The New Skyride??????

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Sorry I spoke up for you on a previous post.

I'll be encouraging DZ owners I know not to do business with PROSKYDIVING.COM.

X-2

Here's what turns my stomach regardless of whether or not you think we understand your business model:

-Post #48
Trust me, we are very aware of the collective bad taste that SlyRide has left in the industry, but we have designed this system to be the absolute opposite of everything they are.

Wrong. You are doing exactly what they are doing...so far.

-Post #48
We do not want to force this system on anyone...

Justify post54 where your said, "If DZs don't get on-board in some way, they risk losing everything."

-Post #54
PROskydiving's goal is not to become the highest ranked website in the industry and get between potential customers and dropzones.

Dude! That's EXACTLY what you are doing? Do you think we are all blind or stupid?


-Post #54
we have not implemented any national marketing campaigns, but when we do,

You'll be re-directing customers from one DZ to your "preferred" "nationally-listed DZs. Does that ring a SlyRide bell? Your little blurb about non-proskydiving DZs says it all.

-Post #54
We do take a small cut of every tandem that books, but only when our payment processing system is used.

Kinda like SlyRide, eh?

-Post #54
The consumer expects the ability to book online and get everything done without picking up the phone.

This could be true and you are taking advantage of that through your site to snag money from them by charging that premium.

-Post #54
Regardless of your thoughts, that's where business is going.

Arrogance

-Post #54
If DZs don't get on-board in some way, they risk losing everything.

Threats

-Post #54
MY DZ is in the same situation that most DZs are in.

BS...totally unadulterated BS.

-Post #54
Yes, we do take SkyRide GCs at my DZ, but only because we can't afford to let all of the business go to the competing DZs.

...and you STILL don't get it.

-Post #54
Unfortunately, this is what keeps SkyRIde going, but at the end of the day, we all need the business.

What you are seeking is to snag ALL the business and eliminate the competition.

-Post #59
I personally do not see any similarity between the PROskydiving business model and SkyRide. We are not a booking service (unless they choose to book on PROskydiving.com), but rather an online reservation solution for the skydiving industry.

...and you STILL don't get it.

-Post #63
I'm not proud of dealing with SkyRide, but I have to pay the bills.

You ARE SlyRide at it worst...almost but only because you haven't addressed extra charges refund policies.


-Post #67
We are simply offering DZs a secure method to take online reservations from their own websites. For the percentage we take, we are giving them use of our system as well as national marketing exposure.

If that were true you'd have created security for their individual websites rather than having to use yours where you're taking that percentage.

-Post #67
If you don't understand or appreciate our business model, I am sorry. We are quite proud of it.

I don't understand why you are so proud of trying to move existing customers from one DZ to another.


Finally:
It appears to me that if you were really interested in helping out the industry, you would be promoting it as a sport trying to generate new customers...not a money-grabbing scheme involving simply moving existing customers to preferred DZs.

What you are really doing is trying to drive existing customers to specific DZs and doing nothing to create more business for the industry.

ProSkydiving...a self-proclaimed "National Skydiving Association/Organization".

Oh wait....SLyRide started their own organization just like that, didn't they?

I am not stating this is good one way or another...but I did notice that Spaceland was on their website...and the price listed was the same for tandems (185 weekends)as on the http://www.skydivespaceland.com website. Not saying good or bad just stating what the site said.

You are right, I was not thinking about the Hosting and transaction charges etc, however, Those are still less than the cut sLyride charges and most likely PROskydiving charges.
It has now been proven that PROSkydiving was born from sLyride money, or at least affiliated with sLyride money, That's reason enough for me NOT to recommend them to anyone and to add a little extra effort to encourage DZO's to do their own marketing. We still do NOT need a middle man.

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Arrogance

Exactly. I'm sure we all remember the whole "freestyle" tandem thing that went on at this DZ a few years ago. Who was the DZO that sponsored this activity and kept on with his righteous indignation long after the feces hit the fan? Yup. This one.

Is it any wonder he's not getting his lease renewed after this season?

And now we have 2 DZs with their own separate booking services, and both these DZs aren't getting their leases renewed. Do I see a pattern here????

