Moved Here from Other Forum

So, I was thinking of trying to somehow incorporate http://www.motorsportsofutah.com with this forum. As I am thinking that MOU will be more marketable on a local or information avenue. I have a few new products that I am excited about and Joe's Father-inlaw Brad has been building something cool! I also just got hooked up with a new dealer that has really good products for cheap. www.superatv.com. Tell me what you guys think

Haha I would never doubt your abilities Sam. As for incorporating the two sites I am interested to hear what your thoughts are. We should all try to meet up sometime to chat.

Lets do lunch next week! How about Tues or Weds?

So, after I left you guys I figured there is no time like the presence so I called John and asked him If he had bought the company because he wanted to invest in the MOU or to help his brother out. His response was that he wanted to help me out (Which is what I figured).

I then asked if he wanted to stay a owner or if he cared that he was bought out. He said either way as he said that him being a silent partner was better then having Jeff as a partner. He also said that he didn't plan on helping out and that he was just dead weight. So he said that all he cared was that he got his $1500 back.

So with that being said what do you guys think? I have no expectations FYI. So lay it out.

So, I was thinking of some potential ideas. We could built a point system and as people built up points by posting or using our site they could either buy stuff from our store, get a discount, or gift certificates. Or we could have users submit there riding trips. We then will select the best one then feature it and give them stuff or discounts...Do this on a monthly or weekly basis. We could also do this with quads or parts. I am sure there are tons of people who would love to do a article. Giving them the idea they are important and its like they are writing for a mag...

We also can have riding trip and then at the end have an option to get them to sign up with us and we will email them a .pdf of a trail map. Or give them the option to purchase one for like a dollar.

Basically we need to figure out what people want and how to make them feel important. We can do this by doing features on people and what they ride or have in the garage.

Well now that I am finally on this forum we can generate some ideas/ feedback and discuss. As for your meeting with John I still have to think over the entire concept of where we want to take all of this before I will know how to proceed. I definitely do not see any return on investment for purchasing him out at $1,500 right now you are doing little to no profit so I see no immediate way to recoup that initial investment especially with an entire redesign of our business model. Which at first will be a business model focused on specialty products that are not connected to your current revenue streams at MOU.

Having said that I may possibly entertain a purchase overtime where we give John 15% of the profit until he is paid out $2,000 this would be done over a three year time period. If by the three years he is not paid in full then he no longer owns any stock in the company and leaves with what he has gotten back. This would give him a possible gain of $500 and would also enable us if we could pay him $2000 that would mean that over the three years the company made close to $20,000. My hopes are that we are making well over that in 3 years and he is paid off much sooner. But this option takes nothing out of our pockets initially which makes me feel better since I do not see the value in his $1500. Anyways we will need to think about it more overtime.

As for the site, we need a few things,,

1. A cleaner look with a nice way to opt in to become and ATV cowboy.
2. Trail reviews like Mad, people love to learn about trials and want to know about them before they try them so we need to be doing regular reviews and rides. Mike we need to have a Trails Menu option in the top that links to all posts about trails and also has a forum about trials.
3. Sam I like the idea of a reward system, for commenting and interacting on the site. We need to discuss this in more detail down the line.
4. Monthly Video Podcast. A video podcast is going to drive tons of traffic to the site and to our Youtube page. We need to be riding as often as possible in reality at least twice a month to be taken seriously in this industry. We can do this and post Video Podcasts about what we have done, Once we Finish up the tutorial and I edit the Paiute trail footage we can start posting on Itunes. That gives us 4 episodes to release over two months during that time we will be able to generate at least two more video casts. Which we can release monthly from then on.
5. We need some new Logos and headers where we explain some of the purpose of the site, we will get rid of any images that do not look stellar. We need to focus on ATVs and UTVs
6. Accountability: Meeting in person is a hassle and not needed but we need to have a phone conference at least once a week where we set measurable goals and tasks for each of us to get things done. We have some great ideas and I really feel like we can make some cash. But we won't if we are only working on this once a week and forgetting until the next week. The sacrifice will be worth it when this is our fulltime business or it at least pays for the hobby.
7. We need to get more traffic to the site and get people opting in to join the site. As far as visits we need to share the site as much as possible with individuals we know who are interested in this type of information. We should be posting in forums and other sites insight ful comments that will generate click backs to our site. And most importantly we need to start looking to rank for some keywords. Especially focused on keywords like Specific trails or parts.

Product Development.

