Lynn and I have this crazy idea.

First, the vision: capture and share the stories of those who don’t have a huge budget to hire a film agency.

One of my favourite things in life is a good story. I also love filming and travelling. Often the most interesting stories are told in the most unsuspecting places. Travelling journalists are the lucky few in the world who get to hear these stories and share them if they are fortunate enough to be hired by a news company.

But. (Don’t you love a good but!) Online video has changed the game. YouTube, through the monetization of videos, has enabled thousands of creative people to make a living working in what used to be an elite industry: film.

So, Lynn and I are taking a leap into this world of YouTubing. Just a few years ago I thought it would be crazy to try and make a living through producing YouTube videos. I still sort of do. But, we have a plan.

The work has already begun. We will be posting content to YouTube regularly, probably weekly at first until we are doing this full-time, and then hopefully daily. Our content will be the stories of those we are doing projects for, and our story as we do the work of travelling journalists. It won’t always be glamorous. We’ll publish those videos too.

Allow me to explain how this works using a scenario:

An organization provides basic health care in the remote villages of Nepal. They spend every dollar they have on meeting the needs of the local people. We hear about their organization and want to tell their story. They raise a bit of money to pay for our travel to Nepal. We begin telling their story through YouTube videos before we even leave on the trip. Hopefully a few of our viewers will find this project interesting and decide to support us financially through our GoFundMe campaign. While we travel and produce a spectacular video for their organization to use however they like, we will be uploading daily vlogs about our experiences (as far as it is possible depending on internet access).

The money raised through GoFundMe and through the monetization of our YouTube channel will pay us what we would normally charge an organization for our services. If we raise enough money we may even be able to donate back some of the travel expenses they covered for us. We aren’t in it for the money just as much as they aren’t in it for the money.

We hope you think our idea is a crazy as we do.

But we also hope that you see the value of doing this sort of work.

This, we believe, is a new era of journalism. It is a freelance world. A world without strings attached to puppet masters sitting in corner offices. It is a world where we can create and publish. And, if our creations are good enough, we can make a living off of it.

Thank you for understanding and getting behind us!

William and Lynn