Go Sportn

Back to the Future: GoFISHn's iPad magazine: The Year in Fishing

It's perfectly clear that media-based business models are tricky because of the m-word -- monetization. Charge for your content, and if the buyers are there you are good. Pick a niche where the cpms are rich and the audience sizable, and you're good. But what do you do when you're in a category like sport fishing, as we are with our GoFISHn.com project. There is a big nationwide audience, but alas even at scale the premium cpms are hard to get. We're just a start-up, so perhaps it's no surprise, but I know around the industry at more extablished brands it's a similar story.

Last fall, we decided to try something that would get readers to pay and advertisers to buy: the magazine, or the mobile digital magazine in the guise of an iPad app, to me more precise. We figured that if we could pick and organize the best of the 10,000 posts on GoFISHN in the past year, we could deliver a great experience for consumers, good enough to actually pay for, and attract advertisers. 

So Brian McClintock, the editor for GoFISHn, and I partnered with Dmitry Papery's  Cohere Studio to make it happen. It was A LOT OF WORK, as I documented in this post on Quora. But a couple of weeks ago we launched "The Year in Fishing," on iTunes with a free preview issue and a $4.99 full download of nearly 100 screen of great images, video and text organized by specific fishing guides and interesting subjects, including crime, celebrity, science, records, danger and more. So far we've seen about 2800 downloads, and we've barely begun promotion. Here are some of the reviews we've gotten:

 

It's a great start on an interesting experiment. if consumers will buy the app, we're sure advertisers will join in to buy advertising, in fact one already has. Have a look at the app in iTunes and let us know what you think -- after you download and purchase the complete issue, of course!

 

 

 

The new GoFISHn.com

They say in the tech start-up world you have to be ready to "pivot" as soon as you see the need. At GoFISHn, we've already done that multiple times since we launched in December '09. Now we're doing it again with the launch of the new GoFISHn.com, which went live on April 1 (no jokes, please). 

Let me begin with a brief remembrance of its predecessor, the former GoFISHn.com, which you can still see here for a few days more, until the lights go out.

We believed that this was the site the fishing world wanted and needed. It gave anglers, small businesses, and big tackle companies a great forum to publish their stories, images and videos. We helped that river of crowd-sourced content get discovered in Google search and on our Facebook page, which has 188,000 fans. Those guides who posted quite a bit found a lot of new customers as a result.

We must have done something right because last year we saw more than 1.3 million unique visitors, and this year we were on track to at least double that. And on Facebook, GoFISHn is reaching a far bigger audience of at least 100,000 people per week.The "friends of friends" for our page reaches 45,000,000 people!

Alongside that GoFISHn.com publishing environment, we built a business directory of nearly 15,000 small businesses, and encyclopedia of fishing subjects, such as species, techniques, and destinations, which included nearly 10,000 pages of licensed content.

We lashed all this content together using an ingenius system that automatically linked all fishing reports (photos, images) about striped bass, for instance, to the pages in the encyclopedia about striped bass. The same applied for business, reviews, and Q&A posts that mentioned striped bass.  We also added a Google maps feature so that users could see the same information -- businesses and media posts -- in a map view. 

To top it all off, we added a Q&A engine, and reviews section, and what's called "faceted search," which is a really helpful way to build search results. When you search "striped bass" for example, you would get a list of posts and profiles as well as a list of filters to narrow the search -- such as "updates," "businesses," "encyclopedia entries," and so on. 

On the social front, we realized early that Facebook was going to be as big as Google, and we innovated early with our GoFISHn Score program, which tallied all the the Facebook "likes" for a given profile into one number and rewarded big performers. Our own blog on GoFISHn receceived more than 200,000 Likes, and one of our best contributors, Paul Peluso, saw more than 10,000. 

In other words, GoFISHN was the best fishing site two technology and media guys could dream up and deliver on a very limited budget. And it worked for anglers; unfortunately it did not work with advertisers in the fishing business. We suffered from being a newcomer in an industry raked by the recession with a limited appetite for innovative digital marketing ideas. Our Google Ad Sense network, which supplies the advertising on the site, is a steady stream of income, but it's also bottom dollar. Given more time and our fast growing numbers, we would have broken through, but time was up.

