Fall 2024 Updates to Outerthere's Add My Hike service (formerly List My Trip)

Let me start out by saying Thanks for allowing me to send you emails about the business of outdoor recreation - our business. My hope with this forum was to bring a community together of local guides and hosts to just share ideas and opinions. (OK, honestly, I really just needed someone to talk to about the business stuff besides my partner, Anna; she’s exhausted hearing me go on-and-on… lol).

Anyway, up to now, I’ve been publishing a mix of interviews and my own stories to share insights with the belief that we’re all in this together. But let’s keep it real. I’m not doing all this only to kvetch and hang out with you all. I’m doing it with the goal of bringing us all together under a common platform where we can all earn more money from our businesses.

That platform is called Outerthere.

The Back Story

For the last 13 seasons, I’ve been a host, a tour operator and outfitter, earning a 5-figure, full-time salary since 2020. But when my daughter was born, it was either her or the business. I chose her. To do that, I decided to turn Outerthere into a listing service (like Airbnb or Ebay or Uber or App Stores or Craiglist… you get the idea).

It wasn’t a hard decision. No other listing service existed for our types of outdoor experiences for locals. (No, Meetup isn’t a listing service; plus they charge us too much upfront to reach “members” who don’t like to pay for our services. TripAdvisor/Viator is for tour operators who cater to travelers with big budgets, not locals looking for deals. And Facebook’s currency is attention, so Facebook Invites doesn’t do anything for us.)

Inventory Problem

It’s also a lot simpler than you think. When enough 3rd party service providers like us add our experiences on these platforms, both parties can make serious money. The trick is the classic chicken-or-egg: a platform needs enough critical mass of visitors who are ready to book trips to make it worthwhile enough for outdoor recreation leaders like you to add your experiences (aka inventory) to the platforms. If a platform doesn’t make you money because they don’t have enough buyers, then you’re not going to waste your time offering it your inventory.

This year, I solved for the critical mass issue with some tweaks to listing criteria: there is now a minimum number of 10 dates required for the exact same experience you’d like to add to Outerthere (same location, time and price, scheduled weekly, twice monthly or monthly). However, this requires you change the way you think about your experiences from super-customized to commoditized, like the templates you use on your favorite social platform. (We can discuss this offline).

Keeping more of your money

I hate fees. You hate fees. We all hate are fees. But fees make everything work. Without fees, we wouldn’t have platforms where we can earn extra money, including whatever site you currently use to promote and charge for your trips.

We started with a ridiculous 30% commission due to the costs of the transition. But after a year of working through these costs, platform fees are now 7% of the base price of your experience.

And fees are now capped at $500 for the year. Meaning, that if you earn $50,000 on Outerthere, instead of a $3,500 commission, our commission stays at $500.

How much can you make and how?

Speaking of, can you earn $50,000 on Outerthere? Yes. But not with a handful of trip dates.

In 2021, I earned $30,000 as a host (the year my daughter was born) and $43,000 in 2022 as a tour operator. If I were able to host more trips, that trajectory would have continued and I would have easily crossed $50,000 in 2023. Instead, I reprioritized family and pivoted Outerthere business when I recognized the broader opportunity for all of us.

But the single most critical part of earning in this business is pricing. You can’t build a business if you’re pricing less than your costs (a lesson I learned the hard way). So another change to our service will be a minimum price floor of $40 per experience. As of this writing, I currently have a camping experience listed for $500 - AND IT’S GETTING BOOKED because with 30,000 visitors, there’s a (growing) market for every type of experience.

If you’re still wondering why anyone would pay $500 for your experience, you’re probably not serious enough about making money from your outdoor recreation business to maybe quit your job some day.

If your guests are telling you that they would no longer join your trips if you raise your prices, they’re the wrong guests.

If you’re working to maintain your pricing as low as possible in the hopes of deferring costs with sponsors, here’s a wakeup call: sponsors don’t care about your mission; they just want to sell, too. So they only sponsor influencers way more popular than you who get their audience to spend on their sponsors. How do you think they can afford a sponsorship in the first place? Wouldn’t you rather be a sponsor and cut big checks rather than beg for sponsor crumbs?

But… if you think you can price your experience at $500, too and get to $50,000 or more in revenue per year and maybe quit your job, stay subscribed to this newsletter and complete the form to add your experience here. You and I are going on an epic adventure to grow our businesses together.

Hi everyone, Al here. Thank you for reading 🙏 If you enjoyed this article, please leave a like or comment online and share it with your friends.

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