When you get right down to it, Doug's had a burning jealousy for years over Ben and Cary. Well, maybe this booking service is his Hinckley exit strategy -- make a million bucks with it so he can go buy some land and build it bigger and better than that mega-DZ down the road he's been jealous of since the day it opened...

I received a phone call a few minutes ago from a friend who is one of our jumpers, and informed me that your website proskydiving.com has my dropzone listed in your site as a "Non-proskydiving" dropzone. I went to your website to verify and now I am here to demand that you remove my dropzone listing from your site IMMEDIATELY!
We have been fighting off ASC for years and keeping them out of our area and I am not going to be involved with you having a link to my website (skydivesmokymountains.com) listed in a site that is sponsored by 1 800 Skyride dba ASC! Furthermore, I never gave you permission to add my website to yours!

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I received a phone call a few minutes ago from a friend who is one of our jumpers, and informed me that your website proskydiving.com has my dropzone listed in your site as a "Non-proskydiving" dropzone. I went to your website to verify and now I am here to demand that you remove my dropzone listing from your site IMMEDIATELY!

I think you misunderstand the purpose (and reputation) of ProSkydiving.com. I think what they are doing is quite smart, and you'd would find it advantageous to look at their product.

I would not be so quick to judge, nor so quick to make foolish statements.

Proskydiving.com has no connection, in any conceivable manner - to ASC or Skyride.

And me, I don't have a horse in this race, so consider this just as friendly advice.

_Am

In post number 55, you will see that the DZO/Owner of proskydiving accepts Skyride, and talks about paying his bills with the revenue received from Skyride. So your answer is NO, we do not want to be affiliated with anyone who is affiliated with Skyride.

AndyMan,
Oooops...


You said:

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I would not be so quick to judge, nor so quick to make foolish statements.

And then followed it up with:

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Proskydiving.com has no connection, in any conceivable manner - to ASC or Skyride.

Ooooops

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The business models on this are completely separate.

Not really. The execution may be a little different, and the one may provide some additional services to the DZ, but in the end (as of this point) they are both in the business of online 'advertising' for tandems across the country, and then 'selling' those tandems to a DZ in the area the tandems actually live for less then the DZ would charge a customer off the street.

I use the word 'advertising' sparingly, because all they're really doing is optimising their search results for every lcoation in the country, and hijacking customers already looking to make a jump.

Let's rewind 20 years, and imagine that I placed an ad in the Chicago area phone book for tandem skydives. I took calls, booked tandems, and then called Doug over at CSC and said, "Hey Doug, I got these tandems ready to jump, if you want them I'll send them your way for 15% less than you charge everyone esle. If you don't want them, I'm going to send them over to Roger at SDC. One more thing, this yellowpages ad has worked out so well, I'm actually going to take out ten ads for 'DZs', just to make sure I get the majority of Chicago area skydivers calling me first".

How well would that be recieved? How much different is that than optimising search results for skydiving in geographic areas other then your own, only to 'sell' the business to the operators actually in that area? Not much different if you ask me.

OK, but your post is about the nuts and bolts of the website. Online order processing and shopping carts is a business to itself. If that's really the idea, and this website is customized for the skydiving market, that would be another story.

DZ.com lists 281 DZs in the US. If PROskydiving is really such a great onine tool for DZOs, they should have no problem becoming a service provider to at least half of the DZ in the US.

So lets say they get 140 DZs on board. They charge them a flat rate of $45 per month, which works out to $6300/month total. The $75,000 cost of the website is repaid in 12 months, and from there on the site generates an income of $75,600 per year. That would be a way to really provide a 'service' to DZs.

We both know that's not what's going on. With very little effort on their part, they are intercepting web traffic that should rightfully go to a local DZs website. Then they are passing that business on, for a fee. They are doing nothing, nor providing anything for the DZ that is worth a cut of the business, far from it.

It's simple greed. The guy thinks he can sit in Chicago, and just rack up cut after cut of tandems being sold to DZ across the country. No DZO could possibly be happy with this because they get no benefit what so ever.

The only service provided is administrative, and I don't know of any businessman who would want to be forced to use one administrative solution because that provider was essentially holding their customers 'hostage'. I can imagine scores of businessmen who would prefer to collect the maximum revenue possible from their customers, and then spend it on administrative solutions as they see fit. They would have the freedom to choose what works for them, and to change those solutions in the future as they see fit.

