I get this question quite a bit.  In fact, this season, I get it almost on a daily basis.  Either by email, or someone calls me and wants me to tell them, step-by-step, exactly how I sell to the media, who to contact, how I set up all my streaming video equipment, etc, etc.

I finally decided to address this publicly and I hope those who read this understand my reasoning.  I'm not trying to be mean or unhelpful, or anything like that.  But the bottom line: what I am doing with storm chasing and media stuff is a business for me and as such I have to protect those interests.

First off I want to say that I am flattered that anyone feels I have attained a level capable of giving quality advice on this business.  I appreciate that and the point is not lost on me.

You should know that I have spent years and years developing how I do things and aquiring my contacts in media.  No one handed all this stuff to me, it was pure hard work to get from there to here.  It has been a very rough road. Not only that, with some of them I have contracts that have non-disclosure agreements which prevent me from even talking about them anyway.  Expecting to ask a few questions, and then go out and make a killing is not within the realm of realistic expectations.  If you are seriously going to get in to this business, you should expect to work very hard and have many disappointments and frustrations and sometimes be willing to go without sleep. Deadlines are deadlines!

The same also goes for how much money I make doing this.  Just to be quite frank, it's really no one's business.  My financial matters (as are anyone else's) are private matters and it's not really appropriate to ask someone else to give out that information.  It's pretty obvious I am out chasing a lot and upgrading equipment regularly, and we all know chasing isn't exactly cheap, so you can gather from that what you will.

I get the impression that people think this is an easy thing, and you can just ask someone how to do it, get in and make tons of money all the time.  That is simply not the case.  Yes, there is money to be made, some good money even , but it is work, and sometimes very frustrating work at that.

Getting into the freelance video/photography business is tough, and it's even tougher once you are in it.  This is expecially true with storm chasing with the large number of people that are willing to give their stuff away for free just to hear some on-air personality say your name on the air and forget it 2 seconds later.  They don't care about you as a person at all unless you have developed a long term working relationship with various people.  One of the things I have come to learn over the years is that they actually respect those that value their work enough to charge for it.  In the end though, what they want is to beat out their competition with the best video to show.  Period.

Would you walk in to Walmart and say "Here is all my stuff, why don't you take it from me for free and sell it however you want and keep the money?"  Of course you wouldn't!  But that is exactly what you do when you give away your pics and video to the media.

It's tough to get contracts, it's tough to sell your stuff, and it takes years to make a name for yourself to the point you can get any meaningful contracts usually. 

Imagine if you opened a hardware store on the corner.  You spend several years developing your business plan, investing in inventory and the building and got open and was doing well.  Then every day someone came to you, and asked you how you do it, where do you get your merchandise, what do you charge, etc etc, because hey, I want to open a hardware store exactly like yours right across the street and compete with you.  Do you think that business owner would tell you all his business secrets?

In regards to the video streaming:

I also get asked nearly every day, even by TV stations, exactly how I set it all up, because my stream evidently looks good usually, and they want to duplicate what I am doing.  Seriously folks?   What I am doing and what I use to do it isn't secret, it's all out there available to anyone.  However, exactly how I set it all up and all the settings I use are something I keep close to me.  Just this year, when I went with TVN, I spent about 40 hours just testing settings alone on various connection rates until I optimized it for my equipment.  If you want to stream, spent some quality time testing out what you are doing long before you are on the road.  In the heat of battle is NOT the time to be figuring things out. Preparation goes a long way.

If you are a TV station and want to know exactly how to set up like I do so you can duplicate it for your own people, I'll be happy to help, but I am going to charge a nice consultation fee to do so.  My time is as valuable as yours after all.  In fact, I'll do that for anyone that wants to pay a consultation fee.  I can tell you now before anyone asks, it will be at least in the 3 digits to the left of the decimal point... per hour!

I hope those reading this understand my thoughts and reasoning on this, and if you don't "get it" you probably wouldn't be suited for a freelance type business anyway.  I'm not trying to be difficult or a hard nose about it.  But the bottom line is this is how I pay for my chasing and pay the bills and put food on the table, and to tell someone else how to take some of that out of my pocket would be a conflict of interests.