Site Update: March 2009

This update comes to you live from Mahébourg, Mauritius. Where’s Mauritius? Well, it’s a small island in the Indian ocean, a few hours east of Southern Africa.

No matter where you come from, it takes a long time to get here. I came in from London, and it took 12 hours of flying. Mauritius is my first new country of this trip, and I’m grateful to be here.

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Each month I look back at what’s happened with ChrisGuillebeau.com in the previous month. If you’ve missed some articles, you can catch up here.

Writing

LIFE – I wrote about Creating a Legacy Project, Expanding the Pie, my New Home in Portland, and Friends and Enemies.

WORK – I wrote about Sitting Out the Global Recession, Happy Birthday to AONC, and Knowing Your Audience.

TRAVEL – I wrote about 24 Ways to Travel for Almost Free, the Travel Ninja launch, and Notes from Bangladesh.

(P.S. Thanks to everyone who has been participating in the comments section. There are some GREAT discussions going on, including several where the commentors have added much more value to the original article.)

Travel

I’m currently on the road for my first Round-the-World trip of 2009. I left my new home of Portland, Oregon and went to Washington, D.C. before heading out across the Atlantic. In London, I stopped off to visit friends, then headed back out for the long flight to the southern hemisphere.

For the next 10 days I’ll be roaming through the region. I head first to Mauritius for a few days, then over to the mainland, where I hope to visit Namibia, Mozambique, and Swaziland. I’m glad to be back out on an adventure.

Travel Ninja Launch

After a long wait, I finally finished my third product, Travel Ninja. The goal with the product (it’s one part ebook, one part audio, and one part update series) is to help people go anywhere in the world.

The Discount Airfare Guide, my first product, deals with basic travel strategies and is primarily for people from the U.S. and Canada. Travel Ninja is more advanced, covers Round-the-World travel and general vagabonding, and is for a worldwide audience.

Later today I’ll be sending a note out to all Travel Ninja owners with a special update on how to redeem as few as 12,500 Frequent Flyer miles to go between Europe and North America in the next couple of weeks.

Next week I have another update scheduled on booking vacation travel during the recession. One side effect of the economy falling apart is that travel providers are getting desperate for business, and creative travelers can find some real deals now – a welcome change from the past several years where prices only went up.

In case you’re curious, these are the kinds of updates I share with the owners’ group. Check it out here if you haven’t seen it before.

Survey

Speaking of products, thanks to everyone who completed the product development survey. I’ve learned a lot from you guys and continue to be amazed at the incredibly smart people who read this site.

I don’t want to bias anyone who hasn’t taken it yet, so I’ll wait to share the results for now. (I’ll close the survey later this afternoon, but if you miss it, we’ll have another one later.)

The Frequent Flyer Challenge

I haven’t posted an update on the 5 Million Frequent Flyer Challenge in a while, but people are still finding the original article and telling me about miles they’ve earned. Expect a longer update with the new total mid-week.

For now, here are the links if you haven’t seen it before:

The Original Post
Update #1
Update #2

What’s Coming Next

Travel – After this trip concludes (I go home via Hong Kong and Los Angeles) I’ll be home in Oregon for the second half of the month.

Essays – The articles will continue to be posted on the new schedule of every Monday and Thursday. I’ll also publish a couple of extra things on the weekends, so be sure to check back in on the site as those posts are not always sent by email or RSS.

This month I’ll write about the following topics, among others:

• Going Pro
• What Is First Class Travel Really Like?
• Influential Following
• The Year of Convergence
• Overland Travel from Maputo to Manzini (well, hopefully – I haven’t done that yet)

I hope you enjoy my writing, and I always welcome your feedback.

The Teleconference

When I was visiting with Naomi last week, we brainstormed a number of ideas about where to go next with the site, especially in terms of helping people who want to be able to create their own independent lifestyle like Naomi and I both have.

As mentioned, I’ll share more information about the survey results soon, but one thing I’ll definitely be working on is more resources for people who want to get started working online. The site has a very diverse audience, but it seems a significant group of you guys are interested in online microbusiness work but don’t know where to begin.

As part of responding to that need, I’m thinking about doing a test teleconference for a small group of people who are interested. Stay tuned – this is brand-new and being worked out while I’m on the road.

Audience Participation

You can participate in the development of this project in several ways:

Leave a comment at the bottom of any essay. Feel free to add to the discussion at any time, and include a link back to your own site if you have one.

Join my newsletter announcement list or add me to your RSS reader.

Follow my real-time updates on Twitter.

Send other feedback. Use my contact form here to tell me what you think so far.

Tell your friends, or tell the world by submitting my essays to StumbleUpon or other social networking sites.

I appreciate the time you spend here. Don’t forget to change the world the way you think it needs to be changed.

-CG

Catch up on Previous Updates Here:

January-February 2009(Tokyo)
November-December 2008 (Seattle)
October 2008 (Seattle)
September 2008 (Seattle)
August 2008 (Seattle)
July 2008 (Karachi)
June 2008 (Amsterdam)
May 2008 (Vancouver)
April 2008 (Syria)
March 2008 (Los Angeles)
February 2008 (Seattle)

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Port Louis, Mauritius Image by F2B