I'm telling you, this whole thing is borderline mafia behavior. You have to business with them to be protected from them. If you don't, they'll work with your competition, and you'll lose big time.

Finally, and I've touched on this before, but the only redeeming angle of this whole scam is the prospect of new and unique customers, not hijacked from the web, but generated through some sort of off-line, real world advertising campaign. However, for starters, no such campaign is currently in place, but even if it was, I cannot see a way to run a successful campaign designed to benefit 140 sole proprietorships literlly scattered across the country.

What sort of advertising do you know of that would equally benefit Perris and Skydive Smokey Mts (real DZ). I don't even know where Skydive Smokey Mts is, and that's part of the problem. If it's not a big-city DZ, how do you advertise to reach the big cities and small town equally? If you cannot do that, then the big city DZs will get the bulk of the advantage from the advertising, but all the DZs on the program will be paying an equal cut of their profits to 'participate'.

The idea of wrapping a truck with skydiving advertising was mentioned by Chicagoland. Unless you plan to wrap a truck in each and every locality with a DZ in the program, that part of the advertising will only help a fraction of the DZ in the program, but again, they're all paying an equal cut.

I know there are differences between this operation and Skyride, but I maintain that even an honestly run program such as this is still internet piracy, where web traffic is intercepted and held as leverage to recieve unjust enrichment. The bottom line is that DZs would be better off without this website anywhere near their customers. Let them collect 100% of the revenue, and make their own decisions about how to handle the payments and bookkeeping.

Well said Davelepka

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Flat fees will not work for anything with credit cards except minimums to spend every month . At the 2-3% that Visa will charge to process the transaction it only takes 7 tandem purchase transactions a month at your $45 mark and Proskydiving goes in the hole for the rest of the transactions

In that scenario, my thought was that the $45 goes to PROskydiving, and the Visa % is on top of that. A DZO will have to pay Visa with or without PROskydiving, so you might as well just keep that seperate from a website user fee.

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Is that ability worth $1-2 per student over the credit card fees?

Do you really think they're doing it for $1 to $2? I know this isn't Skyride, but I've heard numbers around 20% for the Skyride cut. I can't imagine that PROskydiving (who apparently is familiar with Skyride) would drop from 20% to .5 or 1%. My guess is that it's closer to 20% than to 1%.

But all of this is just 'pie in the sky' talk, because they're not just an e-commerce service provider. If they were, they would never come into contact with your customers until AFTER they were your customers and ready to make a purchase. A customer would go to YOUR website, choose a product, and would only see PROskydiving after they hit the 'checkout' button.

That is not the case, as they are actively 'selling' in your market, and making the customers their own, extracting their cut, and then passing them on to you.

That's the key difference here, no matter how try to slice it, they are getting in between local DZOs and their customers. They are either cut in on the deal, or they will forward the customers to a competing local DZ. It's borderline extortion.

For all the 'services' you gain, you lose the ability to directly connect with your customers, unimpeded by an outside organization. A Chicago DZO has no business shopping for customers in any other market then Chicago, or the Chicagoland area. No good can come from a Chicago DZO retaining control over the customers of a DZO in another state.

In refernce to Paypal, you are in direct connection with your customers, and you can deal with them as you like. If you want to use their service, you pay a fee. If not, you process the payment otherwise.

If after a sale Paypal became your only way to communicate with your customer, and any attempt to collect payment outside of Paypal resulted in Paypal cutting off your communication with that customer, and locating that customer another seller with the same item who was willing to be paid via Paypal, then yeah, that sounds just like the PROskydiving deal. It really is that messed up.

I think it was you Dave that mentioned "Piracy", which is a good point. Are there any laws pertaining to internet piracy? Both, sLyride and PROskydiving are guilty of this. Plus, It looks to me like the way that site (PROskydiving) is laid out, with the non members being listed at the bottom as "Non PROskydiving Dropzones" would possibly be a form of Blackmail or Extortion. It appears to be a slam on the non members to discredit them for not being members. It's kinda like the attitude that has been expressed in the other sLyride threads that if you are not a current USPA member, you are not a skydiver.
I will agree with Skydive Smoky Mts, I can't find where our DZ is listed now, most likely for the reason I noted in an earlier post, but when it was there, Neither I, nor my DZO had given permission to them to add any reference to our DZ to their site.

