Quitting BTYB?

Maybe by definition, but not in spirit.

I’ve been thinking a lot about BTYB / LN over the past couple weeks, which lead to the survey from yesterday (please take a minute to fill it out if you haven’t already). Tonight I had a conversation about all this with Carl Zetterlund, a long time reader who is doing a segment of LN with me right now.

So, I think it’s time to make some changes. Here are the problems, as I see them:

I don’t post frequently enough and we both know it. Along with this comes inconsistency. Sometimes I get in a few posts in a week, but sometimes I disappear for a couple weeks.
There’s a layer of formality between you and me. Most of my posts are more of a lecture from the front of the room than a conversation, to use an analogy.
Life Nomadic isn’t up yet, which means that most people don’t even know where I am and don’t get frequent updates on my travels, even though that’s one of the biggest and most important parts of my life right now.
BTYB has no real defined purpose. I think this is more in my head than in yours, but to me it’s something that’s important to me but doesn’t have a concrete place in my life.
I write about a lot of topics, but can’t explore some of them in great detail because it would take up too much of the blog’s focus (the practical aspects of living in an RV, for example).

I don’t post frequently enough for two reasons. One, despite having far more (and more engaged) readers here, Life Nomadic is my priority. So every week I make sure that I have my posts in for Gadling, but BTYB gets written for if a) I happen to have an idea for a post at a time when it’s convenient to write for it or b) if I’ve gone too long without writing and feel guilty.

Two, most of my life is traveling right now, and I feel like putting travel information on BTYB is blurring the line too much between the two sites.

The layer of formality stems from this problem a bit. When I write so infrequently I feel like I have to make my entries more polished. I know people look forward to the posts, so I try not to “waste” them by writing shorter blurbs about some quick interesting thought I had that day, or something funny that happened.

So… what to do about all this?

Here are some thoughts:

Combine all of my sites into one

Better Than Your Boyfriend, Life Nomadic, and Best in the Land, all under one roof. Probably an entirely new domain, either Tynan.net or ReallyAwesome.com.

Over the last year I’ve really started to get some clarity on what my passion is and what really makes me unique. I haven’t quite gotten the wording down, but it’s something along the lines of living life outside the box and inspiring and helping other people do the same.

When you think about it, EVERYTHING I do and write about fits into that definition. The new site will be focused around that idea. I think that this will also help build a sense of community and common purpose, which is one aspect I think we’re missing now.

My attention shifts between LN and BTYB now. If I’m visiting a lot of countries rapid fire I have tons of travel stuff to write. If I’m hanging out in Panama for two months, I have less.

So instead of having two sites that alternate between getting enough attention, I’ll have one that is consistent. I even have things I want to write for Best in the Land, but I don’t because I’m not willing to commit to focusing on it.

Promise and Deliver Consistency

I’m going to publicly announce and stick to a fixed schedule of posting. To make sure I do this I’m going to pre-write a bunch of posts and have my assistant publish one if I don’t have a new one ready by the deadline.

Carl was saying today that there are certain sites he checks because he knows there will be new posts. When he checks mine he expects that there won’t be. That’s sad.

I will also set a personal goal of writing at least 1000 words every day.

Have Feature Posts and Blog Posts

I’m thinking about writing two feature posts per week (the kind of stuff that gets posted now), and also writing shorter daily update style posts more frequently. Casual posts that probably won’t change your life, but will keep the conversation going.

I just got a video camera yesterday, so you can also expect video posts.

~~Buy You an Awesome Pony~~

Write Short Ebooks / Guides for Niche Topics

I was inspired by Chris Guillebeau, who makes his living writing a blog with a very similar theme to mine. He has a few 30-50 page ebooks that he sells through his site. I like his approach because they’re all high quality and he doesn’t push them.

Some ideas for things I would write about are:

Living in an RV
Dropping out of School
A collection of my best stories, rewritten with more background and detail.
Behind the scenes stories from Project Hollywood
Going Vegan

Obviously most people wouldn’t buy most of the ebooks, but readers who are really interested in a topic would find the books valuable. Hopefully by now you trust that I do very serious research into everything I do, do it as excellently as possible, and produce very high quality work.

