The Vagabond Accounts

[ntdxc1878]

I wasn't sure if there's a better forum for this, so feel free to move mods if it's more applicable elsewhere.

I am planning to start up my blog again, and I was thinking of a different way to present content that hasn't really been done before (a difficult thing to do nowadays).

I came up this idea called The Vagabond Accounts. If anyone is into sports, it is very similar to The Players Tribune, a website where athletes share personal accounts of stories from their lives and careers. It's a great website, and I thought about taking the same kind of approach but with some epic stories from living life on the road.

This is how I see it in my head: Someone could write up a story and send it to me, preferably with maybe some pictures to add, and I could upload it to the site. Pretty soon, we would have an amazing collection of stories that paints a beautiful picture of the highs, lows, and struggles of life on the road, in a van, or riding the rails. It would be a cool way to illustrate a different viewpoint about how vagabonds are viewed by society. Submitters could have a brief bio written about them if they choose, and if they have a website or instagram that they'd like to promote, I would love to add links to other people's blogs and other projects.

And before you say it, I KNOW that stp has a whole forum dedicated to that, and I don't mean to take away from that at all. I just thought it would be cool to have a site totally dedicated to epic travel stories. I would never want to undermine StP.

Anyway, I REALLY want to hear your feedback on the idea. Good? Bad? How could it be improved or tweaked?

 

[Deleted member 125]

And before you say it, I KNOW that stp has a whole forum dedicated to that, and I don't mean to take away from that at all. I just thought it would be cool to have a site totally dedicated to epic travel stories. I would never want to undermine StP.

so you want to users this websites users to jump ship to yer website and instead of posting stories here they post them there? what you just described is this exact website.

 

[Beegod Santana]

Not really a new idea but I'd say there's still room for it. Travel blogs are a dime a dozen. As far as I can tell most sludge it out for a few months before realizing that they're never gonna make any $ at it and then posts become spotty till the blog is abandoned all together. Also, like skanky mentioned, what you've described is exactly what STP started as.

 

[Matt Derrick]

i don't think the OP's intention is to 'poach' users from StP for their own means, but rather see if there is enough interest from people to do the project they are talking about.

i know we have the travel stories section here in the forums, but i have recently just opened up a new area of StP under the 'articles' tab up above. This area is meant to highlight the 'best' stories and other material from the forums and give folks a place to contribute content that won't get buried under a deluge of forum posts.

it's pretty new, so i'mt still working out the kinks and finalizing the design/layout, but it's there if you want to see some interesting content.

my goal is to create something along the lines of what @ntdxc1878 is talking about. but, i really need help/contributions from people, so what i would like to propose is perhaps we can find some way to work together on this project? i could definitely use help in promoting it and finding interesting content in the forums that could be 'moved up' to the articles section.

of course i'm open to any other ideas @ntdxc1878 or anyone else might have for this section, so feel free to post here and let me know what you want to see here on StP.

 

[Matt Derrick]

oh, i forgot to point out that i plan on using the articles section as a place to post a series of articles about my travels as they happen, and i would encourage others to do the same, kinda like treating it as your own blog (one that is shared with many other users). that way you don't have to feel pressured to write all the time (maintaining a personal blog successfully often requires posting at least once a week or more) and it creates a central area where folks can see the ongoing travels of several people. the only requirements i would ask for doing a series like that is that you write half way decently (remember to use the enter key) and include some photos in each article you post. if we could have several authors posting regularly, i think that would be fun and interesting for the StP audience to check back on.

 

[Koala]

I like the idea of more streamlined travel story outlets, both making a new site & getting the articles feature on here going. Like http://northbankfred.com/index.html

If people wanna submit their stuff, hell yeah, and if people wanna keep the collection up and running and looking awesome, hell yeah too!

@Matt Derrick are the articles just regular threads that are also tagged on articles or is it an entirely separate thing?

Edit: answered my own question, I see that it's the former ^_^

 

[roguetrader]

@Matt Derrick - with regards to 'writing halfway decently' I think it needs to be made clear to people in either a 'submission guidelines' box or maybe the STP rules section that it is important to re-read and edit any content for clarity BEFORE IT IS SUBMITTED - especially long pieces ! there have been so many times on STP where I have been reading peoples posts or stories and become totally lost and confused due to this issue ! obviously some people have more practice than others in written English and grammar but hopefully anyone who posts here can re-read a piece and assess whether it makes sense or not.....

 

[benton]

What would stop the OP from scouring the internet for stories and posting them?

Don't we all pretty much know how to use the internet by now? It's pretty easy for anyone to publish a blog. Web hosting is affordable and we have YouTube.