AZ Vibe – The Ultimate Phoenix Entertainment Resource

One other bit of news today is that a new Ticketing website has been launched under the AZ Vibe umbrella offering after market (or Ticket Brokering) tickets to events not only in Phoenix but around North America as well.

You can get tickets to Vegas shows, Broadway shows, NFL Playoffs, concerts and more.

Here’s the URL in case you need it:

http://tickets.azvibe.com

Right now, this site still has TONS of BCS National Championship Game Tickets still available. However, since the game is officially sold out and demand is at an all time high ticket prices have sky rocketed.

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Now that 2010 is in the books, I thought it would be time to deliver a year-end wrap-up. We have exceeded all expectations for visitors across all our sites reaching 80,000 unique visitors a month. In the process, we reached maximum capacity on our previous servers forcing us to move to improved servers.

As you probably noticed during the month of December our sites (except for the AZ Vibe Coyotes site) was not very active in the publishing department across the board. As with all expansion comes growth and changes in all aspects of business. With AZ Vibe, I felt that I was spreading the operations a little thin.

I spent the month of December re-evaluating what has worked and didn’t work across the board as well as looking at where the site was at once the Christmas season started.

When I started this site on June 25 of 2008, it was a challenge to see if there are cultural events around town. Since then, the site underwent exponential growth with new opportunities to make an impact on the Greater Phoenix Area.

However, one of the challenges of being an Editor is knowing when to say ‘no’ to story ideas and story pitches. When going through the pitching process, trying to make an impact on the community has made me say ‘yes’ to numerous pitches when I should not have. As a result, the topics covered and the magnitude of the articles written or were to be written spiraled out of control.

What I decided during the downtime in December, is to re-focus the mission on the main site to the following categories:

Local Sports
Local/Cultural Events
Food/Wine
Entertainment

Any pitching of stories that don’t fall into these categories will no longer be accepted for publication on the main site.

HOWEVER….

I have decided to leverage the AZ Vibe social networking sites (Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Tumblr, and YouTube) for articles, news, and other items that don’t make the cut for the main site.

In regards to the other AZ Vibe sites, I personally have been looking for an ASU Sports and Arizona Diamondbacks beat writer for quite some time but have not been successful in finding talented and dedicated (key term here) writers for either of these beats. I always found either a talented writer or a dedicated writer but not both.

For now, we are going to stop posting new ASU Sports news and articles on our ASU Sports site. All ASU Sports articles from here on out, will be posted on our main site until a time where we can send a beat writer out on a regular basis. The AZ Vibe ASU Sports site will remain live for the time being.

Phoenix Coyotes/NHL/Hockey coverage on the AZ Vibe Coyotes site will remain unchanged. If you have noticed, a new site cosmetic was installed a few days ago. This is temporary and designed for improved readability and to make the site load as fast as possible. Once the NHL season ends, a new site cosmetic will be located and installed.

As you note from the ‘About Us’ section at the bottom of the main page (on the AZ Vibe Coyotes site), the mission of the site is to fill in the gaps in local coverage. That still stands today. However, I’m playing around with the little things that work and don’t work for the site and coverage in general.

I am also listening very closely to Phoenix Coyote fan/reader feedback about the site and have implemented changes accordingly. For example, the recent change of the site cosmetics for the remainder of the season and adding transcribed articles of interviews/conference calls is the direct result of fan/reader feedback. Your comments are always welcome may they be positive or negative.

I think that’s it.

As always, thanks for reading! I sincerely appreciate and am grateful for all of you who take the time out of your day to read this site.

Finally, please make sure you support our sponsors via banner ads and other promotions as that helps to keep the site running.

Aaron Wood
Owner/Editor/Grand Poobah
AZ Vibe

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We are proud to announce the launching of the AZ Vibe Business Directory!

Click here to go to the new AZ Vibe Business Directory!

We wanted to give small to large businesses the opportunity to get their companies noticed through our site as well as giving our readers the opportunities to connect with local businesses in the area! We thought a business directory would be perfect for that purpose!

As we have been growing over the years, we have found that there are tremendous companies, events and organizations in the Greater Phoenix Area that we just may not get to cover right away. We want to give those businesses the opportunity to get listed here and have our readers connect with you!

Here’s how the site will work. The minimum submission cost is only $20. You will be listed for one calendar year, you will have the opportunity to describe your business in detail, and list three key links/URL’s to the important sections of your website. For small businesses and businesses just getting started, a submission in our directory will also help in building good inbound links to your site which helps in your search engine rankings.

The $20 fee will guarantee a listing in the directory. However, the more you pay, the higher and more visible your listings will be in the directory.

The $20 fee will be offered for a limited time only so act now before prices go up!!!

If you are a registered charitable organization, please contact us via this link and we can make arrangements to get your organization and/or event listed at no charge!

Submissions we do not accept at this time are political or pornographic related.

If you have any questions, comments or concerns please contact via the e-mail in this page or just leave a comment on this article!

Click here to go to the new AZ Vibe Business Directory!

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Due to increased demand on our main AZ Vibe Twitter page we have started up a separate Twitter account for our sports coverage.  Starting tonight at 6PM we will be posting all sports related news, information, articles and other goodies on @azvibesports.  All Coyotes, D-Backs, Suns, ASU, Rattlers, and anything else we can dig up will be posted here.

Also, make sure you visit the other sections of our site for your sports needs:

AZ Vibe Coyotes Page – For all your Phoenix Coyotes/NHL/Hockey coverage

AZ Vibe ASU Sports Page – For all your ASU Sports coverage

…and coming soon…

Our AZ Vibe Arizona Diamondbacks page.

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We had a family emergency this past week so we had to shut our offices down for the week. We’re back up and running now so get ready for a bunch of articles!

