In the online world, every single click, every like and even the time you stay on a post before you move on is a valuable information, especially for the likes of content creators like us.

How we got here

As we didn’t have any spare cash floating about apart from the equity in our house it meant we had to sell EVERYTHING we own, including the house, car, and 98% of our belongings. We gave up and said goodbye to everything we had built together over the past 20 years to make this journey possible. 

As you can imagine this was not an easy decision. We have had MANY moments where we questioned, and doubted, and had to keep reminding ourselves what we value most and why this idea emerged in the first place. 

We are from a generation which is taught to follow a certain “formula of life”. You finish school, go to college or university, get a good job, get married, buy a house, have children, work everyday to keep the house and the children fed, only for them to leave home and follow the same route, whilst you carry on working in order to save enough to hopefully one day retire and only then really live. We wanted a different story. A story which involves more! More time together with our children, more experiences, more adventures, more happiness…

Breaking the mould

I can say for myself that I was scared of breaking the mould. During the period of preparing and planning I had to shut off to people who where negative about our decision. I needed every ounce of positive input to keep going on this huge transformation. It’s hard enough to do something like this on your own, but to carry though as a couple with children is big, as its not just your own future that you need to consider but the future of your children’s which is even more important to a parent!

Some days we still doubt and worry, we still get lost in remembering the past or venturing into a future we don’t know. But most days we are very happy and more importantly every day we are together, exploring different places, different cultures. Some days are so good we have to pinch ourselves to check its not all a dream.

Why didn’t we wait?

For us waiting for retirement to make this dream come true was never an option. We want to enjoy our lives with our children, to watch them grow and develop, we didn’t want to miss the short 18 or so years we have them. We want each day we have together as a family to count! With Dylan reaching his teenage years quickly, we felt we needed to do it now, before it was too late!

Making our plan sustainable

We are realising due to various factors beyond our control, that the savings we had stored away for this adventure are not going to last as long as we’d hoped! So we need to start earning an income if we want to sustain this life. 

One thing that encouraged us was that other sailing channels on YouTube where successful with creating a little income by recording their journey and receiving small payments from people all over the world who support them through Patreon. 

There’s one problem – its a very competitive market, and you have to try stand out!

But how?

We’ve seen various channels try different tactics. Some do wild stunts, or focus only on the technical side of sailing or boat jobs, others show lots of boobs and bums or (T&A) as its called – luckily for you this route won’t gain us any followers, so it won’t be featuring on our channel! The trick is to find your niche.

So whats our niche?

We’re an average, family of 4, who have been crazy enough to swap everything they have to sail around the world, end of story…
or is it…

Honestly we don’t even know the ending to our own story, we are making it up as we go! All we know is that we are on this ride, we are loving it, and we really don’t want to get off! We will keep working our not so pretty butts off, and intend to document it all for our own and your entertainment! 

Hopefully you find it interesting enough to keep watching, liking and sharing! 

How can sharing our journey with the world help us?

Patreon income

Patreon is platform for creators like us who try to make an income with their creations / videos.

Some think we are asking people to pay for our “long-term holiday”. This can’t be further from the truth. What we are doing is taking a step out of societies “normal” to see if we can live more fully and freely and give our children a different outlook on life that sees past belongings and materialism. We spend a huge amount of time sharing our journey, recording, editing, writing and researching, so that our supporters can share in our experiences. 

Why? Because if it wasn’t for the other YouTube creators inspiring us and showing us what is possible, I doubt we would have been brave enough to make this decision. Our hope is that through sharing our journey we might inspire others to find a more fulfilled life path.

Shawn and I spend about 3-4 hours per weekday schooling the kids, we also spend around 40 hours recording, and editing videos and photos to record our journey per week. We obviously also need to fit in all the regular things that other families do – washing, grocery shopping, cooking, cleaning, maintaining & fixing the boat.

The reward is our downtime is way more fulfilling and interesting than it use to be, and the journey as a whole is an experience of a lifetime. 

I suppose what I am trying to get to is that our patreons are in fact not funding a “luxury holiday” or a holiday at all – this is not a holiday. This is now our lifestyle. We live, school and work on a boat instead of living in a house. For the cost of a take away coffee our patreons help us to be able to keep going, they are supporting the hours of work that go into creating a video that entertains them. So if you want to buy us a “virtual coffee” once a month as a patreon, we’d be very grateful!

Social Media income

Getting money through your followers and subscribers is a long shot and takes a very long time. To give you an example, to start making any money off your videos through YouTube you need 1000 subscribers and 4000 watch hours, and even then the money you make is pittance. In order to make a reasonable amount of money your subscriber numbers need to be in the 100k mark. At the moment we have just over 850 subscribers, so we have a long way to go! But we are a determined bunch, and we will keep producing fun, family friendly videos, we love them, surely other families will too! So now you know why we keep asking you to subscribe, please subscribe, we need you!

Income through Sponsorship

This is a catch 22, to get sponsors we need to gain followers. YouTube channels with high subscribers get all sorts of things for free, from new sails, to free marina stays to clothing and swimwear. The sponsors are using influencing channels to promote their brands, and when I say promote, I don’t mean by us doing parades up and down the beach in our new SPF sun shirts, all they ask is that we use the products in our videos. Big channel sailors have been given new sails, solar panels etc. These are all things that we need, and that we would need to purchase anyway, so getting them through sponsorship is a real saving and bonus!

We need our follower numbers to increase dramatically. Which is why every share, like and follow means so very much to us!

One quick click goes a long way

1. Join our adventure, and follow, like and share our videos and posts as much as you possibly can. It doesn’t cost you anything, but it goes a long way in keeping us going.
   
2. If you are serious about supporting us and would like additional content, and personal interaction with us become a Patreon, benefits include exclusive photos, videos & posts. https://www.patreon.com/sailingmokara
   
3. Come sailing with us! We’d love to have you on board. Your contribution will go a long way in keeping up with the maintenance and keeping bills paid.

I hope this blog is not misunderstood as to how hard we are having it, because we are not. We are very aware how lucky we are to be able to do what we do, to have had enough equity in our house to be able to explore a different lifestyle as a family, to be healthy and crazy enough to do this.

We feel very grateful and fortunate to be where we are at the moment. And we hope that taking a brave leap into the unknown will lead us to find a better and more fulfilling path for us as a family and to give our children a different outlook on life and what can be possible.

If you would like to follow our YouTube channel here is the link:
https://www.youtube.com/user/baby4632

Follow us on Instagram @sailingmokara

Want to support our work please visit: https://www.patreon.com/sailingmokara