More Big Changes For Bicycle Touring Pro

April 12, 2009 by Darren Alff

It’s been three and a half months since I arrived in Europe for my 9th long distance bicycle adventure (I’m in Orebic, Croatia at the moment). In that time, I’ve traveled thousands of miles, visited nine different countries, met some amazing people… and I’ve had a lot of time to just sit and think.

When people ask me about my travels, they usually ask where I have been and how long I’ve been on the road, but few people ask me what I spend my time thinking about .

Now I don’t know about you, but I believe that thinking is very important. When you are caught up with work, friends and family issues, it is often times difficult to find the time to just sit back and think. But because I’ve been doing some much traveling lately, I’ve had a lot of time to think. And I’ve been thinking a lot lately about BicycleTouringPro.com and the future of the site.

I’ve been running BicycleTouringPro.com by myself for almost two years now and I think it’s getting bigger and better by the day. But it’s still got a long ways to go before it becomes what I want it to become – the biggest and best bicycle touring website for young travel minded go-getters.

Over the past two years I’ve changed a lot with the site. I changed it from a normal website to a blog. I added a store, wrote an eBook, set up a Facebook Page, and produced a guide for obtaining free travel accommodations. I’ve had a few guest posts by authors and experts… and I even tried out a two-day bicycle touring web event. I’ve changed the type of posts I write and I’ve changed the frequency at which I publish information to the site. I’ve tried a lot of different things… and I’m not finished yet!

Just like on my past bicycle tours, I’m continuously altering my approach and my strategy. In much the same way I might try different tires or packing methods from one bike tour to another, I am continuously changing my tactics with BicycleTouringPro.com. The goal, of course, is to discover something better. A better way of doing something. A better result. A better experience.

While I sometimes fear these charges will confuse or frustrate my readers (and sometimes they do), I continue on. I continuing changing because I believe change is what is required in order to get to where I ultimately want to be. After all, if you do not change, you will continue to make the same mistakes… and you’ll stay in the same place you are now. I learned that a long time ago… and so I continue to change!

With that said, I’m announcing a few more changes for the site here at BicycleTouringPro.com. Some have already taken place… and some are going to happen in the very near future. Either way, here they are:

My 12-Part Bicycle Touring Email Mini-Course

First of all, you may have noticed that I am now offering a 12-part bicycle touring email mini-course via the sidebar on every page of the site. You just enter your name and email and you get 12 emails that walk you through some of the basics of long distance bicycle travel. After the 12 emails have finished, you will continue to receive a monthly round-up email in which I update you on the best of the best at BicycleTouringPro.com.

If you signed up for the BicycleTouringPro.com email newsletter in the past, then you have already received these 12 emails and there is nothing more to do. But if you are not yet on the list, you can enter your name and email in the fields below and your first mini-course email will be sent to you right away – absolutely free of charge.

Stories From The Road

Secondly, I’ve decided to share more of my personal stories from my travels with you.

When I started BicycleTouringPro.com, I wanted to build a site that taught the ins and outs of bicycle travel and I wanted to do this by posting only “how to” type articles. But after a couple months of writing, I realized that I could not continue with the “how to” type articles for very long. There just isn’t that much to know about bicycle travel after you get an understanding of the basics.

So I put the basics in an eBook called “The Bicycle Traveler’s Blueprint” and made it available for instant download for those who want that core essential bicycle touring information in an easy to digest format. And now that that information has been amassed and collected in a single location, I hope to use the website here at BicycleTouringPro.com more as a place to answer questions, share stories, and really get people excited about bicycle travel.

That said, I’ve hesitate for two years now with publishing my own or anyone else’s travel stories on the site because I tend to think most travel stories are just plain boring. I also think that the people who come to BicycleTourignPro.com are here to get help and information, and they could care less about where I’ve been or what’s happened to me while I’ve been out on the road.

But then, just recently I came to the realization that my travels right now are an incredible learning opportunity – both for myself and anyone else who might choose to read my stories, watch my videos, or look at my pictures.

So from now on, I plan to share more of my personal explorations with you. I’m only one person and I can only do so much traveling, so these future posts may come in spurts. When I’m traveling there may be a ton of pictures, videos and stories being shared. And when I’m back at home in the United States, the personal posts may stop for a while. But in the meantime, the regular “how to” type posts and gear reviews you are used to seeing here at BicycleTouringPro.com will continue as usual.

I hope that by sharing my stories with you, I can get you excited about traveling with your bike… and teach you a few things about bicycle touring, long distance travel, and lifestyle design along the way.

Guest Posts From The Pros

I’ve been getting a few emails from readers lately asking me “Why haven’t you written about diet and exercise? Why haven’t you written about wheels and tires? Why haven’t you written about sleeping in a hammock?” or a slew of other strange and obvious topics one might write about when discussing bicycle travel.

