We are planning two major changes that will affect new Hotspot Providers: 1. We plan to do first-line customer support centrally. This is so that we can provide a consistent service to all Skryove end-users, while at the same time taking off the load from the Hotspot Provider. This support will be limited to telephonic support related to end-user problems. If we cannot help the user, we will contact the Hotspot Provider to check the status of the Hotspot. 2. We plan to implement different revenue-share models for Hotspot Providers. We will have two common models on our website: a) Sign up as an ordinary Skyrover (Hotspot Provider), and get 50% revenue share. If you plan to only run a single hotspot for your coffee shop or to share with a few neighbours, you’ll qualify for this. b) If you plan to install Skyrove at lots of different locations, you can also become a Skyrove Reseller. You might be running an IT company or have a passion for technology and entrepreneurship. You can get between 50% and 70% revenues, on a sliding scale based on total revenues. We also plan to provide more documentation, training, etc in return for a commitment to upholding certain minimum Skyrove standards and to keep setting up new Skyrove hotspots. Skyrove resellers will also have an opportunity to provide a service to ordinary Skyrovers, and we are thinking of linking up ordinary Skyrovers with Skyrove Resellers. For example, we could promote Skyrove resellers on our website, and if someone wants to start their own hotspot, they can choose to get a Skyrove Hotspot-to-Go or to use the services of a Skyrove Reseller to come and install at their location. Currently, we have not finalised all the details, and therefore would like to ask you for any feedback on how best we should implement this. We have only one goal with the new models: To get more Skyrove hotspots out there! We are offering a free Skyrove router to the best feedback we receive, positive or negative. Please email your feedback to henk(at)skyrove(dot)com or leave a comment on this blog.

I mentioned last year, and more recently in a podcast on the Amplitude Show, that we’ve been looking at ways to implement advertising on our Welcome page.

The bad news is that we haven’t really figured out how to do this properly, yet. The good news is that we realised that sometimes the best way to figure something out, is by doing it!

So without further adieu, we are introducing a pilot advertising campaign for Travelstart, a discount airfare booking site, on our Welcome page. We thought that this would be the best product to promote, seeing as most Skyrovers are visitors to South Africa, and may have the need to get around.

The point of this campaign is to first try and determine whether there’s any value in having advertising on the Skyrove Welcome page, or whether this is merely an annoyance to customers, before we develop a more robust product in which Skyrove Providers can partake.

And, of course, to get feedback from Skyrover Providers!

I’m happy to announce that we’ve launched a Skyrove Support number! +27 (021) 4488843 We plan to progressively give more 1st line customer support to Skyrovers over the coming months.

Skyrove will start to directly support Skyrovers with forgotten passwords or who have account or purchasing queries who would normally have been referred to us only after speaking to the Hotspot Provider, thus causing extra inconvenience for the end-user.

In addition, Skyrove will also give telephone support to users who are having trouble connecting to the network due to any problems on their computers, such as Wi-Fi cards not being on and static IP addresses or proxies being set.

If we determine that the problem is with the hotspot itself, we will then contact tech support for that particular hotspot.

As always, we welcome your feedback!

Henk