ridertown.com
May 1, 2003
"Night of the Stars"
By far, the single biggest Ridertown event of the year is the annual Memorial High School Junior/Senior Prom and Promenade, held this year on Saturday, April 26. We provide the first and best coverage of the young ladies and men in their finery, publishing color photos of every participant in the Promenade through Memorial Park, and dance photos provided by Memorial High School. The Promenade photos were online before one o'clock Sunday morning, while the After Prom activities were still in full swing.
This year was no exception in terms of the feature's popularity - in fact, on Sunday, the day after the Prom, Ridertown.com set a record with 706 Unique Visitors, topping the year-old mark of 612 set on the Monday after last year's Prom. The new record lasted only 24 hours. It was crushed when 1031 Unique Visitors came to Ridertown the next day.
As good as breaking one-day records may be, even better is the knowledge that many who helped break those records were drawn to the site for the first time. Every time we "host" such an internet event, Ridertown.com gets bookmarked as a favorite and revisited by more people than ever before. Which means that our sponsors' banner ads and Storefront Web Pages are seen by more people than ever before. Are you a Ridertown Sponsor yet? Senior Pictures are coming, and football season...
P.S. - Many, many well-deserved Ridertown kudos to all the parents, teachers, volunteers and sponsors who make the Promenade, Prom and After Prom such a fun and safe night for our high-schoolers every year. These things don't just happen - you know who you are. Well done! and keep up the good work.
...and Speaking of Football
The Spring Street Journal. (Auglaize County's Only Locally-Owned Newspaper) also provides the first and best print coverage of Roughrider Football, going online with complete write-ups and color game photos by Andrews Photography a couple of hours after each game.
We're offering game sponsorships again this year to all Ridertown.com sponsors. (Last year's articles are still viewable in the ridertown.com Archives section.) For a measly $10.00 per game, a Sponsor can have a banner link to his Ridertown Storefront Page (or existing web site) placed at the top of The Spring Street Journal. write-up of the game. A banner graphic is also applied to each game photo. If you sign up for all 10 regular-season games for $100 before the season starts, your game sponsorship will be continued through all playoff games at no additional charge!
Last season, the one sponsor who took advantage of this offer headlined 12 game write-ups, and had his banner graphic attached to 305 full-color Roughrider Football game photographs. One hundred bucks. During the 2002 high school football season and playoffs Ridertown.com received more than seventeen thousand Unique Visitors, many of whom saw every last one of those 317 appearances of that banner ad.
Hello?
Life Is Good - Hit Me!
Unique Visitors to ridertown.com in April 2003 outnumbered those same month previous year 6960 to 4858 (a 43% increase!), extending Ridertown's streak to 32 consecutive months bettering same month previous year numbers.
FYI, "Unique Visitors" is a conservative counting method, recording only one request per remote computer per day. Computer stations that are used by more than one person, such as at businesses, libraries, schools, etc. will still only be counted as one visitor each day. Beware of other website claims for "hits" (requests for all file transfers including individual graphics). For example; over a recent 12-month period (2002-2003) Ridertown received 61,000 "Unique Visitors," but more than 7,500,000 "hits."
Solid Advice for a Better Life:
Opportunity does not always come knocking at your door. Sometimes it comes by phone. Or email.
Thanks for visiting ridertown.com!
Chris Botkin
This Issue | April 2003 | March 2003
Have Your Machine Talk To My Machine
ridertown.com is owned and operated by Chris Botkin, a fifth-generation St. Marian born and raised who is active in local service organizations and a heck of a nice feller despite a dearth of perspicacity, pulchritude and luck. Ably assisting is Dave Stilwell who is busy with family and volunteering beyond any reasonable bounds of human endurance. We both have day jobs, too. Our goal for Ridertown is world domination, but we'll settle for dragging St. Marys kicking and screaming into the Information Age. Are you going to come quietly, or do we have to use earplugs?
If you're not in Ridertown, you're virtually nowhere.
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