Enough hinting, I’m ready to tell you AFN’s big news. I’m so excited! First, a little background.
Recently, some of our readers began coming forward and emailing us their personal stories. Let me tell you, I had no clue our little blog had become an influence on other families! I tell you this humbly, but it honestly shocked me when one woman said she and her husband bought 20 acres and a camper, in part because of the encouragement our story offered them!
Every reader here is so important to us. We really appreciate the small, but growing community we have found ourselves in, and hearing from you has inspired us to take this as far as we can.
What does this mean? Papa and I want to take the giant leap from basing American Family Now on a free blog to starting our own blog-style website! This would enable us to have more control over what our blog looks like, and what features and resources it has to offer you, our readers. There is but one little setback.
Neither of us are computer programmers or website designers, and when it comes to making a website of our own, we are in way over our heads. Believe me, we’ve tried other web pages in the past, and never got beyond a basic front page design.
With that said, Papa and I are always up for a challenge, so we have downloaded a program to help us, and expect to use WordPress hosting so we are familiar with the management aspect. I can’t give you a date when our new site will be open, but I wanted to let you in on our project for two reasons – so you can join in on our excitement, and so you can offer us ideas while we are in the development stage. Is there something missing from our blog that would make it more enjoyable or useful to you? Anything you would like to see more (or less) of? Here are a few ideas we’re working on.
- A page with how-to posts and videos to help you on your own homesteading journey
- A community page to help bring our readers together
- Sponsership and affiliate programs to support the website
We have even created a slogan, and a button you can share that express our family and our purpose for AFN, but you’ll just have to wait until the website is open to see them!
Papa and I have been tossing the website idea around for a while, but because of you we decided that 2012 is a good year to get started. If you have friends or family interested in a homesteading, off-grid journey, please share our blog with them. The bigger the community we build, the more helpful and supportive we can be for each other. Let’s do this!
Congrats on the decision. I really enjoy reading about your family’s journey, and as you mentioned it has really influenced some other folks a lot, others proabbaly less, but as time goes maybe more folks will be influenced. I’m of the opinion you can always learn something from others.
Thank you Deb! The encouragement we get from our readers is really helpful, and we hope to continue offering encouragement back for quite some time.
I like the page just as it is, so any improvements on your part will just be a bonus!
Aww, thank you Cindy!