Maybe it’s time for capitalism to take over! Eric, maybe you should launch a site that is superior and doesn’t glitch. I bet you could walk away with the business.
Funny that you mentioned that, because in 2019 the Russian fellow that had once owned Boat Quest-the biggest online competitor to YW called me to tell me that his ten year Non Compete had expired. Yeah, he once said he would never sell, but so much money was dangled at him, he sold it, and they promptly crashed it to kill off their competition. Anyway it had expired, his IT guy in India was still available, and could all be started “with the flip of a switch “. So he came to visit with me in Fort Pierce, and we discussed the possibility of restarting it. We could had offered more services than YW for only $200.00 a month vs YW $800.00 - UP Per month. I’ll be happy to give you his phone number if you like.
what we discovered was that hundreds , if not thousands of brokers who once were subscribers had either retired, died, or were swallowed up by Marine Max, Dennison, etc. I even called Judy Waldman up, because I thought for sure she would be interested, as she was working at Dennison because her overhead (mostly Yacht World) was so high. She was at a boat show and didn’t have time to talk. I called another guy who used to run Sunseeker Club of NY, who was a go getter but he was sick with Lyme disease (and has since passed).
Real quick, I realized I have no interest in this, and my friend said that “actually I’m enjoying dirt biking around the planet (and had his bike mounted on the back of his Toyota TRD to prove it) and he had me show him a couple of sailboats here. He bought a catamaran in Ct., and went sailing. I should mention that he still had many active sites that were geared to car dealers, so losing boats is no big deal in the scheme of things.
I enjoy my mountain biking and just yesterday told the wife how much more I enjoy it now that I’m not being constantly interrupted by phone calls out in the woods.
So, it CAN be done, but the math vs time required is no longer worth it. The sales people today seem to be happy not being hustlers.
I succeeded so well after dropping YW in 2008 solely because I already had a huge internet following due to my domain names. I discovered that 90% of my buyers had never even heard of YW, as they just typed in what they sought into their browser, and my name came up at the top. I had a site that answered every question they had, I answered the phone at 3am (because it was day time in Australia and New Zealand. I had plenty of happy customers as references who I happily gave them their phone numbers. I totally didn’t need Yacht World.Fk em.. I save a lot of money (didn’t have health insurance either, nor did I insure any of my boats. Had a 4788 stolen one morning, I tracked it down the same day, and made the thief a addition to my Rolodex under “Miami River boat yard owner with muy grande cajones”) without all that useless overhead.
Those buyers not only didn’t come inspect boats, they wired me their entire upper budget limit, which made ME a cash buyer who could close immediately. THAT dropped prices. Kept the paperwork in my business name til the moment they were loaded on the ship, which eliminated all the Customs requirements for reporting “port to port”movements for foreign owners. I wired them their leftovers afterwards. Only American guys active in the 70’s understand this is how it was done if you wish to stay alive.
Good decades, no boat shows since 1997. Yay Internet. Type “Blake Davis Yachts” and I still come up number one despite retiring in 2019.