Earning money from BTYB is an excellent thing for you and for me. It means that I can focus more time on it, which is good for people who buy the books and those who don’t.

And just in case you’re worried that the books will take away from the free content, here is my rule:

If I don’t write the posts I said I would in a month, on time, I will find a hilarious way to give the money away to strangers and will video and post it.

The Downside

My one nagging concern is that this can somehow be considered giving up on LN, which I have committed to focusing on. In reality I consider Life Nomadic to be a major subset of what I do and what I’m about, not the superset. I will be posting more LN related content (first on my agenda is a constantly updated 2009 gear list).

After all, I’m still going to be LIVING Life Nomadic,.

How does this all sit with you?

Does this sound better than what we have going now? I think that most people read both sites anyway, so I have the feeling people will be behind it.

Some questions to consider:

Do you like the idea of combining the sites?
Do you like the idea of shorter informal posts mixed in with longer “high impact” ones, or is that diluting the whole thing?
Do the short books/guides appeal to you?
Which domain do you like better: reallyawesome.com or tynan.net?

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There are 26 Comments.

Hawt

Apr 18th, 2009 @ 2:41 am

I like the idea of combining sites but I think it would hurt you more than it would help you (in terms of search rankings).

You could leave up the individual sites but then have reallyawesome.com draw from all of them kind of like your supertynan feed.

The more hardcore of us could check that out and then you wouldn’t lose rankings in google and everything would stay separate. Then over time if reallyawesome.com starts to pick up and gain traffic you could redirect everything to it.

I’m not sure what a short informal post would consist of, though I’m not against more posting.

I am definitely interested in the short books/guides, particularly the background stories with more detail and the project hollywood books.

I’d save tynan.net for something more personal to you, I like reallyawesome.com.

Hawt

Apr 18th, 2009 @ 2:45 am

I forgot to mention, that while I like the idea of the short books/guides – it would really come down to price, I think $40 CG charges is pretty pricey.

The price point would have to be around $14.95 (the price of a decent book in a bookstore) to get me to jump on, unless it was something I was super interested in.

elai

Apr 18th, 2009 @ 3:42 am

I would combine it all into one site, and tag/subdomain it. So reallyawesome.com/lifenomadic or rv.tynan.net. People who want to read just about vegan stuff will go to vegan.tyan.net, and people who want to read everything will just go to the main site. People can filter as they want. I personally find the multiple completely separate sites a bit annoying when I encounter them. I would also get both domains (conversion doubler style :P), make them aliases of each other (including this one) and see which one performs the best in the end. Then once you choose one, advertise that one, but keep the aliases.

I find short no fluff guides very attractive. I would price them at something low and impulse buy levels, like 9.99 or 4.99 since you effectively have no publishing or other costs like normal books do.

You should focus on one or two topics mainly although, like travel and some other high priority and fit the other ones in as they go along. I think that would happen naturally although.

Gruntwilligar

Apr 18th, 2009 @ 4:31 am

If you do create some e-books I would like to suggest that you create one(or more) about earning a living without having a job.

Jak

Apr 18th, 2009 @ 4:35 am

COMBINE THEM ALL

AWESOME IDEA!!!!!!

Bill Riddell

Apr 18th, 2009 @ 6:22 am

Absolutely combine them.

As for domain, I think its time to decide once and for all how you want to brand yourself. Do you want to be Tynan, or the awesome guy? You can always make it ‘Tynan.net – living life awesome’.
Having said that, not having Tynan.com could be a hindrance. I notice recently even massively popular site like del.icio.us has switched to delicious.com

I wouldn’t worry too much about separate feeds or sub-domains for each topic you may blog on. Why spend forever sorting that out to please a few people who only want to read about RV or vegan, just tag articles.

Dont be concerned that people will perceive you as giving up on LN, your still blogging for Gadling and on another blog. You will still be living the life, thats what matters, not that you are posting to LN.com

Mix of post lengths is cool with me.

Short guides are great. I’d buy some of them. I cant help but think you should look to write that book someday soon though. All your most awesome stories combined with advice on how others can do the same.
Perhaps write it in a similar manner to Rolf Potts’ travel writing book “Marco Polo Didnt Go There”. Each chapter he presents a story he has written, then it is followed by a ‘commentary track’ explaining the lessons that can be taken from the story.

