I am familiar with what you are talking about here.
We are toying around this same idea right now for our regular members and moderators.
The past 4 years we ran our contest with three categories, we group 16 total species where members have the opportunity to eliminate one species for a larger one.
We were discussing doing this vary same thing you are suggesting with 16 species where we select the 16 species that is most targeted across the continent. Each member has several months to submit the best of his favored species but only one person will win for said species, contestants may enter in any of the 16 categories. Or should I say 32 categories/species when you consider 16 for salt water and 16 for fresh water.
It is my understanding that you want to have one just for charters?
You do of coarse realize we have both inland fresh water charters and ocean & gulf salt water charters. Are you suggesting that we run just a salt-water charter category?
I do want to emphasize that our events for the moment dose not really have prizes of any significance. (I need to mention this) this may change in the future when the economy turns back around or sponsorship changes.
right now our events are free for our members. this I need to mention as well.
My question is, (not being in the charter business my self), what would it take to entice or get other charters to enter such a competition? This is the most important question to answer in order for us to make this happen.
I want to make this clear, we do not make a dime off of these contests, since we do not charge entry fees, and sponsors do not pay us for hosting. the only thing we get out of this is traffic from members and guest.
As a businessperson I am certain you understand this. as well as we don’t want to run a separate contest for just one or two people.
We have had charters compete in our past 16 species contest, most of which drop out shortly after entering because they just cant target that many species and make a living as well.
I am sure you understand I am not trying to hinder this but am trying to gather information to make this as profitable a venture for members, charters, and us as well. In other words, there has to be a nitch that holds the contest together.
Here are just thoughts about the type of event I was thinking about. the one similar to the one you mentioned.
*With different categories for each species it dose offer those who target certain species to enter there best for the fish they target most of the year.
*draw back to this, say once some reaches say a seven pound small mouth bass, we can be almost certain that we will not receive any more entries for that category. Should that bass come at the beginning of the year, that category will be dead for the rest of the season…even tho’ it is possible to catch a bigger smallies, it just is not all that probable…
In your business you know this to be true for any species. in the forum business it is a hangman’s noose. Once the bottom drops we have months of no entries so our visits to the contest strings slow down or stop after a while.
To be honest, it dose that now around October, we have a couple months were we wait for any last minute photos of summer fishing events to come in, they seldom do.
This is the reason we have opened this discussion to our members. our last years contest was the slowest ever, but that I’m sure was due to economics. It was for me.
To give you an idea on cost, if we just do hats for 32 categories, we are talking over 400.00 for hats and shipping.
Please keep the ideas rolling in, the more information we gather the better the events we can run for our members.
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