Week in Review, Counting Down to Travel
Time is passing quickly and we have so much to do. A few months ago it seemed that we had all of the time in the world. Now we are leaving in less than two months.
But first let me talk about this week at theplanetd.
We have a guest post at The Travel Writers Exchange today regarding how the Planetd came about. It was so much fun to write about the process that we took from world travelers who sent the odd email home to friends and family to travel bloggers that chronicle our journey for all to see. Check it out and tell us how your travels has evolved over the years.
We just find the Travel Writers Exchange one of the best resources for travel writers and Bloggers on the internet and we are so excited to contribute our own little piece of information to their site!
We also have a travel tip about climbing Mount Kilimanjaro at TravelDudes. We have connected with them on Twitter over the past few months and this site is a machine. I hope that our blog becomes the success of Traveldudes in the future. Thanks for inviting us to share a tip!
Anil at foXnomad has published an ebook about Overcoming the Seven Major Obstacles to Traveling the World. It was a successful series that he ran on his blog and due to popular demand he has formatted it for an easy to use ebook. If you are thinking of traveling the world, but things are holding you back, this is the book for you! We were honored to be ask to contribute a small excerpt about our personal stories of world travel.
Click here to visit foXnoMad LLC.
I also signed up for MatadorU this week.
TravelBlogging is incredible, but it isn’t going to pay the bills along the way by itself. NomadicMatt has figured that one out, but we have a long way to go to making $3000 per month off of this site.
Travel writing for magazines and newspapers has always been the goal. Our 4 part series for the Toronto Star during the Tour d’Afrique was one of the most rewarding experiences of our lives and we want to keep writing for publications as we go. That is why I do feel that MatadorU will be good for me. I did take a travel writing course at George Brown College a few years ago, but my confidence has certainly grown since then, so I feel that I will be able to get a lot more out of a course now than I did then. Plus, I love the forum that they have going on in there. Hopefully I can balance the time. Between packing, keeping up with the blog and still working times are a little busy.
The blog is starting to feel like we have actually gotten it to where we want it. We like the layout and we like the plugins that we have added to the site. Changing the Subscribe to us button has helped increase our subscribers and by adding the subscribe to comments plug-in at the end of posts has added a feel of a conversations going on.
We still need to change the location of our Contact Us link and we want to add a menu in the side bar for posts besides just recent and top commented. We would love to add our favorite featured posts and top viewed posts as well. If anyone knows which plug-in that would be, I would love to hear from you.
A few months ago, I wrote about StumbleUpon and how I don’t know if it works at all. Well, here is my advice. Stick with it, because we are starting to receive quite a few hits from StumbleUpon. I spend quite a bit of time stumbling other people’s sites and posts and it really does pay off in the long run.
Twitter has become an important referrer for our site. We decided that we were going to focus our attention on twitter. Celebrities, corporations and politicians are using twitter to reach the masses so they must know something right? We think that it is only going to grow as people catch on. Most of my friends and coleagues aren’t even on it yet and they were the ones that were on facebook years before me. So I think that twitter still has a long way to grow.
Speaking of facebook, we made a facebook group, but I don’t know how beneficial it is. Nobody is really sharing information and my blogs show up on my own feed through network blogs, so I really just have a lot of people following me but they aren’t really seeing or doing anything. I am starting to think that we should just have people follow our facebook accounts that we already have going under our names. That way we can be friends and actively engage in a conversation. What is your take?
Embracing Technology
We finally bought an iphone to keep in touch on the road. Thanks to Trisha’s (travelwritersexchange) advice about the wordpress plugin for posting emails to the blog, we think that now that we have a phone for traveling, we will be able to stay updated on our posts even if we are in the middle of nowhere. From what I have seen in my travels, Cell signals can be picked up almost everywhere. Lots to learn and many applications to add, but we still have time to have it all figured out before we travel.
So that is what is going on with the site and on the internet side of things.
Here is what is going on in travel preparations.
We took our first load to storage! You know it is real when you are starting to pack. I hate living in a mess, so when the boxes start to pile up, they have to be taken out.
We have priced flights and dates and are narrowing down on the exact date that we are leaving. I know, I know. You probably can’t believe that we haven’t booked our flight yet. Dave’s TV show keeps changing dates on when it is going to end, so we keep pushing back our flight date. We think that everything is settled though, so we are probably going to book it this week!
We have started packing our backpacks. I like to pack early. Most of my stuff for travel, I don’t use here and I don’t wear that same clothes either. So I start to pack early. It helps me scale down what I will be taking. It takes me a few tries but the longer the bag sits there, the more I take out. It is my way of not over packing. I throw everything in to the pack at first and then I reorganize it a couple of times. Each time I take out more and more things. It feels so good!
So there you have the week in review. Only about 6 more weeks to go until we are on a flight to India. Last night we almost changed our minds on where we were going to fly into, but we changed them back to Kerala sometime in the 3rd week of November.
