The monetisation of naturist content explained

Unlike what some seem to believe, paid naturist content is not something new. For many decades, naturist federations and clubs have been publishing magazines and newsletters that were uniquely for their members. Unless you paid the membership fee, or you had generous friends, you didn't have access to this content.

For the longest time, these organisations had quite a monopoly on such publications. If you wanted to know what was happening in the naturist world, where to find a club or resort, or read about personal experiences of naturists, you had not much choice but to become a member. On the other hand, for clubs and resorts that wanted to attract new guests, these publications were the only way to reach their audience. It was a pretty solid system until the internet came along.

The uprise of "free" naturist content

We sometimes think that the reason why some naturist organisations struggled to modernise, or are still struggling, is because there was never a need to. They were the only source of information and considered the only authority. But the internet changed everything. Suddenly, everyone could share their knowledge and experiences with the whole world. Stories that were previously only told at the communal dinner table of a club now had the potential to reach millions. And that's exactly what happened.

When we started gaining an interest in social nudity, roughly around 2010, the internet was already our number one source of information. Naturist bloggers or vloggers were still very few, although The Naturist Living Show Podcast must have already existed. But at the time, the concept of podcasts was very alien in our part of the world.

Commercial resorts were probably the first to jump on this new media. Instead of buying a half-page ad in a naturist magazine, they now built complete websites with lots of pictures and information. Their reach wasn't limited anymore to the members of one or more organisations and they could easily update anything that became outdated (or at least they should have). In a way, this too is monetised naturist content. It was free for the reader, but the goal was to get more paying visitors.

The start of our personal monetisation journey

After the resorts came the people, individuals who wanted to share their own stories. For some, it was out of ideology, because they wanted the whole world to know about naturism. Others had a very strong opinion about what naturists should and should not do. When we started this blog in late 2016, it was mostly a hobby project. The combination of enjoying the process of writing and general dissatisfaction with existing naturist content. Nobody seemed to be sharing our perspective of naturism, through the eyes of an early thirty-something European couple. So that's what we did.

When we started blogging, it wasn't our goal to make any money with this, but it didn't take long before it just began coming our way. As our audience grew, resorts started seeing the potential of advertising with us. Yes, they had their own websites where they could publish for free, but creating content takes time and this wasn't their core business. Unlike naturist federations, our content wasn't just for members, so our potential reach was a lot larger.

Don't imagine us walking around with wheelbarrows full of euros and dollars though. What we earned was barely enough to cover our travel costs. But we were traveling full-time and living from our savings and every little money we earned could potentially extend our travels. So we started looking at other possible monetisation options. At the time, the two most important ones were Google Ads and affiliate marketing.

Affiliate marketing is basically promoting products and then receiving a small percentage of the sales. This quickly appeared to be harder than we thought, because naturism isn't really something for which many products exist. What could we sell? Sunscreen? Sarongs? The work this would involve was much more than we would ever make from it. Google Ads came with a different problem: Nudity. Even though there's no explicit frontal nudity on our website, our butts were enough for Google to say "No way".

Failed projects

If we couldn't earn from existing projects, we just figured that we better create or own. The first big thing we came up with was "NUDE", short for "Nudist's Ultimate Destination Explorer". There were already existing directories of naturist resorts around the world, but they all were very incomplete. We were going to build the best and most complete one. It was going to be an authority in naturist travelling and resorts were going to pay us lots of money for advertising and promotion options. Well, that didn't happen.

We had already underestimated how much time it took to build such a directory, but we never considered that we also had to keep it up to date. Before NUDE started to get an audience, it was already outdated. And we did not want to spend the rest of our days changing opening times and prices. One would think that resorts would be happy to do this for us, but we learned the hard way that this is not how it works.

Then there was NaturistAds, which was supposed to be our own Google Ads. We figured that if we were not allowed to place ads because of nudity, resorts would not be allowed to create them either. So we wanted to become the middleman and create an advertisement platform where naturist businesses could place ads on naturist websites. Not just our website, but every naturist website that wanted to join.

