Wow. I don’t know what I was expecting, but I got a ton of awesome feedback from you guys. Some people literally wrote a page or two.

So first of all… thanks a ton. I read every single reply (over one hundred total) and got a ton of good info.

I’ll share some of the insights provided.

First of all… I am not very popular with the ladies. Only TEN percent of the readers who responded were girls. I would have guessed somewhere between 30-40%, so I was way off.

(interestingly, the only people who told me they like the old design better were girls…)

Pretty much everyone who responded has been reading for months or years and reads every post. That probably has a lot to do with the fact that dedicated readers are more likely to fill out a survey, though.

I guess my career as a pollster may not be about to take off.

There were two big things people criticized:

I preach about consistency, but haven’t been super consistent.

A lot of people specifically brought up Best in the Land, and a few people even said it was their favorite site of mine.

But… as people pointed out, it has fallen by the wayside and I haven’t been updating it.

The reason I stopped was because no one really commented there and readership wasn’t very high. My writing commitments are pretty high now (especially considering I do all this for fun and not for profit), so I dropped it to spend time elsewhere.

That may change in the future.

I’m also aware that I haven’t been perfect about updating this twice a week. There are some somewhat valid reasons for that, but now I am writing several articles in advance (on all sites) to safeguard against anything coming up in the future.

If I fall off with consistency in the future, send me an e-mail and bug me and I’ll write one when I get the e-mail, guaranteed.

I’m too preachy sometimes

This is one I wrestle with a bit. I agree with everyone who said this, including those who said that I act like think I’m better than everyone else. What’s particularly interesting is that four or five people used the word “preachy”.

Some of my friends told me that I don’t come off this way in real life, even though I’m at least as opinionated, stubborn, and evangelical about the stuff I do.

One of my big goals in life is to be the same person to everyone. Some people are huge jerks online, but really nice in real life. Others are the other way around. I want to be the same in every setting with any person from friend to stranger, celebrity to janitor.

But I’m not. I think in real life I’m a lot warmer, friendlier, and a bit more empathetic (although no one has ever called me that…).

When I take the attitude of “hey look at this great thing I’m doing”, it’s not to separate me from other people, but rather to show other people something great that they could try too. Maybe that doesn’t always come through.

At the same time, I’m arrogant by nature (how many times does it say Tynan on this page?). I don’t think I have the most potential or that I’m the best at any single skill. I know people who are better than me at pretty much everything I do, including things I pride myself on being good at.

But I DO think that I make better decisions than pretty much everyone else, and that snobbery will probably continue to come through to some extent.

That’s probably enough on that topic. Since people took a lot of time to help me with my survey I’m trying to address the good and the bad of each one and share my thought processes.

Bottom line - I’m going to be aware of this and proofread posts while thinking “is this who I really am in real life?”

Stories vs. Self Improvement

Number one - I’m done saying “personal development”. How is that phrase any better than “self improvement”. What’s development? It’s not necessarily good by definition. Developing a crack habit is development. So F the stigma of new age seminars, I’m going back to “self improvement”.

Or maybe I’ll make up my own word like “lifestyle design” and write a book about it.

Anyway… people definitely weighed in on this issue. I just went through all of the comments again and tallied the amount of people who had strong opinions one way or another.

13 people want me to focus on self improvement stuff

12 people want me to focus on stories

This ties in with other people saying that I should focus on one thing. Good point, because right now it’s a bit like reading two blogs stuck in one (don’t worry, I’m not making any more blogs).

A particularly illustrative comment:

“I’m not even really sure what your blog is centered around, except you :)”

At the end of the day it is just a blog about me and my life, half written to entertain others and half to keep a personal record of what I’m doing and thinking.

More Pictures

Everyone wants more pictures, videos, podcasts, and personal home visits where I dramatically reenact their favorite stories.

I’ll see what I can do. I like pictures too, and videos are a good idea.

Maybe I’ll just walk around outside with my phone in front of me videoing myself.

Archives

The archives are a problem. Nothing is ordered by category and things are hard to find. I will fix that.

PUA Stuff

A bunch of people ask why I never post pickup stuff. This is probably because a good number of pickup sites link to me, so that’s where some of you come from (and why you’re all dudes).

There are a few reasons I don’t post field reports and such.

1. I’m not really in the field anymore. Other than for karaoke, I just don’t go to clubs. Girls are pretty much the last thing on my mind these days. Umm… except for the 10% who read my site…

2. I want communication with girls I’m with to be direct, not for her to read about it online. I’ve been tempted before to write about interesting relationship things, but each time I felt like it could be seen (and maybe even WAS subconsciously) as an “easy way out” for communicating.

