March 05th, 2008
By Arthur

Tomorrow evening, if any of you are interested, there is going to be a HUGE announcement here at SimplyOutdoors. I have been waiting to tell everyone about this, but hopefully by Thursday night I will have verification for this particular announcement, and be able to share it with all of you.

I can’t tell you all the details, but it will change SimplyOutdoors dramatically, and what is about to happen is right in line with our mission here at SimplyOutdoors. I promise to provide full details about the announcement come Thursday evening so I hope all of you keep checking back.

This announcement will shape SimplyOutdoors.net for years to come and help us to accomplish our mission statement. I can’t wait until tomorrow night so I can share it with all of you.

Popularity: 27% [?]

February 04th, 2008
By Arthur

I keep stealing Darrell’s term, but I just like the way it sounds!  If you missed the title of this post we now officially have SimplyOutdoors.net swag available for sale.  I have to say thank you to Jody over at the TheHuntersWife.net for the Cafepress store idea and I’m proud to announce that we have shirts, hats, coffee mugs, and some stickers that are now available for everyone to buy if you so choose.

I honesty have no idea how much demand is out there for any of our products that I just created, but at least the things are there and are available if any of you decide you would like them.  I tried to do a variety and also put at least one really cheap thing available as well.  I have to do a shameless plug and say that I would love for all of you to have the SimplyOutdoors.net oval sticker in your back window.  That would be very cool.

If any of you are even remotely interested in buying some of the products you can either click on the “Our Gear” page up at the top or head on over to www.cafepress.com/simplyoutdoors and access our store there.  We would love for you to do that, although you know you’re not required:)

Even if Jeff, the wife, and I are the only ones who buy products I will be okay with that.  If any of you want to surprise me though feel free:)

Popularity: 23% [?]

February 04th, 2008
By Arthur

With an outdoor show coming up, and a few other banquets we have to attend, we figured it was about time we got around to coming up with some sort of apparel for SimplyOutdoors.  We thought that would be a more professional look, and also a way to promote the site at these particular events.

Now the apparel might change as time goes by, and we will probably add some other items as well, but for now we have two shirts.  I wish I could say we have shirts for all of you readers to buy, but we don’t yet.  What we do have is some shirts that the wife made with some of her creative talents.  I made the logo and she made the shirts you see in the pictures.  They were both made with the special iron-on paper that you can purchase for your printer.  You print whatever you want on the paper and then iron that on to the shirt.  I was a little skeptical at first, but for now I thought they turned out pretty good. 

The first two shirts were our test shirts and for the actual events we are going to have polo shirts with the logo in the corner.  I definitely think that will be a more professional look then showing up in a t-shirt, although the t-shirts will be worn locally for promotion:)

We are thinking that in the future, if there is enough demand, we might have to actually go through an embroidery company of some sort to have the shirts mass-produced.  That honestly depends on all of you readers. 

Would any of you be interested in SimplyOutdoors t-shirts, bumper stickers, hats, or anything of that nature?  Please let me know.  I know a lot of the bloggers have been contemplating this same thing, but I really would like some feedback from all of you on how much you would be interested in some SimplyOutdoors swag, as Darrell from Alphatrilogy calls it:)

Your thoughts would be appreciated!

Popularity: 22% [?]

January 26th, 2008
By Arthur

I finally did it.  I have been fighting this for quite some time, but I broke down and did it.  I didn’t enjoy it, but I think it will go a little way to help promote the blog.  I hope so anyway.  Now everyone is asking “What did he do?”.  I will tell you.  I put SimplyOutdoors.net out there for the social networking gods to see.  I created a Myspace account.

I have been trying to fight it for some time, but I want the blog to become more popular and one sure fire way to help that cause is to put it in the social networking scene.  I just couldn’t fight it any longer.  There is no quicker way on the World Wide Web to get noticed.  So I did it and I’m not ashamed.

In all fairness I hope quite a few people notice us this way and then make their way over to the blog and become a bigger part of our audience.  After all that is the goal of our site; to attract an audience and to attract new readers on a daily basis.  I think Myspace is one way of doing it.

So if any of you out there reading this have a Myspace account, don’t hesitate to add us.  Our address is http://www.myspace.com/simplyoutdoors.  I’m looking forward to all the new contacts that we attract from this endeavour.  The more people we can get our message out to the better:)

Popularity: 21% [?]

January 22nd, 2008
By Arthur

Rex over at the Deer Camp Blog was nice enough to award us, along with a few other blogs, the prestigous Excellent Blog Award.

I have to say that I am flattered and completely shocked by this award.  I’m not giving it back though so nobody try and take it either:)  We are completely grateful that Rex thinks this much of our blog and I truly appreciate his thoughts and praise.

I think I’m suppose to send this on to 10 people, but I’m not sure exactly how it works.  I think if you check my blogroll you will find that every one of them on the list deserves this award and I would hate to single certain ones out anyway.

So again thank you Rex and I look forward to meeting you and everyone else next year in St. Louis.  It should be a great time 

Popularity: 28% [?]