Lastly we need to decide on one or two specialty products that we want to feature on ATV Cowboys that we believe will generate great income right off the bat, as this grows we can then focus on driving other traffic to MOU or whatever entity that will be for other products. But specialty products will be key. We should get together for a few hours sometime where we can draw outcome really specific goals and talk about what products we think would be the most beneficial. I think possibly either a Street Legal ATV Kit or UTV kit that we either partner with someone to sell or have Brad find someone who can make it for us would be awesome. Highland where I live it is legal to have a street ATV. WE could put a kit on the Grizzly or something and do a video about me riding there then focus on selling that kit. This could be a great revenue stream if we can get a good profit margin.

Street Legal ATV gets 14,000 global searches and has low competition. If we could rank for that Keyword and have a great kit to sell with $100 in profit we could rack away some serious cash right off the bat.

I agree with Jared. Buying out John is only
for the purpose of getting him out of the picture. The only
assests of MOU is a few hundred dollars in the bank.
I have somewhere around $200-$300 in inventory.

Relationships with distributors like MTA and advantage Performace
(which most distributors require a
store front and pre-purchase of $5000 of inventory). I can remember
Joe saying that anyone could get the discounts I do. :)

I do make about $20-$100 a month. It does depend on the month though.

I think with help we could
push $200-$500. With advertising
stuff for free on KSL and selling locally we really
could make more money. The issues I have is not being able to answer the
phone during business hours as I spend my life on the phone talking to
DigiCert customers.

So, we could push harder to get things
selling here locally and also on the site.
I am sure John would be happy to make more money
off this uh well Favor or investment of getting rid of Jeff for me. We
could use the money we make locally or with my shop to start paying of John.

I don't think our main focus of selling locally and on MOU is going
to bring in the big bucks right now as we are competing with
Rocky. So it may not even be something we want to focus on.

I have www.motocurb.com on magento cartsoftware which I am using as
a free trial as of now. it does cost $25 bucks a month.

http://www.magentocommerce.com/

Basically they provide you with everything. Since I am not a brillant
programmer like Mike is....this is my best option I have found.

I am currently figuring out how things are setup in the the cart.
I am pleased so far and they do have good learning resources and support.
I have entered in a couple of parts and want to get to 10-20 parts then
go live with it and start trying different things with SEO.

I would also be entering parts of new stuff that very little people have. This
would include the stuff from Brad. I plan on making money on the site and
pushing it hard on KSL and other free sites.

I also want to get into the
Forums and push the products that Brad is making for us.

Once that is up and running I want to rip the floor out of MOU and
either make it a forwarding information site or put a new cart software on
there.

So that is my current plan and focus with what I am doing.

And now for what Jared layed out in his 7 steps. I agree with all of them.
Lets setup a plan or layout a process of how and when we are going to complete
what Jared has listed. We need to decide what is the most important and
do those first.

When is the best time for everyone to do a phone conference?

Oh also Jared I emailed Brad about the street legal kit. What do we need to
make a UTV/ATV DOT approved in Utah?

I am not exactly sure what all needs to be in the kit to make it street legal. That is something I will have to look into. As for now Sam I think you should do what you feel you need to with MOU, in the mean time we all need to focus on getting ATVcowboy looking and functioning better as well as creating much more content. This will enable us to get a few of these specialty parts going from ATV cowboy. Then when we want to start focusing on MOU we can figure out how we want to transition it and what we will do with John. As for now what we want to focus on has nothing to do with MOU other than we are bringing Sam onto the team here. One design element that I really like at MOU is the silhouette icons of the machines where did you get those? Could we get an additional one of a Utility quad rather than a motorcycle. I think a smaller version of those would be a cool button with text over it saying, "sign up for our mailing list and become an ATVCOWBOY today" or something like that.

So Sam if you can get me those files I will tweak them and we will use them as the sign up. Mean while what other look elements do we want to change? Things I have mentioned to Mike are.
1. I would like the Home Forum Gallery Archive to all have defined borders and look more like a button rather than a text link.
2. I also would like to take down some of the current headers that we have now and only use the images that are really awesome. For example I really do not think the one of jed jumping is very cool and it should be one of the ones taken out of the rotation.

I am good for a conference call tomorrow evening after YM so around 8:30 or so if we chatted for like 30 to 40 minutes and set some actionable items to work on over the weekend that would be perfect.

Also we are possibly looking into a Ride on Saturday Mike are you going to be able to do that?

Last but not least try to check in on this forum at least once a day so we can see where we are at.

I have those images of the ATV and UTV as png files in my drop box account. What is your email address and I will send you a shared folder on my dropbox account? I probably have them in a PSD somewhere also. Let me know what you need.

We also need to get rid of the dumb photos in our photo gallery. We also should add a few more new sections on the home bar. Like "ATV News","Trail Reviews""Parts reviews" that way we can start to build good quality content to help google crawl the site. We need a couple hundred pages of good unique content.

