Fishranger?

[Kimtown]

Boat's don't run on thanks ...
Either do weather sites .

I get that

I'd be ok with them throwing a few sponsorships up to help with costs

Surely some big name fishing brands would be interested in putting their logo and ads on there

[bowl]

Boat's don't run on thanks ...
Either do weather sites .

I get that

I'd be ok with them throwing a few sponsorships up to help with costs

Surely some big name fishing brands would be interested in putting their logo and ads on there

Reedys rigs major sponsor

[Kimtown]

Boat's don't run on thanks ...
Either do weather sites .

I get that

I'd be ok with them throwing a few sponsorships up to help with costs

Surely some big name fishing brands would be interested in putting their logo and ads on there

Reedys rigs major sponsor

Oh **** :rofl:

[Mattblack]

i been using fish reminder of late as Matt Black put in a post seem,s okay

I also love that big wind direction map on Windyty when using a PC

[Brett]

I saw this posted this morning on facebook and thought it may as well be copied here. I have copied it from Melbourne snapper and gummy reports on facebook.
I hope Joe doesn't mind as I think he is also a member here.

Hi everyone. This is Joe from Fish Ranger. Since activating subscriptions on the Fish Ranger app I’ve had people ask why it’s no longer a free service and why the price is set at $39 per year. I wanted to explain the reasons for this and tell people how we arrived at this point. I believe when people understand the full picture they will be supportive of the changes. (Thanks to the admins at MSGR for allowing me to share this story).

Since the concept of Fish Ranger - I have invested more than $300,000 of my own money and 4 years of my life to build Fish Ranger into what it is today.
Fish Ranger is not a static website, it is a complex IT application with multiple functions and servers. Every year there are over $20k of fixed costs just to keep it running without any new development, if you factor in new development that figure skyrockets. It generates about 50 cents per day showing ads and that is the only monetary thing I’ve received back from the site since I started the whole venture.
When I decided to build the site I said to myself that I didn’t care if it didn’t make me rich as long as it can cover its costs and every fisherman in the country uses and loves the app - then I’ll think it has been worth it.
In early 2014 I owned a tinny that I would take out on PPB. I checked the weather often and I was frustrated at the lack of clear and consistent information out there and so wanted to do something about it. It was then I came up with the idea to build a weather site that would be the best there is. For several months I researched weather systems and developed a plan. I assembled a team of developers – meteorologists, architects, back end developers, front end developers, designers, testers, administrators and coders to build the site. We developed for 13 months straight and it was the most stressful period of my life. I worked all day in a high pressure IT job then each night I would get on my computer to skype with the team and worked a second shift to develop the site, discuss issues and solve problems. This left me emotionally and mentally drained every night and every weekend. The project also ran over time and over budget.

In October 2015, my health suffered significantly as a result of the stress I was under and literally overnight I suffered a number of problems. To this day I still have not recovered from that. My efficiency plummeted and I become ineffective at things I was previously good at, but I had to keep going. I made a plan to quit work in early 2016 when development stopped and take some time to recover. If I wasn’t working in a full time day job there was no way I could afford development so I had to keep doing both.
The site went live on January 1st 2016 and although there were thousands of users logging on to check it out (I posted it to every fishing group in the country), usage reduced to almost zero within a couple of days. Despite the site being live - development work had to continue for another 4 months as there were essential admin components not yet built.

In April 2016 I made the difficult decision to quit my day job, stop all development work and go on a break. Given I wasn’t working, I had to rent out my home and went back to live at my mums for 12 months. I spent this time recovering my health while marketing and administering the site.
Although the product was technically good - I was wrong on the marketing side. I believed that if I built the best weather site people would realise it straight away and they would switch. Word of mouth would get out and before long I’d have thousands of users logging on and companies would be banging at my door to advertise and sponsor the site. At that time I averaged about 10 users a day for the first 8 months.

In Aug 2016 I had a booth at the Fishing and Boating show in Melbourne. While I was there, Steve Starling, Dave Kramer and Paul Worsteling all took an interest in the site and helped promote it on their channels – which gave things a much needed kick start, but the site still did not have an income stream.
I spent the next year trying to get advertisers on board. Companies such as Shimano, Daiwa, Rapala, Frogleys etc. all did not want to advertise or sponsor the site. In 2017 I entered negotiations with a large boating, camping and fishing retailer. This company expected a large volume of development work, their own apps, loss of site ownership control, increased infrastructure costs and offered a payment which would have been less than the total fixed cost to set it up, let alone pay for my time or IP. With this going on - it was hard for me to watch this same company pay for twice-an-ad-break prime time TV advertising for a month before Christmas. At the time I was left wondering how many millions of dollars that cost.
In March 2018 I was giving serious consideration into closing down the site. I was depleted financially and emotionally. I was just not able to get companies or investors on board. I asked myself if I had done absolutely everything I could to keep it going and the answer was no - I hadn’t tried crowdfunding. So I set up a Kickstarter and launched a campaign. At this point I was exhausted and to be brutally honest - part of me wanted it to succeed and the other part of me wanted it to fail so the stress would be over.
It hit its target quickly and that put some wind back in my sails because I saw people believed in the site and were willing to back it. The money would keep the Fish Ranger site running for another 12 months and include funds to develop new features, including the subscription portal, which would give it a chance to stand on its own two feet.
From the completion of the Kickstarter campaign until now - those features have been in development. There were challenges on the way but we got there. The subscription portal is live and subscriptions cost $39 per annum – the cost of a round of drinks at the pub. As a price comparison, Buoyweather, one of the competing sites that offers marine forecasts over open water, charge USD$79.90 (AUD$110) for 1 year and they only offer GFS data without any BOM data. Fish Ranger provides BOM data and GFS data and allows easy comparison of the two models. I believe it is a very reasonably priced service.
I don’t think my investment into the site will ever be made back but I’m not in a position to be able to support the site on my own anymore. The aim of the subscription model is to firstly cover the fixed costs. Anything more than that covers the support costs, enhancements which always need to be made and future development costs to be able to change the site in future.
The purpose of sharing the Fish Ranger story is to let people know how much work has gone into the development to make it what it is today and to highlight the costs in building and maintaining it. I truly believe it is a world class application for fishermen – created here in Melbourne.
I don’t know what the future holds but I want users to realise the value of what they have here now and support it to continue.
Joe Greco, founder of Fish Ranger
(Special thanks to the MSGR admin team for letting me share this story)