New Blog Format Coming Soon
I’m changing the entire structure of my blogs soon. This video pretty much sums it all up, so watch it since I address exactly what I’m doing as well as answers to questions I’m sure to get.
To summarize the changes:
– All three of my blogs (The Blackdragon Blog, The Caleb Jones Blog, and the defunct Sublime Your Time) will be combined into one super blog at www.calebjones.com called The Alpha Male 2.0 Blog. All old articles and comments will be moved to this new blog.
– The new blog will only contain self-improvement Alpha Male 2.0 articles (business, dating, investing, etc). I will not be blogging anymore regarding things like commentary, analysis, politics, movies, etc. I’m not saying I’ll never talk about that stuff in future YouTube videos; I probably will. I just won’t be blogging about them anymore. Any old articles from any of my blogs that are not self-improvement will be placed into a separate archive you can still access though.
– The new blog will switch from a text format to a video format. Every blog post will be a video with a text transcription.
– There will be no commenting function at the new blog. Instead, I will cross-post all blog videos over at the Alpha Male 2.0 Community Forum and the private but free-to-join Alpha Male 2.0 Facebook Group and you can comment there. You can also comment on YouTube and all social media platform links below.
– The time I was spending replying to comments on my blogs will be put into replying to comments and DMs at my various social media outlets. Like it or not, the world is moving away from traditional blogging and towards video and social media so I need to go where the audience is.
The approximate time frame for this will be in early June after the release of the Ultimate Open Marriage Manual/Course is all done. (Big announcement about that on Monday so stay tuned!)
If there are any questions let me know. Here are all the relevant links to sign up to and/or follow in anticipation of this change:
Alpha Male 2.0 Community Forum
Alpha Male 2.0 YouTube Channel
Video killed the blogging star
Video killed the blogging star
In my mind and in my car
We can’t rewind we’ve gone too far
Oh, a, a, a, oh
Oh, a, a, a, oh
Pictures came and broke your heart
Put the blame on VCR
You are a blogging star
You are a blogging star
Video killed the blogging star
Video killed the blogging star
😉
Caleb,
I remember you telling me that it’s not worth it to be a celebrity. You said it’s a very bad idea to be one.
If you increase your viewership substantially you might actually become a celeb
So I’m a little confused as to why
Not exactly. I said the disadvantages outweigh the advantages and that there are easier ways to get laid, both of which are correct.
Incorrect. All I want to do is 5X my audience size, at best. Men with 5X my audience size right now are no where close to even C-list celebrities.
Because I like money.
Will the move cause all the old comments to disappear? There’s a lot of gold in the comments to your old blog posts, so if those are going away, I need to archive them ASAP!
I’m not your target audience but I hate video blogs. They are soooo boring most of the time. The people also talk too slow and it’s hard to have the patience to sit through their long boring blogs.
Yo Caleb, I canceled smic it sent me a support ticket without actually canceling the subscription. then I tried it again same deal. today it charged me and renewed the subscription.
I don’t want it right now. can I get a refund? whoever is managing doing it badly.
Iceman – Yes, send an email to theonlyblackdragon@gmail.com and say in the email that you’re emailing Caleb directly and to forward it directly to me per my instruction, and give me at least 48 hours to respond.
No. All comments will be kept on my blogs, forever.
That’s an understatement. You’re A) a woman, B) over age 33, C) don’t believe in low or zero-cost 1st/2nd dates, D) think having FBs is somehow “mean.” You’re the literal opposite of my target audience.
We’re talking about me, not everyone with a video blog. Look me in the eye and tell me my videos are boring. (Not that it matters, since you’re not in the target audience here.)
That’s too bad. The comments were almost as valuable as the initial blog post.
Best of luck with the new format!
Making the YT vids now be the blog is a much better idea, although I find the Alpha 2.0 Facebook group is pretty useless. A good idea is ask guys to submit questions on what they’re struggling with and/or finding difficult and any submitted that Caleb deems the most interesting and worthy of his time, he’ll answer on camera once a month, or every 2 months. Questions submitted that he’s answered before and/or considers dumb or stupid, would get ignored.
Hi Caleb,
I was wondering about all the blogs post at Sublime Your Time.
I like them, and sometimes still go refer to them.
Any plans to put them also in your new blog ?
Thanks.
Good thing about tour current vídeos is they work as podcasts too. I can keep working and listening. Audio killed books, to me.
That’s why you’ll still be able to comment on the blog posts in numerous places.
I will probably do something like this but I will heavily limit the questions to certain topics.
If someone wants to ask me all the questions they want about whatever they want all they need to do is join the SMIC program where I do that every other week.
Yes. The Sublime Your Time articles will be re-integrated into the new blog.
The new blog will probably have a podcast option where you can just listen to the blog video instead of watching the video, but I haven’t confirmed that yet. We have paid blog members now who have that option so we’d have to completely re-do that feature.
Lovergirl..I’m also not a big fan of video blogs.
FYI, .YouTube has a “Playback Speed” option that allows you speed up videos, which helps with the slow talker problem.
As long as there are transcripts, no problem. I read the transcript and comments by the time the video was half done.
Yep! There will always be full transcripts. Some people like to watch (video), some people like to listen (audio version), and some people like to read. I’m going to cater to all three.
I got refunded.
I am just writing this post to clarify to everyone that I am canceling my subscription not because it was bad or anything. It was amazing and delivered on all of Caleb’s promises. Forum, podcasts weekly conference. all of it A level stuff. I canceled because my broke ass can’t afford it and it was on my dad’s credit card since I don’t have one.
