Blogging is hard. Really. If you’ve ever read the daily work flows of professional bloggers like Darren Rowse, you’ll know it ain’t a picnic. I subscribe to and read several hundred RSS feeds every day and keeping pace with that daily torrent of reviewing, processing and writing about that information could easily be a full time job for several people.
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But I absolutely love it. Vagabondish has always been a labor of love – no ads to speak of, beholden to no one but myself. I write about long term travel simply because I enjoy and am passionate about it. But lately I’ve been hashing out a few ways to evolve this blog, with specific issues and goals in mind:
- I wish I had 72 hours in a day to write more, to say more. My current overflow of WordPress blog drafts – all 108 of them – are a testament to that. I need a Mini-me. Or perhaps several of them: a gaggle of passionate vagabonds like me writing just as passionately about travel news, the travel industry, gear reviews, etc.
- Since day one, I’ve always wanted to custom design this blog. As a web designer for the better part of a decade, it’s ironic that the one site to which I devote the vast majority of my time is the only site of mine that wasn’t designed by me.
- A wise man once said – and I’m paraphrasing – that, “If you find a job you love, you’ll never have to work a day in your life.” Which is why I’m exploring new possibilities to monetize this blog. I’m not talking the standard Travel+Leisure, CNN.com, et. al. method of advertising where the content accounts for 10% of the screen real estate. I’m not looking to make a mint; but rather a small pittance of AdSense and affiliate revenue that will hopefully contribute to my long term travel plans.
Towards the above goals, I’ve decided to evolve Vagabondish into a blogging collaborative – a sort of travelzine. Over the next few weeks, I’ll be rolling out the new design and working with a cast of traveling characters who are just as psychotically infatuated with travel as I am.
This Irish bloke’s ecstatic about the new Vagabondish. His wife – not so much.
I’m excited to say that RSS subscriptions have doubled in the past month and traffic has more than tripled in the past few months. I’m crossing my fingers and hoping that a bevy of new content, new reviews, and fresh faces will help grow this blog into a real kick ass travel resource for the bloggers and readers of this great travel community.
Thanks to everyone who regularly reads Vagabondish as part of their daily dose of travel deliciousness!