The New Producers Part 2 - How do you monetise free content?

Video equipment is cheap, and access to eyeballs has never been easier. But getting a sustainable return on the effort and cost of creating content is one big problem that has been killing traditional publishers. So, who is making free content that people will pay for, how do you actually monetise that content, and how do you create free content that people will pay you to make? This three part article looks at these questions.

Part 1 - Who is making paying content for free?
Part 2 - How do you monetise free content?
Part 3 - 8 things you need to know to create free content that people pay you to make!

Video is an engaging storytelling medium, and it’s extremely popular. But doing it well and often requires resources. But these can be expensive, particularly when making long-form content. So, how exactly do you go about acquiring the funding to continue making these films in a sustainable way?

Generally speaking, channels and not individual films are what gain audience loyalty. People like channels because they offer consistent content. We’ll talk about what makes a channel in part 3. For now, the question is: “where does the money come from?”. Setting up a YouTube channel with the partner programme will enable it to make money from AdSense adverts, either pre, post or during a film. YouTube pays for ad views, but at $2 or so per thousand views you need an awful lot of them to generate significant funds. It’s a start, and I’ll show you how to estimate the income from a YouTube channel later in this article. 

Unless you have millions of views you’ll need a portfolio of funding models, and what is working seems to be a funding portfolio. Crowdfunding, affiliate links, merchandising and so forth. For example, there’s a chap called Casey Neistat. He does really well with subscribers and views. His channel generates quite a lot of revenue because his celebrity status attracts lots of attention. But achieving celebrity status is not available to us all.

Patreon is a four year old (in 2017) crowdfunding site designed to work for creators. Money is pledged in various amounts of cash that are given either on a time basis or on the production of something tangible. There are various tiers of contribution and the creator delivers rewards at each level. These might be early access to new or special content, or could be film credits, or even opportunities to visit the creator. There is another benefit from Patreon, it is good for the relationship between patrons and creators. It enables patrons to be a part of the process, and inclusion is evidently good. It is through their more than 1400 patrons that Riley and Elayna are potentially generating a reasonable budget for their films - although I am sure it's not a dead cert nor as bountiful as the glib estimates suggest. In terms of relationship, well, they take patrons sailing every now and again.

With a thousand or more patrons it's quite within the bounds of reason to develop significant income; some creators are apparently pledged many thousands of dollars per video. And if you make a video a week and have lots of followers who watched the ads as well, then you can make an income.

Many creators are quite open about their revenues on Patreon, it’s there on their page. And there are tools like Socialblade that will give an idea of how much Youtube channels might make in revenue. I just entered the identifier for a channel called Active Self Protection. It was quite a surprise to discover that the revenue estimate is between £31.8k and £508.5k. I suppose that it depends upon how many ads are watched fully. But you get the idea...

Going back to Riley and Elayna. They have quite a body of work on YouTube, over 100 episodes at the time of writing. The videos average about 15 minutes each and provide an insight into their happy lives and travels. Views average between 200k and 400k. You can look them up on Socialblade to see what that means.

As I have mentioned before, filmmaking kit is no longer hugely expensive. GoPro’s, DSLRs, camcorders, drones and some audio kit come in for as little as £3-4k for the lot. The production tools on La Vagabonde are sensibly simple. A couple of good quality still/video cameras, A GoPro, and a drone. The drone delivers excellent footage of sailing and exotic locations. It’s great to see aerial footage from mid-ocean. This contributes an essential part of the films, which are becoming ever better travel documentaries as skills improve. And this goes for many of the other yachts doing this. We’ll talk more about that in the third and final article in the series.

And this is where one future of documentary can be glimpsed. Travel film for TV is expensive. It also requires celebrity and lots of expensive flights, carnets and agreements. For people following this Australian Odyssey, there is a well rendered view of the planet from an optimistic perspective. They have a pretty solid following for their franchise that will just keep giving, so long as they do. There is a lot to be said for making films about the life you live. The film part is a lot easier than the living bit.

The Volvo Ocean Race involves several multi-million pound campaigns racing around the world. It is very exciting for the participants but much of the best footage came from the in-port racing and not the ocean legs. During the race, everybody is concerned with coaxing the last fraction of a knot from the boat. Winning the race is the overriding objective and historically films came a long way second. So very little footage of the main race was captured in the yachts. 

In an attempt to address this, the race organisers invented the role of media crew member. Their job is not to sail the yacht but to make films about the pith and moment of day to day life aboard, which in itself often gets quite very exciting. But I’ll let Rick Deppe tell you about the life of the media crew member in a film we made a few years ago.



There are many couples voyaging and making films. Riley and Elena are by no means unique. Many yachts are crewed by people with widely varying experiences, but they are telling stories that are very engaging for a significant audience. 

Traditional navigation can be quite a complex mix of maths and measurement with tricky instruments, tables and graphical techniques. A mix of art and science that takes practise to become even relatively accurate. If you are interested in this then 'Emergency Navigation' by Peter Burch is the book to read. Really useful stuff to know when the electronics have all died. BTW, I’ve put a link to this book on Amazon at the end of this article - a paltry attempt at monetisation.

Part of what makes this nomadic lifestyle possible comes from the computerisation and digitalisation of yachts and ships. The arrival of GPS, small computers, and chart plotters has simplified things dramatically, Navigation and pilotage can even be carried out with a smartphone, and at a fraction of the cost of paper charts. Not only are they easy to use but they are a useful source of illustrative graphics too. Today, with modern communication systems, a vessel can remain entirely up to date with weather data, chart corrections and even email. 

This unprecedented connectivity and capability is not restricted to yachts in salty orbit of the planet. There are many mobile people, digital nomads, creating content of all sorts and being supported on Patreon. 

And the following is powerful. When the list has grown, at least some of it will help with bigger, one off projects on Kickstarter and the like.

All of this really empowers niche interest groups lying in the long tail of interest. Unlike the limited shelf space of broadcast, the Internet is effectively infinite. If there is an audience, no matter how diffuse, then it can be served. No more dumbing down for average.

Broadcast’s limited shelf space has another impact. In order to attract attention, it's  content must have the widest appeal. So, inevitably, scheduling becomes ratings driven. The consequence of this is content that must not humiliate the lowest common denominator, and that means it can only be average.

As audio and video literacy become more commonplace, so production standards will improve. The yachts and their crew are making ever better, and more sophisticated stories that really are competing with TV, even in production value.

So where does this leave things? It's an exciting prospect for anyone already skilled in audio and video storytelling. Serving a niche with a constant supply of fresh and engaging content is becoming ever more sustainable.


This content is an interesting phenomenon. It’s not all simple entertainment designed for escaping the world. Some of it is about exploration too. And what is fascinating is that if you give the product away for free then there are sufficient people who will contribute towards your expenses. In the next article, part 3, we’ll look at the sort of content that generates this loyalty.




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