Matt-Gibson.org

An Interview with Gary Arndt of Everything Everywhere

Gary Arndt

Ranking travel blogs is a tricky business. There is no way of knowing exactly how much traffic a blog gets, and how long visitors stay for, unless you’re the administrator of the blog. There are several tools you can use to rank other peoples’ blogs, but none are completely accurate. However, whenever I read a travel blog toplist, search on Google, or compare blogs using any of the afore-mentioned ranking tools, one is almost always on top: Everything-Everywhere.com. Gary Arndt is, by my best estimate, the most popular solo travel blogger in the world.

After interviewing Gary for my column at TransitionsAbroad.com I asked him a few more questions about social networking, travel gear, and unique trips he’s taken. Here’s what he told me.

Matt Gibson: You’ve been traveling and blogging for about three years. Did you start Everything-Everywhere.com with the intention of making money? Or did that occur to you later?

Gary Arndt: Technically, I’m still not making money on my site. I have no doubt I could if I made it my priority, but my priority is building an audience. My goal isn’t to get rich, it is to be able to continue what I’m doing indefinitely. So long as I can cover my costs, I’m happy.

MG: What single change to your website had the biggest affect on it?

GA: There were two things: 1) introducing the photo of the day feature in November 2007, 2) investing in a professional custom WordPress theme in March 2009.

MG: You document the progress of your Everything-Everywhere.com in detail on your second blog, Garaphernalia . What are your current goals with regards to traffic?

GA: I try to set goals every year that are above and beyond what I think I would achieve via natural growth. I have no idea how I’m going to achieve them. In 2009 I set a goal of getting 100,000 visitors over a 30 day period. I was doing about 20,000 per month when I set that goal. I really had no idea how I’d increase my traffic 5x. I didn’t achieve that goal until December. For 2010 I set a goal of 250,000 visits in 30 days. I achieved that in February. I’m not resting on my laurels, however. I have goals for RSS/email subscribers and Facebook fans as well that are very important. Those will take much more effort.

MG: How do you plan to achieve those goals?

GA: I wish I could say I have some sort of master plan to achieve every goal, but I don’t. One goal I have is 2,000 daily visits from Google. That is really just a matter of creating more content and getting more links. It is possible I could write one killer article that ranks well and that could get the entire 2,000 visits per day. That probably isn’t going to happen. Realistically, I’ll get a few visits every day from a bunch of articles. Achieving that goal will just be grinding away at normal blogging activities. Another goal I have is getting 10,000 Facebook Fans. That has required me to experiment with several things including widget placement on my site and marketing on Facebook.

MG: Do you ever have guest bloggers post on your blog? How do you feel about guest bloggers?

GA: I have a few times in the past, but as of now I usually do not allow guest posts. My new rule is that if you want to do a guest post on my site, you have to meet me in person and share some adventure with me. My site is a travelogue and that is the only thing which really fits. Almost 100% of the requests people send me to guest blog are just companies that are just looking for links for SEO. I’m very, very fussy about keeping types of links off my site.

MG: About how much, on average, does it cost you to spend a month on the road? Does your blog cover your expenses?

GA: Costs are totally dependent on where you travel. Costs in SE Asia or Central American can be anywhere from 1/3 to 1/5 of your daily costs of being in Europe. My overall goal when I started my trip was to have a budget of $100 per day. That has gone down since I’m slowing my rate of travel and don’t have to buy as many plane tickets. My blog isn’t currently covering my expenses, but I am only now starting to monetize my site. My focus until now has been building an audience. I’m quite confident I’ll be able to cover my costs with my current audience once I focus more on monetization.

MG: What equipment do you carry for working on the road?

GA: I have a 15″ MacBook Pro, bluetooth mouse. Nikon D200 with three lenses, three USB external hard drives for backing up photos, and a Manfroto tripod. I have a bunch of wires and other small things as well.

MG: Does blogging make you want to read contemporary or even classical literature more or less? Is there a sense that living in the moment supersedes any study of traditional forms of writing?

GA: To be honest, I hardly ever read fiction. I read a lot, but it is almost always non-fiction. Usually books on history, economics or current events. That is just a personal thing with me.

