By Josh:
(Warning: I try to keep what goes on this site 100% about baseball but my first paragraph is going to break that and not be real nice about it. You can skip the paragraph if you want and move on to the actual article.)
My wife and her job have been the key reason I’ve been allowed to do all that I’ve been doing with the sites. She will be losing her job soon because she is not vaccinated even though she has a very real risk of side effects to things like this and has a Medical Exemption that has been accepted by her employer as a result. So if you think it is okay that individuals are getting fired and losing their families means for survival because they have chosen for any reason to not get vaccinated you need to unfollow NW Baseball Report and 9 Inning Know It All right now. Don’t comment, don’t reply, don’t email me I’ll simply block you and move on.
Okay back to baseball and the site.
With all that is going on I am trying to figure out what it will take to keep the site active and striving for its goal of promoting baseball in the northwest. I’ve made sure that the site and podcast are always free to read and listen to as well as a location for players and teams to promote themselves. Photography helped cover the costs of everything but that will be ending as my family is most likely going to have to move out of the state.
So here is a list of things I need to feel confident in keeping the site moving forward
1. Writers and content providers
With me leaving the region I obviously won’t be able to get to games, tournaments and events, which makes writing recaps and articles related to the events challenging.
I know that I can still write weekend recap articles for colleges that have scores and stats online but I know the site could have so much more than that. I want writers who will put together articles about high school games/teams, more in depth college game recaps, and more. Here is a list of topics I just came up with off the top of my head but I want to do so much more than just what is listed below.
- High School League weekly score recaps of games and top performers
- High School team articles (can be recaps of their specific games and stand out players)
- College game recaps (This would be great to be done by an assistant coach on a team and could be a full article just focused on your team’s games each week.)
- Tournament recaps (Even now I missed a ton of tournaments and would have loved to have posted an article recapping all that happened. Parents, coaches and tournament hosts could all write these up.)
- Little League season recaps (We know that newspapers aren’t going to cover Little Leagues but how cool would it be for a parent to see their kid talked about on a regional baseball site.)
I know there are a thousand other ideas out there and I’m open to a lot of them. I can still email coaches and teams about season preview articles and season recap articles but so much more can be done.
You can email me at nwbaseballreport@gmail.com if you want more info.
2. Patreon Supporters
Now at this point the only way I have of funding the site is through the supporters I have via Patreon. Hosting the NW Baseball Report site, the podcast host, the subscription to the site I use for recording the podcast and a number of other expenses need to be covered. As much as I wish I could afford to keep paying for all of these things myself, the truth is these costs would take away financially from the needs of my family and with no income coming in I can’t do that.
Support from Patreon Supporters would allow things to continue on without me having to worry about the costs. If enough people become Patreon Supporters not only can I keep things running but I could seek ways to expand the reach and impact of the sites.
Some of the numbers below are a guy dreaming but if we don’t set goals and dream about what could be then we aren’t working towards anything. This is what I’m working towards.
- 25 Supporters – WIll keep the sites up and running
- 50 Supporters – Will keep the podcast up and running
- 100 Supporters – Build sites for additional regions
- 500 Supporters – Sites for every region covering baseball as well as the development of softball sites
- 1,000 Supporters – I could probably just make this my full-time job (a guy can dream).
Here is the link to the NW Baseball Report Patreon Page.
3. Photographers
I started taking photos at games because I enjoy photography but also because I realized that I don’t have one photo of me playing any sports in my life. I have team photos and the individual photos but absolutely nothing with me on a field, court or track playing any sports. All I have is my memories and at my age those memories aren’t much anymore.
I have used my skills as a photographer to earn some income but I’ve also used my skills as a photographer to capture memories for hundreds of players over the past decade.
If you are a photographer but don’t have a home for your photos or don’t think you can get access to teams, tournaments or events, then contact me because I know a lot of events that would love to have a representative of NW Baseball Report on site.
I have a place where you can sell the photos (I can provide details for you if you want), or if you just want to take photos and make them free for players, parents and teams to use that can be done as well.
4. Other Needs
To be honest I’m angry, frustrated, scared and a whole host of other feelings. We don’t know where exactly we will end up. We have narrowed it down to a couple states and a couple cities in those states, but it comes down to whether or not we can get jobs. We know we are going to have to sell our house and when the time comes move our family to a place we have probably never even visited.
It is going to result in a lot of change in our lives and I could really use encouragement and prayers as my family goes through all of this.