1. A home page plus a driving directions / contact information page (including links to your website) on our website.
2. Your home page searchable by geographic location, brands you carry, types of items you sell, and articles you contribute.
3. Your shop will be listed as a featured shop on our start page on a rotating basis.
4. Opportunity to list 2 new featured products on your home page each month.
5. And, of course, increased high quality traffic to your site.

Policies:

1. We will limit member shops to no more than 2 dozen full service kayak shops, with as many as a dozen specialty shops (paddles only, kayak kits, etc.) in addition. We believe this is essential to promoting loyalty and maintaining a familiar & comfortable feel to the website. Kayak outfitters providing trips will be listed separately.
2. Although we own a kayak shop that will be a member of KayakShops.com, our shop will not receive any preferential treatment in terms of listings or prominence on this site.
3. We will honor your investment in this site by providing geographic exclusivity -- we will not list another kayak shop located within 100 miles of your shop.
4. Articles submitted to us will become permanent on this website. However, you retain copyright rights and may publish the article elsewhere. (We, of course, will not use the article elsewhere without your permission).
5. Members not satisfied with Kayakshops.com after 6 months can request and receive a refund of 50% of any membership fees paid. (The other 50% will have already been committed to advertising).
6. Our goal is to make this website a collective and cooperative effort. Member input is welcome and appreciated. We aim to be as responsive as possible.

Strategies

A website is only as good as the traffic it generates. To that end, we will generate traffic to www.kayakshops.com and to your site through the following means:

1. Search engine rankings -- we're pretty savvy in terms of getting good search engine ratings. (One of our sites is ranked number 5 on Google under "sea kayaks." Another site is ranked number 1 on Google under "kayak tours Maine"). We'll work hard to get good rankings for this site.
2. Pay per click listings such as those provided by Google and Overture. A sizeable portion of your annual membership will be used for these services -- which will bring additional traffic to the site.
3. Link exchanges: We aim to get linked on as many paddling sites as possible. Please link to us!

Details:

1. The annual membership fee for charter members is $50.00. The fee is $30.00 if your provide one article.
2. Fees can be paid by check (made out to Water Walker) or by credit card.

For more information, please contact me ray@kayakshops.com