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We just installed an upgrade on our AZ Vibe Coyotes site so you can read the articles here on your Blackberry, iPhone, or whatever mobile phone you use.

Just enter the URL (http://www.azvibe.com as normal and you will be re directed to our mobile site!

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We’ve been listening to all your feedback about AZ Vibe and put it into the new version of the site that you see today!  We’re still working out some of the bugs in the site (small ones at that).  However, we wanted to roll this out to you today!

Let us know what you think!

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I received an e-mail in my inbox this morning from a friend that was very touching.  I’ll let the letter speak for itself and let you know that the Networking benefit is this Thursday August 13th at Noon.  Address is below.  Please help if you are in the neighborhood.

I’m writing this e-mail in the hopes to help a fellow business owner in the East Valley.
I feel that to help get the economy going, we all need to support our local businesses and visit/use their services as much as you are able.
The following is an e-mail i received from a friend of mine, Jim Davis who owns Bobbies Flowers in Tempe, after he visited a local restaurant and talked with the owner. Please take some time to read it and if you can, stop by and enjoy some great food also!
As most of you know I put on a golf tourney every year and I hit up local businesses for donations. We try to raise money for two great organizations. Last week I stopped in to a restaurant in my neighborhood called “Rock-N-Roll Fingers” located at 937 E. Broadway in Tempe. I have eaten there many times (they have the best fingers I have ever tasted) but have never had the chance to talk with the owner. When I walked in to the restaurant on Thursday last week I was greeted by the owner and his son. I told him why I was there, to see if he could donate anything to my golf tourney. When he saw the flier with the kids that benefit from our tourney he started to get very emotional. He started showing me pictures and charities that he has supported for the past few years since he has been in Tempe. I was very impressed with all that he has given to our community since he has started his business. He also told me that this has been the worst summer and that he even had to shut the doors for a few weeks this summer because he couldn’t afford to stay open. He had just re-opened last Monday and was going to give it one more try before he would shut the doors forever. After we talked for more than 30 minutes I wished him well and told him that I would do all I can to help bring some people to his place. I never pressed him during our conversation to donate to our tourney because I knew he was hurting for business. As I was getting ready to walk out he stopped me and said wait just a minute. He went into the back and came out with two business cards that had “Free Chicken Finger Plate” written on the back. As he gave them to me, he was almost tearing up, he said I need to support you and the kids your golf tourney helps.
I thanked him and left with two free chicken plates to give away at our tourney and I learned what a giving and caring family business this was. It is my goal and wish to help him be successful and you can help. Any business that is willing to continue to give to our community even in these very tough times, is and will get my business. Help me support one of our local neighborhood businesses, They really need our Help!!!

Here is the address

Rock-N-Roll Fingers
Southeast corner Rural & Broadway
Tempe, AZ. 85282
Ph # 480-377-9241

Please forward this e-mail, put on facebook, twitter, whatevere you can do to help!
Thank You so much for your time!

[mappress]

Popularity: 2% [?]

Since we’ve been getting more and more Phoenix Coyotes stories/topics to report on we have just rolled out a dedicated site for all Phoenix Coyotes news and events.  We will continue to post some Coyotes news here from time to time.

For the most part, all Coyotes related news will be posted here moving forward:

http://coyotes.azvibe.com

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In the middle of upgrading our site software we decided to make a cosmetic upgrade to the website as well.  As you can see the site loads faster and is easier to read.  We’re going to be rolling out some new features in the coming days as well as catching up on all of our news.

Let us know what you think of the new cosmetics!

We also are going to be leveraging our MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter Accounts more as we get tons of information, freebies, contests and other deals all the time.  Links to these pages are on the far right hand column under ‘Manditory Links’.

In case you are wondering, the main photos at the top of the page have eight different themes to them. They are as follows:

Theme #1 – Sports Logos from around town – We are planning, in the coming months to offer expanded coverage of Phoenix Area sports teams.

Theme #2 – Barrett-Jackson Auction 2009

Theme #3 – Tempe Music Festival 2009

Theme #4 – Westgate City Center, Glendale

Theme #5 – ASU/U of A Hockey Game

Theme #6 – Scottsdale Culinary Festival

Theme #7 – Shot of the Atomic Punks from the Marquee Theater in Tempe

Theme #8 – A sample of the goings on at the First Friday Art Walk – Roosevelt Row

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As you have probably noticed I’ve been putting up ads and will be adding more as the week progresses.

The Cool Ticketmaster Widget in the right hand column updates automatically with events coming up in the next 7 to 10 days around the Phoenix area.  If you see a Ticketmaster event  you like, click it and it will take you to the purchase page.  I’m trying to set something up for Live Nation shows as well so stay tuned….

We’re also in the process of interviewing writers for various departmental openings we have needs for.  so expect many and varied new articles, reviews, and whatnot from some great writers in the coming weeks.

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Apologies for the delays in posts…had to fix a few bugs related to the server/domain move.

Anyways….here come the posts….

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After some great suggestions by some really cool people, I’m changing the name of the domain tonight so update your bookmarks!

The new site will be

http://www.azvibe.com

I’m moving the domain tonight so stay tuned. Everything should be done by tomorrow….

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I know I promised two more events for Tuesday but two of the four events didn’t pan out.  I was going to post an event for another Salsa night but couldn’t confirm if it was a one time deal or a re-ocurring event.  The other event was free bartending lessons but it smelled like a sales ploy to sign up for their classes.

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I’ve got four pretty unique and different things to post for tomorrow (don’t worry all are ongoing events every Tuesday) but I need to make some calls to get clarifications (mostly to make sure they are actually going on) for the events before I post them so hang in there until later today…

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