The angler who has never heard of you
A lot of guiding work comes the same way. A client has a good day, tells a friend, and the friend rings. It works, and it is also a ceiling. The angler who has just bought a rod, or who is travelling to a river they have never fished, has nobody to ask. They search for "guide" plus a river name and find a forum thread from 2016.
Many people look for a guide because they are new to the water, or new to fly fishing. They want someone to show them where to stand and what to tie on. Anglers use FishingBeats to plan a day on the water, so a guide page sits where that question gets asked.
The guides directory is new. There are only a handful of guides on it so far.
What your page shows anglers
A guide page covers who you are, where you work, what you charge and what you are qualified to do. It suits a full-time guide as well as someone who fits guiding around another job.
Who you are. Trading name, bio, photo, the town you are based in, the area you cover and how far you will travel, years guiding and languages.
Who you work with and what you teach. Beginners, groups, juniors, whatever applies, plus the methods you teach and guide, and the fish you guide for. Juniors only shows on your page once a DBS check is recorded: teaching children is the one claim we will not show on anyone's word alone.
What is provided. Tackle, waders and flies, and whether you sell gift vouchers.
Months available, and how to book. With a booking link if you have one.
Rates. One row per service, such as a full guided day or a half-day casting lesson: length, price, anglers included, price per extra angler, and whether the fishing itself is included. That last one matters. An angler comparing a day that includes the beat with one that does not is not comparing like with like.
Venues. The waters you guide, written in as text, with a town, county and website if you like. That works for water that is not on FishingBeats too, and a venue's county puts you on that county's page.
Favourite flies. Up to twelve, shown as fly cards on your page.
Charlie Atherton's page is a good example of one filled in properly, with qualifications, a price for casting tuition and the area covered. The full list is at fishingbeats.com/guides.
Qualifications and ticks
Anyone can write "qualified instructor" on a website. Anglers know that, and it is why a page on its own can feel thin.
You list each qualification with its awarding body, title and discipline (AAPGAI, GAIA and FFI are the usual ones). It stays off your public page until we have checked it against the awarding body's register, so anything an angler reads there has been checked.
There is also a Verification tab. You can upload proof for:
each qualification
public liability insurance, with its expiry date
first aid, with its expiry date
DBS works differently. It is checked through the DBS Update Service from your certificate number, with your consent. No DBS document is uploaded or kept.
A person looks at each piece of proof, sets the tick and emails you. The public page can then show qualifications verified, Insured, First aid and DBS checked. A tick on our page is our claim as much as yours, which is why each one rests on something a person has actually seen.
Your page, your say
A guide page never goes public without your consent. Registering and publishing your own page counts as that consent. A page with no recorded consent is hidden everywhere, the sitemap included.
Nothing goes live while you type. Save a draft, and "Save draft and preview" opens the real page as anglers will see it. Publish puts it live within a few minutes. Editing a live page never takes it offline, and Discard draft puts it back as it was.
Every page carries a quality score out of 100, with "must have" and "good to have" checks that explain why each matters. Guide pages are not blocked by it, but fuller pages rank higher in lists and search, and pages with a photo come before pages without.
There is also a Boost page. A complete page can earn up to 20 extra ranking points: eight for a verified badge or link on your own website, four for three or more favourite flies, and three for each guide, club or owner you bring along who gets a live page (up to three, through your own personal link; we never email them). Nothing lifts a page that is missing required details.
Seeing what happens
Insights shows views, visits and clicks on to your booking link, website, phone, email and social pages, for the last 30 days, 90 days or 12 months, compared with the period before. It also shows where visitors came from: search engines, other FishingBeats pages, your own site, other sites, social or direct.
What it costs, and what it is not
It is free to join and free to have a page. There are no card details, and nobody pays for placement.
It is not a booking system. Anglers do not book or pay through FishingBeats. Your page sends them to your booking link, website, phone or email, and you deal with them directly. It is also not a promise of work. It is a page that makes you easier to find and easier to trust.
Getting started
Sign up at partner.fishingbeats.com/join: say who you are, make an account, confirm your email.
Find your page by name, or start a new one. You may already be listed, since most listings were built from public information.
Show it is yours. Signing up with an email at your own website's domain is checked automatically. Otherwise we can send a 6-digit code to the contact address already published, or you can add a short tag to your website. Failing those, a short note with evidence is checked by a person.
A person at FishingBeats has a look, usually within two days. New pages stay hidden until then.
If you have a question along the way, the Messages page goes straight to the team, and replies usually come within two days.
In early October we put out a call for guides and casting instructors, asking people to email us. You no longer need to: you can do all of this yourself.
Join as a partner See the guides directory
The rest of the series
This is the third of four pieces on the partner platform. The first two are FishingBeats for fisheries and water owners and FishingBeats for clubs and syndicates. The piece for booking agents follows over the coming weeks.
