The New Skyride??????

proskydiving,com is off to a great start by implying your DZ is not safe and there for not eligable for their packedges.

"PRO Skydiving is the place to locate, research, and purchase a safe skydiving experience "

If you dont use their service you will be listed below this heading.
"The following non PROskydiving dropzones were found in your area. The locations below are shown for your convenience only and are not eligible for PROskydiving packages or Gift Certificates.

Inflated prices and selling products in areas were they have no DZ of their own.

Can you say This is exactly how Skyride started.

Maybe they are the good guys????? Trying to help everyone get more business??? if you jump on board and they get 20% of the profit from the jumps they send you.

I'd suspect it's the same people as Skyride because the keywords are identical, fake dropzones that don't exist are the same ones that are on the Skyride sites, and just as the Skyride site wanted to send folks in Salt Lake City to Moab (four hour drive) so does this new site. However, this new site does mention Ogden and Tooele, the only two DZ's with turbines, the only DZ's within 45 mins of SLC.

wow...

CSC in Hinkley Ill. AKA Doug Smith

Not the same people as Skyride cause Skydive the Farm is on there and I know Hans is not doing business with Skyride.

they are using real drop zones but I remember when ASC started skyride. it was the same thing. Also I believe this is run by Chicago land skydiving.

The wording on the site is such that wuffos would likely think non proskydiving DZ's are less than acceptable businesses.

Also they offer no accident reports to support their claims of having the safest campus' in the skydiving industry.

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CSC in Hinkley Ill. AKA Doug Smith

Sad that they're adopting a similar marketing strategy.
In the bottom of the page it shows several skydiving centers that Skyride also used, ie; Skydive Logan Skydiving Logan Skydive Provo Skydiving Provo Skydive Orem Skydiving Orem Skydive Salt Lake City Skydiving Salt Lake City Skydive Ogden Skydiving Ogden Skydive Clearfield Skydiving Clearfield.

Skyride had Skydive Utah as part of their "list" of dropzones, but pulled it after letters and television news reports came around. Other than Ogden, none of those towns/cities have dropzones, and for several reasons never will/could.

Proswooper (Paul Roussow) is either the owner of that or has some affiliation with it. I don't know the credibility of the site, but he did tell us that they were trying to put together an effort to get bigger than sLyride. I will say that depending on how the four hour drive is explained in the website, that could be getting close to the slyride tactics. No slam intended against Proskydiving.com

I'm sure if anyone wanted to contact Doug he would be more than willing to do something about this misconception. He's a real cool guy and wouldn't do anything similar to skyride..

www.proskydiving.com Doug Smith, Chicagoland Skydiving Center, Hinckley, IL. I suggest that you do not speculate. By all means, go there, read about it, and make comments to Doug. Ask him why he is doing this. (To make money of course, but ask him in more detail.) He will appreciate the feedback. Check the bottom of the main page.

It looks pretty good to me, as long as the dropzones advertised on the site actually take the certificates. It shows distance to each dropzone and gives information about them.

Maybe they are implying that you dropzone is not safe if they are not part of Pro Skydiving by that "safe skydiving experience" statement. But I also think it's good that they list the other dz's who don't use their service too. At least that way you can find dropzones in your area fairly quickly and easily and compare on your own if you don't want to buy through them.

I see something that could be great for those who use them and not a bother to those that dont except for the choice of words and phrasing used threw out the site are designed to intentionally plant missguided thoughts in the mind of wuffo's.

I dont have a dog in the hunt but misleading is misleading and bad for the sport.

Also when they promote the safest campus' in the industry I want to see the numbers. I can name several DZ's on their safe campus list that have more accidents than the ones on the not eligible list.

The qualifications are not how safe a DZ is, it's who will pay the membership. They pitched it to us and it was a matter of who will pay the monthly fee. I don't remember how much it was, but I believe it was something like $100 a month, very much like skydive.com was.

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.

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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 ofter more than they should be.

Ain't that the truth.

Dropzones only need to compete with other area dropzones. So the size of the market, and in turn, the amount of business it generates will dictate the level of advertising.

Between Perris and Elsinore they're both tapping into LA and San Diego, so I would assume that locally they both spend a pretty penny on advertising. Of course, they both do a huge amount of business 12 months out of the year.

Compare that to Ohio, where I jump. We have a 2 or 3 DZ pulling business from a few hundered mile radius, and we jump about 7 or 8 months out of the year. None of the DZs are spending Perris or Elsinore type dollars on advertising, so it's easy for everyone to compete.

When you bring in a thrid party booking service, which is really just a third party advertising service, you notch everything up for no reason. What the DZ are really paying for is the traffic these services generate, the exact same return they look for from advertising.

Now if one DZ in the area uses a service, and the other sticks with only local advertising, the first DZ needs to continue with their own local advertising as well as paying the booking service.