I don’t know if I’ve explained that well

If you are here because you’re interested in pickup stuff, I have a whole book / audio / online course at www.makeherchaseyou.com.

If you go there and sign up for the newsletter you’ll get my weekly article about pickup, written the same way I write these articles.

In conclusion

How do you like these bold things? I like them and will start using them more.

There was a ton of other stuff I thought was useful and will implement… these are just some of the bigger things that many people commented on.

Here are a few of my favorite quotes:

“Please don’t worry about subscribers too much…pretty soon you’ll start doing bullet lists and annoying titles and it’ll be like every other blog.”

Not to worry. I’ll throw the occasional one in for the digg crowd (like the 8 things you don’t have to do), but I’ll stick with what I do best.

“Be more insane in your real life.”

Is that serious? Man… I do the best I can.

“I have this site bookmarked on every computer I use so I don’t miss anything. Your writing has improved so much since the beginning. I’ve told a lot of people about the site so I hope they are all reading too.”

Love you, mom! Just kidding… she hates my site because of these two posts. She actually refused to send my front page newspaper article to my grandmother (who scrapbooks everything) because it had the address to my site at the bottom!

I’m really glad this person said my writing has improved, though, because I wonder if maybe it’s gotten worse.

“Tell us what the bloody hell Conversion Doubler is in English. I was expecting to understand by now.”

Haha… if you don’t know than it’s probably not something that will be very interesting to you.

“Give me money, for free.”

Ok. Send me your paypal info and tell me what you wrote in the other box.

It’s about that time of the year for me to ask for your feedback to make BTYB even more better than it already is.

What’s very curious to me is that my readership grows VERY slowly. Given how awesome these posts are, I would expect it to grow by 100% every hour or so.

Anyway, if you could take a couple minutes and fill out my survey, I’d really appreciate it. Please be totally honest - it’s 100% anonymous and I’d much rather have good criticism than an ego boost.

(If you’re in an RSS reader and this embedded survey doesn’t work, go to: http://makeherchaseyou.questionform.com/public/btyb)

I woke up and stumbled to the front door to check for packages. I wasn’t really expecting one, but you can never be too sure. To my surprise there was a small brown box waiting on the doorstep for me. What had I ordered? I couldn’t remember. I walked back inside and tore the package open.

Inside was a book and a board game. Not just any book and board game, though - they were abominations thrust in in front of my virgin eyes. The game was called A Hot Affair and the book was Penthouse: Naughty by Nature: Female Readers\’ Sexy Letters to Penthouse. Confused, I check the shipping address. Sure enough they weren’t meant for me.

They were my neighbor’s.

I still haven’t returned them. Any ideas on fun ways to do it? If someone comes up with something interesting I will do it and video it.

A guy named Zachary Bleu recently started a blog. Like any smart blogger, he linked to Better than your Boyfriend. Through the magic of science and the internet I can see all the sites who link to me, so I always check them out. I need to make sure no one is besmirching my good name! I think his focus is going to be his upcoming transition to polyphasic sleep, but he had one post about ambigrams. For those of you who haven’t read Angels & Demons (instant review : written by Dan Brown, author of The Da Vinci Code - read it!), an ambigram is a word drawn so that it looks the same upside down. After reading Angels and Demons, I spent a good amount of time trying to make one with my name. It wasn’t easy, and the results weren’t good.

I commented on the ambigram post on Zachary’s Blog, and I was surprised when he IMed me the next day with a link to an ambigram he made for me!

How cool is that? I’ve always wanted a good ambigram of my name and now I have one! I had the daring and bold idea to make business cards with it in the middle. Kristen suggested getting tattoo with it. You never know… I’m crrrazy like that! Thanks again Zachary!

Yesterday on the way to work I stopped by my mailbox. I have no idea why I can’t just have my own mailbox on my property like people have had for millions of years, but in my subdivision we have these stupid communal mailboxes. Because of the added hassle of finding the key (who is going to steal my mail, seriously?) and walking down to the mailbox, I don’t check my mail more than once or twice a week.I sifted through the tall stack of mail. Bills, checks, magazines, and tons of advertisements for crap I don’t want. As I neared the bottom of the stack a small envelope caught my eye. It was addressed to “Black Tie”, my rap name. The return address was just a smiley face. Strange.

