I’ve been setting up WordPress Multilingual plugin for a while now, thinking about offering a second, third and fourth version of my site in the languages I’m studying.

The plugin is great.

The idea of translating myself is a little daunting.

Will it impact how I write in English? Will I be tempted to simplify my expressions, avoid jargon or terms that I know will be hard to translate? Even if it doesn’t, won’t there be some subconscious effect?

It makes me think about my long term goals in language, and about those writers who avoided languages because they didn’t want to muddle their first. I do think I’ll be okay, but on the other hand I have this subtle uneasiness in going too far away from English. If I spend more time each day in Spanish, Arabic and Mandarin, will my English suffer? Can you break your native tongue? (The answer is yes, by the way, I’ve seen it, but usually it involves a decade or more living in another language completely).

Where’s the line?

Sometimes I feel it, wanting to sprinkle in bits of Spanish into my writing, like wanting to say, “verdad?” instead of “you know?” then wondering if I should just say, “right?” instead and forgetting a little what I would naturally say if I didn’t think about it.

Basically I over-think it. Might just be growing pains of learning.

Will translating almostfearless.com into Spanish (and later Mandarin in the fall and Arabic next winter) help that or make it worse?

It should be interesting.

I just had my second child a few weeks ago, in Mexico, making her the first dual citizen in our family. I wrote about our birth experience here:

The Birth Story Part 1

The Birth Story Part 2

Of course I’m now thinking about our Spanish and raising my children as multi-linguals… here’s what I’m reading right now:

Bilingual kids

Challenges of raising bilingual children

The experience of applying to a dual language school

Parenting

Concerned over letting your kids use your ipad? Read The Touchscreen Generation.

What we can learn from Finland on education.

Photography

Beautiful Portrait Photography

Interesting tips for Traveling Photographers

Writing

Paying writers for traffic not content: a new model at Forbes.

And my favorite: The New Yorker rejects the New Yorker.

Chiang Mai Lights by Christine Gilbert

I want to write this down so that other people can heed my advice:

Do not try to edit a film in a country where there are 50% power shortages in the middle of summer.  Or where internet costs $100 for 5 MB/mo of usage at 3G mobile speeds.

Also research countries first before you go to them. (Always forgetting this one!)

Also be more proactive — took us two months to realize the AC units actually worked.

Finally, life is crazy right now. Film is finishing up, Kickstarter campaign to begin, chipping away at Arabic, maybe Syria will end the civil war, perhaps Beirut will really actually get energy assistance from Turkey, and I’ll make it to September in one piece.

Enjoying the summer, the baby, all of it, but crazied like no other time my life.  We’re doing it.  Holy crap.  People are coming out of the woodwork to help us, offer us things, it’s insane.  Can’t even talk about it.

I love it, I’m super busy and I will definitely relax this fall.  But for now, it’s the final push to getting this two year long project out the door!  *karate kick*

I’ve been meaning to write about the course I’m teaching, but I’ve been so busy, I keep putting it off.

Why another blogging course?

I have had this growing feeling over the years that the kind of blogging advice that’s available out there – either for free on places like problogger.net or copyblogger.com or at a price like mediabistro, matadoru, travel blog success, and I think there are others… they don’t really match the kind of blogging that I do, and the things that I focus on.  That’s not to say that they do a bad job, it’s just that I think they give bloggers what they want to hear: easy tips to increase traffic and make money (with the exception of Matador U which teaches travel writing, not specifically travel blogging although they have a brief section on that).

There’s a couple of really big things that make a difference in blogging:

• Your writing
• Your photography
• Your story

That’s it.  Of course some of the most popular blogs have figured out ways around having those things, and not everyone is strong in every area.  The blogs who eschew writing, photography and story in favor of metrics, pumping up traffic, gimmicks, buying traffic/social media likes and “gaming” things like stumbleupon and SEO (which you can’t even do anymore, by the way, they’ve gotten too savvy) have found some success, and sometimes have even become the highest trafficked site in their niche.  For a moment.

I won’t name names, but I’ve seen bloggers use these techniques only to be on a never ending treadmill of having to constantly “work the system”.  If there’s a change in Google’s ratings, like Panda or Penguin, their traffic plummets.  If Stumble or Digg or Reddit or some other easy to game social media site (at one time anyway) change their policies, their traffic plummets.

To top it off, it’s only traffic.  It’s not readership.  It’s a numbers game.  Try to sell these people something.  Try to get them to really engage.  It’s impossible.  They are phantom readers, people who bounced in on the latest viral link and never came back.  It’s chasing the Traffic Dragon and it never ends.

