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An open letter to outfitters about our advertising sales.

Outfitters,

I got to see a very interesting email today from an outfitter in the south( I wont share it here to protect his privacy).  This outfitter was frustrated by the poor quality of outdoor websites and publication companies ripping off outfitters in the marketplace.  He has been ripped off way to many times. I have to agree with this outfitter in regards to the growth of poor quality websites  and poor quality publications in the marketplace.  While this is true that there are some poor quality sites like anything else, bad sites are also offset by some really great websites in the market place.

When we created this site our intention was to create a site that would teach others about the North American Conservation Model, teach hunting techniques, provide a resource for hunters looking for conservation sites and most of all provide a listing for quality outfitters.  We have invested a tremendous amount of money in development and over a year of planning and design to get  to where we are. 

When we had an outfitting business we tried tons of advertising and some were great and some were absolutely deplorable.  I will never name names (definitely do your due diligence and check out who you are doing business with) but we got 80% of our business from one website and that traffic really made a strong difference for us.  There are a lot of scams out there and there are some really great websites as well who provide real return on investment. 

My only advise is that if you actually like the content of the site that you choose to advertise on, you will probably really like the people who read that information to come out and go hunting with your operation.  Like minded people are going to be reading the site and if you want to have hunters in your camps who are like minded people then list on that site.

This week was our first attempt at sending out some emails and chatting with some potential new customers.  I personally will do very little selling of the advertising because I want to continue to work on building quality content and focus on building traffic and development of the site.

The way our website works is very simplistic.  We sell listings to outfitters.  We pay our sales people commissions, we give 10% of every listing to a conservation organization, and we spend the rest of the money on advertising, television show sponsorships and website development.  Someday, I might have the opportunity to make some money on the website but to be honest if that never happens, at least I will know that I did something great in this life and we raised some good money for conservation as a legacy for my kids

The only good website to advertise on is one that is committed to building traffic and for this kind of site we have to build a site that is going to have close to a 250 thousand unique visitors and over 1 million page views per month.  So are we there yet.....Not even close...

We are currently tracking about 10,000 visitors a month and we have a long way to go.  We will be doing a lot over the next several months and years to build our traffic and I hope each and every one of you will stick around and watch and learn about who we are and what we offer.

Any outfitter who would like to know how we offer a real return on investment for your advertising dollars should give me a call and let me show you the light and then let me show you our internal statistics and how we propose to be different in the sea of outdoor websites in the market.  Let us show you we can prove our value.

Sincerely,

Kevin C. Paulson

kevin@huntinglife.com 

P.S.  Feel free to comment on this letter right here on the website and share your thoughts!