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Wow!! Time flies! I’m sure you guys must be busy but kudo to your success and for keeping up your blog.
I would love to hear about what plan or strategy you use for your iphone. Are you planning to unlock and use sim card or using international plan.
.-= Amy @ The Q Family´s last blog ..The Helping Hands =-.
Yep, we have unlocked the phone and are going to be using SIM Cards. We are already using it now with an expired SIM, but having it in allows the phone to work and pick up the internet. It is very cool. Don’t worry, I am going to be posting exactly how the Iphone works and how we are using it. This is one of the things about travel that I am most curious about. Cost, staying connected on the road, uploading posts from the phone. It is going to be a learning experience indeed!
I am really interested in finding out how the iPhone goes on the travels…considering getting one before I head back out but am going to wait see how yours goes
Lol. Love all of your guest posts this week!
.-= Shannon OD´s last blog ..a little inevitability…it’s raining, it’s pouring =-.
Hey Shannon, I will keep you posted. So far, we have just unlocked it and put in an old sim card. But we can pick up internet at the moment, so I really should practice twittering or something from it. I am a little intimidated. Any new technology always takes me a little bit of time. Dave on the other hand embraces everything and understands it so quickly. Too bad he is so busy with work right now.
I’m with Shannon. How does it work, where do you pay for the service? I mean, if you travel between countries how do you keep the service going?
I know in Guatemala for an Iphone you have to pay $120 A MONTH to get service. but then i see people from the states, europe, canada, using them here.
How does that work?
Hey Marina. We don’t know everything exactly. But so far we have figured out that we can buy a sim card and use it as a regular phone while we travel. Because we have unlocked it, we can use it like any phone, but also get the benefits of using Wifi whenever we can pick it up. I am going to be blogging about the trials and tribulations of the cell phone as we go. This is our first attempt at it, but so many people seem to be using it that it must be able to be done. I agree, there is no way I am going to be paying $120 a month for service, so if it turns out to be that expensive, we will end up using it solely as an ipod touch.
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Time really runs away with you but it looks like you are really getting ready to go and putting into a lot of effort into becoming a great and huge travel site. Things are coming along handily and pretty soon, you’ll be blogging from the road which is both a fun and tiring time!!!
ps- glad you signed up for matadoru. those guys are great. Did you use my affiliate code by chance?
pps- in more shameless self help, did you buy insurance yet? I have a widget on my site where you can do that too lol.
.-= Nomadic Matt´s last blog ..The Downside to Long Term Travel =-.
Hi Matt. Thanks a lot to you! Your book has been invaluable and your ongoing advice has been a great help. We have insurance with our film union for the 1st 7 months of travel, but we will need some then. I will check it out when I need it. However, we might have to swing home next summer for a month or two, in that case our insurance will start up again and we will have another 7 months. We are very lucky!
Try WP-Post Views plugin by lesterchan.net for the most viewed posts. You can check out the widget on my site, bottom right.
As for Facebook, I’m not certain it is worth the time investment. I have a fan page set up, not linked to a personal account, and it is rather restricted.
Enjoy the new toy! I’ve been suffering from iPhone envy of late
.-= Gourmantic´s last blog ..When You’ve Got to Go =-.
Thank you for the plug-in advice, I will check it out! Good to hear about the fanpage. I was regretting joining a group and thought that I should have gone with the Fan Page. I guess neither are that great. My personal page seems to get the best response. Network Blogs shows up in my feeds and people click from there. Cheers!
I am the same way, deadly scared of any techy thing. i will literally use a palm pilot for just it’s calculator until i’m told like a kid how to use it!
My husband on the other hand is soooooo not scared of them and lives for it!!!
Marina. I am exactly the same way. I need to be told how to use new things at least twice before it sticks with me. Sometimes more. When we were on the Equinox Adventure, we had GPS, OnStar etc. And there I was using the old fashioned map and missing turn offs. We could have just set up the onstar to tell us where to go. I hardly used any of the state of the art features in the truck when I was driving either. Most people would be checking everything out, not me. I put it in drive and didn’t touch a thing:)
I can’t wait to go checkout all of your guest posts, good to get the chance to read more from you! The FB groups look really nice but that’s so far the most I’ve gotten out of them. It doesn’t hurt to have it though and when I run contests I usually post special prizes or information there (and to my other various subscribers as well).
.-= Anil´s last blog ..Cultural Clocks Around The World =-.
Hi Anil. I agree, it doesn’t hurt to have anything really. If a social network is reaching one or two people it is worth it. Because you aren’t putting much into it. I really do get more of a response from my personal account though. Like I said, Network Blogs shows up in my personal feed. I get all of the benefits of facebook through my Debra Corbeil Account, We have way more followers between our two personal sites than our little group for our site. I will keep you posted on how things go.
I just told my wife you guys are going to India..she is so jealous. India is on our list of places to visit as well. Hope you guys have a great time, I look forward to reading your remote iphone post updates.
.-= Adam´s last blog .. =-.
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