What’s harder, but ultimately where you build a stable, long lasting and financially successful blog, is when you build slower because you spend 90% of your time on writing, photography and story and only 10% on promotion.  Very specific, smart, targeted promotion that is really more like introducing yourself to the world than forcing your content down their throats.

Even Facebook and Twitter are changing.  Pinterest is a closed loop (meaning the majority of the traffic stays on their site not yours).  Same with Youtube.  Google+ too.  The next big thing hasn’t happened and everyone is being very slow to realize that starting a blog today, blasting your content on 10 different social media site and buddying up with other bloggers is just not going ot work.  It did work.  Four years ago.  Maybe even two years ago.  But the internet has moved on.

What’s the big thing now?

Story.  Curation.  Growing a small but loyal following.  Using your site as a platform to other projects.  Kickstarter.  Content.  Content.  Content.

Anyone can take a good photo.  More and more people can write.  Blogs with a story that hooks people in win, not because of your catchy titles or SEO keywords, but because real people, the ones who don’t comment and never go on Facebook, come back to their favorite sites every once in a while to see what happened to you.  That’s the majority of most personal bloggers’ audiences and we ignore them in favor of tech savvy readers who make their voices heard by social-sharing our stuff, but they are a tiny minority.  You need to court your silent audience.

How can you know what they want if they never comment?

You can’t.

That’s why I wrote this course, because there are several things I wanted to talk about and I wanted to create a space for people to do the work that’s necessary to build a stronger blog.  By getting feedback from other other bloggers.

What’s in the course?

I have over 60 articles on blogging as craft, the business of blogging, how to write a long term narrative over multiple months or years.  How to improve your photography.  How to grow your audience.  The opportunties outside of blogging.  At last count it was over 54,000 words (a novel-sized amount of content).

That’s all well and good, and I think my experience is probably really helpful for people.  But the part I’m most proud of is the workshop nature of the course.

Every week we have one challenge that we post to the group and get feedback about.  It might be a specific writing topic or photography or video or practicing giving critiques to each other.  I even give a prize to the person everyone votes did the best job, for a little extra motivation.  These aren’t academic excerises either, these are all intended to be part of what you’re creating for your blog.  You can skip them, if you want, but seeing other people’s work and interpretation may help you think about your own work differently.

Once a month I do a writing critique session where we all post something we haven’t published yet and give each other feedback.  The “winner” is the person who everyone votes gave the best and most helpful feedback.  It’s not just about receiving crits, it’s also about learning how to give meaningful advice to your peers.

I offer video critiques of your blog, where I show what I’m looking at on your site and talk through all the ways you can improve.  You can also see other people’s critiques.

I give away free premium themes from two different providers.  I also give away a copy of “Getting out of Auto” a photogrpahy ebook that is probably the best source available anywhere to learn how to take professional photos for beginners.

Your silent audience won’t tell you what they liked or didn’t like, they just vote by leaving or staying.  Your web traffic stats are impossible to get this kind of feedback from (‘oh they spent 6 minutes on this article, is that because they were staring out the window or reading my post?’).  Writers and photographers critique each other’s work all the time.  It’s how you get better.

There’s a new article (sometimes more) posted each week as well.  I take votes on what to cover, so if you’re dying to know more about an aspect of advertising or how to pick a new theme or where to start on video, I will write that post.  It means the content is constantly evolving to meet the group’s needs.

There’s also a private facebook group and there’s a fantastic dynamic in there.  It’s a great place to ask any question or to just see what other people are working on.

The course is self-paced, because I know we’re all busy.

And I priced it at the industry-lowest price point of $29/mo.  There isn’t a more affordable course out there, and for what you get (video crit of your site, my responses to questions, a community, weekly challenges with prizes, free themes (which cost more than $29 alone!) and a free photography ebook: $10) you’re getting more than your money’s worth.  I’d make it free, but it would actually lower the quality of the conversation, because that payment invites serious bloggers.

I write this course because I’ve been answering emails about this stuff for years.  I’d write 2,000 word responses to one person and then poof, another email would come from some else asking the same thing.  It felt like a one-way conversation! I wanted a way to write about the things that I love and what makes blogging a joy for me, and be able to have this conversation with other like-minded folks.

By the way, I happen to write about travel, but this isn’t just for travel blogs.  In fact, I’m not sure that’s even what I’m writing anymore.  Maybe I’m a lifestyle blogger.  The course is geared for anyone who writes story-based blogs.

Can I be immodest for a moment? I think this is the best blogging course available, anywhere.  I really love how it turned out.

I’d also love it if you’d join me.  Go to blogbrilliantly.com to read more.

I’m closing out the last open invoice I have as a freelancer, after four years of trying to make it work.  They promised payment on Monday.  We’ll see.

