venture.
We have been full time for 5 years with capitol and full time staff working round the clock for 5 years.
Easy huh?
LOL
I personally know you can not buy love in this industry.
Sport Fishermen look for loyalty and websites that we allow them to speak out.
If you can not speak out then that is not a social network.
I have seen a few marine industry sites come up all ready and the rule book was so long it was not worth even thinking of getting involved.
Now something to really think about.
PARTNERSHIP!
What is this word? and does the marine industry know this word?
Well some do but I personally believe most do not understand the meaning of this word for the internet.
Think about fishing and boating sites like this.
Please also understand I am not just speaking about sportfishermen.com
We the team who built these sites have built a shopping center.
A freaking huge one
We have filled the parking lot with tons of people. Shit more than most magazines in this biz have ever given you guys.
Now sadly our customers sit in their car reading about all this great stuff but sadly the stores in front of them are empty.
Sportfishermen.com was not built for our team to sell things.
It was built for companies to plug in features to this site.

For example, Costa I’m not picking on you, as I love your product as I own 3 pairs. You all have built a great video site. Fact is though it is pretty flat lined on traffic.
How can that change? One solution would be to work with us and feed your content onto SportFishermen.com!
2 would be to manage our video section for us and offer our members great rewards for uploading to our site. You also could probably help step us up to HD as I have not put the money out for one reason and that has always been the lack of support of this industry.
Heck you could then feed our content back to your site I think that’s somewhere around 5,000 videos.
It’s a really great 2 way street. We can work hard on bringing in more traffic and building features.

Sadly everyone wants media kits, but sadly media kits truly are a waste of time in the internet game.
If you are looking to buy mass traffic then a media kit could help but for the most part social networks like SportFishermen.com need to work on a case by case basis. Sure we can sell you branding all day long. Or cost per thousand marketing aka “cpm”
But fact is winning online takes work and some smarts.
Getting educated about online ROI is key and also how to recognize the value of your ad spends.

Your money could be worthless to us, why? Some companies could invest money into staff to help our members get solid answers. Some may be able to donate product, some may be able to help us cover tournaments, Some just may be able to help with money and we can put the right people in place to do the marketing on social networks.
Every company has a different style and a different ROI. Some may find ROI in leads. Some may find it in sales on their website. Some may need pure branding to help build the hype.
Now for the small guys! Yes this year we pulled a big one on you. We yanked your sigs.
Why did we do this? For the pure reason of finding out who gave a shit about us and this site.
It really was amazing to find out who really cares this year and who is just a user.
What is the funniest part of this is some guys ran off and now post on new sites that just started.
Usually meaning no potential of sales. So instead of hitting me up and asking if they could trade services because the bank was low or work out a better rate in return of more fishing reports some just left.
Then the next funny part of this is the guys who paid for a ad and bought the quarterly billing ad to get a discount.
The reason a couple of these guys are so funny is they think they are smart. They figured hey ill buy the quarterly ad get a discount then ask for a refund near the end.
But the nice part about sportfishermen.com is that members hit me up all the time to tell me they bought product from sponsors. Some you can just read the site and see that they sold enough to hands down pay for the ad Hey some may not have sold something but put hundreds if not thousands of eyes on their products.
To some companies that ROI will no doubt come as we see it all the time comes at a later date. I may see a lure for sale now on this site but not buy it till I’m ready to go tuna fishing. But then the time comes to go fishing and the guy is gone.
So back to my story, a couple guys pulled this shit with me. And hey that’s cool no big deal. I did one last test to see if I would ever deal with these people ever again online. And that was gave them the refund and stuck some extra money in the refund to see if they had a care in the world to say hey John you over paid me. Lol ya right this is the marine industry GREEDY as hell lol
Well guess what dumb ass, over the last 5 years we have acquired over 1500 boating and fishing sites.
Most of our domains are type in domains. We never stop building and we never stop spending.
We will be here this year and next year and 5 years after that but you will never be here again.
Remember something about the net, sadly you are stuck with who you get.
A owner of a website like this may be a jerk or the nicest man in the world.
But there comes a day when every man has had enough. So remember when you get yourself banned from a site, remember when you buy something from someone and then screw them, remember that we may own things that could make or break you in the online world.
Just food for thought next time you want to play games with a site owner.
Well I doubt anyone actually read any of this horse crap but hey my fingers felt like typing.