To make a long story short, there are a lot of topics to write about when it comes to bicycle touring. Some of these things I have on my “to-do” list and I plan to write about them when the mood strikes. But some subjects I simply have no knowledge about (such as hammocks and bicycle touring tires) and therefore feel unable and unqualified to share information on such things.

I haven’t written about these things because I either haven’t had the time or I am simply unqualified to write about them.

So here’s the deal. I need your help!

This is an open call to you experts out there! If you have something you consider yourself to be an expert on that relates to bicycle touring and you’d like to write a guest post for BicycleTouringPro.com on the subject, just send me an email with your name and a short description of the subject you’d like to discuss. If I like the idea, I will write you back with further instructions and a guest post will be created and shared with the rest of the readers on the site.

Interviews With The Bicycle Touring Pro

On a similar note, I’ve received a few requests recently for interviews and guest posts on other blogs and websites (see my recent interview with Cycle For Change for example). I love doing this sort of thing and I’m happy to do it. In fact, I’d like to do more interviews in the future! So if you run a blog, website, newspaper, magazine, or business that somehow relates to bicycle travel and you’d like to interview me for your publication, please contact me. I’d love to speak with you.

People & Things I Think Are Really Cool

Just like I hesitated sharing my own personal bicycle touring stories here on BicycleTouringPro.com, I’ve also been hesitant to share anyone else’s bicycle touring experiences. My fear in doing so is that BicycleTouringPro.com will simply become a collection of bicycle touring journals like you find on CrazyGuyOnABike.com or I’ll become a full-time bicycle touring reporter like Gene Bisbee of BikingBees.com. While I don’t want to be like those other guys, I do still want to highlight some of the people, places and things I think are cool and worth sharing.

In the past, I’ve shared these people, places and things via my Twitter account, but I plan to take another approach in the future.

In fact, this new idea is well underway and it’s been hiding in the background of BicycleTouringPro.com for a number of months, only today making it’s appearance on the main part of the site.

Check it out here: http://www.bicycletouringpro.com/lifestyle

What you are seeing here is a collection of people, places and things I think are awesome! For now, most of the items you see are simply things I think fit into my “bicycle touring lifestyle”. They are movies I love, clothes I wear, products I wish I had, etc. But in the future, I plan to highlight young travelers, incredible places you may have never considered visiting, and a whole lot more.

I call this new section of BicycleTouringPro.com the “Lifestyle” section, because the people, places, and products mentioned here are the things that I believe may help in transforming the old traditional bicycle touring of the past and flipping it on its head, turning it into the new, modern, young, hip, and lifestyle driven activity it should have become so many years ago.

The new lifestyle section of BicycleTouringPro.com has a completely different RSS feed you can subscribe to, so if you currently subscribe to the regular Bicycle Touring Pro feed, you will need to subscribe to this new feed as well if you want to get the new “lifestyle” items delivered to your feed reader.

Regular Bicycle Touring Pro RSS Feed: http://feeds2.feedburner.com/BicycleTouringPro

Lifestyle Bicycle Touring Pro RSS Feed: http://bicycletouringpro.com/lifestyle/feed/rss/

If you know of a person, place, or thing I should add to the new “lifestyle” section of BicycleTouringPro.com, be sure to let me know! Don’t forget to send me a link to the person, place or thing.

Post Frequency

Another thing I’ve changed a lot since starting BicycleTouringPro.com is the frequency at which I post new articles and content to the site. I started out posting once a week, but the readers wanted more. Then I amped it up to two posts, three posts, and even four posts per week. But that was burning me out and it was simply too much information for the readers. I love bicycle touring, but even I don’t want to read about it four days a week.

So I’ve recently calmed down a bit and started posting one large post and one smaller post per week. I think that’s been working pretty well, but the rigidness of this planned posting schedule is killing me. I’ve got 12 amazing new posts lined up in the queue, but at a rate of two posts per week, it will be a month and a half before you get to read them. So for now at least, I think I am going to speed up the posting schedule. And once I run out of things to say, the content may slow down again.

It’s just that with summer quickly approaching, everyone getting ready for their travels, and my own bicycle touring adventure well underway, there is a lot of information to get out there and I think the sooner I do it, the better. So get ready… cause here it comes!

Reader Questions & Answers

Finally, I know you have questions about bicycle touring. Whether you are new to bike touring or you are a seasoned veteran of bicycle travel, I really want to help make your bicycle touring experience an amazing, life-altering experience. I want to do this, because I have seen what an amazing impact bicycle travel has had on my life… and I know it could positively affect your life as well if you only give it a try.

So if you have a question you need answered, let me know by leaving a comment at the end of this article or any article on this site and I’ll do my best to answer the question in a future blog post, a personal email, or in a guest post from an expert who knows what he or she is talking about.

Sound good? I hope so, because that’s the plan… at least for the next few weeks. Let’s try this out and see how it goes. In the meantime, I would appreciate any feedback you might have for me.

What do you think of my plans? Do they sound okay with you? Is there anything else you think I should add, expand, or change here at BicycleTouringPro.com? Let me know by leaving a comment below.