If you have a business has a website that you would like to increase traffic to, then A Baseline View would like to hear from you. For a once a year advertising fee, you can have a spot on the most popular Southern Illinois High School Basketball Web Publication. ABOUT ABV - My name is Jack Bullock and I have a journalist background as I received a B.S. degree in Mass Communications from Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville in 1991. After a few stints covering sports for local newspapers and in radio, I was bored with and tired of the everyday grind. I longed for the opportunity to go out on my own with my own publication. Any small business owner who is skilled at his or her trade can relate to that statement. My first true love in sports was high school basketball. This love affair continues as we speak. I began printing a magazine about high school basketball (Sports Photos Magazine) in the winter of 1998-99 covering high school basketball. I learned a lot during this growing period. The most important fact I learned was that there was only one cure for the headaches of printing costs and circulation of the printed word. The Internet!!! The "Net" was still in its infancy so logically I went with printing at that time. But ABV (A Baseline View was my weekly newsletter in 1999-2000) hit the World Wide Web during the 2001-2002 season. The popularity of this website has grown faster than I ever expected. I am now in my 14th season covering high school hoops and my 11th Annual ABV Boy's High School Basketball Preview that was posted on November 21st, 2011 was once again a big success. It featured over 100 high school basketball teams. The ABV archives for 2010-11 contained 40 basketball game summaries and tournament previews. I am well on my way to matching that number in 2011-12. I personally saw all or part of over 80 games (counting tournaments) in 2010-11. If you have been to many games you have probably at one time or another saw me sitting on the baseline of the basketball court shooting photos, keeping track of stats and viewing the games. In my journalistic world, it has always been "A Baseline View." THE "SO-CALLED" COMPETITION - Companies that produce basketball programs for tournaments and sell advertising for the printing do NOTHING to help promote high school sports and the fine players and coaches involved. ABV promotes these participants in a way that no publication can. By reaching an unlimited audience on the World Wide Web!!! Programs distributed at ballgames are picked up, looked at and thrown under the bleachers for the janitors to sweep up after the games. Your advertising dollars get swept away right along with the paper and ink. An Ad on ABV cannot be pitched on the floor. The majority of basketball fans that view the pages on ABV are from the local high schools. The "Kids Dig ABV." There is no doubt about this. Basketball fans prefer reading stories and looking at photos, rankings, schedules, scores and standings far more than seeing a program with a roster and a team photo. There is no real comparison between what ABV offers to the fans and advertisers and that of companies printing these books. Unlike program print companies that will call your office and beg you for money every time your team advances in a tournament, an Ad on ABV is a one-time fee per year. Your Ad is good for 365 days! As for other websites, none of them stack up to what I offer on my web publication. If you need additional proof of my impact on the high school basketball scene in the southern part of the state, type "A Baseline View" into your favorite search engine. In fact you can type in nearly all of the conference names in my coverage area into a search engine and my website will be on the first page of the search. The National Trail Conference, Midland Trail Conference, Egyptian Illini Conference, Cahokia (Kaskaskia) Conference, Cahokia (Mississippi) Conference, South Egyptian Conference, Greater Egyptian Conference, Black Diamond Conference East Division, Black Diamond Conference West Division, etc. Google, Yahoo, MSN, Yahoo, Ask. It doesn't matter your search engine preference. ABV shows up EVERYWHERE!!! THE CLOSE - If you as a business owner or advertiser have any questions about my site, feel free to call me or contact me by email. As for my friends in the coaching fraternity, feel free to contact any of the head coaches. They all know who I am and what I do. In fact I have 10 letters of recommendation from southern Illinois coaches posted on my site. Here is a link to those letters. Click on this link to view Coach Recommendations. ABV would love to have your local or regional business as a part of the advertising family. An Ad on my site with a link will guarantee traffic to your website. The fee I charge is very small when you take into consideration the amount of days you are on my site and the amount of traffic that will see your business ad. All ads are links to your website. I have a few banner ads right now but I would like to add a few more. The money that I take in from advertising helps me offset my costs to travel to the games and the equipment that I use. Your advertising dollars allow me to continue to give these kids what they deserve. A quality basketball web publication that they can access. I have a full-time job of which I work a full 40 hours a week and I also run this website in which it takes a lot of work. I have sacrificed a lot of hours over the years because of one thing – my love of this game and the kids who play it. This website isn’t about the fans or the coaches or the schools themselves. It is about the children who work hard and develop into players and good citizens. This is the reason that A Baseline View is still going strong. Click on this link for Ad Rates. Click on this link to view ABV March 2011 Web Stats. If you are interested in becoming part of the ABV world, send me an email at the link above. You can also call or text me at (618) 731-6324.