Blog like you mean it.

[savage]

I admit right now that I have not read every sentence of the above posts, as doing so would carry me well into February, so if this has been mentioned, great - I'll reinforce it. If it hasn't, great - I'll introduce it.

A side-benefit of blogging is the RSS/syndication factor.

To wit: When Adam at HauntedIllinois.com posts to his MySpace blog, his post is picked up at http://www.chicagohorror.com - the front page of which is wired into the blogs and feeds for around 20 different Chicago-area and Chicago-related horror, haunted house, Halloween, gothic, etc. websites and companies.

This increases exposure for blog posts, and lets ChicagoHorror.com have up-to-the-minute content without the need for me to hunt it down and post it myself (something I simply don't have time to do).

The benefits of something like this should be painfully self-evident. I first tried this with EverythingSinister.com starting about this time last year, and that site does amazing traffic now - it's my home page and the first thing I read every day, because there's NO delay between the time the various posters post and the site picks up the feeds.

Something to think about.

[Greg Chrise]

Thanks, Chad

RSS has not been mentioned yet. I found many sites I was somewhat intrested in that their feedy thing was not operating properly, ones like Ghostdroppings.com do work. These are supposedly simple plug ins that allow subscribers to hook up to you and get an update on what has just been published. Some lag about 6 hours behind but it is a good automated reminder that a blog is still out there and active.

[Duke of Darkness]

I will research this on my own, but if anyone wants to save me the work and explain how you get your blog on these feeds, it would be great.

Dave

[savage]

I will research this on my own, but if anyone wants to save me the work and explain how you get your blog on these feeds, it would be great.

Dave

If you use Blogger.com or your MySpace.com blog, the feeds are generated automatically for you. Look for a link that says "RSS".

Then it's just a question of submitting your feed to the right site.

One of the tricky things about this is that, while it's easy to find a newsfeed reader for personal use, it's a lot more difficult to find one that will display feeds on a website - I had to reverse-engineer a personal reader to get it to work on my feed sites. So (to my knowledge) there aren't a lot of feed sites out there... yet. It's a new-ish technology; I figure in another year or so (if that) it'll become pretty commonplace...

I know Chris uses something similar for HauntedHouse.com - Chris, if you read this, what did you wind up using, and how would you rate it?

[Greg Chrise]

If you at some point have enough content to hold an audience, you do things like have minor little promotions and contests, giving something way like a trade show freebee or a T-shirt or something similar. In exchange the winner will be one who is on your feed, has you on their Tecnacrati search or something like this.

For some period of time readers who otherwise did not do this automatically will do so to enter your contest. Like wise you reading other peoples content enter into any thing they are doing for traffic no matter the topic of their general discussion and their site may bring browsers to your blog. Once you have say 1000 subscribers, you are pretty much already somebody.

[Greg Chrise]

In general, no one will subscribe or manually check in to a site that does not have daily quality updates and great information. From what I can see a blog might take a good portion of a year before it great results become automatic. Just at the time the domain name fee is due.

So the paid content sites are a great way to put stuff out there and see what flies and still at worst case promote the support of haunted houses attendance.

All of this content can be accumulated, updated, edited and revised, is stored out there somewhere and then all at once you might have the large quantity it requires to attract serious Blog intrest.

Sort of like, you go by a car with a for sale sign on it by the side of the road Verrsus you see a car that looks pretty good among 30 cars. Which is more likely to make you let up a little on the gas peddle.

Or of course you can begin first class to begin with.

[Greg Chrise]

I had nothing better to do than start typing into my Blog/journal. In 4 days I'm already having things go into the archives. I will be posting daily trying it out as some kind of therapy.

If you would like to leave comments or have something discussed a bit further let me know. This should appeal to those just starting out or who have low turn out events.

Overall, this is a good place to discuss what topics the world should or should not know or maybe doesn't care about. Or what would be the overall goal of blogging the planet about Haunted Attractions?

It is tough to be interrupting Transworld discussion but, no time better than now. The link below takes you to my AOL Journal.

http://journals.aol.com/ghaunt1313/Vampire_Safari/

Comment here or there it doesn't matter. What subjects everyone should consider should go here on the forum.

