Reflecting on 18 Years of Blogging With The Extraordinary Tourist, The Author of TET.Life

A photo realistic image of a man wearing a long coat in the middle of a road going into the distance. He is looking into a sunset.

It's been quite a while since I just wrote an actual blog about myself. If you're new here, I'm The Extraordinary Tourist or TET for short, a.k.a. David Arandle, the author of this blog. I've been posting articles, almost weekly, since 2004.

When I started this blog digital cameras were just starting to go mainstream, the iPhone didn't yet exist, and mobile tablet computing was an idea that just didn't seem to have legs despite a few tries from various companies not named Apple (Apple didn't invent tablet computing they just solved the issues that plagued the whole concept). YouTube wasn't a thing either.

This blog really is a labor of love, since the little money it earns from ad revenue is laughable for a website that's been around for so long. No really, it is laughable. In the last 30 days I've made AU$1.37 from ads. I know of many bloggers who are earning upwards of six figures from their blogs inside a year of starting them. This is because they serve a niche and they take advantage of sponsorships and brand deals as well.

Which is not to say no one is interested in this blog. In the last 30 days it's received 2.84K page views, and averages around 3K page views a month. The problem is I don't, and won't niche down. This is because I write this blog for me. Sure, I hope people read the articles that interest them but the purpose of this blog is so I can write about everything that is of interest to me (that isn't related to animation and video for which I have a completely separate blog). That's why it's called TET Life.

I'm pretty proud of how this blog has evolved from a newsfeed that originally was embeded into one of my websites so I could easily update it with my 'latest art studio news' to a stand alone 'lifestyle' website that I think is pretty interesting to explore. In many ways it's a history of the last 18 years through my eyes.

I'd encourage you to pick a topic from the site menu that is of interest to you and fall down the rabbit hole into the past however many years of that topic there are articles about. I'd particularly recommend Humor and Internet/Technology. Life Observations is also a good option - though you have to go into the sidebar and open up the Browse by Category link to find this. Browse by Category s actually a good way to see what topics I've written the most about as you can see the number of articles relating to each.

When you are scrolling down through the pages don't forget to check for the 'More Posts' link at the bottom to keep going back further in time. That link does get a bit lost in all the ads at the bottom of the page.

Unfortunately in a blog of this age there will be dead links, missing embeded videos and other such perils. I did start to go back into the early posts and update any missing information (and embed links to my RedBubble Store) but it's a slow process that I don't really have the time for.

By the way, if you enjoy some of my travel posts, the 2007 Australian road trip I took with my sister, Blonde Rose, I collected all the posts together into a physical book you can purchase from Lulu - should you ever want to follow our adventure.

Anyway, I think I'll leave it there. My blog statistics show that posts like this only get read by the most hardcore of readers, which is probably only my mother (hi mum if you're reading this). However I don't mind.

Sometimes writing a blog means writing filler articles like this so you at least have something posted that week. It may not do much for the readership of the blog but it does a lot for making sure I stay consistent with posting a new article every week.

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TET.Life (The Extraordinary Tourist Life)

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