Readers of PCBDaily – The Old Gang is Back!

Jason Koertge has an awesome vacation rental business in Panama City Beach that focuses on remarkable properties around the Pier Park area.  They range from 1 to 3 bedrooms, they’re clean, and amazing.  He can be found lurat PCBLP.com.

If you’ve been reading PCBDaily for a while, you probably remember a couple years ago when I sold PCBDaily to CYber SYtes.  You see, I had some grand plan that involved climbing the corporate ladder, at some point returning to school to get my graduate degree and just following where life took me.  Well, as life goes, the direction changed sporadically and somewhat unpredictably along the way.

Instead of climbing the corporate ladder, I accepted a position with CYber SYtes (who bought PCBDaily from me), and instead of going to graduate school, I decided to teach others how to do social media.  And of course, in the spirit of a true entrepreneur, working for someone else really began to wear on me.  So my wife and I started PCBLP.com, a vacation rental business, to build a more solid future for our kids.

So, that brings us to today.

After a year of explosive growth with PCBLP.com and almost exactly 2 years to the day, PCBDaily.com is back in the arms of it’s creator.  A part of me always resented the fact that that I sold it.  I know many of our readers certainly missed me.  But the last two years was necessary for me to be where I am and necessary for where the future of PCBDaily will be.

PCBDaily has always been the go to place for news and information specific to Panama City Beach and we want it to stay that way.  You’ve always been able to rely on us to find out what’s going on and keep tabs with the local current events.  We’re back, and we’re making plans for it to be even better!

But, I’m not alone.

I founded PCBDaily.com in 2006.  I ran it alone for three years but decided to instigate some growth in 2009 when I brought on board two very important assets.  With these assets, PCBDaily could have never instilled the value it now has today.  Each of them have been missing a part of their heart as the ownership of PCBDaily was held by CYber SYtes.

This second time around I have two partners in making the PCBDaily magic.  These two partners have always had as much passion for PCBDaily as I’ve had and offered not a moment’s hesitation when the opportunity of partnership came up.

Karen Smith

You probably know her.  Everyone knows her.  She’s the broker/owner of Beachy Beach Real Estate and her kind, fun-loving spirit, so generous she’ll literally give you everything she has and be thankful for the opportunity to do so is literally unforgettable.  She’s always had a passion for PCBDaily and she was one of our first paid advertisers.

She stuck with us from thick to thin and even stayed with it for the duration it was out of my hands.  She wrote for it when she could and she co-founded TheBeachShow with me in 2009.  She’s a real estate extraordinaire and has the awards to prove it.  And she’s so humble she’ll probably ask me to pull these glowing remarks down to subdue her blushing.

Now, she’s a partner in PCBDaily – part owner, equal contributor and 100% awesome.  You can expect regular episodes of TheBeachShow to come back and hear from her smiling face often about what’s happening in the real estate market.

Cebo Campbell

When I first hired Cebo to write for PCBDaily.com years ago, he was relatively new to the business community here, new to web development, but certainly not new to writing.  Having already been a published author, he certainly has taught me a thing or two.  He was, humorously, regularly dubbed my sidekick, of which a label did no justice for who/what he really was to me and PCBDaily.

Having grown to be not only my best friend (yes, Cebo, other than my wife, you are my BFF), he’s taught me about life, writing and work ethic.  While at first I was “mentoring” him on how to market, he’s far surpassed my skills and become a very high-paid talent to countless others around the country.  His skills are shown all over the place, and you’ll continue to see them as the future wears on.

His heart was always in PCBDaily and his passion was obvious in everything he wrote.  It really only made sense that he too was a partner in the new PCBDaily.  He’ll be writing about tourism, technology and current events.

What’s coming up.

PCBDaily has always been your source of news and information relating to real estate, growth and tourism in Panama City Beach, and it will continue to be so.  But, with that, we’re taking the reason for our being to a different level.  In years past, this was ran as a business – trying to generate revenue from ad sales.  Moving forward, there will be no drive to make money directly from ad sales.  In fact, we’re going to remove many of the ad spots, and won’t be taking any paid ads at all.

We want to provide quality information about the area and we hope that you’ll support us through our other businesses.

