Frequently Asked Questions
What is FishTips?
FishTips is a fishing information platform built to maximize the success of your fishing trips! Connect directly with dialed-in digital fishing guides for hyper-current digital guiding, training, & fishing reports!
Why would anyone want to share their fishing spots?
FishTips began with fishing guides and top tournament anglers posting tips that were detailed game plans on exactly how they would guide someone. Guides take anglers to fishing spots on every trip, so creating a digital version of a guide trip on FishTips was a natural way for guides to guide, train, and educate even more anglers online. Perhaps their boat broke down, had a bad weather day, or it was the offseason, the FishTips platform attracted hundreds of digital fishing guides that wanted to provide their same high level of customer experience and deep knowledge of their fisheries in a digital format to help even more anglers!
As we grew, we received feedback from both digital guides and customers for other types of informative fishing products to help anglers stay up to date on their fisheries or learn new places to fish. We are excited to now offer premium subscription channels for the latest fishing updates and hyper-current fishing reports. FishTips also has training videos for digital guides to share in-depth videos on exactly how they approach a fishery or how they break it down before they even get there.
Do I have to register an account to use FishTips?
FishTips is freely browsable without a login. You can see the digital guide trip tips, training videos, and fishing reports channels that have been posted by our digital guides. You will need to register an account to purchase a tip or post one (pending approval and qualification for digital guides).
If I am a guide already making a decent living, then why would I start using FishTips? (For Digital Fishing Guides)
Digital Guides utilize FishTips to earn additional income by digitally guiding, training, and educating more anglers online. Tip sales can provide many of the benefits of a guided trip to both you and your clients at a fraction of the cost and time investment required. Tip sales can fit seamlessly into your existing revenue channels, like guiding, outfitting, and social media. Tips can also generate a meaningful amount of leads and engagement for those channels, and vice versa.
Do I have to sell a minimum amount or dollar value of tips to stay listed on the platform? (For Digital Fishing Guides)
No. We believe that you should decide what tips you list for sale and how often. The FishTIps platform is yours to use as a flexible option that works best for you.
Does FishTips own my tip after I post it? (For Digital Fishing Guides)
No. A tip is a creative work, like a book or a movie, and is protected under copyright law. Authors retain full copyright and control of their tips. FishTips only asks for the rights we need to store your tips and make them available for sale.
What happens if someone tries to redistribute a tip they don’t own on FishTips?
This is a violation of copyright law and violates our terms of service. Our policy is to investigate any such incident and take whatever corrective actions we deem necessary, up to and including account deactivation and a permanent ban from using our service.
Is FishTips available outside of the United States?
At the moment, we are US-only. We can only accept payments from credit cards with a US billing address and send payouts to US-based bank accounts. This may change over time. If you are not based in the US and would like to work with us, then we’d love to hear from you!
Can you provide an example of what you mean when you say that tips can fit into a guiding business? (For Digital Fishing Guides)
Sure, let’s say that you take a client on a full-day trip. You’ve gained a lot of knowledge about that body of water, but you believe it’s unlikely you will book any more trips there this season. You can package the same information you used for that trip into a tip and gain additional revenue from your investment of time. You may also have the opposite problem of being fully booked and have a client that you just can’t fit into your schedule. You can offer that client a tip instead.
Is everyone who posts a tip a fishing guide?
We want the FishTips platform to be open to experienced anglers with helpful fishing information, whether they are a full-time guide, talented tournament angler, or skilled fishing educator. Our mission is to connect every day fishermen and women directly with dialed-in digital guides for informative digital guide trips, purposeful training, & detailed fishing reports!
How does a prospective digital guide get a verification check mark and qualifications like "professional fishing guide" or "professional tournament angler" listed on their profile? (For FishTips Digital Guides)
Anyone can select up to two qualifications to be listed in their profile. We ask anglers to submit verifiable third-party evidence for each qualification: this can be a guide business website in their name, or an online link to official tournament results. We evaluate any evidence provided, and we also check their profile name against the identity listed in the verified bank account they use to accept marketplace payments.
Who gets the money from a tip sale?
The funds go directly to the digital fishing guide who lists the tip for sale. FishTips takes a percentage of the proceeds as a platform fee. This fee pays for credit card processing costs, web hosting, and other necessary expenses associated with providing the marketplace.
When a digital guide registers a sale, our 3rd party payments platform, Stripe, will automatically settle the funds to the digital guide's bank account within 2-3 business days.