It wasn't all that costly to run the site, just a few thousand dollars a month, but we also wanted to spend on editorial development. So we bit the bullet and shifted all our content and most of active users to an entirely new technology platform based on the popular and free Word Press technology. We lost the high-tech custom elements of the old site, but we re-published the 10,0000 plus posts, and old urls still work (they were "redirected" to the new ones). After we sorted through a bunch of bugs, traffic was back to levels we saw on the old site. Hard to believe, but true. And of course, we still have the amazing Facebook community. And now our monthly tech costs are about $200. 

Very soon, the old site will disappear from view and the code and a database of the content will go into storage somewhere in the Amazon Cloud, perhaps to be resurrected when the time is right. There is always hope. -Ned Desmond

 

 

 

What's up with GoFISHn and GoHUNTn?

If you've visited GoFISHn or GoHUNTn in recent days, you may have noticed that we have a "coming soon" page up where your expected to see our sites. That's because we are in the middle of an effort to swap the sites' content and profiles from our original technology base to a new one, which will be much less costly to operate. The site will reappear shortly, perhaps as soon as this evening, April 1. (No April Fools joke!)

You'll notice that the new site is different in some respects from the old one. Here is a quick run-down of some of the major changes:

GoFISHn Membership. On the old site, anyone could join and post. One the new site, anyone can request to post, but they have to make that request by emailing us at Ned@gofishn.com.

Existing members who posted actively on the old GoFISHn.com are grandfathered into the new site, and we have preserved their posts as well. They will hear from us shortly about how to activate their new accounts and start posting again.

Posting on the new GoFISHn. The new technology is WordPress, which means the publishing tools are much more powerful than our old offering. We'll set up instruction on how to use them, in case anyone needs help.

There are a numberof additional changes that we'll explain once we've launched. Thanks for your patience. 

 

 

 

 

 

Facebook's new Ticker: What's a publisher to do?

So Facebook holds a giant developer conference called F8 and announces a slew of major changes to Facebook. These introduce a lot of new options for publishers, like us at GoFIShn and GoHUNTn. One of the most pressing and (maybe) promising is activating our sites so that all your activity when you visit GoFISHn and GoHUNTn is automatically captured in your Ticker -- which is a new feature on the right side of your profile page. 

That's a big change from the past, when visitors had to "like" a piece or "comment" on one in order pass along anything to Facebook. 

Don't worry though. Sites can't automatically pass all your activity to Facebook without asking permission first. You might start to see some pop-ups on sites asking you to do just that. There's nothing wrong with asking, but would you accept? For me, it depends on the site. I think my friends would get a kick out of knowing what I read in the morning, especially on GoFISHn, but maybe it's too munch information.

But here at GoFISHn and GoHUNTN, our fans rule, and we would never do anything to cross them. So we asked in a poll on the GoFISHn Facebook page if they would like their friends to see in their Ticker feed on Facebook all the pages they visited on GoFISHns and GoHUNTn. The outcome was pretty one-sided, as you can see below...

 

 

So 66 said "no"; 13, said "yes", and 15 had no idea what the question meant. I take that to mean we will not spend any of our very scarce engineering dollars to fully integrate with Ticker just yet. The new F8 world of Facebook will take time to sink in. Facebook users always rebel at change and then frequently embrace it. We shall revisit this topic! 

 

Facebook Page Posts: What Works Best for Click Through, Post Views, Comments and Likes

    Our little start-up social media start-up GoFISHn is pretty busy on its large Facebook Page (171,000 fans, 87,000 monthly actives, 11 million monthly post views). Throughout the day we re-post the best of new posts on GoFISHn to our Facebook page and let her rip -- we often see hundreds of likes and dozens of comments on that GoFISHn post in a matter of an hour or two. That simple cross-posting routine drives about 30% of the visits to GoFISHn in a given month.

    Given that, you would think we know a lot about the art of posting to Facebook to get the best possible response. And you'd be right, sort of. We *think* we know, and of course we have strong opinions! But the truth is that until recently we never did a careful, data-driven study. This summer we dug in with the help of two talented students, a Fordham economics undergraduate, Chelsey Mitchell, and a high school student, Joseph Desmond, to pull a month's worth of data to see what works.

    What we wanted to know were the answers to some basic questions. For example, what is the optimal number of page posts per day? What's the best day of the week and time of day to post?  What types of post and subject matter do best? And what approach to the lead-in text for the post works best?