[Duke of Darkness]

Just got through reading all the entries in your blog. Some interesting things there. I thought that your numbers where way too low until I gave more thought to the fact that you are in Tyler. A much smaller than average population to draw from. One thing to point out is that the haunts that are doing bigger number are spending much more on advertising. I have been involved with haunts that did over 20,000 guest in a year, but in some cases they spent over $2.00 per head on advertising. That eats up a budget real fast.

Anyway, thanks for being so honest and willing to share. I will check in with your blog periodically.

Dave

[Greg Chrise]

The actual town of Noonday is only 564 population about 7 miles south of town on a major highway. It is a very large new clean building not at all spooky and if you go into town no one knows where it is. It wasn't until I asked for it that their fire hall sign is eternally lit at night. Despite the low advertising capability just having a good attraction will bring it around maybe.

Yet it is valuable information as I had run into so many that did not crash 500 their first year and wondered what gives. Even advertising must keep pace with what is really happening or it is money wasted.

[Greg Chrise]

I agree completely with the $2 per customer advertising figure. I guess your closest city is Portland Oregon? Population 3.6 million.

In comparison, back in the day, Verdun manor saw 25,000 being 20 minutes from Dallas. Hangmans once saw 30,000 being in FortWorth each slightly larger in population but, then there are so many right in the heart of the same cities actually doing poorly.

We are 100 miles from a large city. Yet still being in a small city is weird as people will travel 100 miles to a rural event but not generally come to a smaller city. One rural event I'm familiar with started out at 800 and increased 30% per year and now sees over 8,000 in the middle of nowhere. Perhaps it is a Texas problem with travel perceptions and haveing to travel to do anything so why do it for entertainment when you can just stop by BlockBuster on the way home?

People won't travel from this town 80 miles to the rural event but people will travel 120 miles from Dallas to the rural event.

The other thing about advertising is it can back fire, If your attraction has not matured to being a killer event and you claim it is in an ad, you will have a lot of upset customers.

The "gurus" proclaim spending a minimum of $25,000 for an event first starting up. I have seen them leave even the Dallas/Ft Worth area after seeing 800 people with people kind of upset with them. It sucks.

[Duke of Darkness]

Yes, Portland is the nearest large city. I have been involved with several haunts there, and the Portland metro area is where our new attraction will be located this year. The population of Portland is, however, only about 600,000. 1.2 million including the suburbs (within the tri-county area). The 3.6 million figure is for the entire state.

That said, the numbers that you are likely to draw to a new haunt are very much related to location and population. I know most of the people who do or who have owned haunts in this are in the last few years. While you have seen haunts drawing numbers around 800 in your area, the number for a new haunt here seems to be around 3000. Population may be only one factor in that number however. There have been several long established and very large haunts in the area for several years now. Perhaps the populace here is more educated about this area of entertainment, and therefore more willing to try a new attraction? I don't know that is the case, but it could be a factor.

I understand what you are saying about people traveling, especially in Texas. On the other hand, I have spent some time there (I went to school in Waco and was stationed in San Angelo when I was in the Navy), and I have seen entire towns depopulated on a Friday night as everyone (and I mean EVERYONE) traveled 100 miles or more to go to a high school football game. Not that I would ever expect a haunt to gain that kind of loyalty in Texas, where high school football is akin to religion, but it brings me back to the idea of educating your audience. I firmly believe that if people believe that they are going to get their money's worth, and that they are going to have a good time, they will be willing to make the trip.

I have a friend here who has a rural haunt on his farm. It has been rated the best haunt in the area for the last two years. He does not, nor does he want to, draw very large numbers. But he did draw over 2,500 in his first year and around 3000 the last two years without any high budget advertising. And this is about 25 miles out of Portland.


The point is, if you want to be successful in a more rural area you will have to do several things. You will have to put on a good show. And you will have to educate the public about what to expect when the get there.

I appreciate your approach of starting small and growing. I hope this model continues to work well for you. I will look forward to reading more about how things progress.

