Last Monday evening I took a ride to Carlsbad, a seaside town in northern San Diego County, to hang out with some guys from another riding club in that area. We sat around the firepit at this place called Cafe Elysa, and chatted the night away.
This club held their first annual poker run a few months ago, and I asked them how it went. They said the turn out wasn't as large as they had originally expected. They had counted on about 200 people, and instead about 50 participated.
They got the 200 figure after counting all the people who had committed to attending through a popular biker social site called Biker Or Not. They had publicized their poker run on that site, and attracted some 200 people RSVPing as "yes". But in the end, they only got 50 total people, and those all came from within their club plus their associated friends.
Well because this club counted on all 200 showing up, they advised this restaurant, which was providing the meals for the poker run, to expect 200-250 people. When they found out only 50 showed up, the restaurant got really pissed about it. The club had to fork over the money it earned from the poker run to pay for the extra food that the restaurant bought.
So while Biker Or Not still has a large user base of which to promote your events to, you can't rely on its users to actually show up when they say they will.
I'm not necessarily sure why that is.
I tend to believe that some people have been able to promote their event through Biker Or Not, and get a good turnout. I imagine it has more to do with how popular the event organizer is, as opposed to the event itself.
Biker Or Not is a singles site, not necessarily a social networking site, unless you want to think of dating as "social networking". At least, that's what 80% of its users use it for. It stands to reason that single bikers have different priorities than married bikers.
When it comes to taking joy rides through the countryside, it seems like the folks who put on the most miles, are the ones not looking for a date. If you're trying to find dedicated riders for your riding club, maybe that's your target demographic.
Though, I tend to think it's still good idea to advertise your poker run on Biker Ot Not; you just shouldn't use it to figure out how many meals to prepare.
But not to diss the people on Biker Or Not, I think if I was to find myself single, I'd probably spend more time there also. It just seems that there's a significant contrast in motorcycling habits between single bikers and married bikers.