    All this is important because it's hard to reach Fans, given way timing and Facebook Edge Rank come into play. A recent comScore and Facebook joint report that if a major brand posts once a day for a week on its Facebook Page, the brand is likely to reach only 22% of its fans over the week.

    Clearly what you post and how you post are critical. At GoFISHn and its sister site, GoHUNTn, we are looking for one three possible outcomes from a given post -- either traffic to our sites, Edge Rank boost, or a combination of the two. In short, strong Edge Rank means more fans see you post in their news feed, and that increases the chance of a click through to our site.

    The analysis we did this summer tried to find some simple correlations between either clicks through to our sites or enagement within Facebook -- post views, comments, likes. There are still lots of research to be done on what makes a strong Facebook post, but we came up with a few strong outcomes.

    Our study looked at the 300+ posts we made on our Facebook Page in the month of June 2011. In our data set, we collected data on the the following attributes:

• Facebook Posts per day
• Day of the week 
• Hour of day
• Post subject matter
• Post media type (images, video, etc.)
• Post lead-in (Text in Facebook composer to introduce a link.)

We attempted to find correlations between these factors and 

• Click-thru and pageviews on GoFISHn
• Postviews within Facebook
• Likes
• Comments

Here is what we found.

What's the optimal number of posts per day?

We looked at this one from the standpoint click-thru to GoFISHn. Was there a point of diminishing returns, or irritating fans? Our gut told us that we could get away with as many posts as we wanted, as long as they were really great posts.

The data showed that we posted between an average of ten times a day in June, and the progression of click-thrus to GoFISHn, likes and comments was a pretty linear progression up to ten.

After ten, the results became erratic. Resultant traffic to GoFISHn per post bounced around a lot, as did likes and comments. More posts brought more of everything, but the average performance definitely suffered, as rule.

Our interpretation: Fans started to skip past our posts a certain point. We did not see a spike in fans dropping the page on those days, just a decline in average click-thrus per post. Gut vs. Numbers: Our gut-driven was pretty well informed. Ten posts per day is pretty much the optimal number for GoFISHn fans. 

What are the best days to post?

In this analysis, we wanted to find out which day of the week was best to post, which we assessed based on the number of post views, likes and comments per post. Our gut told us Monday was tops and it was downhill from there. We were wrong. For likes and post views, Monday is good, numbers dip a bit on Tuesday and Wednesday, and post views and likes steadily increase starting Thursday (back to Monday's level), Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Comments barely change throughout the week. 

We guess this pattern reflects the work week. Monday is a big day to get caught up, and Tuesday Wednesday are serious work days. Kick back starts Thursday and Friday (more time on Facebook!!) and then the weekend arrives. We now try to post more torward the end of the week and on weekends, assuming we're not out fishing.

What is the best time of day to post?

To answer this question we looked at post views per post. Our experience was that evenings were best, and were at least partly correct. What found one surprise. Monday morning, and only Monday morning, is really good between 7 and 9 a.m. Is it that frantic check-in at the computer before rushing off for a new work week? 

Weekdays between 9 am and 1 pm are flat but start to climb steadily from the afternoon through the evening, smoothly up and to the right in a gentle slope.

Again, our guess is that this pattern reflects the work day. Fans are busiest in the morning and start to tune back into their personal lives after lunch and once they get home.

 What type of post content works best?

Facebook allows you to post links, photos, video, status updates and polls. Is there one type that draws better than the others? We know that photos work best, especially if the photo is uploaded to Facebook and only slightly less effective if Facebook picks up a thumbnail from a GoFIShn link post. We based this one on impressions, likes, and comments. 

Our expectations were confirmed: GoFISHn photo galleries outperformed on post views and comments, but not likes. GoFIShn stories were a close second, but they usually have a thumbnail image as well, so they are indistinguishable for a photo gallery to the Facebook user. Videos and polls were significantly lower in impressions, though not comments or likes. Just guessing, but that may reflect the time it takes to engage -- videos in particular are not as quick a glancing at a photo gallery or a post.

What type of lead-in to a post works best?

This may be the most subjective assessment of all, but it's important: what sort of language in a post triggers the most impressions, likes and comments? We categorized the June posts into four categories:

• Compliment ("Awesome fish...")
• Directive ("Watch this..Pray for these people, Tell us what you think...")
• Question ("Would you like to catch this lunker?")
• Statement ("That's a trip we want to take..")