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I think it was you Dave that mentioned "Piracy", which is a good point. Are there any laws pertaining to internet piracy?

'Pircay' in this day and age, aside from the high seas, generally refferes to the reproducing of copyrighted materials, movies, musis, etc. I used that term because in a sense, PROskydiving and Skyride essentially 'raid and plunder' the internet for other DZs customers.

There are no laws that I know of that govern this sort of thing. The problem is the rapid growth and development of the internet is ten times faster then the law makers can keep up. This is why Skyride was able to operate so long unchecked, being able to pin exactly what they did to a specific law (that would hold up in court, where you have to be VERY specific) was so difficult. This is also why it took such a monumental effort from SDA to bring their suit to court and see it through to fruition.

This is also why I'm so hell bent against any of these 'business models'. Just because today you can operate this way without legal repercussions doesn't mean that it's right, or that it will remain 'legal' for very long. Eventually the laws will catch up with the internet, and there will be some sort of regualtion regarding this type of bahavior.

In the meantime, I'll stand firmly behind the conpect that in this little industry, we can cut these people off at the knees by simply not doing business with any of them. This is where competitors need to come together and simply agree that they would both be better off, and on even ground with each other, without any of these 'servive' providers anywhere near their geographic market.

In your profile you state that your home dropzone is Aerohio. Did you know they are a Proskydiving.com member? Maybe you should ask the DZO why he is a member? If you disagree with the business model so much, you should jump somewhere else.

Did anyone take the time to check out proskydiving.com? I did. Check out the info under "For DZs"

"How much does it cost?
It's free to sign up and there are no monthly fees to be a PROskydiving Network Dropzone. PROskydiving only charges for actual sales. Only if a customer purchases a jump package or redeems a gift certificate for your dropzone will you be charged.

We've designed our system to allow you to set your own listing price for both jumps and video options. For purchases that originate on PROskydiving.com, redemption rates are based on a fixed 80% of the total sale. In addition, dropzones can receive an extra 5% redemption bonus (for a total redemption of 85%) per purchase if an official link back to PROskydiving is maintained on your dropzone's website. For reservations that originate from your dropzone's website, fees range between 4.9 - 5.9% based on estimated annual volume. PROskydiving covers all credit card fees and SSL security. Reimbursements are made via check or ACH bank transfer once a week."

So it seems like their fees are similar to slyride.

I also checked out godaddy.com to get an idea on the cost of their shopping cart. I had a detailed breakdown typed out but hit the wrong key and lost it so I'm just going to give the summary here.

My calculations were based on $239/tandem, 5 tandems sold online/weekend, 20 weekends for a total of 100 tandems booked online = $23900

godaddy.com
Shopping cart fee - $9.49/mo = $113.88/yr
Yearly hosting fee - included in shopping cart
SSL fee - $29.99/yr
CC Fees - $180/yr + $.20/trans + .0253 (2.53%) of total trans ($180 + $20 + $604.67) = $804.67/yr

Grand total using godaddy.com = $948.54/yr

Grand total using proskydiving = $23900 x .2 (20%) = $4700/yr

Difference = + $3751.46 by using godaddy.com
godaddy.com percentage cost = ~.04 (4%)
proskydiving.com percentage cost = .20 (20% as stated on their website)

I do not see any advertising being done by proskydiving.com. I did some google searches (using locations listed as proskydiving sites) and none of the searches showed any links back to proskydiving.com.

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In your profile you state that your home dropzone is Aerohio. Did you know they are a Proskydiving.com member? Maybe you should ask the DZO why he is a member? If you disagree with the business model so much, you should jump somewhere else.

Timmyfitz shoots! He scores!

That actually is news to me. I'm both surprised and not surprised. Aerohio was one of the first anti-Skyride DZs, and had a page in their website dedicated to debinking that 'scam' in order to help consumers make the right choice. That said, Aerohio recently underwent a change in ownership, so that historical prespective is just that, history.