I turned it around and on the back was a lipstick kiss mark over the seal of the envelope. A lady!

I carefully opened the envelope, but there was no letter inside. Just a sticker that said “I’m famous / you just don’t know it yet”. I laughed.

How did she get my address? It’s not like it’s some huge secret - there ARE ways to figure it out. That takes effort, though. The postmark was from New Jersey and I don’t really know anyone in New Jersey other than my aunt (pronounced Auuuunt), uncle, and little cousins. Maybe I should be creeped out or something, but I think it’s awesome. Steve said the other day “Tynan, I don’t know anyone who needs attention as much as you do.” I don’t know about NEED, but I certainly do appreciate it. So thanks mystery woman.

For your viewing / sleuthing pleasure, here are pictures of the fan mail :

Nothing groundbreaking here today (is there ever?). I just wanted to take a second to thank everyone for reading my site. It’s a great feeling to know that every time I fill another green page full of words, hundreds of people will read it. My favorite e-mails to get all day are the ones that say I have a new comment. I especially look forward to the comments from regular readers.

Growth has been slow recently, but I’m up to an average of 500 readers per day. There are also huge spikes due to popular stories (like those on the right sidebar) which drive my readership to the thousands, but even on bad days I get at least 400-500 readers.

More encouraging is the fact that people are staying longer and reading more. In fact, almost 15% of the people who visit this site stay for over an hour! I’m really flattered that people are that interested in reading what I have to say. Also, around 40% of the readers are repeat visitors.

I try to respond to every e-mail and myspace message, but sometimes I lose track of who I’ve replied to and forget. If I haven’t written you back, I apologize.

My aim is to make this site the one site that you really hope updated every day. I have sites like that (waiterrant.net is the latest). I hope that every day you are entertained, learn something, or are at least prompted to reflect on your life. If you’re a lovely lady type I hope you’re powerfully compelled to come sleep over and possibly do my laundry while you’re here.

Recently Donovan over at Attraction Chronicles interviewed me. People here are always asking me to post pickup related stuff, but I tend to stay away from it in general. So if you’re one of those people, you can read the interview.

It has a couple stories from the field, as well as some advice and back story on my involvement in the pickup community. Right now the most popular outgoing link from Donovan’s site is the link to my page, so if you are one of the people who found me from there, bookmark the site and check out my story about how I got into pickup. If you read The Game, then it’s basically a prequel to my part of the story.

I actually got an article out every single day this week, and I still have a couple left to publish I think. Also I’m going to Maine this weekend so I’ll be writing a few more stories while I’m on the plane. Have a great weekend and remember : only YOU can prevent monkey smuggling.

After work I went to get some dinner with Doug and Steve. Doug is one of the engineers at Smiley Media, who you will be hearing about soon due to some incredible plans we have set in motion. Steve, as you may remember owns Smiley Media. Jonah joined us later for drinks and fish tacos (for those of us who don’t drink) at Saba, a generically trendy bar downtown. The draw was that its windows look down onto Cedar Street, where the Spasmodics were playing. The Spasmodics are a band who probably deserve some description, but I don’t care enough to go into it.

When we were at Saba, I saw some incredibly hot girls. I know that may not seem noteworthy to a lot of readers, but I don’t see a ton of hot girls on a regular basis for some reason. That should change.

Anyway, we all decided to go back to my place to watch Lost. Steve, Doug, and Jonah took Jonah’s car, and I took mine.

As I stopped at a red light, I noticed that a girl in a pickup truck next to me was staring at me. I was on the phone, but she motioned to roll down the window. I didn’t really know what to make of it. It seemed like she was going to compliment me on my hat, but was it really necessary to do that from car to car?

I put my friend on hold and rolled down my window.

“Hey! I read your blog!” she said.

Whoa! Someone actually recognized me from my blog. How cool is that?! It’s not like I even have a lot of pictures up. I guess it also happened when I went to school, but those were people who had stumbled across the UT Tunnel Story.

The light turned green and she added, “I love your hat!” as I drove off. Hey, my prediction was right.

I need to become a celebrity

I really see no alternative to this. In the pickup community I am a celebrity of sorts. Enough that people know who I am, know my story, and are often times very excited to meet me. I’ve even signed a few books.

Several times I’ve been stopped and asked for autographs because my style of dress is a bit outlandish (thanks, Mystery!).

Rarely a night would go by going out where some group of girls wouldn’t ask to have their picture taken with me.

