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 Reports from Blog CreekFriday February 3rd 2012 (yesterday)We're chained to our computers, thinking about fly fishing. | ||||||||||||||
What's The Global FlyFisher worth? |  |
| Published: Friday February 3rd 2012 (yesterday) Updated: Friday February 3rd 2012, 8:18AM by Martin Joergensen
An approach from a business that wanted to buy The Global FlyFisher made me wonder: what's a site like this worth? And don't worry... we didn't sell!
 After all: a site like this must be worth something. Think of the number and quality of visitors, the fantastic content and the brand value of one of the oldest fly fishing sites on the web. Woot! Let's buy a yacht, a mansion, a couple of fast cars and throw a week-long party... But then again: being in the web business I sure know that we're neither Facebook nor Twitter or even a fraction of a fraction of any of the commercially highly valued sites out there. Sites are valued based on their earnings (if they have any) and their future business potential, but even though GFF has some potential, it's not huge. Fly fishing is a very narrow subject and a small and penniless niche compared to many other markets. I jotted the URL into one of the estimating engines online, and it said that the potential advertizing income based on officially available numbers was 10.41 US$ a day! Woot! Let's buy a yacht, a mansion, a couple of fast cars and throw a week-long party... in a couple of hundred years. The income would be less than 4,000 US$ a year or what hedge fund managers would make in a minute or two before they helped bring down the global economy. Seen in that perspective the offering price of 15,800 US$ was actually not bad. Of course I turned down the offer! Not that 16K isn't a nice sum of money, but honestly: 18+ years of work by myself and numerous others, contributions from north, south, east and west, lots of global class content, 5-6 thousand visitors a day and more fun than you can wave a stick at. That's worth way more than what can be made on a decently paid job in a couple of months. To set the sum in perspective, I just checked what it would cost to have a Google Custom Search running our search. The current system is pretty dated and has needed a replacement for a long time. Prices start a 100 US$ a year, Google writes. That's not bad. I just installed it for a client, and it's really smooth. But looking a bit deeper I found the pricing table. 20,000 searches for 100 US$, 50,000 is 250.- and 150,000 searches is 750 dollars. Whoa! I'd better check how many searches we have before signing up for anything. That would be 509,963 in 2010 and 1,287,372 in 2011. One and a quarter million searches in a year... Hot damn! That isn't even on the tab at Google, but falls in the Large Business category above 2000 US$ a year and asks me to contact Google sales. Not promising! I guess a "Joergensenization" of the old search facility will do fine. Well, enough about money and on to fly fishing and fly tying! We'll skip turning GFF into way too little money - or making Google even more money for that matter - and just keep on posting interesting articles. Maybe yours too? Or you might have other things than articles, which could be interesting.
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New (old) books |  |
| Published: Thursday November 10th 2011 (85 days ago) Updated: Tuesday January 17th 2012, 1:05PM by Martin Joergensen
Another bunch of books snuck their way into my life
OK, it happened again: my trigger finger slipped and several Amazon vendors as well as my all time favorite bookshop, Coch-y-Bonddu in Wales, were allowed to stick their trunks into my wallet and suck up a bit of money in exchange for some books.  Got this one for 13 UK£ - about 20 US$. It's not really worth it, but I wanted to do a joint review with the previous title in the series, not surprisingly called "Fifty places to Fly Fish Before You Die".  By Chris Santella Another Fifty-places from Santella who seems to be a book factory. I'm not impressed at first glance. Each dream location is covered with a brief text and a few facts, and many even without any images. I wonder how these books can become bestsellers... I have been on the lookout for this one for long, but the standard price is about 50 US$, which is a bit steep. But I got this very nice, used copy for 16 UK£ including postage, and that is more than reasonable.  By James Prosek A stunningly beautiful and fascinating book in spite of its extremely simple concept: paint a picture of each of as many trout species and variations as possible. Simple images: a fish flat on its side on white background. But Prosek's fabulous style and the sheer number and variations is enough to spellbind. At less than 13 US$ there isn't much to think about. This is a great book for the money - very nice pictures and great little stories.  By R. Valentine Atkinson Atkinson's photos are all over the place: in magazines, in catalogs, in books, online and offline. That means that we have seen a lot of them already, and I have been disappointed before when buying Atkinson books. But this one features a lot of images that I haven't seen before as well as stories in the usual R. Valentine Atkinson style: written by mainly well-known fly anglers. A very beautiful book back from 1991, but still well worth its price, which is now as low as 6 UK£ or less than 10 US$.  By Robin Armstrong Robin Armstrong has been painting most of his life, but also used to be a river keeper. This book catches the life on a chalkstream in beautiful images and nicely written text. Also see our article about the artist here.  By A. K. Best This is a real classic written by the renown fly tyer and tying book author A. K. Best. The book was overhauled in 2004 and reprinted in a second edition with color images. It's the bible when it comes to dying fly tying materials, and is extremely thorough and useful - even for those that have no plans of dying, but just want to treat their materials as good as possible. In my fever I managed to buy two of these! So it goes when that index finger is hovering above the Buy Now button. At about 20 US$ it's no big deal, but I sure wish I had bought two copies of a better book!  By Lefty Kreh This is a fly tying book from 1995 and that's pretty obvious when you run through it. Simple in scope, plain and fairly boring plates of a bunch of flies accompanied by a pattern description with materials listings. Not much new, and not much to be excited about. Nice book, much better than Kreh's mentioned above, and available used from less than 8 UK£ or about 12-13 US$.  By Ed Jaworowski A very nice book with a great selection of traditional saltwater patterns, richly illustrated with step-by-step photos. Reviews will appear during the winter.
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In Iceland, not fishing... almost |  |
| Published: Friday October 21st 2011 (105 days ago) Updated: Sunday October 23rd 2011, 12:13PMMore about: Iceland | Photography | Pictures | by Martin Joergensen
I'm currently traveling in Iceland with my family and thought I'd share a few pics with you.
I'm not here to fish, but my good friend Nils who lives here, managed to get me out for a day on the stream Varmá (yes, it does mean the warm stream), where I managed to cast a bit for some late season sea trout. And it was late season indeed, being the last day that the stream was open for fishing. Nils with a very small Varmá fish  Rough landscape  Holes in the ground where steam comes out  Icelandic autumn colors  My son Bjarke looking at the stream Tungá  Reflection 
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