Some of the podcasts I listen to (non fly-fishing) utilize crowdfunding to pay the bills, and I'm fascinated by this as a way of supporting fly fishing businesses, in particular for monetizing "free" content like Youtube videos. I haven't produced a Youtube vid in quite a while, and to be honest the biggest reason is that I was getting very little in return. I have sold maybe 100 books from my Youtube vids in two years and booked one guide trip since 2009, plus some book sales through the shop which in all honesty are barely worth it (I make next to nothing selling the books wholesale to the shop). It was either spend two hours putting out a video I effectively made nothing on or spend the same amount of time tying 2dz flies or writing, which have produced a better rate of return.

This brings me to crowdfunding. Most of you have probably heard of Kickstarter, and while the idea of running a Kickstarter for capital investments is sort of interesting, I doubt it would work. There's another crowdfunding platform called Patreon which is REALLY interesting. Basically, people pledge a small amount for each "unit" of content produced. So let's say a video from my or Davie McPhail is worth $0.50 to you. You can make that pledge, then whoever you pledge to gets that amount every time they produce a video (or other creative work. An issue of FAOL could easily apply, if the site owners wanted to take that route).

Long story short: for those of you familiar with my videos, or Davie's, or any other creative labor pertaining to fly fishing, how seriously would you consider signing up for something like this? I currently have about 900 Youtube subscribers. If 1/10 was willing to throw down $0.50 on a video, that would all of a sudden make producing them a lot more worth it from a financial perspective.

Here's Patreon's intro vid: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wH-IDF809fQ.