Here’s why I’ll never do it again.  It takes me so much time and effort to chase down payment that it’s not worth it.  The rates are low, the work is fast turn-arounds and every single publication in the world, it seems, has a complete drunk named Sally running the books, who is so sloshed under her desk that she can’t seem to write checks to pay the bills.  Well, except for payroll and their other vendors.  But for freelancers?  ”We’re behind, I’m sorry.  I understand.  We’ll get that to you soon.”

Publications pay freelancers late because there are tons of us!  And they can burn bridges with us with absolutely no recourse.  Don’t pay your electric bill?  They shut off service.  Don’t pay your printer?  No issue next month.  Don’t pay freelancers?  Get a bunch of increasingly curt emails that end in stupid threats that mean nothing, where you can copy and paste an excuse, an apology and completely ignore.  Afterall, there are a 100 people just like us, waiting, desperate really, to not get paid for THEIR WORK.

Finito!  I will write for publications again, I’m sure, but I’ll never, ever rely on it as income.  Whatever the pay?  It’s found money.

It’s really sad and unfair that publications seem to think it’s okay to stretch their budgets and basically borrow a line of credit from the very people who are the least able to withstand payment delays.

Grrr.

This is the most surreal time of my life.  All these projects that I have been working on for YEARS are coming together right now.

I’m writing a book.

I’m learning Arabic.

Drew and I are making a FILM!! It’s been since 2010 and it will be done in three months.

I’m teaching a course on a platform that I really love.

I’m living in Beirut and my life is full of good weather and fun.

This has never happened to me before.  It’s so strange the way absolutely everything has fallen into place at once.

I’m not taking it for granted.  I know that this won’t happen again for a long time — years even — because it took me years to get all these things into place.  It’s been fantastic though, I feel like everything is humming along and I’m not sure I’ve ever been this productive.  Note to future self: keep your head down and keep working, eventually it all comes together.

It’s free.  It’s pretty comprehensive.  Digging through the archives now.  Great place if you’re just starting out too.

I was recently quoted in a piece over on travelllll.com Why your travel blog isn’t making any money and how to change that and I think it’s a pretty well-reasoned piece. There was one thing I thought of, after reading it, that I had wished I had said to John when he contacted me.

It’s a short story:

In 2010, I went to TBEX (travel blogger’s exchange — basically the SXSW of travel blogging) and Randall Shirley, travel writer and new-to-blogging guy (at the time, he now writes 5faves.com) stood up and asked, “How many of you are making money with your travel blog right now?”

Or maybe it was, “How many of you don’t have a day job and aren’t living on savings?”

It was a full auditorium and I was sitting in the front row with my then four month old son Cole and sheepishly raised my hand. I think maybe six other people did as well.

Point taken.

Of course, after the conference, I had that stairwell moment, where you think of the great comeback hours later, when it’s all but impossible to do anything about it.

If I had my wits about me, I would have said, “How many of you have been doing this for more than a year?”

Or really, “How many of you have been doing this for more than five years?”

In my limited experience, it seems to me that blogging, like being a writer, a musician, a comedian, a small business owner or pretty much anything where you have decided to pursue a creative job at the expensive of having an employer, a defined career track, a steady paycheck, or health insurance — so that you can have absolute freedom to create whatever you want — is going to go through these same struggles.

It’s a pretty sweet deal. It’s a high price. But we’re choosing this.

From what I’ve seen, even the crappiest, hackiest, least savvy bloggers tend to figure out a way to:

• write better
• gain more traffic
• make a living

If they stick with it for a few years and work really hard. People that I saw starting out in 2008 (my first year) who were on blogger and couldn’t use spellcheck, are now making six figures.  (Not all of them, of course.  Most of the people I knew in 2008 have quit, stopped working hard or changed directions).

In five years, anyone, I swear, anyone who doesn’t give up, self-sabotash, become inconsistent or phones it in — anyone can do this.

There’s not short cuts though. If you’re not making money now, keep trying, keep working and keep positive. You’re in the jungle with a machete and weed wacking your way to somewhere no one else has been. Of course, it’s going to feel very different than the corporate-freeway you just exited. That’s the point.

I think it’s only too perfect to talk about HTML5 using a catch phrase from over 10 years ago. It’ll be dated just as fast.  BUT.  Right now, it’s super hot, until the next big thing, and I am loving it.  I am playing with this theme: http://themeforest.net/item/modernize-flexibility-of-wordpress/1264247 and it’s ah-mazing.  It’s responsive so it looks great on my iphone or macbook, but it also has all kinds of cool features, that make me look like a better designer than I am.  I think it just shaved two weeks off my project.  If you’re shopping themes, do this: search Theme Forest for HTML 5 themes.  There are tons.  Look at the 5 star ones.  Plenty.  Go.