Bud ,I don't know what size your audience is but your content ( all topics ) is of interest and value to a wide market. That market will pay to be able to access your content. I designed a platform ROCIT ( return on content information technology)specifically for NASCAR that would allow fan to be able to become sponsors of teams and in return for a $1 a day they get inside access and communications from their fav. driver and team via their own prefered social media platform. The funds raised would enable a driver to be able to start his /her own team. There are other platforms doing similar things <https://legionm.com/overview> Even a simple Go Fund Me campaign will raise $ for causes that fans are interested in. Think about a online process where millions of people like us can stroll thru your library of topics and, projects, photos etc . and also be able to sit and listen toy you tell the stories first hand. Packaged properly and accessable for a fee that should equal what the average person spends on tv/ movies . That would earn you enough to focus on what needs your attention and valuable time. We would all support that.
Thanks for your input. I'd probably be smart to put Airbum.com behind a paywall as that has hundreds and hundreds of past articles. I could link part of that to Substack. You have a good feeling for what I'm trying to do. Airbum.com is 20 years old and terribly dated but I do have replacement home pages for each section and audio versions of probably 20 pipeps. Take a look at it and we'll talk some more.
Bud I have read pretty much everything on your Airbum.com site over the years and reference it often.Just reread your pilot report on the Evangel ,as we are preparing for get one ( the last flying?) ready to ferry to a museum down south. Yes that site is a great assembly of content and should be monitized, but revised to look like the material being produced today. The current kitchen sink style is fun to explore but for todays audience it should be dusting off and reissued. Netflix does it all the time with their catalogue . I'd get a firm to do that and develop a strategy to re-release the material. Dont know if you ever listened to the Canadian band "The Guess Who"? ( American Woman,These Eyes, No Time...) They were a n0. 1 band with huge fan base. A couple of the members are still touring ,and earning $. But the main writer of the songs is suing them ( he doesn't participate ) and has essentially stopped the group from preforming. Content ownership being the author. The band is just going thru a brainstorm session as to how to raise cash to flight the suit and will lean on their fan base. easy to rasie a few milion from such a large group. But they are now trying to find and contact that fan base. You have a lrge fan base .Can you reach them all ?That is always the key to selling ,having a contact with your customer. lots to chat about ...have a great day. Blue sky here ,gotta get the chippy up today. dave
I know the guy who owns that Evangel but my Long Covid brain fog is stopping me from remembering his name. Fantastic airplane!!!
Believe me, I know Airbum has the content but is antique in every way. It first went up over 20 years ago. In web-land, dinosaurs were still walking the land.
I've had REALLY bad and expensive experiences with web development companies and can't even think about hiring someone to do it. I've rebuilt a few home pages for the sections but given that I'm close to killing myself with my current schedule to make a few bucks, I'm afraid, as much as it absolutely needs to be done, there isn't much I can do to fully modernize the website. I might be able to disable certain sections, like the pireps and use the content as items available only through a paywall and re-do the layouts one at a time as I put them. I'll have to think on it.
I really appreciate your input. I'm probably going to have to stop flying in June because I might not get insurance and I need to get Thinking Out Loud moving to recover part of that lost income.
Budd, a college student should be able to update the site at minimal cost and maybe a flight in the Pitts. In fact, they don't have to be local to you as much if not all can be done remotely.
Monetising on line is tricky. YouTube pays around $1 per 500 views if you click all the advert options on. Some people make good passive income from print on demand products. A paywall is good but then how many will subscribe? There is still a lot to be said for a very high quality publication, priced above the market norm, where people will pay a premium for quality.
Yeah, I'm balancing all of those. I don't know to judge quality. I have a long way to go to make a paywall pay. I'm not looking for huge numbers but I'm so time-critical between the flying and the magazine work, I have to make sure I'm not just burning hours while satisfying my own need to "build" stuff.
I think a paywall is a good idea (said the Substack subscriber); I know I'd pay extra to read progress reports on the hot rod and banger projects. The trick would be to get each specialist project out to the interest-appropriate audience, which involves marketing (of which I know nothing). All I know is that you deserve a bigger audience.
Budd - the YouTubers get the couch crowd surfing during the evening hours. The boating people (Sailing Zatara, Gone With The Wynns, and La Vagabond) all link the love of sailing and the ocean with interesting side adventures. Maybe the route is to get you on YouTube, link your other Social media, and tie in your other interests. Pilots are (should be at least) curious, and that should generate interest in unrelated hobbies that are somewhat "relatable." I think your storytelling abilities are what you are selling; the topic is irrelevant! :-)
Thanks, I've thought about that. Even doing vlogs but am hesitant to let people see me. Not sure how a gray dog would fair in that medium. However, am going to look closer at YouTube because I agree that video is the way everything is going. Thanks. Keep the ideas coming. bd
A gray dog IS the top dog in aviation! Post some interviews and make some visits. Fly again your top 10 list on YouTube...with the owners and their back story. Appeal to the broader crowd and then lead them to the paywall for more searchable and specific info.