There will still be some ads.  Choice, non-competing businesses that want to trade some of their products or services will get in exchange the opportunity to advertise along with feature articles and Newsletter promotion.  But this will be kept at a minimum.

Plus, the newsletter will be redesigned and begin going back out weekly – I know a lot of you have asked for this.

We’d like to go back to having regular giveaways and contests and continue with community involvement.

We’re super stoked to have the team back together and to have PCBDaily in its rightful hands.  Tell us in the comments below what you’d like to see us do, moving forward!

 

Thanks to the Readers of PCBDaily

This holiday season we wanted to thank you for your continued support of PCBDaily over the years.  We’ve grown tremendously since we started blogging about Panama City Beach in September of 2006, and we couldn’t have done it without you.

This time last year, we were talking about the airport and the runway extension, offered some tasty suggestions for Thanksgiving dinner, and the elimination of the Y at Highway 79 and Front Beach Road.  Interestingly enough, in 2008 we talked about Black Friday deals (Target didn’t open until 6 am), a free movie at The Grande, Seahaven auction details, and an airport construction update video.  In 2007, we were talking about the TDC, condo sales being down, and mortgage rates hitting a six month low.

We have some exciting content planned for 2011 and tons of great ideas coming up.  Tell us some of the things you’d like to hear about in the comments below.

Weekend Events – Pier Opening, Circus, Steel Magnolias

Looking for Panama City Beach events?  Bookmark our Events section!

Sunny Indian Summer weather welcomes you to take part in historic openings at beach piers, check out a circus big top, scarecrows and a jazz festival-come on down!

Piers- Grand Opening

The city and county fishing piers will hold twin celebrations Friday to mark the official completion of both structures.

First head out to Bay Countyís M.B. Miller Pier at 2 p.m. There’ll be cake! (and a fishing contest) The fishing competition begins each Friday at 5 a.m. and ends at 5 p.m. on Sunday at both piers.

At Panama City Beach’s Russell-Fields Pier, beginning at 4 p.m., Scott Lindsey remembers Dan Russell and Elgin “Popeye” Fields Jr.  Hookd Pier Cafe hosts their grand opening – free food. Even more food courtesy Buffalo Wild Wings, Reggae Jís Island Grill and Back Porch Seafood & Oyster House- and live music.

If this isn’t enough fun- watch out for fireworks at BOTH piers-  8 o’clock Friday night!

Continue reading “Weekend Events – Pier Opening, Circus, Steel Magnolias”

Top 5 Trending Articles for Summer 2010

This was a crazy summer in a variety of ways in Panama City Beach.  With the summer tourism season being kicked off with a massive fire on Thomas Drive to our whole industry being devastated by a massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, our traffic exploded, our newsletter subscriptions went through the roof and we had some of the most record breaking trending articles we’ve ever seen.

  1. Continue reading “Top 5 Trending Articles for Summer 2010”

Should PCBDaily have an iPhone App?

We’ve been discussing developing an iPhone app for PCBDaily, and we’ve been trying to gauge an interest in it and determine what features you would like to see if we were to release one.

We’ve been tossing around a lot of fun ideas, but it really comes down to content and making it easy for you to have access to it.  Can I ask you to take 5 minutes and take this survey?

As an added bonus, we’re going to throw in a chance to win some tickets to the Little Shop of Horrors show being put on by the Kaleidoscope Theatre later this month.

So, hop on over, take the survey and be entered for a chance to win two tickets to the Little Shop of Horrors.

Click here to take the survey.

Here are the stipulations for the giveaway.

  • Each entrant can enter once and only once (we can verify this by ip AND cookies) and must use a valid first name and email address.
  • Contest begins when this post is published and ends on Friday August 13, 2010 at 12 noon CST.  We’ll do the drawing later that day.
  • We will be doing the drawing regardless of how many people enter.
  • There will be 1 winner total.
  • By entering you are opting in to receive future newsletters and emails from PCBDaily and CYber SYtes and you are opening yourself up to the greatest resource for news and information Panama City Beach has to offer.
  • If you are selected and you do not respond to our email notifying you of winning within 7 calendar days of the close of the contest, then we reserve the right to award the prize to another entrant.
  • This giveaway is open to anyone in the continental United States.  If you win, you will be solely responsible for making arrangements with CYber SYtes to redeem your prize.
  • Read full rules here.