These booking services don't create new skydivers. All they do is route people who already want to jump to your DZ, and then they take a cut of the profits. So in a given market, the same number of overall tandems are still made, just with a hunk of the profits being shipped elsewhere.

A booking service is great for national businesses. Airlines, hotels, car rentals, all benefit from these services because the size of their markets are unlimted. The more people they can reach, the more seats or rooms they can sell. On top of that, those business can expand with additional locations if the business is booming.

A DZ is a local business, and doesn't need that tyoe of service. Their market is defined by geography and the fact that not everyone is a potential DZ customer. All you achieve by introducing a booking service to the mix is creating a false sense of 'urgency' where everyone needs to get on board, and ship a cut of their profits out of state to keep up with the other local DZs.

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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 ofter more than they should be.

Ain't that the truth.
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Well said jumpdude and dave, I do all the internet marketing and seo for my home DZ. I track where most of the business comes from as well. This year was astounding for the number of new students tandem and AFF. A little good SEO can place your site in a very large geographic marketplace as well as above the booking services. Its all in positioning. But that aside, it does sound enticing as a prospective customer can just as easily find your site then STILL buy off the booking service which can be aggravating in itself, and just ends up eating up profit margins for the dz if the customer were to just buy from the dzo in the first place.

Thank you...


Another thing that you may consider in your advertising is to pick up the domain of your local city but add the work "Above" in front of it. Most of us have seen the Google map ads that sLyride runs that are like;
Above Nashville Skydiving or Above Knoxville Skydiving, but they don't have the domains to match. I DO!
www.abovenashvilleskydiving.com
www.aboveknoxvilleskydiving.com

You will notice that the Knoxville site is done up for Skydive Smoky Mts. That way, there's no desception.

I would love to buy them all, but there's just way too many, so I encourage all the DZ's to grab these while they're still available.

Look at you! a real web genious! don't worry the previous un-edited version of your post is already on the legal wizards desk.

Wouldn't that suck that your own beloved law will get you? hahahhahaha

how about those unsafe DZ's huh? you know all about them don't ya?

Well,,, How do you figure that "My law" will get me? I'm not the one who's falsely advertising.

And your point is??????????????????????????

Gotta love those Tenn kids.






Nah....

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Look at you! a real web genious! don't worry the previous un-edited version of your post is already on the legal wizards desk.

Wouldn't that suck that your own beloved law will get you? hahahhahaha

how about those unsafe DZ's huh? you know all about them don't ya?

And what do you think can be done about that? Fraudulently advertising to have a "National chain of Skydiving Centers" and websites claiming have have dz's all over the place, not to mention the Sharks that has been brought up, is a fraud and a big lie! Exposing the fraud is NOT illegal.

And what does unsafe DZ's have to do with anything? I've seen tree landings and highway landings multiple times at ASC, so it appears to me that you may be stepping on your own pecker (censored) more so than Jumpdude's.

My hat's off to all you guys here who have the courage to take a stand against their fraud.

One more question, it's been "a couple of weeks" since you said that you guys would be open in "a couple of weeks" in Waverly again, Well????

Where does not matter, but we are open and I know that has to hurt you and jumpdudes feelings, I mean since he has no DZ at all and has failed in keeping ALL of us from not having a DZ as well.

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Where does not matter, but we are open and I know that has to hurt you and jumpdudes feelings, I mean since he has no DZ at all and has failed in keeping ALL of us from not having a DZ as well.

You only fail when you stop trying.

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Where does not matter, but we are open and I know that has to hurt you and jumpdudes feelings, I mean since he has no DZ at all and has failed in keeping ALL of us from not having a DZ as well.

You only fail when you stop trying.

That's why the ASC supporters hate you, as you said, you've been a thorn in their side that will not go away, All I can say is to keep putting your money where your mouth is and don't give up!

Hey Everyone,

Check out the updated PROskydiving with an embedded reservation system for DZs to use internally as well as accept secure reservations from their own website - www.PROskydiving.com/dzinfo. Check out www.uskydive.com and click "book now" to run test transactions. Use credit card number 4111 1111 1111 1111 along with any future exp date and any 3 digit code.

We are excited about it and the system has been very well received by DZs. We have over 50 dropzones on the network already.

No thanks, i'll stick with my Non PRO Skydiving Dropzone

1) Date format requires slashes and a 4-digit year, yet you don't provide that as an instruction. If I type in a 2-digit year, or separate month-day-year with dashes, for example, that produces an error. Just tell the user up-front what date format is expected.

2) When I register for AFF, then try to add 2nd student for a tandem, it doesn't display the tandem option any more. I can imagine where some groups will register all their people at once, with a mix of 1st jump types.

3) If I put a date of birth that makes me under age 18, but lie and click the box that says I'm over 18, you go ahead and book me for a jump, even though I don't qualify because I'm too young. You should do an age check against that birth date.

That should keep you busy for a little while...