How to promote your VA.

[nathanh12]

Hi Guys,

I have started my VA last week and am trying to work out how to get pilots.

So far to market it I have:

• Placed A Link On Flightsim.com
  
• Registered with VA Central
  
• E-Mailed Around My FSX Using Friends.
  

My Site can be found here

I have also submitted my site to Google but another question I have is how do you add meta tags to phpVMS.

Thanks in advance for the help.

Nathan.

[joeri]

iff you would have done a search you would have see that even yesterday this topic was presented to us all.

[freshJet]

1. Don't use the same boring template as everyone else does.

2. Do something realistic - you've been open for a week and can already say:

"Almost 400 routes to fly at your leisure using aircraft from the 737-800 to the Airbus A380"

3. Get a logo. And don't just get a picture of a frog and write Frog Airlines in a boring font.

4. The name is really bad too, sorry.

[Strider]

You will need a better name, sorry but Frog Airlines just does not sound good, a good web site, and time spent on web site is also a big help, as at the moment, it looks like a 5 minute job. Spend some time on it, show us that you love it as much as we should, if you are going to use a template that others use, do somoething different with it, change the colors of it. Change the layout of it, spice it up. Don't start off with an A380 and flying long haul if you have just started a week ago. That is a turn off to 98% of pilots out there. Unrealistic VA's don't tend to stay around too long. Use a real world airline and use the way they run things, don't use their name if you don't intend on getting permission first, real world airlines are very strict on who can use their name and who can't. And they can shut you down for good, it has happened many a time before. Use your signature to promote your VA, put the link in your signature, every place that VA's can put links, put your link there, give a press release to flightsim.com, you will get a load of pilots from that, as it is a great way to get people to know about your VA. But you need to give your VA some lovin, and give it a logo, and not any bog stabdard logo you can get from photoshop or the net, be creative. That is one of the main things in creating a VA, is being creative.Don't worry about making mistakes, or making "boo boos" learn from them and let others help you, accept criticism, even if you don't like it, the people are only doing it to make your VA better. Yes you may get the odd bad comment that doesn't give a way to improve, but most if not all people on this forum will help you in anyway that they can. Also respect others, and they will respect you. Don't expect to get 100 pilots within the first month, you won't get that.

[Angel Air]

I agree with the above statements.

here is the reports from other VA owners when I released my first attemp. http://forum.phpvms.net/topic/4458-new-va-angel-air-va/ that tread should give you some idea of what you should be doing.

I am currently having the same problem I have advertised in all the right places and I think that my website is up to scratch but I guess it is all about having patience and to keep improving on what you have got, it has taken me 3 months to get my site to a point where I think it is acceptable.

So that should give you some idea of the time you should be putting in too creating all of the info on your website.

I only have 9 registered pilots on my site of which 3 are regular pirep filers. My constant battle with myself is "is it all worth the hassel" well I have to say even though I only have 9 pilots on my site I have enjoyed creating my site and learning a bit about PHP and the challenge of getting pilots to register.

Anyway the best advice I got was to keep plugging away until you do get it right.

Scott

[Cor]

To run a VA is very difficult, it is almost a fulltime job and the problem is there are to much VA's.

Most of all made up VA's are gone within the first year. We existing now more then 5 years and still is hard work

because the world of flightsim is changing also every day, you have to keep up with the wishes of your members and also

dealing with problems between members.

Before you start a VA you need really think everything over, because when your VA is getting bigger it starts the look like a litlle

company with a the work and problems with it. If you can manage that then the VA will promote itself via mouth to mouth.

When you pilots are happy they will tell others ect, ect.

Regards,

Cor