We looked at how the post views, likes and comments sorted out. On post views, the question lead-in barely nosed out the compliment and the statement, and also generated the most likes and comments. Questions, obviously, elicit responses.  The directive was the weakest on almost every count, perhaps because people don't like to be told what to do. Curiously the compliment did well on all counts except Likes, where it lagged badly. I guess if the lead-in text offers a compliment, then there's not much point in liking the post.

What type of fishing content works best?  

 This may not be of much help to non-fishing sites, but we broke down the types of posts we do into the follow categories:

• Big fish catches
• Fishing ingeneral
• Weird stuff
• Gear
• Nature - Biology
• Funny
• Crime
• Fishing competitions
• GoFISHn product news
• Famous People
• Conservation
• Injuries/Death
• TV shows

 There are some posts that just defy description, like the Russian woman scientist and yoga enthusiast who swims in the buff with beluga whales in the arctic (honest!), but for the most part our posts fall into these categories.

On post views, it was pretty much a tie among all the categories except TV shows, which lagged a bit. In terms of likes, however, the clear-cut winner was nothing new to us: "big fish" which you can see on GoFISHn, really do rack up the "likes."  Big fish, especially records, are what anglers are all about. The Facebook "like" becomes a "high-five" for the happy angler.

On the comments front, however, there was a lot of variability among subject but two stood out for especially high comments:  "crime" and "famous people." Celebrities need no introduction, and we blog about them anytime we can just to catch the Google traffic. Crime is not a surprise because we've long seen a powerful response to anything involving bad actors. Our fans love to hoot at folks who've been arrested, whether it's poaching, driving a boat under the influence, assault, theft or whatever the fishing blotter has to report.

That's what we learned, and to the extent possible we've this knowledge to work. -Ned Desmond

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

June 2011 Record Visits for GoFISHn and 3.5x Growth over June 2010

Summer is usually the peak season for traffic to fishing websites, and GoFISHn is no exception. In June, GoFISHn saw almost 234,000 visits from 177,000 unique visitors, according to Google Analytics. Those numbers are a 3.5x improvement over the same month last year. GoFISHn's best day last in June saw 12,900 visits, which is more than 4x our best day in June 2010.

Where did all that traffic come from? Google was our top referrer, and Facebook second, which is no surprise. GoFISHn was built with Google in mind, and our 170,000 fan Facebook page drives lots of traffic. But the third biggest source of traffic is direct -- folks who type in the GoFISHn url or bookmark the site. That number reached 27,000 in June and marks a 5x increase over last year. Clearly the GoFISHn brand is taking hold. All told, GoFISHn saw traffic from 1,371 "all sources and mediums" last month. Here's the breakdown for the top seven sources (m.facebook.com is Facebook on a mobile device.)

GoFISHn also reached some additional important milestones. The GoFISHn blog on GoFISHn crossed the 100,000 "likes" threshold, and the GoFISHn Score program had its first big winner, Captain Paul Peluso, whose great profile on GoFISHn reached 5,000 likes, and he won a free trip with his choice of GoFISHn's big list of guides. (That's Paul in picture at the top of the post. No wonder he is smiling!)

What does GoFISHn's success to date tell us? First off, our big bet on user-generated content is on the money. Every day members post pictures, video and fishing reports -- sometimes their own pictures and reports and sometimes content they found online.

To date, we've had nearly 11,000 posts. The content is fantastically varied and unpredictable, which is what readers clearly love. To get an idea of the all-time most popular posts on GoFISHn, click here. An everyday fishing report from a Florida skipper, an Alaska guide, or a Wyoming fly guide with a talent for video, can see hundreds of pageviews and dozens of "likes" in hours, and stories and pictures about amazing fish, like a record blue cat, can explode with thousands of pageviews in hours. 

The variety only starts there. Who knew that crime stories, like abalone poaching, would be such big hits? Humor is another category where GoFISHn has found a deep well of great material, like this crazy Asia carp stunt, and readers are also eager to take in anything from the natural science perspective, like the latest on cookie cutter sharks or the gender-bending behavior of wrasse, or spectacular nature photography and video, like this BBC video of a bald eagle taking a salmon. The sensational, which often seems to come from Australia for some reason, is always a sure bet,  like this amazing picture of a saltwater croc in Australia grappling with a sea turtle or another croc taking a bite out of a tough Aussie dentist angler. 