My little sister tells all of her friends about me and to them I am a celebrity of sorts.

I’m not trying to convince you I’m a celebrity - because I’m clearly far from it, but I have had experiences which give me a feel for being what a celebrity would be like, and I love it.

I was hanging out with one of my very successful friends a couple weeks ago. He told me that I was the first person he’d known who wanted to be famous just for the sake of fame. Not for the money, but just for the experience of being famous. He has no desire to be famous. He asked why I wanted to be famous.

I want to be famous because it’s an option. I can’t imagine dying without doing everything there is to do (besides drugs and drinking), and being famous is one of those things. What a change in perspective it would be. To go from wanting attention to having too much of it.

People say that fame corrupts and is a big hassle. I don’t think it would ever bother me. It opens up doors that may otherwise remain closed. When people in the pickup scene approach me, I don’t blow them off. It’s not that I really want to answer the same questions I’ve asked a million times. It’s that I can put myself in their shoes. I know that the enjoyment they get from hearing me answer the questions is far greater than inconvenience to me, so I answer them. Sometimes I enjoy the conversations too, of course - but a lot of pick up artists have the knee jerk reaction of blowing off the people who want to talk to them.

Also, I think I’m a great influence. I would love to have a soapbox to stand on and show kids that you can be yourself and be liked by everyone and that you can stay away from drugs and drinking and have fun.

Someday I’ll get there. I’ve got a few ideas.

The new site design is here! Rejoice! It’s not totally done yet, but I think it’s fully functional. I put all the ads back in, and I think that they blend with the site design well enough to not be a pain. I personally use firefox with adblock so that I don’t have to see ads, so if they bug you - try that. I made the whole design myself including the html, css, and graphics. However, I stole the comments part from Fahlstad. He makes the best freely available wordpress templates, so check him out if you need one. I’ll be replacing most of his comments code with my own soon.
I’ve been staying up incredibly late, going into the office at night, and working at home as well. I like working when there are other people around, plus I have phone calls to make tomorrow, so I’m going to wake up earlier and get back in the habit of working when other people are.

Today Terri, the only female employee in the Austin office at the moment, came up to me as I was trying to fax something.

“Tynan… I heard a rumor about you.”

Oh crap, I thought. My brain scanned through every grey area I’ve ventured into. What did she know about? More importantly - what didn’t I want her to know? I couldn’t think of anything, which seemed scary.

“When you were in San Francisco… well…”

That narrowed down my problem. What happened in San Francisco? I tried to get onto the roof of a hotel. That’s hardly bad at all. Did I inadvertantly do something inappropriate that other people were talking about?

“I heard that girls were flocking to you left and right.”

Huh? I don’t think that actually happened. There were two random girls that I talked to while I was there. Does that count as flocking? Oh well - you can’t complain having rumors flying around the office like that. I guess it would help if there were some ladies around the office to hear them.

I’ve done two interviews this month (see how casually I say it? It makes it sound like I ALWAYS do interviews). One was with Men’s Health UK and the other is for a seduction blog. I’ll post links / text when they’re published.

Hmm. I think I need to find a girlfriend.

EDIT : I know the site is kinda a disaster now. At least the cool archive link on the right works. I’m too tired to keep working on it, so it’s time for a nap and then REAL work. And then if I don’t fall asleep instantly, more work on the site.
That’s not a typo - my favorite site just got better. I was talking with a reader of my site and he told me my site was hard to navigate. You know what? He’s right.

So, I’ve done a few things to fix that (and other) problems. The most obvious change is that you no longer have to click “read more” to read the rest of the article. You still have to click “comments” to read comments, because otherwise the page would be even huger than it is now.

Also, if you go directly to a post (either through a link or by clicking the title of a post), you’ll see links to the next post and previous post. This is for people that like to read the whole site in order or have some catching up to do. When reading in this mode you can also see all the comments right on the page.

The oversized “archives” section on the sidebar is now a really cool scrollable calendar. If you hover over the little icons you can read the titles of the posts. I might change this soon, but we’ll try it out for a while.

I removed the “please give me money” section at the bottom of each post. Very few people donate money or play at the casino, so there’s no point in bothering everyone with the messages. The ads make me a few dollars each day, but they might be on their way out as well. If only I could figure out a good way to make money from the site that isn’t offensive to readers.

Lastly, I changed the font to Verdana. Apparently that’s the easiest font to read, and some of my posts are rather long.

Do these changes help? Hurt? Any other changes you think I should consider?