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Old 16-04-2015, 13:54   #31
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Re: Why does nobody get sponsors to sail

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Originally Posted by skipmac View Post
So how does this work? You're going to pay me $500/month to sponsor you?

That seems a bit greedy. I'll sponsor you for $400/month. I will send you my paypal by PM.
A little dense I see.

I bet you could move your boat over next to a road and rent it out as a billboard. Just think of the years of lost revenue your have given up
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Old 16-04-2015, 17:29   #32
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Why does nobody get sponsors to sail

I'd like Kraken Rum to sponsor me. Actually if they would just pay to have their logo stitched on a gennaker for me, I'd fly it.


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Old 17-04-2015, 07:47   #33
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Re: Why does nobody get sponsors to sail

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Just asking y nobody gets sponsored to sail. I mean it's perfectly easy you just write a letter to a company telling them that their logo could be displayed all around the country and even internationally. In exchange u just put a sticker on your boat or cable tie a sign to the lifelines and receive money or products.
Ha ha ha....I get 3-5 emails asking for free stuff every month in exchange for "free marketing". The best one I received lately was they wanted me to PAY THEM $500/mo after I gave them a free water maker and they would write a positive review about it once per month.

Truth is marine vendors are bombarded with these type of request so much so that those types of emails are like getting an email from my long lost auntie in the UK that wants to give give me 1,000,000 dollars if I just send her $10,000 to set up the transfer account.
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Old 17-04-2015, 08:25   #34
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Re: Why does nobody get sponsors to sail

Lay out a buisness case for them to make money and they will happily send you all the money you need.

Of course once you start working on the buisness case, if you are honest and reasonable, you will quickly realize they won't make money off sponsering a typical cruising boat, so they won't sponsor you.
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Old 17-04-2015, 08:47   #35
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Re: Why does nobody get sponsors to sail

But......
Let me share with you what works from a Marine Vendor point of view.

First, where most people go wrong is they plan their dream, start a blog, and then start contacting gear manufacturers painting a rosy dream image of thousands of blog followers and eyes seeing and reading about them and seeing your product. Then you go visit their site and there are two weeks worth of posts and the writing. And lets be honest here, not everyone is a writer and knows how to post about the sailing/cruising lifestyle in a way that anyone would want to read! The next step for your email is either the spam folder or if I'm feeling in a chatty mood (translated to not wanting to do real work or boat projects) I will politely send back a "thanks but no thanks email".

So that is the wrong way to go about gear discounts from a vendor.
Here is the right way.

You cruise for a few years building up a blog following of a few thousand page views per day (less than 1000 and it's just your family and friends reading your blog...sorry) Lean how to write. Learn how to tell a good story. Learn how to take and post good photos. Then once you have build something of VALUE (eyes on a page) you then contact the marine vendors with a link to your successful blog and Google analytics page showing your blog traffic for the last year or so. Then what can you expect to get from said marine vendor? A few hundred dollars off, or the unit at dealer cost. So do the quick math here and see all the work that it would take to build up your blog and following and for what....you save a few hundred dollars on a water maker? This is the reality vs the dream/myth of "get someone to sponsor you".

Yes you can do it and at our cruising height with about 2000 page views per day on our blog, we made about $200/mo in Google click ads from people visiting our site. Sure that bought a few more tacos, but if you add up the hours I spent writing and posting on the blog, ha ha ha, I was making $0.17 per hour!

So even if someone WOULD sponsor you what do you get? The same thing the Vendor would get in all honesty, not that much.
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Old 17-04-2015, 09:17   #36
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Re: Why does nobody get sponsors to sail

Quote:
Originally Posted by SV THIRD DAY View Post
But......
Let me share with you what works from a Marine Vendor point of view.

