CSC CHRONICALS 4
Lift tickets.
Don’t know if you noticed on the head of a small online ski group. I started it on meet up.com several years ago, and it grew to about 250 people. Then I started charging membership dues because I realized I should be paying for meet ups web feed out of pocket. So I started charging about seven dollars. Even at seven dollars, membership went from 250 enthusiastic skiers, down 12 out 35 devoted to club members. Turns out meet up is full of lazy cheap bastards who would even pay seven dollars to get someone working there bought off every morning finding ski deals, discounts, and organizing trips with a bunch of noncommitted single-and-looking losers.
Well, I never got any perks out of this club, except personal enjoyment and some experience in social media. It is a lot of work, about two hours per day answering e-mails, updating trip information, and just figure out where to go on the cheap. One trip, whether it’s to the Catskills or Vermont, can be a pain in the butt to organize and take up tons of time. However, I still never did this for profit, and even though dues are about $20 per year now, only few of the people pay them and I don’t skim off of it or treat myself to any of it. Realistically, pretty much all of it goes to meet up because they charge about $150 per year or just for giving me the wonderful opportunity to bring members into their little meet up web world.
However, I finally chanced upon something wall organizing our trip to Killington, Vermont. Turns out Killington has quite the press room page on their website. And on that page, very seductively titled is Comp policy. This is where they give free tickets to members of the press that are coming to write stories — or to sell, more or less — the resort. It just so happens that with these people, they include bloggers and online media folk.
Well well well.
It just so happens, while I don’t run a ski blog, I do run an online ski community that gets frequent e-mail blasts, often promoting the mountain we’re going to. In this case, Killington. Not only do they get e-mail blasts, but we often promote the trip via Twitter, Craigslist, the meet up site itself, and YouTube. And it just so happens, that I remembered how, for every trip we’ve made, I’ve made a little video and posted it to you tube and also to the WSR site. And each one of them turns out to be a somewhat at a promotional video for that mountain. And until now, I haven’t gotten squat for it.
Let’s see if we can change that…
I drafted a very neat letter to the media person for Killington, explaining how I run an online community with over 100 members, and we promote our mountains via e-mail blasts etc. and how I usually do a review of the mountain as well as a video at the end of our trip. I mention I look forward to making the video in a review for Killington etc. blah blah blah.
Haven’t heard back yet, but I’ll let you know when my free day pass arrives. Fingers crossed!