Josh

Apr 18th, 2009 @ 8:59 am

Hey Ty,

I think I speak for most of the readers when I say that we’ll read however much you feel like writing on whatever subjects you feel like addressing. There’s plenty of other sites about travel, and various other things that could slip in under some “self development” label, but we keep reading your stuff. It’s a combination of the awesome life you lead, the way you write, and the honesty you have that keeps us reading, and that will always come through. And there’s other things for us to read out there while you’re busy living life and gathering new stories ;-)

Cleo

Apr 18th, 2009 @ 9:02 am

Combined sites would be a fabby idea!

A mixture of post lengths would be absolutely fine, and short random ones would be just as good to read as long informative ones.

Guide books = wicked, I’d really like that…

I personally would go for tynan.net, because it’s a site that’s all about you…But of course reallyawesome.com describes you as well :)

Philip

Apr 18th, 2009 @ 12:16 pm

I like the idea. You are right, I do read all your sites anyway, so it makes it easier if they are under one roof. I like what Hawt mentioned about rankings. You might want to keep that in mind. It is harder to get more readers if they don’t know the purpose of your blog. Simply living awesome is a hard one to pin down. But, it worked for here so it most likely would work somewhere else.

I do like the idea of mixed posts. I look forward to longer ones, but I would read the shorter ones too. I like the idea of regular posting, but I hope it doesn’t make you stressed to post. A forced post isn’t a good post.

The idea of short books/guides is nice. It would be great to go more in depth with some of the topics you discussed. I don’t know if I would be able to buy them, but it would help people that really do want to live in their RV, earn a living without a job, etc.

Finally, the domain livingawesome.com would work best. I think that it describes best what you are doing. Tynan serves as a nice gateway to any side projects you have.

I look forward to whatever happens.

Bunky

Apr 18th, 2009 @ 2:47 pm

I like the idea of bringing all of your stuff together in one easy to find place and think it will bring some more randomness to your postings.

Short posts can be fun to read too.

More books would be nice, but I still think you need to come out with one all encompasing extension to MHCY that teaches everything to diet and exercise, to how to purchase good stuff cheap, to just being an awesome person in general.

I like tynan.net better than reallyawesome.com just because it sticks out more, but think you should go for awesometastic.com

Drew

Apr 18th, 2009 @ 3:04 pm

I would say I’m against the idea of you combining the sites. It seems unnecessary. As far as a purpose for BTYB, I feel like it doesn’t need to be that specific. BTYB is kind of already your catch all (vegan, adventures, learning techniques, language). And I like it that way. I read it because there is a good possibility I will learn something new or random.

Along with that, short blogs are just as good. The blog where you talked about learning Kanji in 2 months was really helpful to me, since that has always been a goal of mine…but it was pretty short and the first one was mostly just a link and you riffing about it for a little bit.

Also the post where you linked to the country quizzes helped me a lot on something I was interested in, but hadn’t decided how to accomplish the goal yet.

You SHOULD put all random ideas here…your Best In The Land posts would go well here except when they are exclusively travel related (which I’m sure in the immediate future, most will be).

Life Nomadic works well as a separate site in my opinion. I go there when I want to read about travel stuff, which is not as often as I want to read crazy adventures or neat things to learn. Even though I’m a traveler and have gotten a lot of GREAT info from LN, it was at specific times.

Consider your blogs as different publications. I think GameInformer and Rolling Stone are excellent magazines for things I want to keep up with…but I wouldn’t find it more convenient (even though it would seem like it would be) for their content to be in the same magazine.

You don’t have an obligation to your readers to do anything unless they pay for something. I appreciate the concern and love, but when Tucker Max or Maddox don’t update, I accept that they are probably working on a bigger project and know it will be worth the wait.

