I’m closing in on 17 years of publishing this blog and decided to step back in time and look at the history of the blog and see if it is still relevant in 2024.
The way I discovered tiny houses in 2007 was not by looking for them but by researching simple cabins and the different types of construction.
I grew up in Prescott, Arizona in the mountains and have memories of simple cabins like you still see in some National Parks. They are very basic with maybe a simple kitchen area and a small bathroom. Some still had outhouses.
My dream had always been to have a cabin in the mountains. A basic cabin for a place to get away or maybe eventually retire to. I had been bookmarking different websites with simple structures. Even looking at yurts, and other types of construction.
In my research I stumbled upon a simple website called Tumbleweed Tiny Houses.
Jay Shafer was the designer and builder and had posted pictures and plans and a tiny self published book he had created. I was enthralled and reached out to Jay.
Jay never responded and the website gave his address in Ohio.
I had been learning about a new thing on the internet at that time. It was called blogging and used a new software called WordPress. I found someone who had an online course and decided to purchase it and learn it. It was back in the day when you had to put all the pieces together. Create a database and connect the WordPress software to it.
Since I was enthralled with tiny houses and had all these bookmarked sites I purchased the domain TinyHouseBlog.com and decided I would share what I learned.
Not being much of a writer I thought I would just keep each blog post short and share pictures and links to the different types of ways to build cabins or tiny houses. You could decided what you wanted to call them.
By researching through the fairly new Google search engine I could only find a couple of references to tiny houses at the time. It turns out that I was the first one to start spreading the word about the “modern tiny house” which really was Jay Shafer’s creation.
My first post was about Montana Mobile Cabins.
My first love log cabins and these constructed small and simple. Montana Mobile Cabins was my first choice to share. They still are in business. Unlike many other tiny house companies that have come and gone over the years.
At this time Google came out with Adsense and I joined up and pasted code onto the site. This way the little bit of income generated by the banner ads helped pay for my hosting and my time.
I was surprised at the traffic I was getting as I tracked the traffic through Google’s analytics program.
I continued the first year or so to just publish about construction techniques but in the mean time I found out that Jay Shafer had relocated to Sebastopol, California and now lived around 20 miles from me. I reached out again and we finally met in person.
I was able to see his tiny house where he lived in an apple orchard and share with him what I was doing with the Tiny House Blog. We became friends and have kept in touch ever since. I have relocated as well to central Oregon.
The next stage I moved into for the blog was sharing stories of people actually living tiny.
I asked people to share their stories with me. Had them write the story and share pictures. I then would format and edit them and publish.
In the early days I was initially publishing 5 days a week. When the blog was really popular I moved to a 7 day a week cadence but soon started to burn out. I did that for around 2 years.
The next stage was hiring a writer and that is when Christina started writing for me. She has published my Monday post consistently for over 12 years. Recently she cut back to biweekly because of the health of her mother but still remains faithful. I really appreciate her.
I have also added in the last couple of years Alexis who with her partner Christian post videos on YouTube. She shares their videos with a writeup on Fridays.
So is the Tiny House Blog relevant in 2024?
Frankly I haven’t come to a final decision. Traffic is way down and I know people prefer short form video. Attention spans are way low.
Yes, I think there still is room for quality, educational content and I’m trying to move the blog in this direction.
Time will tell and I’ll revisit it every year.
