RVtravel.com is a sick puppy today, Saturday, March 26, 2016. Everything was fine until about 9 a.m., when all of a sudden, the front page was taking a minute or two to load. At other times it would not load at all. Now (11:05). It's offline entirely.
This was a lousy time for this to happen. My essay this week is all about major changes taking place with our newsletters and website. I should be able to re-post it here by 11:15 a.m. (Pacific) this morning. I may also send it in an email later in the week for those readers who tried to read the issue today but couldn't.
Okay. . . got to find my essay to repost. Be right back.
Chuck
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Okay, here it is (without photos or illustrations):
One more report in this space about business stuff. I promise to get back to RV-specific topics (for the most part) in the future. But this is important and I must tell you. It's about how we are changing the way we display and distribute our news, articles and other information.
First — and please bear with me as this may seem like bad news to some of you — at the end of this month (this coming week) we are discontinuing our RV Daily Tips Newsletter. We started it four years ago and have produced nearly 850 issues. We thought when we began that by selling enough advertising in it we could replace some of the lost income from the closing of our RV bookstore. The store had been our main source of income for about 10 years, supporting this RV Travel newsletter and paying our salaries. Sadly, we never did better with the daily newsletter than cover our costs, even though producing it Monday through Friday demanded an enormous amount of our time and energy. In the end it stifled our overall productivity.
Another big problem with the daily newsletter has been that many of its subscribers tire of getting an email from us nearly every weekday. So they unsubscribe from the daily edition. But in doing so many inadvertently unsubscribe from this Saturday newsletter as well. The result is that we have lost hundreds of subscribers in the last few months, not good.
NEW, IMPROVED RV TRAVEL WEBSITE
With the time and money we will save from not publishing the daily newsletter, we are building a hugely improved RVtravel.com website. The current site, the one you are reading, is (we readily admit) mutt ugly and difficult to navigate. Even though we pride ourselves in being a quality source of RV information, our appearance is shabby and the function Stone Age.
Sometime late next month we will flip the switch on the new site. You will love it. This newsletter will look much the same, but the rest of the website will be brand-new, with all the articles and information easy to find (and all of it updated). And talk about information! We will have a ton of it!
We are busy now sifting through the archives of this website and a couple dozen of our other sites and blogs (some long gone), rounding up more than 3,500 articles (about 18 years' worth) to post to this website. It's a huge job. We figure that on average we can find, update and re-post about three to four articles an hour. So that's roughly 1,000 man (and woman) hours of work. I've been sitting at my computer every night for weeks finding, updating and posting articles. Members of our staff have been posting articles a couple of hours every day in between their regular duties. Our newly assigned RV Daily Tips writers are picking away, too. Slowly but surely we are gathering this massive amount of advice and information into one central location, RVtravel.com.
Alas, some of our articles from the past are hidden away in the far reaches of cyberspace and hard to find, some on websites and blogs we abandoned long ago. It will likely take months to find them all, update them, and re-post them to this site. But, wow! In the end, it will be worth all the time and effort!
In the meantime we are about to debut several video shows on our YouTube Channel. It's been my dream for years to produce more video as a way to present useful, valuable information about RVing in a different way than simply with words and photos alone.
I won't go into detail about the shows, but I can tell you that they will be entertaining and educational, most between 10 and 12 minutes on a specific topic related to RVing. We are also about to launch our tongue-in-cheek Spin and Win game show, which you will enjoy if you have a sense of humor. Even though it will be a bit goofy (mirroring my personality), we will have great prizes, some valued at more than $200.
You should see us when we are taping the show. Everybody is laughing so hard it's almost too much! I'm the host, sporting the ugliest, tackiest, most tasteless shirts known to mankind! My sweetheart, Gail, is our "Vanna," and is a hoot! When we get a formal schedule set for tapings, we'll invite our local readers into the studio to watch.
Finally, for those of you who pledged including those of you who do so on a monthly or annual basis, we will certainly understand if you "unsubscribe" now that we have suspended the daily newsletter. That said, I can promise that the amount and quality of information going forward will be far greater than ever before and I believe worthy of your support. So stay tuned. We are energized and I believe you will enjoy the fruits of our labors.
Hi Chuck! - Was able to view everything normal last night about 8:30pm central time. I even answered the the shower head question.
ReplyDeleteGene Hultman
Your newsletter is the first thing I open every morning. We are new to RVing and have learned quite a bit from your page.
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