In other words, there is a huge abundance of highly entertaining, original fishing content published on the Web every day, and GoFISHn members do a great job of finding it for everyone to enjoy. Fishing magazines and cable channels are great fun, but their professional content model does not compete with the true-life experiences and digitally captured imagery that countless anglers post everyday. GoFISHn is well on the way to becoming the destination of choice for all that fishing media.

I will be at ICAST in Las Vegas along with Brian McClintock. Drop me a note (Ned@gosportn.com) if you'd like to learn more. -Ned Desmond

 

 

 

Who's Who in the Fishing Industry on Facebook

We asked one of our interns, Chelsey Mitchell (Econ, Fordham '13), to look at the Facebook pages of the major brands in the fishing world and record their total fans as of just about now June 2011. (If we missed your company, let us know and we'll add you to the list. info@gosportn.com)

We created this list in part because GoFISHn is #3 and we're not above a little self-promotion. The results are pretty interesting, which you can see for yourself below. There were a surprising number of no-shows (you know who you are) and of course there are powerhouses Basspro and Cabela's. Lots of important product brands have practically no presence on Facebook while media and retail brands do well. 

Maybe we could summarize this way: Retailers want buyers. Media want readers. They know what they want, and they are clearly paying attention to Facebook as a source for both. Tackle makers, on their other hand, appear less sure about Facebook, with a few exceptions, like Costa and Plano. That's probably because they aren't so sure about the value of a Facebook fan or how to go after them. The idea of an ongoing, direct conversation with fans though the medium of Facebook is still a pretty radical idea for many brands. But it's coming on fast, and smart brand managers will soon figure out that Facebook page fans are a stunningly cost-effective way to stay in touch with customers and get feedback.

At GoFISHn, we're ready to help any company that wants to crack the code on Facebook or any other digital project. Click here to see the results of our latest project, Bassmaster.com, which was the re-launch of old ESPN Bassmaste site for the new owners of B.A.S.S. The new site includes a complete Facebook integration, which lead to a doubling of traffic from Facebook in the first month after launch. Give us a call if you'd like to know more... -Ned Desmond 

Here's the list: 