Caleb, the reason I didn’t cancel before was that I thought it would be like amazon and will cancel instantly. It was just my dumb broke ass panicked that I had to send an email. As for my comment above I apologize. I didn’t even think at the time that a negative comment would be bad for your business. As for your staff being unavailable because of weekends didn’t even cross my dumb mind.
In the future, I do intend to be a member of the SMIC again and start my own business. Apologies for the trouble. I hope this comment clears out any damage I have done. hope we are cool now 🙂
Why didn’t you use SEO for your blogs? Blogging without SEO is like a car without gaz.
I’m exactly and 100% your target audience but I have to agree with Lovegirl here. I hate video blogs, even with transcription. I used to love https://revolutionarylifestyledesign.com/ but then had to stay away from it when he moved from article format to video format too.
The problem here, I guess, is that not only it takes more time to watch a video and lead to less retention rate (at least for me) but also most of the time a clip content is NOT AS GOOD and CONDENSED and WELL THOUGHT-OUT as an article (unless they are taken directly from a seminar or course). I can read a quality article 4-5 times (like reading it once then come back later for referencing) but I seldomly watch a video twice, unless it’s insanely good.
I basically read every single article you have written but only watched about 1/5 the clips you’ve uploaded over Youtube and Instagram. Most of the time I find the commenting section much more valuable than the article, probably because I was already well-aware with most of your materials.
But you are right, the trains everywhere have been leaving the blogging town for social media metropolis. I will wait and see how it goes for you.
You probably should also take into account that your niche, aka Alpha Male 2.0s, is very busy with a full life and doesn’t use social media often.
That’s probably the reason why many of your A2.0 Facebook Groups (free or paid through courses) don’t thrive as strongly as it should. But maybe it’s just my speculation.
I did and still do. Why would you think I wouldn’t SEO my blogs? What an odd question.
I don’t disagree with you, but the reality is that you are in the minority of the modern day internet audience.
1. That’s only a percentage of my audience. A bigger part of my audience are men who are not Alpha Male 2.0s yet but want to become them. These men are all over social media in a huge way.
2. You don’t ever have to use social media to consume my content and never will.
Uh, my free Alpha 2.0 FB Group is up to over 1,300 members in just a few weeks with zero advertising and near-zero mention from me and it’s a restricted-entry where a moderator has to let you in. Just watch what happens when I start actually making people aware the group exists.
Bottom line: I hereby promise everyone that if, after this change, I actually see drop in traffic and a drop in sales, I promise I will immediately go right back to the old format. So if you’re right, you have nothing to worry about.
I’m confident the exact opposite will happen.
Watch.
I’ll probably start doing the same in June with my blog and YouTube channel. I can do what most of the “commentary” community of youtubers do where I record audio over some video game footage and stuff. My target audience are gamer beta loser nerds and incels (the ones who aren’t total assholes on the internet) so this could work well.
Guess I’ll just start with all the articles I have written in the past then go from there.
It’ll be fun.
You should bid topics blacky and see what’s the most popular one
I personally enjoy these websites (BDB, CJB), the podcasts and the video content.
Based on how things are going online, it does make sense for most online businesses to have a YouTube/video presence, or at least see how it will do. Certainly there’s a huge YT audience that could benefit from AM2.0 ideas.
I personally always learn best through a mixture of articles, audio and video, so I am happy with the YT presence. I do like articles from independent sources, especially now that not many “bloggers” are still around.
I think video transcripts have the ability to be converted into almost article-like quality with a good speaker, a good transcriber, and a good editor. Alsso, AM2.0 YT has a lot of potential to be very enjoyable/inspirational/educational.
My issue (for some businesses) with YT/FB is that it concentrates the online content around 2 large multi-nationals, whereas people with their own individual websites have more of the small business/decentralized feel. There’s a lot to gain, but if someone doesn’t plan properly, they may find themselves reliant on the whims of a few large multinational corps. BD, I’m sure has built redundancies into his businesses, so I’m assuming that it’s less of an issue.
In 5-10 years, there may well be a new, favored online style of communications beyond video/YT, what that is, still remains to be determined (IMHO).
Anyways, best wishes!
Ugh, yeah, I’ve sort of been waiting for this. Was too much to hope the blog would keep going in this form till 2025 or whenever you promised before. But I get it, text blogs aren’t as popular. I actually really enjoyed this as one of the few text blogs with a long archive I could go on a deep-dive whenever, but I understand. I just hope you have as thorough almost video-essay form videos so it matches the content density of your old text blogs.
I just hope the old blog archive isn’t super buggy, or hard to use, or hard to binge-read a lot of articles at once. So much good stuff in there. Please pay attention to old archive user interface
Of course the old blog archive will be extremely difficult to use and non-intuitive. It will also have lots of bugs that will never be fixed.
I’m not insulting you when I say it’s boring watching even your videos but sitting through 13 minutes was hard for me. I haven’t watched any of your other blogs because I hate video blogs. It’s just not my thing. I’m not your target audience so it doesn’t really matter but I would much rather read a well written blog than sit through a video. I’m sure there are other people who would rather read and interact with a written blog- but apparently video blogs are a thing now.
Whatever the format, I hope you continue to do occasional book list recommendations. I find those posts give me something I can work on for a month or two. I credit this blog with turning me on to quite a few great books that I might not have discovered. Brian Tracy’s “Goals” alone kept me busy for six weeks.
You must be psychic. I just recorded a YouTube video today with a book recommendation. It will probably go up next week.
I think it’s less the preference for this particular format and more the amount of people idly watching whatever the YouTube algorithm throws at them. After all, stupid people with no reading comprehension aren’t BD’s target audience either.
It’s also a shame RSS hasn’t taken off.