Oh by the way, a friend of mine told me that Sport fishing mag had a contest running for Okuma.
I have nothing against Okuma matter a fact I just wanted to show Okuma the difference between a big corp. spending tons of money on a website and fancy media kits and Sportfishermen.com a network that just works hard, honest and smart.
Hey Okuma may have not paid for this ad campaign with them but we felt this would be a good test to see the difference between traffic on our site and sport fishing’s.


So I sent Jer out to the local Alltackle.com to buy a Okuma Solterra SLR-10CS.
We have purchased the reel and as always alltackle will ship to us in a timely fashion.
Sport fishing is running this contest for till the end of July and it went up on April 1st.
4 people have submitted tips to win the reel in over a month.
I will not run this for freaking 3 months as I need to keep things fresh.

So here is a link to sportfishermen.com Okuma fishing reel give away.
Click here to win a reel!
Now sport fishing’s editorial staff is going to pick a winner on their site and fact is I don’t believe anything I read from most magazines except Big Game Journal so them having the editorial staff pick a winner sucks in my book.
So I think we will have TIM TURNER our in-house non bias tackle ho pick the winner, I hope that’s ok with you Mr T.
Ill run this contest for 10 days let’s see if we can learn anything about those frisky little mahi mahi fish J
Well thanks for reading my blog on idiots and marketing 101.
Hey some may hate me but at the end of the day gambling sites, ******, **** , razor , MySpace, Google and tons of other none marine industry companies want your eye balls so we will always be here and always make money. We have just always wanted this site to have good marine sponsors. So like I always say, f it we will have fun either way!

Capt John Eppehimer

[Admin]

Oh ya thought I would share with you our suit and tie crew!










I thought this photo was better of Josh

[reel fool]

I love the site...plan to be more involved. Get back to making more post, reports, photos, video (need to learn the editing bit...driving me nuts).

But, DAMN. You got some ugly-a$$ staff!!

[Jer]

But, DAMN. You got some ugly-a$$ staff!!

I'm sexy and skinny.

[WAHOONBOX]

JUST TO CLEAR THE AIR HERE.....THE PICTURE OF THE IDIOT IN THE RASTA HAT IS NOT ME....I USED MY HOLLYWOOD STUNT DOUBLE FOR THAT I-TV VIDEO SHOT......AND HE DID NOT INHALE....NO WAY WOULD I DO ANYTHING SO STUPID.

GLAD TO SEE YOU HACK THIS ONE UP & GET IT OFF YA CHEST JOHN....I HONESTLY THINK SOME PEOPLE FEEL THIS SITE SPROUTED FROM A GARDEN WITH A MODERATE ANNUAL WATERING ....AND A COUPLE DAYS OF SUNSHINE

SPORTFISHERMEN DOT COM IS JUST ON THE VERGE OF BREAKING INTO THE TOP 100,000 RANKINGS OF ALL WORLDWIDE WEBSITES ....GOOGLE BEING RANKED #1.......

IS IT POSSIBLE THAT THE MARINE INDUSTRY ...OR THE BIGGER PART OF IT....NEVER WATCHES CABLE TV ANYMORE?.......EVERY TV NETWORK CONTANTLY TELLS THE WORLD TO LOG ONTO THEIR RESPECTED WEBSITES FOR MORE DETAILS.......DU HUH.....THEY GET THE PICTURE....SO WHY DOESN'T THE MARINE INDUSTRY?


THE INTERENT IS NOT THE WAY OF THE FUTURE....BUT THE WAY OF THE PRESENT.

WAKE UP CORPORATE HEADQUARTERS ....TAKE A DEEP BREATH....AND SMELL THE RO$ES HERE....

NOW CLICK ON THE BANNER LINK IN MY SIGNATURE FOR MORE SFC DETAILS ON BUYING YOUR OWN SIGNATURE AD....AND ALSO PLEASE CLICK ON THE OTHER BANNERS OF THE OTHER FINE SPONSORS OF W2MW AND SFC....