Company Name	Fans	As of…
Bass Pro Shops	1,161,023	6/8/11
Cabela's	1,153,836	6/8/11
GoFishn	169,197	6/8/11
Costa Del Mar Sunglasses	160,412	6/9/11
Plano	126,376	6/9/11
Patagonia	106,426	6/9/11
Panther Martin	65,687	6/9/11
L.L.Bean	62,232	6/9/11
The Sportsman Channel	42,395	6/10/11
Abu Garcia	40,753	6/8/11
Bassmaster	35,572	6/8/11
Garden & Gun Magazine	34,192	6/8/11
North American Fishing Club	33,504	6/8/11
Field & Stream	30,515	6/8/11
Sport Fishing Magazine	28,418	6/10/11
Outdoor Channel	24,005	6/10/11
Rapala	23,490	6/10/11
World Fishing Network	19,092	6/8/11
Orvis	16,283	6/8/11
Strike King Lure Company	15,901	6/8/11
Simms	12,773	6/10/11
Flambeau Outdoors	12,611	6/9/11
Quantum Fishing	12,547	6/10/11
Trout Unlimited	12,255	6/10/11
Take Me Fishing	11,367	6/8/11
Outdoor Life Magazine	9,786	6/10/11
Stren	9,400	6/10/11
In-Fisherman	8,825	6/10/11
GAFF Magazine	7,678	6/8/11
Lowrance	6,939	6/9/11
Frabill	6,883	6/9/11
Catch Magazine	6,697	6/8/11
Florida Sportsman Magazine	5,961	6/10/11
Ross Reels	5,639	6/10/11
Northland Fishing Tackle	5,618	6/8/11
The Drake Magazine	5,395	6/10/11
Old Town Canoes & Kayaks	5,045	6/9/11
Nautilus Reels	4,999	6/9/11
Salt Water Sportsman Magazine	4,675	6/10/11
Marlin Magazine	4,191	6/8/11
On The Water Magazine	4,184	6/8/11
Vicious Fishing	3,903	6/10/11
Loon Outdoors	3,733	6/9/11
United States Catfish Association	3,627	6/8/11
Fly Fisherman Magazine	3,552	6/8/11
Rio Products	3,429	6/10/11
Fishpond	3,426	6/9/11
Pinnacle Fishing	3,281	6/9/11
Cortland Line	3,215	6/9/11
Sage	3,183	6/10/11
The Flyfish Journal	3,027	6/8/11
Federation of Fly Fishers	2,999	6/10/11
Whaling City	2,726	6/8/11
American Rodsmiths	2,678	6/8/11
Lindy Legendary Fishing Tackle	2,654	6/9/11
DOA Lures	2,646	6/10/11
Scott Fly Rod Company	2,634	6/10/11
Kaenon Polarized	2,494	6/9/11
Fly Fishing in Salt Waters Magazine	2,453	6/10/11
Scientific Anglers	2,452	6/10/11
Redington	2,396	6/10/11
Sturgeon Slayers	2,386	6/8/11
Albright Fly Fishing	2,306	6/8/11
Coastal Conservation Association: Florida	2,306	6/10/11
Recreational Fishing Alliance	2,300	6/10/11
Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership	2,272	6/10/11
Zebco	2,268	6/10/11
Shimano	2,266	6/10/11
The Fiberglass Manifesto	2,163	6/8/11
William Joseph Fly Fishing	2,133	6/10/11
Optimum Baits	2,091	6/9/11
Ardent	2,020	6/8/11
Professional Fishing Instructors & Guides Association	1,964	6/8/11
Cajun Line	1,957	6/9/11
Fetha Styx	1,930	6/9/11
Pure Fishing	1,851	6/10/11
Umpqua Feather Merchants	1,843	6/8/11
U.S. Fish & Wildlife Services	1,784	6/8/11
Midcurrent	1,729	6/8/11
Delaware River Fly Fishing	1,704	6/8/11
Recycled Fish	1,634	6/10/11
Deneki Outdoors	1,619	6/8/11
Wright & McGill	1,578	6/10/11
Lurenet	1,574	6/8/11
Owner Hooks	1,483	6/9/11
ICAST	1,424	6/8/11
Culprit Riptide	1,374	6/9/11
The American Fisheries Society	1,358	6/10/11
Loop Tackle	1,350	6/9/11
Leland Fly Fishing Outfitters	1,319	6/8/11
Lamiglas	1,230	6/9/11
This Is Fly Magazine	1,195	6/10/11
The Saltwater Edge	1,109	6/8/11
Seaguar Fluorocarbon	1,024	6/10/11
Van Staal	1,006	6/8/11
Shakespeare	919	6/10/11
Skate The Fly	895	6/8/11
Tarbone	875	6/10/11
Galvan Fly Reels	845	6/9/11
Martha's Vineyard Striped Bass & Bluefish Derby	843	6/8/11
Yakima Bait Company	840	6/10/11
Fin-Nor	803	6/9/11
Winston Fly Rods	802	6/10/11
Tenkara USA	780	6/10/11
U.S. Carp Pro Magazine	763	6/8/11
Sea Striker	707	6/10/11
Montana Fishing Outfitters	693	6/8/11
Gamakatsu Fishing Club	607	6/9/11
Potomac Conservancy	555	6/8/11
Falcon Rods	527	6/9/11
Penn Fishing	518	6/9/11
US Youth Fly Fishing Team	505	6/8/11
Buckeye Lures	488	6/9/11
The Billfish Foundation	487	6/10/11
International Fly Tackle Dealer Show	475	6/8/11
Tibor Reels	471	6/10/11
Humminbird	457	6/9/11
American Fly Fishing Trade Association	455	6/8/11
Game & Fish Magazine	447	6/10/11
Congressional Sportsmen's Foundation	445	6/8/11
Spiderwire Braid	437	6/10/11
Abel Reels	422	6/8/11
Coastal Conservation Association of Georgia	418	6/10/11
Online Fishermen	399	6/8/11
St. Croix Rods	390	6/10/11
Bass Fishing Hall of Fame	389	6/8/11
Chota Outdoor Gear	351	6/9/11
Mann's Bait Company	329	6/9/11
Great Bay Rod Company	310	6/10/11
Gray's Sporting Journal	284	6/10/11
Jack Dennis Fishing Trips	277	6/8/11
Eagle Claw Fishing	272	6/9/11
Discover Fly Fishing	260	6/8/11
National Fish Habitat Action Plan	246	6/8/11
Fly Rod & Reel Magazine	234	6/8/11
Tony's Salmon Country Guide Service	226	6/8/11
The Waterworks Lamson	211	6/10/11
Berkley Fishing	209	6/9/11
Family and Youth Casting Call	193	6/8/11
Daiwa	167	6/9/11
Journal of a Minnesota Angler	145	6/8/11
Booyah Baits	124	6/9/11
Water Gremlin	106	6/10/11
Hall Em In Lures	105	6/10/11
Betts Tackle	93	6/9/11
WaveSpin Reel	78	6/10/11
Fish Finder Charters	72	6/8/11
Bass Assassin Lures	68	6/9/11
The Creek Company	65	6/10/11
Coastal Conservation Association Maryland	63	6/10/11
Thill	23	6/10/11