Also if we are going to use the same photos for the Header I need to photoshop them to make them look brighter and less dingy.
I am good for a conference call this evening at 8:30 also. (I think)

See if you can locate the PSD files. If not my email is

jared.doldham@gmail.com
Send me the png files there and I will look at what I can do, I just want to make a small button icon with those.
Also mike can you add ATV News Part Reviews and Trail Reviews to the menu. Then make a page with any ride reviews about a trail that we have done in the past. As we do new rides we can update the information with better reviews, however we have tons of content already and we can use old articles about rides as trail reviews until we create more.

I can do a call tonight at 8:30.

As for part reviews do we have any? There is no reason to have a section till we have content to put into it. I guess I may have done a review of the shocks for the 400ex.

I'll see what I can do about a design, although now may be a good time to do major design changes, which if that is the case we should do some brainstorming.

Jared I emailed you a shared folder link to my DropBox. It has the PNG files in them. I will get the PSDs when I get home tonight.

As far as part reviews we just need to pick gear we have already purchased and do a write up on it (This also could include clothing and tires). Same thing goes for ATV/UTV reviews. I don't think we need to make any Major changes to the design for now. Just cleaner photos in the Header and more home dropdowns or menus. Really we just need to get people to sign up. Like doing an article then saying Sign up to view the map of how to get to the riding area....or something like that. Basically we need to brainstorm reason's why someone would want to be part of our forum.

I can also do a call at 8:30.

Men,

I am sorry I have dropped the ball over the last week I have been slammed at school the last few weeks of my last semester are going to be crazy. But I want to get a few things going. Mike we talked before about a post about ten things you must take on a long camping ride. You have done a few of those long rides and I feel like it would be a great post. Name it something like
10 things you need to ride survive the Paiute trail. Google loves lists so bullet points or numbers would be awesome. I do not think it should be too tough of a post make it fun maybe put a bullet about bringing some cord just in-case you need to tie your Polaris to a tree. Then put the picture up. I am busy but I am going to commit to getting the Starter Tutorial edited by Sunday. Sam if you could fix the button I made Mike hated the font which I liked because I felt it looked like mud but if you made that button maybe made it look a bit better. Do you have a software you can use for that? If we all did those things this week plus shared Mikes post on our Facebook pages, twitter, and Google plus that would be rad. Mike could you have that ready and posted by Friday Morning so we could start sharing it then?

Yeah I can work on the button. Where you just thinking a different font or does the actual image need to be better also? As far as software goes I have CS2 is that good enough? :)

I think how to survive tips not only for specific trail rides but for any ATV trip would be awesome.

I agree I thought as far as getting good google keyword s lots of people search the piaute trail and since that trip they do as a camping trip it would be cool to talk about how to do it as a camping trip and what you will need. A general post for what you need for any ride is a great idea as well.

Yes I can have the post by Friday. If you both like the button maybe we should just go with it for now. I don't have to override you.

Mostly I just thought the font looked like it had too many extra periods and commas in it.

I am up for Sam messing with it to try a few things to see if we like something else better.

I just think the font is kinda hard to read. Either way we need to get something up. Normally something on the landing page/Home page of "Sign up now". I will whip something up.

When we going to have a phone meeting? I think we need to have a main focus while also updating the site with new content. SO, basically I think we need to decide on what that focus is and plan out the stages and work for it.

You guys need to check it out. Super creative and easy layout. You may have already seen it.

http://www.dollarshaveclub.com

So I am having troubles getting the Sign up know button Jared made to work for me. The font he chose was actually pretty good for that layout. I Am whipping up a different idea to see if you guys like it. I will send it once its completed.

Sam I like what you did we can use it for now. If we want to make changes we can later down the road. We need to all have a chat this week. I am thinking Thursday evening would work well for me. Mike how is the post coming? I would like to post it this week to get some new fresh content on the site. As for the video I am basically done however I must not have downloaded the last few clips from the card so I do not have the ending yet. I should have it done and ready to roll for a post next week. It will be done earlier but if we post Mikes this will give us another post for content.

Luckily I found the clips on a card I had at work. So I will finish that off this week. I have also been learning a lot about Podcasts and how they help get traffic to sites. Once this video is up I want to submit the three to Itunes so we can start getting traffic to the site that way. I think it could really expand our reach plus it will act as an accountability partner making sure we are getting out and riding to make new ones. What do you guys think?

Yeah I think its a good idea. We also need to publish our write ups on blogs or any other free resource we can find so we can start creating more back links. I have my motorsports of utah blog which pretty much sucks... but its a start.

We should also talk to Jake Carlson and have him to a write up on his Water pump basically to give him a plug for the up and coming camping season.