The reason you want to update more often is probably because you want people to keep coming back and you want to keep up your brand…which is a noble goal…but you don’t want to force it…and you don’t want to dilute the brand by making it too all inclusive. That might work for a little bit, but will ultimately hurt it

(Think Facebook when it was just for specific colleges and now…I guarantee in 3 years it will be irrelevant and bankrupt…but if it had continued to cultivate a niche market it would probably be profitable for years to come…just speculation…but hopefully my rambling is getting my meaning across)

You’re posts are usually really helpful and enlightening and sometimes inspirational. I’m willing to wait for the muse to hit for that kind of content. Books don’t really appeal to me, and despite their length, I think you will find having the additional project annoying. If you’re not charging per book, you won’t have to have the whole thing done at once (thing your series of vegan articles…not exactly enough to put into a book, but still really helpful, and easier to commit to when you can break it up into multiple posts). I mean, if you already have these ideas for things to talk about, but you’re having trouble thinking of things to make posts about….I dunno, that doesn’t make sense to me. I understand the need/want to monetize, but will it be worth the extra work?

I don’t think there is anything wrong with how you’re doing things right now. What is the bottom line? Do you want more readers? To feel more accomplished? SOLELY to do right by your readers (who get all the content for free?) Aside from convenience and maybe the lack of a nagging feeling for you that the site isn’t fulfilling its true purpose (does it need one that is THAT specific?…I’ve read it every chance I get for 9 months without one being apparent or necessary to me), what does combining all the sites into one accomplish? You have to design a new page, register a new domain, let everybody know, etc etc. I don’t think it will really generate more readers…and people who might have been attracted to LN in its current state might find wading through the rest annoying. And people that read BTYB might find it disappointing that most of your attention is focused on travel and not rappelling bridges or learning everything about finances and the steps to get started themselves.

Starting to get to wordy…keep the sites they way they are…figure out and communicate EXACTLY what you are trying to accomplish with the sites and then we can help you figure that out…post things you find interesting and helpful…most of us will probably feel the same way about it regardless of length.

Just my .02, and both of your sites appeal to me, so its not like you will lose this reader, but I don’t mind checking two sites (particularly when they are clearly linked to each other) and I think it will benefit you more (both in work not needed and broader, more specific coverage to attract more readers) to keep it the way it is.

arebelspy

Apr 18th, 2009 @ 3:35 pm

sounds like this post should be titled “quitting LN” not quitting btyb, especially wrt this paragraph:
“My one nagging concern is that this can somehow be considered giving up on LN, which I have committed to focusing on. In reality I consider Life Nomadic to be a major subset of what I do and what Iâ€™m about, not the superset. I will be posting more LN related content (first on my agenda is a constantly updated 2009 gear list).

After all, Iâ€™m still going to be LIVING Life Nomadic,.”

you got all hyped about pushing through the dip, but it doesn’t seem like you’re going to do that for LN to make it the best in the world.

anyways, i follow all your sites (gadling, here, etc) through rss, so combining them or not doesn’t matter to me, i’ll see all your content anyways. it could be a fine idea

i hope you just don’t start too many projects, as you tend to do (ex: ebooks now, apparently) at the expense of focusing on ONE and making that the best.

/shrug

gl, i’ll be reading no matter what

Par

Apr 18th, 2009 @ 3:43 pm

I think that most non-american readers feel that any web site with the word awesome is aimed at 14 year old US citisens.

For me there is NO problem with the infrequency of the posts since I’m using Google Reader. How many of your users read through RSS-readers? Don’t worry, keep posting on the different sites when it suits you!

Mads

Apr 18th, 2009 @ 4:51 pm

Nooooo, don’t quit. Your blog is one of the only blogs I really care about reading – and reading it through Bloglines, I don’t mind the infrequency.

Nicky

Apr 18th, 2009 @ 5:10 pm

I think combining them makes sense and then after that the only real decision to make is whether or not you’re going to write some high-quality articles or not.

Whether its at tynan.net or reallyawesome.com matters so little in comparison to the quality of the articles you put out.

I don’t even think the topic matters if you’re writing good content. In fact, I think it is better to constantly be writing about new topics as they come.

Sure,you write about RVs and I don’t live in an RV. It’s still pretty entertaining to read and I know your next post will probably be more relevant to me.

In the end its less about the topic itself and how you frame the topic in your writing.

I think you should just pick a name and then focus on the content. I really don’t like the name tynan.net, but that is irrelevant because I like your articles.