 

SCORE: Facebook "likes" + tech razzle dazzle = new GoFISHn social incentive and prize program

Anyone who follows GoFISHn and GoHUNTn knows that a month ago we did something radical: we took all the "likes"  counted by the the Facebook "like" button on each both for each member profile and added them up into one number. Now every member can see how many "likes" they've recieved in total, which is sorta fun for our more competitive members.

That was just a first step, however, in the launch of the new GoFISHN Score and GoHUNTn Score programs, which reward members based on those "Like" numbers."  We announced the new program for GoFISHn the other day, and we've seen a strong uptick in posts and visits since then.

The appeal is simple: post your own media or blog other media around the Web. If we like it, we'll re-post it to our Facebook page, which for GoFISHn has nearly 167,000 fans. That usually produces 50-100 "likes" almost immediately. The member can also rally their friends on Facebook to come and "like" the post too. The better the posts, the the more frequent the posts, the more friends who stop in to "like" something, the sooner the user hits prize thresholds, which range from a GoFISHn sticker for 50 likes to a free fishing trip for 5000 likes. 

It's no wonder that Facebook is consistently GoFISHN's second largest source of traffic, just slightly behind Google. And maybe not second for long. -Ned

Bassmaster.com has launched!

One of my all-time favorite figures in the media world is Don Logan, who ran Time Inc. for ten stellar years and did a no less outstanding turn as the co-COO of Time-Warner. He retired a few years back to Birmingham, Alabama and began investing in local businesses, including the Barons baseball team, and spending more time on his favorite occupation, largemouth bass fishing.

I talked to him from time to time about the GoFISHn project, and tried to get him involved as an advisor. He seemed interested but not quite ready to take the bait, and last year I found out why.

Don long had his eye on a much bigger project: the acquisition of B.A.S.S. and Bassmaster from ESPN. That deal went through last fall, and Don and his partners Jerry McKinnis and Jim Copeland got started on the tough business of extracting the extensive B.A.S.S. businesses (Bassmaster magazine and website, Classic, Elite and Open tournaments) from ESPN.

That led to a call from Don asking if I'd take on the effort to re-build the Bassmaster.com site. In my former life at Time Inc., that was my line of work. The project was clearly a terrific challenge for an iconic brand. The 500,00-member B.A.S.S. organization is by far the biggest and more powerful media and membership entity in the fishing world. And it had some obvious resonance with GoFISHn. I said "yes."

That commenced a very hectic six-month project that examined questions like this: How can a small B.A.S.S. staff and run a very high-powered website without the deep pockets and very deep technical expertise of ESPN? At the same time we had to move quickly into the relentless planning and execution to design and build a much-improved website on a tight budget and a short timeline. 

The result of all that is the new Bassmaster.com, which launched on schedule, May 1, and on budget. Here's a link to our press release about the project. Don, as you can read, is pleased with the outcome.

The new Bassmaster is a significant improvement over the old one in several respects:

Design. The former site was shoe-horned into an ESPN-page template designed to showcase video. That makes sense for ESPN.com, which is centerered on lucrative game highlight video, but was not quite right for Bassmaster, which prides itself on great writing and photography, as well as strong tournament video coverage. To re-balance that design equation, we created deep editorial wells on the home page and main channel pages to better showcase every piece of content equally -- articles, photos, and video. 

Recirculation. Every Web editor knows that it's all about keeping the visitor clicking, and the former site had far too many dead-ends, especially on stories and photo galleries. The new site has multiple options on every page to get reader clicking to the next story.

Organization. Bassmaster is about a few clear subjects: tournament bass fishing, professional anglers, bass records, bass fishing gear, bass fishing tips, and the Federation Nation organization. The former site did not make that clear in the top navigation, which probably confused visitors. We streamlined and focused the navigation as well as the organization of the content.