MG: Is the old distinction between the “tourist” and the” traveler” completely moot at this point? Do you ever find yourself annoyed by the actions or behaviors of tourists?

GA: We’re all tourists. I have never, ever seen a local who thinks of me as a traveler. Traveler is a word that people use to describe themselves because they don’t want to be lumped in the same group as the guy wearing the Hawaiian shirt with dark socks and sandals. I totally understand the desire to separate yourself from people like that, but the fact is if you are visiting a place, you are a tourist. I have no problem calling myself a tourist. It doesn’t bug me and I hope I am not so pretentious that I need to come up with new terms to describe myself. If I did, I’d like to call myself a “voyager”, just so I can lord over people who call themselves “travelers”.

Have I found myself annoyed by other tourists, of course. Especially when it comes to taking photos. It is just one of those things like the weather you learn to deal with.

MG: Do you consider yourself an outsider wherever you go no matter how long you stay and participate in the life and cultures about which you write? Is this reflected in your blog posts?

MG: Social networking is a great tool for increasing blog traffic, but many people don’t know how to use it. Take me, for example. I have 40 followers on Twitter. You have 80,000. How on earth did you get so many?

GA: I made a decision back in January of 2009 to focus on Twitter as a marketing tool instead of just a communication tool. It was a good move. Since then I’ve soured a bit on Twitter. There are a LOT of garbage Twitter accounts. Accounts that were activated but never used, spammers, etc. I’d say that easily more than half of the accounts that follow me are garbage accounts like that. Most people with large numbers of Twitter followers have large numbers of garbage accounts following them. Twitter is great for communicating with other bloggers and industry people. It is horrible for reaching the general public. Facebook is proving to be a much better platform for that. There are 400,000,000 Facebook accounts, half of which are active every week. It is much harder to market on Facebook than Twitter, but that is just part of the challenge.

MG: Do you consider yourself an outsider wherever you go no matter how long you stay and participate in the life and cultures about which you write? Is this reflected in your blog posts?

GA: Of course I’m an outsider. I anywhere I go I come with my background and baggage. Thinking you can become a local somewhere is a fantasy. You can observe and participate in certain cultural things, but don’t ever for a moment think you are a local, because they sure as hell don’t consider you one. You could move to Japan, learn fluent Japanese, marry someone Japanese, but you will never really be Japanese. That’s just the way it is.

When I write, I write from the perspective of an American who has lived most of his life in the midwest…because that is what I am. I can’t be anything else. I try to learn and understand, and to some extent I can be influenced by the people I meet, but I am under no illusion that I am always an outsider. That is not a bad thing, either. Most of the places I travel to, many people have never left their own country. Meeting tourists is their best opportunity to learn about other people.

MG: We all have certain expectations when we visit places. It’s easy for a place not to live up to what we imagine it to be. What was your most disappointing trip?

GA: My most disappointing trips have been due to weather. I cut my trip to South Korea short because of cold weather and my entire time in Vanuatu it rained, causing me to cancel my trip to Tana Island.

MG: What trip was the nicest surprise?

GA: Probably Mulu National Park in Borneo, Malaysia. I hadn’t heard much about the park but I was pleasantly surprised by the experience. I also was pleased by my experience in Oman. I wasn’t planning to go to Oman originally, but really enjoyed the experience.

MG: What’s the strangest thing that has happened to you on the road?

GA: Probably when I stumbled across the moon rock in the Solomon Islands.

MG: The growth of backpacking has resulted in an increase in rave-type parties in travel hubs and destinations worldwide. Along with this has come an increase in drug use among travelers. How do you feel about drugs and backpacker culture?

GA: I have never done any illicit drug in my life. I haven’t even smoked a cigarette. However, if people want to do that, it is their business. I’ll be honest, there is much about the backpacker culture I’m not that clued into. I’m much older than most backpackers so I don’t go to raves, I don’t go to nightclubs and I’m really not interested in partying. It doesn’t appeal to me. If I was younger I still wouldn’t be into that scene. If 20-somethings want to go and sow their wild oats, that’s fine, but it isn’t something I’m interested in.

