The purpose of our Website was lend credibility to our Adventure, begin branding the adventure, provide a public forum for thanking and bringing awareness to our sponsors and finally to share our adventures with anyone who was interested.

After I had the Website completed I found it much easier to secure sponsorship and media interest. If I was on the phone with a prospective sponsor I would say, "our Website covers exactly what we are doing and why- it also lists a number of our current sponsors." I believe having well known sponsors on our site was helpful in the decision making process for prosepective sponsors.

An added benefit is that we had email addresses with our sites domain name on it. For example, if you were biking across the country you may purchase www.rideacrossamerica.net or if you were hiking through Patagonia you may select www.patagoniahike.com. Then you can create your email addresses [email protected] or [email protected]. This makes it easy for your sponsors and your audience to remember how to contact you and go back to the Web to read trip reports and view pictures.

Typically you can buy a domain name for a year for $30 or less. Many companies offer hosting and Website templates which are easy to modify as well as technical support. I am sold on www.allwebco.com. This is where I bought my template. If you get stuck send me an email and I'll try to help.

Some suggestions for creating the site is to provide a powerful homepage that your audience where your audience will land. Summarize briefly what you are doing and why, also play up the sponsors because they are the ones who making this possible. Some categories for the navigation on your site might include:

• Overview - Discussed above
• The Adventure - Discuss your adventure in more detail, offer a downloadable map of your route, link to other sites.
• Sponsors - Gratefully acknowledge those who are making this possible. It is a good idea to have logos from each of your sponsors here. It creates confidence and shows that you are supported by the "big boys" in the industry.
• Reports - This section can be reports from the field while you are on your adventure as well as pictures. If you have Internet access while on your trip you can use a variety of free tools to upload your photos at a library, community center or Internet Cafe. Use caution with the trip reports, we spent way too much time writing these and often had to take an extra day off to catch up. PocketMail is an excellent tool for recording a journal and writing emails while you are outside. You can download and send emails from any payphone and the gadget is very light, we used it daily. If you use this tool on your adventure for your trip reports you will need someone at home to post your reports.
• Thank You - In this section you may choose to publically thank those who helped you before, during and after your adventure.
• About Us - Describes who you are, why you are crazy enough to do what you do and has a photo of you.

Again, if you have any questions about any of this please feel free to contact me.