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Local Dot Com success story

Even creator Rick Godwin didn't expect Snowboard.com to grow this big, this fast When Snowboard.

Even creator Rick Godwin didn't expect Snowboard.com to grow this big, this fast

When Snowboard.com went online in November of 2000, Web designer Rick Godwin had a not-so-simple plan - to provide an online community for snowboarders and by snowboarders; a unique spot where the snowboard faithful can interact with other true believers from around the globe.

In Godwin's own words, "I wanted to create a cool place for snowboarders to go and get psyched about snowboarding. There are not a lot of places out there to meet up with other members of the snowboard community - most of the sites are either stores or news sites, while this is based on the riders themselves. There isn't another site out there like it."

Although he has received hundreds of offers for the domain name since he registered it in 1996, Godwin, an avid snowboarder, had a very clear concept of the online snowboard community he wanted to create. On his side, Godwin had the technical know-how, enough seed-money to turn his Emerald Estates house into one big high-speed Web server, and the sincere belief that if he built it, the snowboarders would come.

It really didn't take that long.

In five short months, Snowboard.com has enlisted more than 80,000 registered members from around the globe. The site averages 10,000 visitors a day, and 300,000 visitors a month to make it the most visited snowboard site on the Web by a wide margin. More than 10 gigabytes of information is downloaded from the site every day from a library of more than 2,000 pictures and 200 video clips - more than 15,000 pages of data all told, the majority of which was supplied by site members.

"It's become a living, breathing thing. It has its own life. People can post anything. Pictures of them snowboarding. Pictures of their dogs. Videos of a trick they learned. Stories. Poems. It's definitely free speech orientated - we don't edit anything unless it's blatant nudity or something."

Everything that is posted by members can be viewed by other members and rated on a scale of one to five. This ensures that the best stuff always winds up on the top of the list. New pages are viewed separately and won't be ranked until enough people have appraised their value. Some of the photos at the top of the list have been viewed and rated by more than 3,000 registered users.

And the site is growing bigger every day - that means more pictures, more videos, more poems, more articles, more personals, more classifieds, and, most importantly, more members. At its current growth rate, it's not inconceivable that the number of Snowboard.com users could triple by the time the site is a year old.

"I haven't advertised at all, but this thing is definitely accelerating," says Godwin. "Most of it's probably by word of mouth, people telling their buddies about it. Every member gets a Snowboard.com e-mail address, so that attracts a lot of attention. Some people come across it while they're surfing, or type in the address to see what comes up."

Because of features within the site that allow snowboarders to hook up for carpooling and riding, mountain resorts have started to realize the potential benefits of supporting Snowboard.com. Bear Valley Resort has already named it's terrain park after the Web site and has hosted a Snowboard.com-sponsored halfpipe competition. Both Bear Valley and Mountain High Resort (both in California) have "Snowboard.com: The Community" banners around their terrain parks.

Although Godwin hasn't had any problem attracting snowboarders, attracting advertisers to help cover the costs of running the site is proving to be a bit of a challenge.

"Snowboard companies are afraid of the Web - you tell them you're from a Web site, and they start running," Godwin says. Retailers are afraid of snowboard companies selling direct to customers, and snowboard companies aren't convinced that their target audience is computer literate enough to find their ads online. Even though Godwin offers to host the ads for free and only charge advertisers based on the amount of traffic that is redirected to their own Web sites, almost nobody was biting.

The few retailers that have advertised with Snowboard.com have had thousands of responses to their ads, says Godwin, who tracks all the traffic coming in and going out. Unfortunately, these advertisers aren't enough to sustain the site much less make Godwin a dot-com billionaire at age 31.

The investment to date has been about $300,000, most of which Godwin subsidized with other Internet projects. It took a dozen Telus workers three weeks to hook up his computer centre in Emerald with fibre optic cable, which is hooked directly to the backbone of Telus' high speed capability.

"I probably have the highest bandwith in the Sea to Sky corridor," Godwin says, "but I'm driving a five hundred dollar car."

What Snowboard.com needs is one or two mainstream sponsors, like a Mountain Dew or a car company, says Godwin. The average age of Snowboard.com members is 19, and 80 per cent of users are male. Eighty-five per cent of members live in the U.S., five per cent in Canada, and the remaining 10 per cent are spread around the globe.

"I have to believe that a lot of companies would be interested in this kind of demographic," says Godwin. "In the long run, this site has to become self-supporting. It's already by far the busiest snowboard Web site in the world, it's already the biggest community of its kind in the world, and I'd like to see it stay that way."

Inside Snowboard.com

To get access to all the features of Snowboard.com, you have to become a member of The Community. It's free, there aren't a lot of personal questions to answer, and every member gets a free 10 megabyte online e-mail account that can be accessed around the clock from anywhere in the world - that's five times larger than a Hotmail account, and twice the size of the service offered by Yahoo. You also get a cool address - i.e. john_doe@snowboard.com .

Other member sections include Art, Articles, Classifieds, Contests, Forums, Free Stuff, Games, Humor, Photos, Poetry, Polls, Short Films, Short Stories, Tricks, VideoClips and Videos. All of the content is provided by members, and ranked by other members.

You can also find the most comprehensive collections of links to snowboard manufacturers, resorts, camps and heliboarding companies anywhere on the Web, says Godwin.

One of the biggest and best resources, however, are the other members. One of the uses for The Community is to link riders with other riders through the members section to arrange car pools, trade information, and to show one another around their resorts.

"People are using this site to link up with locals when they're on vacation, to get a bit of local knowledge of the mountains they're visiting for the first time," says Godwin. "That was one of the selling points when I was putting the site together, and it's cool to see that the community concept is working at this level. Based on the feedback I'm getting, people are riding more and getting more and more into the sport."

Members don't just link up for riding - the online personal ad section is one of the more active sections of the Web site, providing a forum for members 19 and older to find someone with something in common - namely snowboarding.

Godwin has a few additions planned for the site. The first is a comprehensive list of retailers in every snowboard community around the world - "mom and pop" stores. Retailers will be able to get a free Web site, or a link to their site. If all goes well, Godwin hopes to collect commission from the number of Snowboard.com users who access their sites.

He is also working on a database of pro riders for members, and has set aside user names for most of the pros if they want to participate in online forums, answer fan mail, or chat with their fans from around the world.

It would take a week to even visit all of the different sections of the site, and months to sift through all of the member information. Because new pictures, videos, and creative work is submitted every day, it's a different site almost every time you log on.

"People tend to spend a lot of time at the site," says Godwin. "It's addictive. Sometimes I get sucked in and then the next thing I know it's three in the morning."

Once a sponsor steps up, Godwin plans on building the same kind of community with the same kind of content for freeskiers. He has already reserved the Freeskiing.com domain name. And no, it isn't for sale either.