Native couple finds YouTube success with cruise journey movies

When Jerry Shields videotaped highlights of a Caribbean cruise that he and his spouse Jill took in 2021, the couple didn’t foresee how that might impression their lives in an enormous, constructive approach.

The couple, who reside on St. Joseph Island, would go on to take pleasure in a profitable second profession and web fame because of that videotaped cruise.

“Jerry put that video up on YouTube and before we knew it we had 1,000 subscribers and we were being monetized by YouTube. This tiny thing turned into a great big snowball,” Jill instructed SooToday.

The couple now take 5 to seven cruises a 12 months and have effectively over 18,000 subscribers to their ever-growing collection of Cruising Canucks YouTube movies.

The movies chronicle Jerry and Jill’s cruises all over the world and likewise supply journey recommendation and suggestions to viewers.

The couple additionally take folks on group cruises.

“We have this very interesting audience of just normal people wanting to learn more about what their next cruise might be like,” Jerry stated.

“I said to Jill ‘maybe we should put our faces in front of the camera and just explain our experience firsthand.’ Neither one of us had ever been on camera for anything so it was kind of an awkward thing in the beginning.”

Jill agreed.

“We didn’t just jump over our comfort zone. We threw ourselves right over that line,” Jill laughed.

Regardless, the couple quickly grew to become accustomed to being on digital camera.

“We found that there’s a whole YouTube market out there for not being sensational,” Jerry stated.

“We acted just as normal as anybody would be on a vacation and not do an over the top social media thing. People told us ‘you’re so relatable, you’re so real.’ Now, people meet us on a cruise ship and say ‘you’re just like you are on your videos.’”

Jerry shoots and edits all of the movies whereas Jill handles all of the questions they obtain via social media platforms.

“I had no social media presence whatsoever before. Now my whole life is on social media,” Jill stated.

“I used to laugh at kids when they told me they were going to be YouTubers and now I’m living that life. So, there’s the ironic part of this whole story,” she added.

The revenue generated from their Cruising Canucks movies and thru internet hosting group cruises has allowed them to take roughly 35 cruises since posting that preliminary YouTube cruise video in 2021, Jerry stated.

It additionally enabled Jill to retire from her job as an academic assistant a couple of years sooner than anticipated.

It’s a profitable aspect hustle for Jerry.

Jerry is a meteorologist and provides SooToday with its each day climate forecasts.

With a trusty laptop computer and fashionable know-how, he’s in a position to provide each day climate forecasts for the Sault whereas cruising anyplace on the earth, from locations as far aside as Panama and Turkey.

“Every morning I check all the details of the weather back in the Sault, going through everything on the radar like I would if I was at home on St. Joseph Island,” Jerry stated.

“We ensure that wherever we’re travelling I’ve obtained entry to good web as a result of I’m up early within the morning to ensure I get the forecast for the Sault.

“Everything these days, fortunately, is web-based. I can see the observations from all the weather stations anywhere around the area. I can pull up the radar, real time, from my laptop. I can pull up all the weather models.”

These days, the standard of the web is pretty much as good on a ship on the ocean as it’s at his dwelling on St. Joseph Island, he stated.

Many of Jerry and Jill’s cruises have been within the Caribbean, however they’ve additionally taken cruises within the Mediterranean, across the British Isles, Europe, Alaska, down the California coast to Mexico, the northern coast of South America and the Panama Canal.

“We’ve seen quite a bit of the world,” Jerry stated.

Jill stated town of Split, in Croatia, stands out as her most memorable cruise cease whereas Jerry stated his favorite thus far is the British Isles.

“What’s funny is that so many people in our own backyard have no idea this is happening. We get recognized more by folks in Florida or the UK than we do in the Sault,” Jerry stated.

“We were walking through the airport in Rome and I had people yelling and running towards me saying ‘Mrs. Canuck, I can’t believe it’s you,’” Jill added.

Jill’s mother and father had been avid cruisers, main her and Jerry to observe of their footsteps.

“We continue to do it because we’ve met such wonderful people that are cruisers, travellers from around the world. We’ve built a community and they affectionately call themselves ‘the Canucklings.’ It’s a great big extended family. It’s been wonderful,” Jill stated.

“I’d have to say that I’ve been absolutely impressed with the people that we’ve met around the world and how personable they are. It’s been an interesting thing for me to relate to all these people around the world,” Jerry added.