MG: Does your constant travel cause problems for long-term romantic relationships? How do you deal with the issues that inevitably arise from your work?

GA: You are the first person who has ever asked me that question. Yes, it is very hard if not impossible to have any sort of relationship with people you meet while traveling. The only way I can see doing it is if you travel with someone you met before you began traveling. As much as people fantasize about traveling like I do, it is not a lifestyle for most people.

MG: Is there a particularly good book, article, or author that you read recently you’d like to recommend?

GA: What I read is usually associated with a place I’m visiting or about to visit. I’d suggest people read recent non-fictions books about the culture, history, and economy about the places they are planning to visit.

MG: What is the most popular post on Everything-Everywhere.com? Why do you think that is?

GA: I haven’t actually looked at the stats. It would probably be the one I wrote on the Solomon Islands moon rock. It was an oddball story that resonated with people. I’ve actually had people from NASA follow up with me and other people who have visited the Solomons have followed up on the status of the moon rock.

MG: What’s your favorite post on Everything-Everywhere.com? Why?

GA: Probably my posts on visiting Preah Vihear in Cambodia. I like it just because of everything I had to go through to get there.

MG: Which travel blogs, if any, do you read?

GA: I have about 50 travel blogs in my RSS reader. I have add sites to that whenever I find one that I like.

MG: What do you look for in a travel blog?

GA: The best ones are usually by people actually traveling or people with an interesting personality. Things like top 10 lists might get some traffic, but it isn’t going to really define someone’s personality. There is this mantra out there that, “content is king”. I don’t think that is true. Most people who read blogs can probably name the bloggers they follow more easily than they can list articles written by those bloggers. Content isn’t king, personalities are king. For the most part (and there are some exceptions to this) people follow bloggers, not blogs.

Four Questions for Rolf Potts

Rolf Potts

Rolf Potts is my favorite travel writer, not just because he’s a great writer, but because he managed to do what I had thought to be impossible: he legitimized backpacker-style travel writing in big-time mainstream travel magazines. It used to seem that in order to be published in a high-end (and therefore high-paying) travel publication you had to travel to exotic destinations, stay in a luxury hotels, eat in five-star restaurants, and take elaborate tours–things that I’ve never been able to afford to do. Since I couldn’t afford to go on the trips that these magazines published stories about, I thought I would never have a chance to write for them. But then came Rolf. He’s an unapologetic budget traveler. In his first book, Vagaboding, he communicated the richness of the backpacking experience and the philosophy behind it so well that the editors couldn’t deny his talent–or refuse his stories. Literature is full of incredible backpacking books–On The Road changed my life like it did everyone elses–but it took Rolf to bring that kind of travel writing to mainstream travel periodicals (check out two of his most popular stories here and here). Now, thanks to Rolf, and his writing (the best of which can be found in his second book Marco Polo Didn’t Go There) backpacking travel writers like me can travel the way we want to and still feel justified submitting our stories to magazines that pay more than the price backpack that we carry.

After finishing an interview with Rolf for TransitionsAbroad.com (you can read that interview here), I asked him a few more questions–things I was personally curious about–for my blog. Here are his responses.

Matt Gibson: You’ve said that, after all of your globetrotting, you’re a sucker for a good ‘ol fashioned American road trip. What’s your best road trippin’ memory? What road trip would you like to take next?

Rolf Potts: My best road-trip memory was the 8-month North American journey I took in 1994. In that instance, it was a case of road-trip as lifestyle, since I was basically living out of a van and driving the States for upwards of a year. I was particularly enamored of driving through the America West, which is one of the world’s most classic road-trip landscapes. I don’t have my next road-trip planned just yet, but I’d love to revisit the American West for a couple of months and just camp and hike (and drive) my way through the region.

MG: You’ve been called the “Jack Kerouac for the Internet age”. Although the comparison has merit with regards to your respective philosophies about travel, it seems to me that Jack may have been a tad bit more eccentric than you are. What do you think about this comparison?