This platform actually worked really well and in its heydays placed ads on about 25 naturist websites. We had a system that was never seen before in the naturist world. Instead of paying a monthly or yearly fee to place an ad on a website, we worked with a pay-per-click system. The advertisers would only pay a certain amount when someone actually clicked on their ads. You'd think that every resort would embrace this opportunity, right? Well, they didn't. Most resorts didn't care about flexible pricing. When they made their budgets, they wanted to know what advertising would cost. In the least complex way. Byebye NaturistAds.

Content behind a paywall

In a way, except for the first year or so, our content has always been monetised. It appeared to be free for you, the reader, but we were receiving money from resorts and businesses. That's the way we liked it, we thought that our income should come from those who financially benefitted from what we do. It was a good concept, we travelled around the world and made some money from advertising along the way.

And then came COVID. Tourism stopped existing and businesses froze their budgets. Our income went from "enough to get by" to nada. We had to turn back to our savings that were dangerously fast going towards the red numbers. That's when we did the one thing we never wanted to do. We sold our kidneys. Just kidding, we turned to you, our readers, for support. This was our very last option, we started a Patreon where you could donate between $5 and $50 USD per month. If that didn't work out, Naked Wanderings would stop existing and we would have to go back to office jobs.

We figured that it was worth a shot but never expected what would happen next. Your support was overwhelming. We even got messages saying "Finally you created a way for us to give back to you". It's fair to say that the reason you can read this blog post today is thanks to the support we received through Patreon. Because of this, we could keep creating content for everyone to enjoy.

Much more content even. As we were not able to travel, we had to find something else to keep ourselves busy. So we learned how to make videos. YouTube provided a new way of monetization through ads. Interestingly enough, these ads are Google Ads. Remember? The platform we were not allowed to use on our website.

How not to do Patreon

Patreon has saved Naked Wanderings and is still one of our most important sources of income. Although our content has always been monetised in one way or another, this is the type of monetisation that some people seem to disagree with. We understand why because it comes with a lot of pitfalls.

The only reason why Patreon worked for us, is because we had been creating "free" content for years. We were known and appreciated in the naturist world and a lot of people were willing to help us a hand when things turned south. Today, however, we start seeing more and more creators looking for a skip-the-line ticket. Instead of spending years on growing an online presence and becoming appreciated within the community, they want to make money from day one.

This isn't necessarily a bad thing though. It's all about providing value. Our value is in information and/or entertainment. But this could also be online yoga classes or in-depth research or art or whatever. What's not good value is "pay to see me naked". This is our personal opinion, of course, and feel free to disagree.

In order to monetise on YouTube, we have to censor all nudity. Trust us, we too think that the black squares are ugly and you don't want to know how much time it takes to carefully place them. We could easily double, triple, or even quadruple our income by putting the uncensored version of our videos behind a paywall. We all know that there are a lot of people online who consume naturist content for non-naturist reasons. But what would be the value for the "real" naturist community?

Over the last 8 years, the reason why we create naturist content hasn't changed. We want to show the world through our own eyes. Except that now, it's the eyes of a late-thirties early-forties couple. We want to show you places and share experiences and we doubt that whether or not you can see our butts, boobs, or genitals would make much of a difference.

Content is never free

There is a saying in marketing that goes something like "If you're not paying for it, you are the product". While you were reading this blog post, ads may have inspired you to visit this or that resort. If you're watching our videos, YouTube will show you ads or we may tell you about a sponsor. If you're just looking at our posts on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram, Mark and Elon are gathering your data. Even the hobby blogger, who creates content purely for ideological reasons, can only be found through Google or social media.

Content is never free and these large companies may leave some of the crumbs for us, the creators. We rely on this, because creating content takes a lot of time, time we only have because we can monetise our content. So if there are content creators you appreciate, support them. If you can't support them financially, help spread the word. Help them grow their audience. This is the only way to guarantee access to… well… free content.