If you read my posts, I take no umbridge with the employees or fun jumpers at DZ who do business with Skyride or PROskydiving. In fact Doug from PROskydiving has said this in reference to his acceptance of Skyride GCs -

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Yes, we do take SkyRide GCs at my DZ, but only because we can't afford to let all of the business go to the competing DZs.

-and he goes to say this about PROskydiving-

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If DZs don't get on-board in some way, they risk losing everything

I myself have described the position of DZOs in this as 'bent over a barrel'. As such, it becomes difficult (not impossible) to blame the DZOs in either one of those two 'networks', but when you trickle it down one more step removed to the employees or fun jumpers at those DZs, you cannot hold it against them.

As for CSC, ASC and any other DZs owned directly by the operators of these sites, those employees are fair game, as they are directly doing business with the actual offenders. I'm on the fence toward fun jumpers at these DZs, but mostly do not hold it against them.

As far as jumping somewhere else, I would not consider it. Aero is the best choice anywhere near here, this PROskydiving business notwithstanding.

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This is where competitors need to come together and simply agree that they would both be better off, and on even ground with each other, without any of these 'servive' providers anywhere near their geographic market.

Need to be careful with dropzones making agreements with each other. Could be viewed as anti-competitive behavior, like price fixing (though different in this case). It's up to skydivers to encourage their dropzones to avoid unnecessary middlemen and not let these companies bully our dropzones into paying for these things.

Dave

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Grand total using godaddy.com = $948.54/yr

Grand total using proskydiving = $23900 x .2 (20%) = $4700/yr

If you consider that many DZs will do 100 tandems in a month, those numbers ratchet up fairly quickly. Figure on a six month season, at 100 tandems a month, you're looking at $5700 a year for GoDaddy compared to $28,000 for PROsydiving.

While I realize that not all of that is profit, as Visa fees apply, they apply euqally to both figures, so if you peg that at 15% of the total, the yearly revenue for Godaddy is $4850, and PROskydiving will pocket $23,800.

You show me the DZO who doesn't want to save $19,000 a year. Even of Godaddy doesn't provide all the services of PROskydiving, I'm sure there are ways to close the gap in services for far less than $19,000.

I challenge you to show me the DZ who wouldn't jump at the chance to save $1900 a year on DZ operational costs. If a solar powered water heater for the shower house would result in a savings of $1900 per year, I'd be willing to bet that the Z-hills shower house would become the new standard.

For everyone out there, condier if you will the number of DZs doing 600 or more tandems per year. Keeping in mind that Doug from PROskydiving states that at his DZ, 56% of the business is had through the website, and that number is growing. Even if you assume that PROskydiving will book 400 tandems per year for these busy DZs, that will put $16,000 dollars (after subtracting 15% for Visa costs) in PROskydivings pocket.

Now ask youreslf how many DZs are in the program, and how many will book 400 tandems. Is it 10? So PROskydiving will make $160,000 for running a website? $160,000 that should have gone to DZOs actually providing the service?

Maybe it's 20, and they'll score $320,000.

If you factor in every DZ in the 'program' not just the ones topping 400 tandems, it's easy to see how PROskydiving intends to extract a HUGE sum of money out of the industry. Will it top $1M? I'm not sure, but if you consider the above math, it wouldn't be too far fetched.

Deos anyone remember when Cary from Skyride said, "Go ahead and sue me, I have more money than god"? The money in these scams is astronomical, which is why I continue to say that these people are greedy, parasitic, and a danger to the industry.

First: I am a DZO.

Second: I actually spent the time to fairly thoroughly read through all four pages of this string.

Third: I agree with virtually everything that Dave has written here.

Fourth, a few of my thoughts:
A very quick litmus test I made was to debunk Doug’s statement that the customer could click through to the DZ at anytime form Proskydiving.com. I could find nowhere on Proskydiving.com where a customer could click through to a participating DZ. Ironically, the Proskydiving web site visitors can click directly through to non participating DZs (like mine). Also, I looked at a handful of participating DZs home web sites (had to google search, couldn’t click through from Proskydiving). What I found was that no participating DZ had a link to Proskydiving.com, they do not want their customers booking through Proskydiving.com, at least once the customer is already at “the right web site.” My point is that Proskydiving does not want “their customers” to defect to the real DZ web site, and the DZO does not want to pay Proskydiving to process “his customers.” It’s a parasitic relationship, not mutually beneficial.

