Crowdfunding for fly fishing content creators?

[Longs for Cutts]

So basically you're saying you don't value what people on the Internet do enough to help them pay for it. Good to know.

If you re-read this thread, you will notice that in addition to trying to figure out ways to monetize the videos that I put out rather than just doing it out of the goodness of my heart, I was also speaking in a general sense. Everyone else who replied understood that, which is why this thread turned into a discussion of ways to help FAOL pay for itself. Your reply was actually a good illustration of why many people think FAOL needs to do something different with its issues. If you actually paid attention to them, you'd notice I haven't actually written for this site and as such was making a general suggestion as to how I thought they might derive more revenue from it, not speaking of myself at all.

[Kytroutbum]

I think he Walter, is referring to his postings on YouTube-which are excellent. Spending my summers working in the Shoshone,over the past twenty years, I 've seen many good shops go under. The tourists who will pay $300.00 a night the absentee landlords, economic conditions of the area make property far more expensive than any income that can be derived from most business. Many people who were born and raised in the greater YNP are finding that they can't afford to start out living in their own hometown. What he is saying is reality out there!

[jszymczyk]

"So basically you're saying you don't value what people on the Internet do enough to help them pay for it." If you want people to pay you for what you put on the internet, open a pay-for-subscription site! If you have content which is WORTH PAYING FOR, people will pay for it... it's called a free market. Maybe put short trailers of your videos on the net and only sell the full versions. There are tons and tons of that business model all over the internet. If you don't want to do it for free, and your stuff is that good, people will pay for it. You are correct- I'm not going to DIRECTLY pay to read a fishing site or watch a fishing video on the internet. I have donated to a few sites which had content I found exceptionally valuable to me... but those sites did not make it a requirement. There is SO MUCH "free" content available that anything I'd pay for would have to be unavailable otherwise... and fly fishing ain't it.

Yes, reality SUCKS SOMETIMES! I don't live in the hometown in which I was raised. I wish I did. It is where my love of the outdoors began. There is no longer much of a way to make a living with my talents and skills there. We all sacrifice, don't we?

Me, or ten-thousand of me, paying for fishing videos on the internet are not going to make property values around Yellowstone affordable... I also can not afford to live where I WANT to live. Damn few people make a lucrative existence in the fly fishing "industry"... Not saying you can't or won't or shouldn't. Starting from the dirt up though, you need to be something special for sure.

I don't understand your perspective... you want to live in an area with a huge tourist economy, make your living by essentially having tourists pay you for your services, but you don't want to deal with the effects of a tourist economy. Yellowstone is not the center of the universe. I've not been and I'm not going.

[Ed_D]

YouTube has options to "monetize" your videos. If you have 100 viewers, that won't amount to much. If your videos are desirable and get 100.00 views, then it does add up. It might be worthwhile for you. Some companies who provide content to TV &/or videos are doing this. TV series can be found on YouTube, they appear to be offered by the companies owning the TV shows or rights to the TV shows (e.g. Acorn Media).

Regards,
Ed

[Byron haugh]

Walter,
You are a very accomplished tier. Your degrees have honed your writing skills.
Your guiding experience demonstrates your fishing and customer skills.
I think you will make it in the field.
I hope you can arrange to do some winter-time "shows" at fly fishing clubs. It doesn't really pay (other than expenses), but it does build a following for articles, books, videos, etc.

If you do appear at shows, Parks Fly Shop should compensate you as you would also promote their shop/guide service for the next season.

[NJTroutbum]

It is a tough business...sure as heck is. I tied commercially through much of the 90's....filling custom orders online. $2-300 a month through most of the year. Not enough to live off of, but I was active duty at the time. So it just ate up my fishing time. Debated for many years about trying a shop in central PA for awhile. But with a family it just ain't in the cards the way the market is. If you can find your niche and make it work, my hats off to you. I would certainly be envious. These days Parkinson's would never let me tie commercially. Life is what it is. Thankfully I have a career that still supports my fishing.

[The Chronicler]

Sadly it's an old, old story. 40+ years ago I came to Montana, worked two jobs, my wife worked and somehow we made it when many others that came around the same time did not. The only time I ever made a living from fly fishing was the year that I worked at Dan Baileys. Today it is even more difficult. The fly fishing world has changed, the way we get information has changed, if I want to know about something I can find it, for free, on the Internet. I survived in Montana for the first few years by working a jobs that I really did not enjoy until I ultimately found one job that would pay the bills, but even then my wife continued to work. Between us we made an adequate wage that allowed us to enjoy living in Montana. I wish you well in your endeavor to find something that will allow you to fulfill your dream.

[Brian Moffitt]

Walter,

As others have posted it's really tough to make a living on the internet if you aren't going big. Free content is simply too plentiful and often it's of amazing quality. On another board there was a discussion about the F3T and how unhappy several posters were with this years' line-up. Overall the assessment was the films were of poor production quality, generally uninteresting, and overall not worth the price of admission. I haven't been recently, but I felt much the same way when I went. More than half of everything shown was an extended trailer for a lengthier film and only a few selections were "feature length". I have a hard time justifying attending when most of the content I could have seen online for free. Given Orvis now has a "Fly Fishing Theater" site, it's pretty easy to get good, high quality content and the cost is zero.

All this is to say if you are going to monetize your internet content you have to be exceptional and provide real value. Patreon and similar sites are great, but to make anything off it you'll need to put out a lot of content day to day as you are only paid when your content goes live. Once live if it's watched 10 Million times and you only have 1000 Patron's you'll only get the Patron donation 1000 times, so that means lots of content. Several artists (musical) I follow have begun using Patreon and they are putting out content 1-2 times per week in some cases just so they can make a living off it. In other cases the web presence leads to actual paying work and I believe in some cases that was the intention all along. YouTube and similar sites provide the exposure which leads to paying work. This being said, everyone I know who works in the fly fishing industry says that nobody is going to get rich doing so and perhaps that needs to be modified to "nobody will make a living". Most of the guys I know who guide during the summer have full-time paying gigs during the non-summer months (in many cases teaching so they have the summers off). It may be that if you want to live near Yellowstone your only option is to find a paying gig which doesn't involve fly fishing.

I wish you the best.

Brian

[The Chronicler]

Well said Brian.