I think we should ad the sign up button right below the quad spotlight. what do you think?

Button looks awesome and for traffic. Also Mike what is your Gmail info I want to block my work computer and Sam needs to block his computer so we can get a better idea of true traffic and build from there.

How do I block my computers?

go to http://atvcowboy.com/mint

Login with tarous@gmail.com password: mintcowboy

I just go there then hit done?

Sam somewhere in the preferences you should be able to see where it says do not count this computer or dont count visits from this computer something like that.

Hey guys,

So a few things. Sorry about the video long story short my computer at home is having a tough time handling the footage. So tonight I plan to take my drive home get the footage and then edit it on Wednesday. The over all edit does not take long it is the rendering between each edit that my home comp is just not doing well with. So it will be ready this week. Also we need to go for a ride very soon. I want to get in at least two during this month one long ride maybe an after work ride. THis saturday is the family thing so I t does not work best. But the next two both work for me. MIke the 28 is the girls weekend so you will have to watch kids so I do not think that one will work. Do the 14th or 21st work for either of you? I want to make at least one video cast this month and a few posts about other rides. I would really like to do 5 mile. It is open and should be a great place to ride in the early spring.

So I work Saturdays and get off at 2:00 PM. If I have enought time in advance I can get someone to switch with me. Or we if you wanted to do a afternoon ride I could do that also. So with that being said I have Mondays off. I will always be game to ride then. In fact a week from today I am planning on a riding trip with some guys from work. My buddy Jason just bought a brand new RZR 4 seater that he just gotten past the break in period. I am not sure where we are planning on going but you both are welcome to come even though I know you have work and school....

Thanks for the invite Mondays are bad for me with work and class. Mike are you able to go this next Saturday? Sam is that enough time to switch? If not we will just go and do a review of the trail. Sam you should write a review of the new 4 seater razor and take some pictures that would make a really great post. Will you be taking your bike or your Rhino?

Yeah I figured Mondays would be hard...I will take some photos of the RZR 4 and do a small write up on it.

I wish I had a nice camera that would take quality pictures...I guess I will just have to use photoshop to make them look better.

What time are you trying to go next Saturday? I can email my team to see if anyone is up for switching!

Jared I also will need your help. Brad and I as you know have been working on building a bunch of stuff for the RZR 800. Well we have completed the Pre-Filter Top Spin and its for sale.

We would like to do a you tube video on how to install it and also to explain what it is and what it does.

I would then like to do a write up on it that also includes the Video. We then can first launch it on atvcowboy. We can basically use both our names in the procductions. I know nothing on how to produce a quality video....

Let me know what you think. I know you are super busy with work and finals

Yes I'm planning on 4 wheeling next Saturday.

Sam,

I will call you tonight so we can talk about the video. As for when we plan to go I was thinking in the morning maybe meet at my place or in American Fork around 9. Mike what works for you?

9 Sounds fine.

Mike how is that post coming?

Mike,

What would it take to get a site map up for the site?

Is there anyway we can change the forum so that the most recent comments are on the first page and not the last page? Also mike what did you think of the new Tutorial? Sam you can check it out on the Youtube channel

Jared I will call you tonight about the video if you have time.

Yep call me around 6:45 I have class till 6:30

Mike when can you get together so we can make the podcast?

How was riding? I have been trying to finish my kitchen cabinets which has been taking up all my time. With that being said Jared when is a good time to call you about the video?

Sam This evening after 8 or anytime after 5:30 tomorrow would be fine. Also how much did it cost to make the Pre- Filter? How many do you have? What price should we be selling it at?

If I bring some kids with me to give Nat a break I could probably come Thursday. Friday I'm going on an overnighter with the scouts and wont be back till Saturday afternoon. Saturday evening is Stake Conference Adult session.

Riding was great. We had a ton of fun. We were a little annoyed because there were signs all over the north side of 5 mile just out of the staging area. I'm not sure if they meant stay on the roads or dont ride at all, but we took them literally and didn't ride there. The map does say there is private property just north of the staging area and north of that is more Public land. I plan on calling the ranger to see what the deal is with those signs.

We ended up spending most of the day on the south side, which make for rougher trails, but still a lot of fun. We got a little rain and a little hail. Luckily not enough to make anything muddy because some of those trails were crazy steep. We almost managed to get lost which made it even more of an adventure. Hopefully we can pull some decent footage off of Jared's new GoPro.

I currently have 4 of them at my house. I am selling them for $186.00 on KSL and brad is selling them to me for $136.34. We both are making around $50. So he is making them for $86. I will try to call you tonight or tomorrow. I know you are super busy with finals so I have been waiting for them to get over. We are almost ready with the skid plates for the Polaris RZR and the AIR Filter replacement.