Time and money. The equation of doing what you want to do. More money can give the time to do what you want, but usually takes away that same time. So I would think while building my Skybolt, there is not a single question I could ask that you would not know the answer to. Of course, the Biplane Forum has probably kept my project alive over years, and most answers are there. The wider internet has all the answers too-for free. Again, the Skybolt builders guide has a lot of answers as well, but not all of them. But how do you beat free? You won’t beat Tik Tok, Instagram or any other site. You stuff is fascinating to us, but for the most part us, is a niche of a niche. Also, the few people I follow on Instagram have all said they make next to nothing on social platforms, two at least have published books, which gets them enough, but doesn’t make them rich.
When Apple came out with iTunes, almost everybody was happily stealing content and paying zip. They decided that they would price it at 99 cents. What did people get for their 99 cents? A faithful, true recording that would be stable and free from viruses. They beat free!
One of my other hobbies, is model airplanes. Surprise there! When you are building, questions come up, like what does the wheel well of any early P38 look like? Yes an internet search will likely bear fruit, but we all like things in a neat package. There is a large series of monographs by Detail and Scale. Over the years I have bought some of them, a few years ago, they started updating them and more importantly released them digitally-the digital ones being so cheap, I buy them for aircraft I am not really interested in!
So to your dilemma, you have all the material to do similar. The Pitts would be a prime example. “So, You Want to Build a Pitts Special” by Budd Davisson would sell very well to this “niche of a niche”-why? Because of your knowledge and the fact that the Pitts building process has parallel’s in every biplane. You could go into your technique and explain why Curtiss did things the way he did. It could be done in a series, so you could release it at your pace. Doing in book format, eliminates a big part of the expense of publishing a conventional book. Owners would appreciate as well as you could cover repair technique's for things that get bent…..
Budd, I don't know if it says more about you or about me, but I find anything you write about interesting. I too have wide ranging interests but have trouble focusing enough to actually complete much. Just keep on doing what you do. "If you do it (write it) they will come.
Bud ,I don't know what size your audience is but your content ( all topics ) is of interest and value to a wide market. That market will pay to be able to access your content. I designed a platform ROCIT ( return on content information technology)specifically for NASCAR that would allow fan to be able to become sponsors of teams and in return for a $1 a day they get inside access and communications from their fav. driver and team via their own prefered social media platform. The funds raised would enable a driver to be able to start his /her own team. There are other platforms doing similar things <https://legionm.com/overview> Even a simple Go Fund Me campaign will raise $ for causes that fans are interested in. Think about a online process where millions of people like us can stroll thru your library of topics and, projects, photos etc . and also be able to sit and listen toy you tell the stories first hand. Packaged properly and accessable for a fee that should equal what the average person spends on tv/ movies . That would earn you enough to focus on what needs your attention and valuable time. We would all support that.
Thanks for your input. I'd probably be smart to put Airbum.com behind a paywall as that has hundreds and hundreds of past articles. I could link part of that to Substack. You have a good feeling for what I'm trying to do. Airbum.com is 20 years old and terribly dated but I do have replacement home pages for each section and audio versions of probably 20 pipeps. Take a look at it and we'll talk some more.
Bud I have read pretty much everything on your Airbum.com site over the years and reference it often.Just reread your pilot report on the Evangel ,as we are preparing for get one ( the last flying?) ready to ferry to a museum down south. Yes that site is a great assembly of content and should be monitized, but revised to look like the material being produced today. The current kitchen sink style is fun to explore but for todays audience it should be dusting off and reissued. Netflix does it all the time with their catalogue . I'd get a firm to do that and develop a strategy to re-release the material. Dont know if you ever listened to the Canadian band "The Guess Who"? ( American Woman,These Eyes, No Time...) They were a n0. 1 band with huge fan base. A couple of the members are still touring ,and earning $. But the main writer of the songs is suing them ( he doesn't participate ) and has essentially stopped the group from preforming. Content ownership being the author. The band is just going thru a brainstorm session as to how to raise cash to flight the suit and will lean on their fan base. easy to rasie a few milion from such a large group. But they are now trying to find and contact that fan base. You have a lrge fan base .Can you reach them all ?That is always the key to selling ,having a contact with your customer. lots to chat about ...have a great day. Blue sky here ,gotta get the chippy up today. dave
I know the guy who owns that Evangel but my Long Covid brain fog is stopping me from remembering his name. Fantastic airplane!!!
Believe me, I know Airbum has the content but is antique in every way. It first went up over 20 years ago. In web-land, dinosaurs were still walking the land.
