Good idea X, it's DONE!

That's an excellent point and from the business owner perspective, very helpful!!!  

They should have tracking codes embedded in their banners to monitor the effectiveness of their advertising on any site.  However, a customer telling them always carries more weight to a vendor.

On the other hand... if you mention that you found them on CycleFish and they're currently not paying for advertizing, what would be their incentive to pay?

 MIKE                   "I'm... a... high... way... STAR..."   

How does one become a featured Business in the little box on the header pages??

Good point nofrets, but I hope the incentive would be a couple of things...

First if they are getting business from their free listing in our community, I would certainly hope they would be willing to support our community.  Maybe just me, but I always repay anyone who has helped me in business.

Additionally, they get a lot more promotion when they upgrade to a paid subscription, including inclusion as a featured business (also answers the question above), inclusion in our newsletters, and their profile becomes available to EVERYONE who visits the site (about 250,000 people a month) and not just the registered users, and lots more.  So hopefully if they get just any business at all from the free profile, they realize the benefit of increasing their promotion here.

Ok, not to beat this topic to death, but this is what I was talking about in my reply on the first page.  I said that businesses should support their customers in the biker community.  I just saw a Bike Night posted in the calendar and it says

"On the last Thurs of every month Turbo and friends get together at Ralphs Stand Up Bar and party down. We have a live band, free food, cold cheap beer and mixed drinks. Come out and have some fun with us. All bikes wecome"

No I don't know if Turbo or the Bar is supplying the free food, but I do know that it is probably going to cost more than the 12 bucks Lucky charges for a whole month here.  And I doubt they are going to get a fraction of the bikers that come here every day!!!  Some come on guys, help Lucky out, and support our "online Biker Bar".

Ok, last you'll hear from me on this.

I want to thank Lucky and his school of fish for the great site. I signed up for a free business listing and within 24 hours I tracked 7 new visitors to my website, www.ladybikerstuff.com, that came from Cyclefish. I was sold! I signed up for the paid listing right away. $12 a month for the added benefits and to keep Cyclefish alive is so well worth it. I also appreciate that there are bikers out there who want to support paying businesses in order to support Cyclefish. Thanks to Cyclefish now I can swim with the big fish (:

Kathy
kat@ladybikerstuff.com

Ok, it's me again. For you business holdouts... In 48 hours 70 people have viewed my profile on Cyclefish. $12. a month breaks down to .40 a day. I spend more than that on Diet Coke from fast food drive thrus.

Lucky, Great job on the new Business listing page. Hope everyone here has taken the time to thank the businesses that support this great site. Either by using their business, or at least a nice thank you messsage!

Hey Lucky, looks like you are getting a number of businesses as preferred. I'm am sure that helps out, and I hope all the users are showing those businesses how much we appreciate them supporting the best site on the internet.

I for one make a point to visit every one of them!!!

After reading this months newsletter I though it was a good time to re-address this topic. I would think with what CycleFish has become that the businesses on here would be happy to support the site, and personally I'm a little disappointed that they haven't. These businesses come on here, get their free profile, use the site to promote their events and such, and then can't even throw in $12 a month (if that is still the cost) to support their customers favorite hangout. I have friends who have cycle shops that spend $100 bucks or more to feed their customers burgers on a Saturday, and they may get 40 people to show up. And then they will spend several hundred dollars on a booth at a rally that has a total attendance of about the same as the number of people that hang out here regularly.

Sorry to rant, but Lucky is doing a great thing here giving us this great place to use at no cost to us, and I just feel if these businesses can't throw in a couple of bucks to support the site (and get some advertising) then why should we support these businesses.

JMHO

  Justified rant there gofur

You know !!!  I have been saying for the longest time that it really doesn't take much for a business to jump in, buy some ads, and support this site for us.

I for one have bought a couple of thinks from our supporting businesses, and will continue to support those that support CycleFish.