iCommerce what is it?

[Erik Sine]

Why Should I Upgrade?

There are two kinds of memberships. Board Patrons for individual sign shops, & Board Vendors for Suppliers / Distributors / Wholesalers / Media / Associations, or anyone who sells products & services to sign shops.

By upgrading your free membership you will be helping to support the Sign Syndicate develop helpful tutorials, build and update light sources testing for channel letters, sign cabinets and general lighting. As a thank you for supporting us you will have access to all tutorials and test results from our various board projects. We started out tested our testing in 2008, which consists of every major manufacturer of Neon & LED lamps continually updating them as new products get introduced. These tests help to make your buying decisions easier.The benefits of doing so are listed below: (You don't need a paypal account, any credit card can be used)

Membership Purchase Link

Board Patron

Board Patron $95 per year, $65 6 month - Status is only for individual sign shops, or sign shops who also do wholesale work for other sign shops. I will also use and separate at my own discretion. However, because of the Tutorial Section access, this membership is non-refundable.

You will have access into our Tutorial Section & Patrons Electric Sign Forum. The Tutorial section of this board holds all of the light comparison projects such as the industry renown Neon & LED "Great White Hope Project" and others. Sign Design Tutorials by Mike Burke, and other miscellaneous video tutorials. The Tutorials and articles are always growing and expanding.

Here is our current Tutorial List so far:

Light Projects

These are the current Light Projects that The Sign Syndicate Exclusively holds at present, The Great White Hope, Project Tighty Whitey, and The Red Light District. Over 50+ Different individual compartment testing of all major brand light products currently used on the market. GReat

Current Manufacturer List: Sloan, Permlight, Transco, Axiom LED, YYZ Systems, US LED, Ventex, EGL, Elite Lamp Technologies, Borealis, Aristo, CAO Group, AgiLight, Philips, JT LED, JS LED, GE, Sylvania, Electra LED, Eurocom, AA

For those who lurk but have not yet signed up, Erik did drop the subscription pricing. I know we all like to get our information free online, but a lot of time and resources have gone into the projects shared on here - and the information available is extremely valuable to those in the electric sign industry - so a starting price of $65 is very reasonable. If it helps you make even one project decision that saves you some headache and grief, it will have been worth it.

Some of you may well spend hundreds or thousands doing your owning testing and comparisons - which is commendable (but rare) - but the rest of you could arm yourselves with some very valuable information for a fraction of the cost of what it would take you to do these comparisons yourselves, and with a wider range of products than you'd likely include yourselves.

It's a privately run forum by a sign shop owner, so maybe it doesn't have the clout of other paid associations, it has its navigation quirks and personalities you'd prefer to not have to filter through - but the value of information gleaned goes far and beyond what you get from trade magazines. You can learn by lurking the public areas of the site, of course, but can benefit even more by participating (or at least supporting) in the more detailed areas that really are intended to help the industry as a whole.

-Marko, YYZ Systems

Video Tutorials

HV Probe Use Tutorial - How to use a HV Probe when serving neon, make sure your neon load on a transformer is correct. A lot of time when servicing someone else's work you might find that they didn't load the magnetic transformer correctly

Capacitance Tutorial - This is a tutorial on a basic comparison on Neon GTO cable products put our by various manufacturers and how they compare to one another. How capacitance differs in various solid conduits but most importantly what toll they can put on your transformers. Video demonstrations to neon transformers reactions to loads of neon filled lamps, Hg filled lamps, and heavy capacitive loads

Sign Design Tutorials

Tutorials written by Author and Sign Designer Mike Burke of "Inside Sign Design"

1. HOW-TO Design Channel Letters

2. HOW-TO Design Reverse Channel Letters

3. HOW-TO Design Open-Face Channel Letters

4. How-To Design Front and Back-Lit Channel Letters

5. HOW-TO Design Sign Cabinets

These are exclusive tutorial written by Mike Burke for The Sign Syndicate.

Sample Teaser 1 (HOW-TO Design Channel Letters)

Sample Teaser 2 (HOW-TO Design Reverse Channel Letters)

Sample Teaser 3 (HOW-TO Design Open-Face Channel Letters)

Added Benefits as a Board Patron

Sign companies will now have the added bonus to become listed in the Install & Service Map for easy finding . This directory & map can assist your company in obtaining sub-contract work from other sign companies across the country and further. You will also be the only members who can have graphics or links as signatures that will appear at the bottom in every post you make.

Signature example:

Install & Service Map

Free Board Patron membership? (Patron's Only)

Yes, individuals can get free yearly memberships by simply submitting a written article or tutorial that can be shared in the Tutorial Section of this board. It must be unique and fit into the following categories as a, Sign Fabrication Tutorial (example: channel letter fabrication), Marketing Tutorial (example: How to better market yourself to property managers), or a Sign Design Tutorial (example: How to better make... ). I know we have a lot of creative & skilled members that I'm sure would have something interesting & unique to share and at the same time you can benefit from others. The length of the membership depends on the content, PM me.

Tutorials we are currently looking for (3/11/10)

- How to make channel Letters by hand (No Automation) - documented by pictures or video in detail

Membership Purchase Link

Board Vendor

Board Vendor $350 per year, $250 6 month - Status is for Component Manufacturer's, Suppliers, Distributors, Industry Groups, Trade Magazine Staff & Sign Association. No longer can anyone in this category sign up for a Board Patron. However, because of the Tutorial Section access, this membership is non-refundable.

Board Vendors have their own Directory where they can promote their products & services in our Board Vendor List, also get customer feedback as well.

As a Vendor you are given a Affiliate banner located at the footer of this site for the membership duration, a three month rotating banner seen on all phases of this website except the front page and the ability to advertise and promote your companies products & services all across the board, a large horizontal banner that is rotated between Board Vendors in each weekly newsletter. Depending on the number of Board vendors participating in newsletter ads a possible second location will be opened

Newsletter Banner (1 year Membership Duration only)

The update is that we will now run a large horizontal banner from a (Yearly subscribed) Vendor each week in rotation with others, giving far more visibility to our Vendors each week in our weekly newsletters (7,500+ electric sign industry contacts) as seen below.

Banner Size 150 x 700 Horizontal

Board Vendor posts made in their directory, promoting or advertising their products and services will be shown at the bottom of the weekly newsletters under “NEW PRODUCTS & SPECIALS” as they come

Affiliate Banner (Membership Duration)

Rotating Banner (Three Months):

• You can start new threads about your product & service, promotion & announcement in the Board Vendors Forum
• You can only promote your product on all other forums in the form of a "reply" ONLY when a non-specific and suggestive product question is asked. Example, "What product should I use for building an outside sign?......."
• No longer will topic hijacking be permitted for product promotion on specific product topics. Example "What does someone thing of Product X, and what are your experiences with it?"
• No attacks on other Board Vendors

Right now with year memberships it is just about a $29 a month for Vendors ($350), & under $8 amonth for Patron's ($94). Both members can do a lot of self promoting either by being a vendor with product & service announcement in the Board Vendors forum or across the board. Board Patron by promoting their companies ability to install or fabricate signs for others by the service and install directory or by having graphical banners and links in their signatures (such as mine below)

Personally for what can be spent as a Patron, I spend more on dinner in one weekend.

To upgrade your current free membership use this link (You must be logged in)