I've had REALLY bad and expensive experiences with web development companies and can't even think about hiring someone to do it. I've rebuilt a few home pages for the sections but given that I'm close to killing myself with my current schedule to make a few bucks, I'm afraid, as much as it absolutely needs to be done, there isn't much I can do to fully modernize the website. I might be able to disable certain sections, like the pireps and use the content as items available only through a paywall and re-do the layouts one at a time as I put them. I'll have to think on it.
I really appreciate your input. I'm probably going to have to stop flying in June because I might not get insurance and I need to get Thinking Out Loud moving to recover part of that lost income.
Budd, a college student should be able to update the site at minimal cost and maybe a flight in the Pitts. In fact, they don't have to be local to you as much if not all can be done remotely.
Monetising on line is tricky. YouTube pays around $1 per 500 views if you click all the advert options on. Some people make good passive income from print on demand products. A paywall is good but then how many will subscribe? There is still a lot to be said for a very high quality publication, priced above the market norm, where people will pay a premium for quality.
Yeah, I'm balancing all of those. I don't know to judge quality. I have a long way to go to make a paywall pay. I'm not looking for huge numbers but I'm so time-critical between the flying and the magazine work, I have to make sure I'm not just burning hours while satisfying my own need to "build" stuff.
Thanks for the input.
I think a paywall is a good idea (said the Substack subscriber); I know I'd pay extra to read progress reports on the hot rod and banger projects. The trick would be to get each specialist project out to the interest-appropriate audience, which involves marketing (of which I know nothing). All I know is that you deserve a bigger audience.
Budd - the YouTubers get the couch crowd surfing during the evening hours. The boating people (Sailing Zatara, Gone With The Wynns, and La Vagabond) all link the love of sailing and the ocean with interesting side adventures. Maybe the route is to get you on YouTube, link your other Social media, and tie in your other interests. Pilots are (should be at least) curious, and that should generate interest in unrelated hobbies that are somewhat "relatable." I think your storytelling abilities are what you are selling; the topic is irrelevant! :-)
Thanks, I've thought about that. Even doing vlogs but am hesitant to let people see me. Not sure how a gray dog would fair in that medium. However, am going to look closer at YouTube because I agree that video is the way everything is going. Thanks. Keep the ideas coming. bd
A gray dog IS the top dog in aviation! Post some interviews and make some visits. Fly again your top 10 list on YouTube...with the owners and their back story. Appeal to the broader crowd and then lead them to the paywall for more searchable and specific info.
/Volumes/MAIN Backup Drive-3tb/1 - A - BACK UP FILES - COMPRESSING MAIN BACK-UP/PODCASTS -MP3/1-AUDIO PIREPS-SELECT/TurbineGreatLakes.mp3
I don' know if this will run for you, but I can do these until I'm no longer breathing. Let me know if this works.
I'm certain that didn't work Send me your e-mail and I'll send you something as a sample.
Time and money. The equation of doing what you want to do. More money can give the time to do what you want, but usually takes away that same time. So I would think while building my Skybolt, there is not a single question I could ask that you would not know the answer to. Of course, the Biplane Forum has probably kept my project alive over years, and most answers are there. The wider internet has all the answers too-for free. Again, the Skybolt builders guide has a lot of answers as well, but not all of them. But how do you beat free? You won’t beat Tik Tok, Instagram or any other site. You stuff is fascinating to us, but for the most part us, is a niche of a niche. Also, the few people I follow on Instagram have all said they make next to nothing on social platforms, two at least have published books, which gets them enough, but doesn’t make them rich.
When Apple came out with iTunes, almost everybody was happily stealing content and paying zip. They decided that they would price it at 99 cents. What did people get for their 99 cents? A faithful, true recording that would be stable and free from viruses. They beat free!
One of my other hobbies, is model airplanes. Surprise there! When you are building, questions come up, like what does the wheel well of any early P38 look like? Yes an internet search will likely bear fruit, but we all like things in a neat package. There is a large series of monographs by Detail and Scale. Over the years I have bought some of them, a few years ago, they started updating them and more importantly released them digitally-the digital ones being so cheap, I buy them for aircraft I am not really interested in!
So to your dilemma, you have all the material to do similar. The Pitts would be a prime example. “So, You Want to Build a Pitts Special” by Budd Davisson would sell very well to this “niche of a niche”-why? Because of your knowledge and the fact that the Pitts building process has parallel’s in every biplane. You could go into your technique and explain why Curtiss did things the way he did. It could be done in a series, so you could release it at your pace. Doing in book format, eliminates a big part of the expense of publishing a conventional book. Owners would appreciate as well as you could cover repair technique's for things that get bent…..
Budd, I don't know if it says more about you or about me, but I find anything you write about interesting. I too have wide ranging interests but have trouble focusing enough to actually complete much. Just keep on doing what you do. "If you do it (write it) they will come.
Yes, an explanation of each project from conception to current status
For most projects I have the photos for that.
bd