Business plan · open by default
The content is the product and the catalog. Every state week leaves behind a printable, an affiliate list and an archive page that keeps selling long after the week ends.
Revenue
01
Free readers get the weekly guide. Members get printable worksheets by grade, packing lists, offline maps, the full state archive and a monthly live Q&A before school breaks.
$8/mo · $72/yr
Target: 1,200 members by month 12 ≈ $86k/yr
02
A 20-page PDF per state: map worksheet, facts pages, recipe card, scavenger hunt, coloring poster. Zero fulfillment cost and it sells hardest to homeschoolers and road-trip parents.
$9 each · $99 bundle
Highest-margin product. Sells forever after publish.
03
One sponsor per state week across newsletter, Reels and Stories. Natural fits: state tourism boards, national park lodging, minivan and cooler brands, family insurance, learning toys.
$1.5k–$6k per week
Tourism boards buy 6–12 months ahead — pitch by quarter.
04
One honest "what we actually packed" list per state. Amazon, REI, Booking and campervan rentals. Never more than five items, always with the reason it earned space in the car.
3–10% per sale
Compounds as the archive grows.
05
School and library site licenses for the kit library, plus a teacher edition with standards alignment. Sold on a July–August cycle when budgets open.
$250–$1,200 per site
Few customers, large invoices, renews yearly.
06
Two hosted trips a year built from the most-read states, run with a local operator who handles logistics and insurance. You bring the audience and the itinerary.
$300–$600 per family
Ten families per trip is the sweet spot.
07
The Curious Atlas Field Book at the end of year one: fifty states, fifty recipes, fifty maps. Print-on-demand patches and enamel pins per region in between.
$28 book · $22 tee
Year-one capstone; funds year two abroad.
08
Our own book series. In every volume Dad gets spectacularly lost in a different national park — Yellowstone, Acadia, the Grand Canyon — and only the kids can read the map and find him. Real park facts, Junior Ranger checklists and a lost-papa scavenger hunt hide in each edition, and pre-orders open alongside the matching state week.
$18 hardcover · series pre-orders
The flagship product. The Atlas sells it; it sells the Atlas.
Sequence
Weeks 1–12
Publish free, every Monday, no exceptions. Add affiliate lists and open the first ten printable kits. Goal: 5,000 subscribers and a repeatable production week.
Weeks 13–30
Launch the membership at founding-member pricing. Start pitching tourism boards for the states you'll cover 4–6 months out. First sponsor slots go cheap for the case study.
Weeks 31–52
Kit bundles, classroom licenses, the field book pre-order, and the first hosted trip. Raise sponsor rates once you can show reach and saves per post.
Year Two
Same weekly spine, higher-ticket sponsors: airlines, rail passes, language apps, travel insurance. Kits become passports; trips become the flagship product.
Instagram is where the state weeks live publicly. Each revenue stream below stacks on the same weekly content — one shoot, six paychecks.
$300–$2,500 per post
The flagship Instagram income. One brand per state week: a recipe Reel, a trail Story with a link sticker, or a packing-grid carousel. Rates climb with saves and shares, not follower count.
3–10% per sale
Link stickers on every Story during a state week, plus a Linktree-style shop page in the bio. Gear lists, road snacks, park passes. Disclose clearly, keep it to what you'd actually repack.
$2.99/mo per subscriber
Subscriber-only Stories: behind-the-scenes footage, live recipe cook-alongs, early itinerary drops. Mirrors the Glovebox membership and catches followers who will never leave the app.
Variable
Followers send Stars/Gifts on Reels; platform bonus programs pay for high-performing short video when they're running. Small money, zero effort — treat it as a tip jar, not a plan.
$200–$800 per clip
Brands pay you to film content for their own accounts — your face, your kitchen, their page. No audience size required, so this starts working months before sponsored posts do.
Kit & book sales
Every Reel ends with the printable state kit; the grid bio points at the field book. Instagram is the storefront window — the kits and membership are the till.
Rule of thumb: don't turn on Subscriptions or pitch sponsors before roughly 5k engaged followers — UGC deals and affiliate links carry the early months.
Giving back
Every membership, printable kit, sponsorship slot and copy of How to Lose a Papa sends a portion of proceeds straight back to public lands. The exact percentage gets locked in and published before the first dollar of revenue comes in — then reported on publicly, every year.
The book series
One pledge, one promise: a fixed share of every book sold joins the same park fund. The series and the giving-back commitment are the same story — read a park, visit a park, fund a park.
Media kit
A week includes: a dedicated newsletter placement, one Reel, three Stories with a link, a logo lockup on the state archive page, and use of two photos from the shoot. We write the copy; you approve it.
Enquiries
Tell us the state or country, the quarter, and what you want families to do after they read it.