RP: I think the comparison to Kerouac was more metaphorical than practical or literal. Kerouac introduced a generation of Americans to the joys of open-ended travel, and I’m trying to do the same. Past that, it’s difficult to make applied comparisons, because travel — and society in general — has changed a lot in 50 years. Biographically and philosophically I don’t always follow in Kerouac’s footsteps, but I share his belief that travel anywhere carries this amazing, potentially life-changing hum of possibility: that there is so much to be gained by just mustering up the courage and hitting the road.

MG: The growth of backpacking has resulted in an increase in rave-type parties in travel hubs and destinations worldwide. Along with this has come an increase in drug use among travelers. How do you feel about drugs and backpacker culture?

RP: I would disagree that we’ve seen a rise in drug use among travelers, since backpackers have always hit the road in search of more permissive attitudes toward things like drugs. This includes the Asian “Hippie Trail” of the 1960s and 1970s, of course, but you saw similar motivations in travel during the Victorian Era and before. So whatever kind of drug use you see in backpacker hubs these days is nothing new.

That said, I like to discourage drug use among vagabonders — not only because it is often illegal and hence risky, but also because there are more interesting things to do on the road. To my mind, drugs are something you do at home when you’re bored of workaday life, whereas on the road you’re constantly encountering these new and amazing experiences simply by going outside and walking around. In this way, sinking time into backpacker drug scenes is the equivalent of watching TV when you’re on the road: It’s a passive and contained experience that’s not really connected to the more life-affecting experiences that travel offers. I have no moral issue with casual drug use; I just think that an unmediated experience of reality has more to offer on the road.

MG: Hemingway wrote standing up. Kerouac wrote like Usain Bolt runs. Vonnegut wouldn’t start a new sentence until he was sure the one preceding it was perfect. How do you write?

RP: I’m more like Vonnegut, and in fact I often quote his observation from Timequake about “swoopers” and “bashers”:

“Tellers of stories with ink on paper, not that they matter anymore, have been either swoopers or bashers. Swoopers write a story quickly, higgeldy-piggeldy, crinkum-crankum, any which way. Then they go over it again painstakingly, fixing everything that is just plain awful or doesn’t work. Bashers go one sentence at a time, getting it exactly right before they go on to the next one. When they’re done, they’re done.”

Like Vonnegut, I go one sentence at a time, and when I’m done I’m done.

There’s Treasure Everywhere

image from Lesinge.org

When I first moved to Taiwan I was fascinated with everything. I walked around stupefied, a silly grin permanently plastered to my face, amazed at the incredible world that I had discovered. That lasted for about three years.

I don’t smile like that anymore. I haven’t for quite some time. About a year-and-a-half ago the things that once enchanted me, the incense burning in urns in front of temples, the small aluminum roofed houses, the palm trees that line the boulevards, became commonplace and I became unhappy.

I thought that I had become too comfortable in Taiwan, so I went to Guatemala. I wanted to rediscover the wide-eyed wonder that I felt when I first moved to Asia. But I didn’t. After having traveled around Asia, Central America seemed too similar to home. It bored me.

The problem, however, wasn’t Guatemala, nor was it Taiwan. The problem was me.

We travel to feel like children again, to be adrift in a an enchanting world, to discover possibilities beyond our imaginations. When I first moved to Taiwan I was caught up in this enchantment. This enchantment is what people speak of when the speak of being bitten by the travel bug.

This enchantment, however, does not come from travel. It comes from the way a person looks at the world–a special way of seeing things that most of us experience when we first step out of the comfort of our homes and leap headlong into the unknown.

We need not travel to gain this perspective. It’s simply curiosity. A willingness to learn. An openness to everything. If we can keep that perspective, then it doesn’t matter where we are, we will remain interested, attentive, and excited. But if it’s lost, then everything is lost. The world becomes drab, two-dimensional, and as stale as a b-grade sitcom.

A travel writer friend of mine recently told me about two wonderful travel books written by a french author. I forget his name. The first book was about everything that the author could see from his chair in his living room. In the sequel he gets really adventurous and walks to the window. My friend said that the books are incredible. That author had it figured out.

Some people travel. Some people don’t. That’s of no consequence. But listen to me now. This is the most important thing that I could tell you.

Never forget: there’s treasure everywhere.