I've been on the down-low this entire year. Blog aside, it has been pretty damn eventful overall- with one of those events being the death of my 996. It has been so eventful, that I personally haven't actually posted anything at all this year- and the only post that was published was an awesome piece about a badass track-truck written by Steven James Day that you can find here. What have I been doing? I'll tell you exactly what I've been doing- I've been filming, working for a racing team, and dabbling in production in order to deliver new content in 2018. Next year will be the beginning of TAB's YouTube channel venture, and our main coverage will be of the Pikes Peak Pinata that is being developed slowly behind the scenes by a small racing team called Renn Waffen. Full disclosure- Renn Waffen consists of myself, my dad, and a few of my good friends. I also finally bought some hair gel, multiple clips into the production of the first episode- so don't be surprised if all of a sudden the hobo-looking host is replaced with a not-so-hobo looking host out of the blue.
The "Whatever Cup Project" is now officially dead, and the car has now received a purpose. I will be covering my adventures with my friends in a series called "The Journey to Pikes Peak", which can be found on this blog (once I actually post it), and will also be covered in extensive detail on YouTube. In the meantime, the format of my posts in TAB will now be (potentially excessively) casual, as I'm just about tired of setting up my posts in the way that everyone else does it. Truth be told, I've been keeping up with the modern day outlets that specialize in automotive coverage- such as Donut Media, SpeedHunters, CarThrottle, and Jalopnik- and I would lie if I said I did not personally read these outlets, or like them. Forget liking them, Donut Media and Jalopnik are downright forcing me to make better content on TAB, so I chose this to be the time to start getting the video production side of things ready.
What should you expect? That's to be seen in 2018, however I will say that the videos will be long, and spaced about 3 weeks or so from each other- have yet to make up my mind on that to be honest. At this stage, I can't even say just how much time will be spent making the videos, hence why I can't give a concrete video schedule. As far as the blog itself- it shall live on. I'll still write on the blog, but as mentioned previously, in a more casual format.
In the meantime- I welcome all freelance writers to submit their own articles and photos to me via email, to prospect@thatautomotiveblog.com. I won't even bother responding to you, however, if your first email doesn't contain photos/article, and immediately skips to questioning me about pay. As far as what kind of articles you should present- that is completely up to you. Take a look at what is posted on the blog right now, or come up with something entirely new and different. You can either excel at presenting an average article, or you can be creative and present something that no one's done before- you won't be doing anything wrong by going in either of those two directions. If I deem the article to be something that I don't mind posting on my blog, I will get back to you to get to know you better, and discuss your future with TAB. Compensation will be in the form of money. Each submission needs to be a minimum of 1000 words, and should really have at least 6 photos attached with it (I will pick and edit the photos). Pay will vary- I'm mostly interested in beginner and intermediate writers (full disclosure- I'm not swimming in money, but I recognize quality where I see it), however I will consider truly good articles that can turn profit for the higher paying writers. If you recognize your skills to be needing some honing, but you're also looking for a place to submit your articles for review- you can still have an opportunity to make money using ads. I won't accept click-bait, and all of the above rules still apply. Only one ad per article, and only AdSense ads will be allowed. If you don't have an AdSense account, I will allocate an ad block to you.
In any case- I'll be going back to writing background scripts, editing videos, and spending too much money on camera equipment and tools I don't really need. Stay tuned for more information. You can also follow us on Facebook and Instagram. Oh, and I finally learned how to use Drivetribe, and I must say that it can be pretty addicting. Make sure to join our tribe as well!