Social. To take full advantage of all that Facebook is doing for publishers, we incorporated Facebook "likes" and comments on all content pages, as well as a Tweet link.

Search. The former site search was unhelpful because results incorporated everything on ESPN. The new site is built in Drupal, which means content is easy to "tag" content with subjects and the site search is SOLR, which is designed to use tags to organize search results. It works really well, and Bassmaster fans now can find what they're looking for.

Professional Angler Stats. Bassmaster has a treasure trove of stats for tournaments and pro anglers, and ESPN did a good job making the data interactive. We improved the page-layouts for the pro anglers, added more data, added more ways to sort the data, and tucked in a news feed of stories for each angler. It's stats heaven for pro angler fans. See rockstar pro bass angler Kevin VanDam, for example.

Tournament coverage. The Bassmaster team works extremely hard to cover a demanding tournament schedule and produces everything from live video to articles to photo galleries to real-time live leaderboards and more. On the former site, that impressive media line-up was not easy to find or follow. We created persistent homepages for each tournament to capture all the content, and we placed a navigation module for that tournament above every relevant article, gallery, video post etc. The first tournament since launch, the Bassmaster Elite Pride of Georgia, launched today, and so far the new set-up is working well. 

Publishing. It's a shame when online publishing systems are so cumbersome that editors are reluctant to use them. Bassmaster's new Drupal Open Publish system (designed by Phase2 Technology) makes publishing online what it should be -- fast and easy. Now the editorial teams can publish more and publish faster, which is a key ingredient for success in online media.

We made many additional improvements in the realms of performance, SEO, video, analytics and more. 

As a veteran of many projects like this, I have to say Bassmaster.com has been one of the smoothest and most enjoyable. The Bassmaster crew are both both good teachers and good students. The ESPN technical team was unstintingly helpful and resourceful. Phase2 Technology team did a great job, and taught me a lot about Drupal. And my friends and colleagues Dmitry Paperny, Matt Kaufman, Brian McClintock and Clarence Kwei were as ever invaluable sources of experience and insight.

What's next? as I mentioned in the press release, the next big step is the launch of Bassnation, which will come in a few weeks. Stay tuned. -Ned Desmond

 

 

The big shift: GoFISHn and GoHUNTn go all free in search of more Butch Brown moments

 It's a truim in start--ups that if you stick with your original business model you simply aren't paying attention. So true. 

This week we announced a big change for our sites, our customers and our business model. We made all our pro accounts "free" and ended the $24.95/month fee.

Why? Ask Butch. That's him in the video.

 

Butch Brown is a fanatical fisherman in California who catches largemouth bass like folks have never seen before. When we posted this video, it was only a few hours until this video had 800+ Facebook likes on GoFISHn. Audiences are all about what's mind-blowing, and Butch is that.

We're going all free because we want Butch Brown moments every day. We want people to join GoFISHn and GoHUNTn and post amazing media -- whether it's their own or something they've come across in YouTube. Legions of anglers and hunters carry digital cameras and video recorders (increasingly one-in-the-same), and they are waiting -- and so is the public at large -- for that extraordinary moment. We already see them regularly, and there are more each week. We are becoming the "crowd-sourced" answer to conventional enthusiast media. The value we provide is curation and distribution: we pick the best posts and launch them on our Facebook pages for GoHUNTn and GoFISHn, where we now have nearly 200,000 fans combined. 

In other words, it no longer made sense to limit our access to the best hunter and angler-generated media by asking pros to pay to post, espeically considering they create some of the coolest media. And to be honest we were never comfortable charging these guys anyway. They love what they do, and they are a national treasure. But it's a tough living. 

Our new strategy is to focus harder on big brand advertiser revenues. We're already having a lot of luck doing partnerships that involve posts on our 160,000 fan GoFISHn Facebook Page, and soon we'll start doing the same with GoHUNTn. We're also making changes to our site pages to ensure there is always a nice, fat 300x250 running above the fold in the right rail. You can see the mock-up in the illustration on the right of all pages. Look for this new design in the coming days.

We also pulled above the fold and made smaller the "social" box that keeps count of member fans on Facebook and GoFISHn. This new version counts of how many times fans liked a profile and all the posts associated with the profile. We're going to make that part of an incentive system that will encourage even more posting. Stay-tuned for that and much, much more exciting news to come. -Ned Desmond