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Old 09-25-2021, 10:37 AM
  #338  
franklin_m
 
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Originally Posted by aymodeler
Although I may not agree with all of the details, I am in complete agreement with your overall sentiment here, especially the notion that the AMA is really only appealing to those in need of a club field. The problem is that they do not know how to monetize their organization with hobbyists who do not have that need. Again, if you look to FliteTest as a template, I am certain that they are generating add-revenue income off of their YouTube channel and of course income from their own "store" where they are selling products.

There is a very well developed model for making money on the internet and that is one potential vehicle for the AMA to pursue, there may be others as well. But they will never make money via a membership model unless they are providing some service or content that cannot be obtained elsewhere for free. Today, that service is access to club fields. To your point, that will not be a winner much longer.
You got me thinking. I did a comparison of AMA and FliteTest.
AMA has 36.5K subscribers on YouTube, FliteTest has 1970K subscribers (plus mine a moment ago).
The video that FliteTest posted two hours ago has more views than the last 5 of AMA's ... COMBINED!

What bothers me, is our membership dollars are paying a staff to generate content that's clearly not what the market wants to see. My question is: "Why do we keep paying them?"

Qualitatively, I look at AMA's content and it's static ... "blah" comes to mind. How many Nats videos do we really want? Based on the numbers, not many. Yet AMA keeps making them. Doing more of the same and hoping for a different result. I had to go back six months for anything that remotely looked like an easy quick build ... and it was AMA's rubber band powered Alpha? BORING!

Compare that with FliteTest, which looks like FUN!
Duct-tape plane. Giant Stuka. Soda Can dive bombing. Giant B17. 8 foot troop glider. WW2 glider tow FPV from cockpit. Giant shark kite glider launch. Etc.

Last edited by franklin_m; 09-25-2021 at 10:47 AM.