First, where most people go wrong is they plan their dream, start a blog, and then start contacting gear manufacturers painting a rosy dream image of thousands of blog followers and eyes seeing and reading about them and seeing your product. Then you go visit their site and there are two weeks worth of posts and the writing. And lets be honest here, not everyone is a writer and knows how to post about the sailing/cruising lifestyle in a way that anyone would want to read! The next step for your email is either the spam folder or if I'm feeling in a chatty mood (translated to not wanting to do real work or boat projects) I will politely send back a "thanks but no thanks email".

So that is the wrong way to go about gear discounts from a vendor.
Here is the right way.

You cruise for a few years building up a blog following of a few thousand page views per day (less than 1000 and it's just your family and friends reading your blog...sorry) Lean how to write. Learn how to tell a good story. Learn how to take and post good photos. Then once you have build something of VALUE (eyes on a page) you then contact the marine vendors with a link to your successful blog and Google analytics page showing your blog traffic for the last year or so. Then what can you expect to get from said marine vendor? A few hundred dollars off, or the unit at dealer cost. So do the quick math here and see all the work that it would take to build up your blog and following and for what....you save a few hundred dollars on a water maker? This is the reality vs the dream/myth of "get someone to sponsor you".

Yes you can do it and at our cruising height with about 2000 page views per day on our blog, we made about $200/mo in Google click ads from people visiting our site. Sure that bought a few more tacos, but if you add up the hours I spent writing and posting on the blog, ha ha ha, I was making $0.17 per hour!

So even if someone WOULD sponsor you what do you get? The same thing the Vendor would get in all honesty, not that much.
Hi Rich,

Thanks for taking the time for a very useful post.

I would dispute one thing, though. I think that the time and effort you put into your blog didn't just make you some beer money (about 15% of your monthly budget of $1500), it also helped you launch your "real" business selling a product.

I'm sure some of your blog audience became customers, and new customers could look you up and learn that you are a true cruiser who understands their needs and probably has a product that would meet those needs.

I think you made more than $0.17/hr in the long run. What do you think?
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Old 17-04-2015, 10:45   #37
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Re: Why does nobody get sponsors to sail

Now that is a very good point because the blog turned out to be a big business launch help for me when I went from a Hobo Bozo Cruiser to Water Maker Pusher. Hindsight tends to paint luck as genious and I guess I could try and sound smarter than I was/am and say I planned it, but the truth is it just happened organically. My first hand full of water maker sales went to blog followers, so I certainly have a soft spot for blogs. But timing is everything and today with Facebook and social media (which I detest) its much harder to stand out and get your blog noticed with more and more people wanting to cash in on the mythical "easy blog money".
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Old 17-04-2015, 11:22   #38
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Re: Why does nobody get sponsors to sail

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Originally Posted by SV THIRD DAY View Post
Now that is a very good point because the blog turned out to be a big business launch help for me when I went from a Hobo Bozo Cruiser to Water Maker Pusher. Hindsight tends to paint luck as genious and I guess I could try and sound smarter than I was/am and say I planned it, but the truth is it just happened organically. My first hand full of water maker sales went to blog followers, so I certainly have a soft spot for blogs. But timing is everything and today with Facebook and social media (which I detest) its much harder to stand out and get your blog noticed with more and more people wanting to cash in on the mythical "easy blog money".
I guess we're drifting pretty badly here, but...

I don't know if there ever was or ever will be "easy blog money." Monetizing a blog is hard work. Heck, having a decent blog that isn't monetized is still hard work!

That doesn't mean that it shouldn't be done, though. People do make a living with blogs. They're just few and far between compared to the zillions of blogs out there.
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Old 18-04-2015, 06:41   #39
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Re: Why does nobody get sponsors to sail

I generally have a lot of respect for people making a living, or at least part of it, funded by sailing blogs. The ones that seem to be best at it really know how to push the target readers buttons, either naturally or from industry experience in sales and marketing. Its basically the modern day eqivelent of writing a sailing book or sending photos and articles to a sailing magazine to try have them published. One big difference is instant gratification and the incredible amount of feedback available via site data and reader comments. Some bloggers are good at it, some not so good :P Some focus more on sailing, some more on sex, some more technical, some more fluff
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