Dave

[Jim Warfield]

Since my house, The Ravens Grin Inn is open all year, I am in a place to scoop up more free, off-season advertising than an October only haunt.
The other night at a tour's conclusion a new customer introduced himself as working for NPR radio and he said he will be returning to do a story about this place.
Educating the customer before they get out of their car in my parking lot should be a "win-win" situation for everyone, unfortunately , the customer also has to read a web site or a brochure to get the info.
The positive customer experience (P.C.E.) will directly transfer into the absolutely best free advertising and glowing testimonials imaginable, something you cannot buy for any amount of money.
It sort of runs in the same neighborhood as the front page, or better, headline in a local newspaper. Space (or "ink") is not for sale in most newspapers but if you are a news story , you may find yourself in this envious position, unless you are the maniac in the tower with the scope rifle, that is.....
"Hey! I got my name on the front page everybody!"
("Take him out now!")
"BANG!!"

[Greg Chrise]

I have been in Tyler since 1987 almost 20 years now. I wandered around a full 10 years wondering how does this work. The last 10 years I have sort of just gone a long with the flow with simply making a living with my business(s) as a goal.

It's more than spending money at some figure or injecting something into every potential patron's skull. The flow here is not necessarily productive and it shows in all sorts of business and their lack of true profit.

For a while I was a parts manager at an auto parts store and honchos from Atlanta would come bitching about how the store only made $33,000 per week and the one on the wrong side of the tracks made $50,000. Well, before I did my thing it was $25,000 and beyond that it wasn't my fault somebody screwed up on their marketing plan and put a store here in the middle of the part of town where people do not work on their own cars.

Somehow I ended up with my own company putting decorative concrete usually around larger swimming pools. This is brutal out in the 104 degree temperatures with 140 degrees blasting up from raw concrete surfaces. Of course once we are done the temperature of the concrete is down and it is nice but it is time for us to go to the next blast furnace and tame it as well.

No specific pity to me, looking around a lot of opportunities require this being out in the elements thing and so everyone is at a state of pretty much being beaten down physically because of it. It is pretty tough to be a go getter and then find ones self out there going to get it when it is 104 degrees and so a little slower pace is observed on most things.

So now you are going to take the populace effected in this way and say "Hey let's put on a show!" You are liable to be hit with lunch left overs. The home is devoloped to be a place to get to around sundown and rest, not neccesaritly to be left. Of course there are a percentage of the young who do but, of course there is drinking and such involved and a haunted house might be considered kiddy stuff. Or in our past black plastic rip offs.

In comparison the semi annual car shows have the biggest turn out of the "convention hall" and I saw them high fiving at reashing 3000 customers. So you have to reel back expectations a bit or move.

The haunt related work is second to our normal business which keeps us in a 200 mile region of east Texas. Even when we postured ourselves to provide any work anyone wanted for cost (doing it for free) we only got one big haunt related job per year. And had to chase people all over the country to get paid. So that didn't work. We have a great sounding resume but, at tremendous personal expense.

I used to be pretty smart but, my only current observations of go getters have set themselves up in air conditioned offices with automatic dialers preaching being productive. They are all a little unproductive when it comes to writing out checks too. I further notice that 2 million dollar per year companies have ONLY a small black and white ad in the yellow pages and rely on referals. Simply yelling at people on TV doesn't do anything here. They still have no web presence and do not accept emails. Advertising firms are certainly here to take your money but, there is no guarenteed effect. And this is every day kind of business.

Any would be participant or customer is fighting these same constraints and living conditions. I'm still thankful to have any inpired turn out. It's a seasonal brain snap to declare that the temperature is okay to leave the house tonight. We set up in September in 104 degree temperatures and take tickets in 35 degrees, a dramatic drop in a week. Customers are showing up in T-shirts and standing in line for an hour. I'm going to have to build a comfortable lobby to make it more comfortable for them as they don't know how to dress?

As I seasonally decided it was my job to go see other haunted houses it was really an effort after a hard days work. Driving great distances to the other side of bad storms to find events opened and uneffected.

Up North there isn't any stay home because it is raining or cold. Fall actually is beautiful as the trees turn colors. There is a natural indicator of what to do now. Here they have a row of Halloween decor and masks and the isle behind it is already Christmas stuff in September.