Also, Proskydiving does not seem to offer an option for DZOs to book through them, but only take a $50 (or whatever) deposit. Why? In my opinion, reducing the Proskydiving transaction to $50 would also reduce their cut to 25% of a full cost transaction. I’d be interested to know how many DZO require 100% at the time of reservation when booking directly.

I like Dave’s thoughts regarding a flat fee, plus actual credit card processing fees service. With this model the DZO would benefit from referring his customers to the booking/credit card processing guy, and the booking guy would benefit by directing questions to the DZO by listing the web site, and phone number. Seems like a potential “win-win” to me. Problem is that the dollars moving to the booking guy are a whole lot smaller, they seem to like the parasite model better for obvious reasons.

I would seriously consider using the afore mentioned business model if, but only if at this point in my business it relieved me of having a person on my end answering the phone. That solution does not exist! Many of our customers, even in today’s cyber space environment still want to have the phone conversation. If I’m going to talk to them anyway, I’d just as well take care of the booking, deposit, etc at that time.

I do not compete in my market, the closest DZ is 125 miles away, and I’m within 10 miles of Wichita KS. I do my own search engine optimization (SEO), and have a google rating of 3, which happens to be the same rating Proskydiving has. Any potential skydiving customer in the Wichita area doing a web search will find me. Actually, Proskydiving does not show up on the first two pages with common searches through Yahoo, or Google, not that they can’t eventually perform, wheretojump.com performs very well. I wonder if Jan Meyer has any plans of starting a booking and e-commerce service, oh the irony!

Phreezone has very good points regarding credit card processing, protecting that information, and compliance. I do not do e-commerce. I take deposit information over the phone. That said, I’m still pushing a very grey area because I write the information down, put in a book, and carry it around until the weekend. I can only process credit cards at the DZ, where the machine, and the land line are. If that book gets lost, and falls into the wrong hands, I’m in a word of preverbal shit!

Long-short my opinion, and to the original topic: Proskydiving.com is an above board version of Skyride. From a business standpoint, the Skyride boys have to fund a boiler room full of phone answerers, Proskydiving only has to maintain a web site, and count money!

Martin Myrtle
DZO, Booking agent, web site guru, advertising exec, and “Permanent Latrine Orderly”
Air Capital Drop Zone
Wichita Kansas

One thing I will add to that Martin, and you mentioned it, but did not spell it out quite like this.
Being that there's no clickable link to the Member DZ's websites, that does not help them one bit on their SEO, so from that stand-point, the Non-members get the better end of the deal. BUT, they are still being listed/linked by a website that was created by sLyride's dirty money. So if someone is looking for an incoming link to help with their SEO, this is NOT where to find it.

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One thing I will add to that Martin, and you mentioned it, but did not spell it out quite like this.
Being that there's no clickable link to the Member DZ's websites, that does not help them one bit on their SEO, so from that stand-point, the Non-members get the better end of the deal. BUT, they are still being listed/linked by a website that was created by sLyride's dirty money. So if someone is looking for an incoming link to help with their SEO, this is NOT where to find it.

In my opinion you should never pay for a link simply for the SEO, other than to potentially provide a reciprocal link. That said, I did send Jan Meyer $24 for an annual Basic Plus listing on her wheretojump.com site. I don't know if it helps me or not, regardless I don't mind "donating" $24 a year for the maintenance of that site. http://www.wheretojump.com/ks/

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I myself have described the position of DZOs in this as 'bent over a barrel'. As such, it becomes difficult (not impossible) to blame the DZOs in either one of those two 'networks', but when you trickle it down one more step removed to the employees or fun jumpers at those DZs, you cannot hold it against them.

As for CSC, ASC and any other DZs owned directly by the operators of these sites, those employees are fair game, as they are directly doing business with the actual offenders. I'm on the fence toward fun jumpers at these DZs, but mostly do not hold it against them.

As far as jumping somewhere else, I would not consider it. Aero is the best choice anywhere near here, this PROskydiving business notwithstanding.

Nice justification.