[WAHOONBOX]

SPEAKING OF COSTAS...AND MAUI JIMS....THERE ARE 700 VIDEOS ON THE INTERNET (SFC) THAT I HAVE MADE SINCE 2004 AND I BET IT IS SAFE TO SAY THAT IN 98% OF THEM I AM WEARING EITHER A PAIR COSTAS OR MAUIS.....SPERRY IS NO DIFFERENT.....MY SPERRY'S HAVE BEEN IN 100'S OF VIDOES.....AND I HAVE WRITTEN SEVERAL ARTICLES ABOUT THEM.....BUT NO LOVE IS SHOWN


I THINK I WILL START WEARING PENNY LOAFERS OFFSHORE


ON ANOTHER NOTE...I CAN'T BELIEVE I AM STILL SITTIN HERE KEYBOARDING THIS MESS WHEN IN GOT TO GET UP AT 3:45 AM TO GO KILL MAHI'S AND CATCH A BLUE MARLIN


GOOD NITE

[cblocal]

Admin John and SFC staff,
I just want to thank you for your hard work and commitment to this site. It has given me a place to learn about fishing from people that have forgotten more than I will ever know. It has also given me a place to come and forget the stresses and problems of everyday life, if only for a little while. Also I have met and spoken to some great people...So Thank you for everything.

Sincerely,
Ryan

[Captain Fred Archer]

John,

Man, I know you ain't crazy about typing stuff and would rather yak on the talker. I miss those late night yakathons. My old T-number has changed (the code remains the same - remember it?), so if you feel like squeezing my old noggin' some, just send me an email and I'll send you the number.

As you know, I used to be a mover and shaker in that marine (fishing tackle, at least) world. We used to have a huge ad budget - one of, if not the biggest in the business. Most of the media was that expensive print stuff that back then, represented THE power.

You and I both know that that is no more and I believe, is without a doubt, is never to be again. I believe that the maddening problem is that the overall marine industry has not, indeed, seen the light when it comes to power sites like this one and what they are so obviously capable of accomplishing for them.

Why? To tell you the truth, I believe that much of the fault lies primarily on those very same ad agency guys who you are trying to deal with. Those guys DO have an agenda, a big one. That agenda being long term "I scratch your back and you scratch mine" relationships with certain publishers and I have had first hand experience with some of the $ games that they pull on the companies that they represent. The LAST thing these guys want is for the geese that lay the golden eggs to wake up to the facts of life and the great power of the web and the rapidly waning power of print media (which I have many dear friends in and hate to see what is happening to them, but hey, life is about change and you better pay attention to it, or live with the consequences.)

So how come marine company management doesn't kick them in the ass? Most likely because they are lousy managers who aren't paying enough attention to their business and what is going on in the world around them, that's why. Too much status quo and golf and f'ing off and not enough, "What's happening in the marketplace, what IS the marketplace nowadays, and what the hell are we doing about it?!"

Ah, now I'm on a rant. Sorry about that. But please believe that my heart is with you. I see your frustration and understand it completely. I only wish that I were in the driver's seat, driving that big, old Peter Built of a semi of a fishing tackle company that I used to run, instead of this little, old '48 Crosley re-paint that I pedal around now, cause I guarangoddamnteeyou, I'd have jumped on your ass with two feet and locked you up as the premier tackle marketing vehicle that you are long, long ago.

I might be a sick, mean old SOB, but I'm still a smart one when it comes to this crazy-assed business and I used to make mincemeat out of the lazy fools that we competed with. And you'd have been a big part of that meat clever that I used to swing!

I'll predict it right now. The first big guy who wakes up and makes the effort and spends the money to jump into this not so new world of really, truly effective marketing in places like your house will trigger a bunch of others to do the same...none are leaders, but one thing is for sure, they are big time followers!

Just be patient and don't do what we used to call "drop trow" for any of them. There aren't enough of them around to make that a good strategy, at least in my opinion. Instead, continue to build up the site and attract and keep more and more of we fishermen - their customers that they want and need to talk to - stay after them, accentuate the powerful positives, don't get discouraged and it will come where it should, John...

To you and Jer and that fierce little army of yours and this great big one of...

WE, THE CONSUMERS AND YOUR HOUSE THAT WE LIVE IN NOWADAYS!

I'm not preaching here and I'm not bullshitting. I'm pretty sure that you know what I'm really like. I'm telling it like it is; the good, the bad, and the ugly. But the good is gonna get better, John...I just know it!

Keep the faith, baby!

Over and Standing By

[Hatterized]

well seems that maybe the corporate marine industry wants to be like some other corporate sectors....run a company into the ground with excessive spending and mismanagement.....then seek some type of federal bailout...........i say let em sink...f' em...

well as i titled this post John.....

you keep this SFC ship a rockin.....and if they dont come a knockin.....well shame on them.....

hell John maybe throw a few of these corp. names out for us so we can as a SFC family BAN/BOYCOT their products....

i now return you to your regularly scheduled program....over/out......

[gradywhite273]

My God , those pictures scared me so early in the morning