One thing I've learned from starting and running numerous companies is: Never Rely Upon Anybody.
For me, and I assume most of you too, storm chasing is a hobby. Sure, it's nice to get a few bucks from your YouTube videos, but with demonitization, piracy, and other issues, it's just not a reliable source of income anymore.
Times are changing. News companies (for which I currently work for one) have had to make major changes in order to survive. Newspapers can't rely upon print subscribers anymore since everybody is now getting their news online. TV stations can't rely upon air waves or cable to get viewers anymore since everybody is now watching Netflix and Hulu.
In the same way, storm chasers can't rely upon selling video to TV stations since (1) TV stations get so much free video from local viewers they don't need to buy video anymore, and (2) TV stations are struggling so they don't have the funds to purchase video. As a result, storm chasers switched to YouTube to make money from their videos. But now that form of monetization is going away, or should I dare say, already gone.
So what is the next change that needs to take place?
Here are some ideas:
- Host your own videos and paywall them. Use social media to promote your videos. What does this look like? Upload short clips of your videos to YouTube, but don't show any "juicy" content. Or, upload very low quality videos. Then at the end of the video say, "Want to see the full video including the juicy content? Visit <mysite>, link here." On your website, allow users to watch some content, but then make them pay for the rest. That's called a paywall, and it is what saved newspapers from going out of business.
- Move your content to another place, like Twitch. It's not just for gaming anymore.
- Make all of your videos free, and sell something in each video. Make money from affiliate sales, product sales, etc.
- Make an contract with a local TV station to give them all of your videos in exchange for a monetary pay upfront. This might require producing a certain number of hours of content, and would probably only work if you stay fairly local and live in a high storm producing area.
- Make a movie instead. Put all of your videos into your movie instead of on YouTube. Then sell your movie at the end of the season.
What else can you guys think of???