As far as ‘products’ I agree it comes down to price. $40 is an insane amount to charge for electrons, especially when I could cruise around the internet and find information for free.

If it were $5 I would buy it without thinking
If it were $10 I would think hard about the topic and whether or not it was worth it and probably buy it
If it were $15 I would ‘buy it later…’

More than that, not a chance.

In the end, I am sure whatever you choose is going to be awesome though, because you decided on producing high-quality stuff a long time ago and that’s the decision that counts.

Nicky

Apr 18th, 2009 @ 5:12 pm

Oh, I forgot to mention that you can probably use a 301 (permanent) Redirect to forward your articles to the new site and preserve your google rankings as much as possible.

Drew

Apr 18th, 2009 @ 6:05 pm

I’m going to disagree with the post above, because its a point I should have made and forget to…not to be conflicting for no reason, and say that I think betterthanyourboyfriend is a great name. If I saw it on a flyer or around the net I would have to go there. Tynan is a cool name, but its not a URL that would really grab my attention

Better Than Your Boyfriend is attention grabbing and almost controversial…and you back it up. You live an extraordinary life and were a famous pick-up artist…so anyone that might think its classless or bragging would see that its a tongue cheek reference to your life both past and preference.

Drew

Apr 18th, 2009 @ 6:06 pm

wow…Present* not preference

Tynan

Apr 18th, 2009 @ 8:26 pm

Thanks a lot for the feedback. I’m going to go with Tynan.net. I like/love the name better than your boyfriend but I think it’s associated too much with pickup for some reason. Lots of people get it, lots of people don’t. Tynan.net gives me a blank slate to define the site.

I’m in the process of combining the sites now and will probably have it done within the next few days.

Tynan

A Nonymous

Apr 19th, 2009 @ 5:33 am

And here comes the point where Tynan blows up the work he’s done so far.

I quote Drew in almost all he writes.

Monetizing from ebooks seems hard to me. Have you ever thought of selling the stuff you review on Best in Land? You could even rebrand it with Life Nomadic.

As I perceive it, that stuff helps people living ‘more nomadic’ and you are the living awesome advertiser of it.

Alas, this is one of those cases where one is selling away his self to make money. Maybe.

DaveT

Apr 19th, 2009 @ 6:01 am

I think combining is a great idea, and I believe it is time that the BTYB domain is left behind. You are no longer involved in the pickup scene (and if that is what this blog is, I would not have it bookmarked and visit, as that is of no interest to me).

Glad to see you settled on tynan.net. I definitely agree that was the domain to go with. To me, it seemed no contest.

I also had not realized you were keeping up to date with Gadling. I just read some of your entries over there.

Anyway, I think that this was a good decision to make. Best of luck with the switchover!

Glade

Apr 19th, 2009 @ 2:15 pm

I think that you should leave them separate, or like HAWT said, leave them separate and then have them automatically post to reallyawesome.com (luv it). I subscribe on google reader, so I never have problems waiting for your next post. The posts come to me. I think more people will catch on to the trend of subscribing to blogs.

Paladin

Apr 20th, 2009 @ 9:30 pm

It’s a shame you’re leaving this one behind. I still think the name is hilarious. My phone keeps track of the feed for me. So when I’m bored I can just read on the tube. I can understand the challenge in maintaining multiple blogs/websites. It’s hard just maintaining my one. But hey…I’ll follow you onto Tynan.net for sure!

Donovan Glass

Apr 21st, 2009 @ 8:03 pm

You’re on to something!

PeaceOut

May 8th, 2009 @ 9:29 pm

04.18.09: “first on my agenda is a constantly updated 2009 gear list”
04.19.09: VIDEO: The 2009 Passport Crisis
04.20.09: Tynan.net
04.24.09: Dealing with the Minutia
04.27.09: How Cruise Lines Get Free Employees
04.30.09: Standard Dishonesty
05.04.09: The Best Banks and Credit Cards: American Express Platinum
05.08.09: Understanding How Cameras Work to Improve Your Shots

Apparently not the FIRST item on your agenda…

Tynan

May 9th, 2009 @ 1:47 pm

@PeaceOut: Good point. It is high up on the list, though. I’ve made the video and I’m working on a cool way to organize the list.

Tynan

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