Last year, AirNav contacted me (as representative of my flying club) and
gave me a year to pony up some extremely high listing fee or get dropped
from their listing. Checking the fact that in the previous month only one
person had come to our club web site through the AirNav listing (versus
10-20 a day through Google) we declined to be listed.

For a flying club I suppose only "click-throughs" matter. FBO owners,
however, need to be looking at their listing from an exposure standpoint.

Well, flying clubs can look at their listing not only from the
perspective of a direct benefit to the club (getting exposure for
their club on a site with highly targeted GA interests, as opposed to
a general public search engine such as Google) but also from the
perspective of he benefit to their operation and to their members. If
AirNav helps their members operate their aircraft more efficiently,
increase flying hours and/or reduce operating costs, then it should
make sense for them to do their fair share to improve AirNav's chances
of being around to continue to provide that service.

Alas, not all view it that way, and some look at hits only.

In the case of Paul Tomblin, who defended his club's treasure chest by
declining the offer, that "extremely high listing fee" was less than
$2 per club member per year. If AirNav is not worth $2 per year to
his club members, then he did the right thing by refusing the
extremely high priced offer.

Paulo Santos
AirNav, LLC http://www.airnav.com/