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| Classic Sponsorship Program | Fillup Flyer's Home Page |
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The page below outlines Fillup Flyer's plan to convert it's services to either a "sole sponsor" or "multiple corporate advertiser" supported operation, and to eliminate all costs to the pilots, corporate flight departments, fbos, and aircraft owners that currently pay to obtain our reports.
With fuel prices sometimes varying as much as $1.00 per gallon, the MPD, or Miles Per Dollar can be substantially increased. Pre-flight planning with Fillup Flyer ultimately leaves pilots with a considerably smaller hole in their pocket. The bottom line is that Fillup Flyer Fuel Finder is especially fine tuned to provide an option to pilots for finding the best re-fueling plan available. In 1991 Fillup Flyer began development of software to allow pilots to obtain fuel price information instantly via computer. In May of 1992, the first route based report was sold for a price of $5.00. The member would use his computer to access an 800 number... request a route and receive a report instantly. In the following years Fillup Flyer added 3 additional report types... Non-Stop Multiple Destination ... Area Reports ... and Statewide Reports. In 1996 the internet started to come of age. In July of "96" Fillup Flyer developed web browser and telnet access to take advantage of the internet.
You bet they are a changin' ... For one -- millions and millions of users are getting internet access every month. On Feb 9th, 1998 Dataquest a market research firm was reported by Reuters News Service as determining that in 1995 27% of all homes in the US have a personal computer. In 1997 the level raied to 43% and in 1998 the level has hit 50% penetration at home. However one of the things that the internet has revolutionized is the idea of "FREE" information. If you go to yahoo.com for example you can get a lot of free information. "Yellow Pages" "People Search" " Maps" "Travel Agent" "Classified" "Personals" "Games" "Calendar" "My Yahoo!" "Sports Info" "Weather Info" "TV" "Stock Quotes" and more... all free. How do these companies do it... Well most of these companies went public ... raised lots of money and lose money every day. Some like Yahoo have now started to make money via advertising. Millions and Millions of dollars in advertising revenue... Yahoo had revenues of 76.4 million in the 4th quarter of 1998 alone. That is an annual run rate of over a quarter BILLION dollars in internet web advertising. The companies spending these millions are not stupid! They are advertising on the web because it works and it is a real value. As more and more information is available for "FREE ", it has become clear that the best way for Fillup Flyer to grow is to offer it's information in the same way. "FREE" well sort of... Sponsors will make it possible and leap ahead of their competitors in the e-commerce race at the same time.
Simple ... We know that if our reports were available to pilots for free, we will deliver 100 times more reports than if we sell them for $5.00.
How do we know that is the case... We always thought that for $5.00 it was too cheap not to check... but for FREE you can be sure people will run the report. FREE that's the key.
Plan A is the plan ... the management of Fillup Flyer would most like to implement. It involves finding one main sponsor which would be an anchor for the service. This one corporate sponsor would benefit from the perception of being "the" provider of this valuable service. This service encourages pilots to pre-flight plan their fuel usage... preventing the many fuel exhaustion crashes and deaths which occur every year... I can't over stress the value associated with being a provider of the service... The Main Page would be modified to show the information is being provided courtesy of the sponsor... This is the difference between night and day. When AT&T sponsored the network television premier of "Schlinder's List" they ran one commercial at the beginning and one commercial at the end of the show saying how proud they were to be able to provide this valuable subject matter to the general public. They didn't run commercials every 15 minutes pumping individual products, they were a sponsor, they built goodwill. A sponsor could have the entire site to themselves, so advertising could be more subtle and very effective. That is what the main page of the Fillup Flyer site would provide for a single site sponsor.
Plan B is an optional plan ... the management of Fillup Flyer will implement this plan if a Single Corporate Sponsor is not found before 8 primary advertisers are under contract. It involves finding eight primary corporate advertisers who are willing to commit to a 3 year advertising contract. These eight sponsors would benefit from being on the upper frame of the Fillup Flyer website. The position of each sponsor in the upper frame is rotated at random each time the website is loaded.
Fillup Flyer still needs the support of its members to initially make it worthwhile for a single corporate sponsor or many corporate advertisers to commit their resources to provide our information to all pilots FREE OF CHARGE. Members should be thrilled that we are working so hard to make this a FREE service. Members currently pay a reasonable $5 for most reports and this is a bargain, however all should agree that FREE is even better. Until it is free we will still need to have pilots continue to become members. Quality will not change... we will still make those 6000 calls a month to the FBOs ensuring that Fillup Flyer will have the most complete information available. Members who currently phone in verbally and have the reports mailed or faxed to them may indeed be affected. If Fillup Flyer finds a single corporate sponsor then it is up to the sponsor as to whether this service will be offered free, or at an additional charge. If Fillup Flyer instead with many corporate advertisers, then Fillup Flyer will continue to offer a fax/mail out service for a fee... information using your web browser will of course be free. If you are a member who is reading this and know of a business that you think should consider either advertising on this site or becoming the primary corporate sponsor, please let them know about this opportunity. They can contact Mark Hanna @ mark@wdia.com
All FBOS will also benefit, not just the lowest cost FBOs... Fillup Flyer has options allowing pilots to search for premier FBOs not just the lowest cost leaders.
Some of the ads that are being displayed are short term contracts. Some are being displayed for demonstration and sales purposes as we negotiate with these corporations for advertising agreements or a total website sponsorship. None of these offers are fictional... we incourage you to support any of the ads that are displayed at the tops of the various pages of this website.
If you are interested in the sole sponsorship or the corporate advertising program, please contact Mark Hanna at mark@wdia.com | ||||||||||||||||||
