Overall
- Who reads the AONC site?
The Art of Non-Conformity (AONC) is a Technorati Top 2,000 blog that is read daily by tens of thousands of people from more than 120 countries all over the world. The group includes executives, artists, authors, vagabonds, aid workers, entrepreneurs, actors, and all kinds of other people. They are high school students, senior citizens, and every age in between.
The target market consists of people who want to live unconventional, remarkable lives. I try not to label them any more specifically than that.
- What is the overriding message of AONC?
You don’t have to live your life the way other people expect you to. You can do good things for yourself and for others at the same time. From time to time, people will try to stop you from pursuing your goals. You can safely ignore them.
- What is the mission of AONC?
The principle mission of my small army and I is to help people live unconventional lives and make their own choices. We’re waging war on the status quo, mediocrity, and the passive act of sleepwalking through life.
- What does world domination mean?
I used the concept of “taking over the world” in my first manifesto, A Brief Guide to World Domination. In this context, world domination refers to finding a way to do what you really want while also finding lasting purpose (meaning, fulfillment, etc.) in life.
When you make your own choices instead of accepting the choices offered by gatekeepers or the status quo, you’ll naturally acquire both friends and enemies. My friends are people who want to live life on their own terms and change the world while they’re at it. My enemies are those who want to stop them. (Thankfully, I have more friends than enemies.)
- Where does the world travel theme come in?
I’m on a personal quest to visit every country in the world, so that takes up a lot of my time and writing. For more about that, read the travel section below.
Travel
- What are your motivations behind wanting to go everywhere?
It’s a long story that I’ve tried to answer from time to time in the articles—the most concise response is that I know I’d regret it if I didn’t try. I love goal-setting and I love travel, so I decided to combine the two.
- What is the deadline and why do you have one?
The difference between a goal and a dream is that a goal is measurable. I started the site when I was 30 years old, and I chose to set a deadline of my 35th birthday in April 2013. Will I make it? We’ll see—as of right now, it could go either way.
- How do you do it—isn’t travel expensive?
I work from a combination of methods I refer to as Travel Hacking. Among other things, I use Round-the-World tickets and a big stash of Frequent Flyer Miles to get around from place to place. Whenever possible I fly to hub cities (Hong Kong, Johannesburg, Frankfurt, etc.) and then travel overland to my next stop before continuing on. I sleep in hostels, guesthouses, hotels, with friends, and sometimes on the floor of the airport.
However, it’s true that no matter how you do it, travel still costs money. When I got serious about pursuing my goal, I set a system of radical prioritization in my life to make it happen—see 100 Countries or an S.U.V. for the initial thinking behind these choices. I also maintain a debt-free lifestyle, so not having to pay back loans also makes it easier to spend money on travel.
- How much time do you spend in each country?
I’ve been traveling regularly for nearly ten years, including four years where I lived mostly in West Africa. Some places I’ve been to dozens of times. I lived in the Philippines for two years. Other places are months, others are weeks, and others are just a day or two. The only thing I don’t “count” for my country list are airport stops. Check out this video, live from Ecuador, for more about country-counting.
I don’t claim to be an expert on each place I visit, but it’s also true that after traveling for so long, a lot of things come much easier to me than they do for less experienced travelers. After visiting more than 150 countries, many of them several times over, it takes very little time for me to settle in anywhere.
- What is your favorite country?
Sorry, I don’t have just one! I like different things about different places. A few overall standouts have been South Africa, Macedonia, the Netherlands, Hong Kong, and Laos.
- How can I meet you when you come to my country?
One of the things I have enjoyed the most since starting AONC has been the chance to meet with readers all over the world. So far I’ve met up with people in Amman, Bangkok, Cairo, Kuwait, La Paz, Lima, London, Rarotonga, Tunis, and Santiago—in addition to lots of meetings throughout the U.S. and Canada on domestic trips.
Before I head out somewhere, I usually post where I’m going and what I’ll be up to. If I’ll be in your country (or even better, your city), feel free to drop me a note and we’ll see if we can get together.
- Where are all the travel photos and detailed essays about each place?
I write more about the process of travel and experiences I have along the way than the destinations I visit. This is partly because I don’t claim to be an expert on everywhere in the world, and also because I enjoy both the journey and the destination. Other travel writers are much better than me at destination writing, so I’m happy to let them own that market.
- What will you do when you finish visiting every country?
I still have a long way to go, and there are a lot of challenges ahead of me as I focus on some of the harder countries. When I finish, I expect I’ll set another big goal and start working on that. Ultramarathon man Dean Karnazes said, “Relaxing stresses me out,” and that’s true for me too.
- I have a question about international travel or Frequent Flyer programs. Can you help?
I’ll try, but please spend some time reading the archives and searching the site first to see if your question has already been answered. For simple, domestic travel, it’s probably a good idea to hop over to Kayak.com.
Products
- How does the business side of AONC work?
95% of the content on AONC is free, but I also sell a growing set of unconventional information products to help people take over the world. On some Sundays I post a short update with business news, and during a product launch I’ll write more about what’s happening. The rest of the time, there is very little promotional content.
- Do you offer advertising or site sponsorships?
No, just the products.
- Do you have an affiliate program for your products?
Yes, and it’s even better—our affiliate program actually works! (Most of them don’t.) The program is by application and pays 51% to selected affiliates. Read more info here, and send in a note if you’d like to apply.
- Do you offer personal consulting?
Not usually. Once in a while I will open up a few hour-long consulting slots, usually to people who already own one of my products.
- You’re selling out! Blogs (or travel writing, or something else) should be free.
I don’t think I’m selling out, but for the few people who believe that, there’s not much I could say to convince them otherwise.
Blogging
- Can I link to AONC from my site?
YES—please do. Linking to the site helps me with Google and Technorati rankings, and I am grateful for your help. You can link directly to ChrisGuillebeau.com or to any of the articles you enjoy.
- Will you trade links or link back to my site?
Like most established bloggers, I don’t trade links on a one-to-one basis. Instead, I regularly share great resources with my readers without expecting anything in return from the sites I link to.
For more info on blogging, including dozens of tips that will help people notice your site and link to you, check out my free manifesto, 279 Days to Overnight Success.
- How do you make the videos?
The first group of video updates were made with my MacBook laptop – no external camera or other equipment. After that, I started traveling with a $200 USB flip camera that I use to record some of the travel scenes. My philosophy with video is “don’t try too hard.”
- What does 3×5 mean?
3×5, or 3×5 Project, was the original name for AONC. I set up the sub-directory for the blog portion (chrisguillebeau.com/3×5) based on that, but after a month I decided I liked AONC better. Lesson: when you start a new web site, think carefully abut naming directories. You can’t easily change them later.
- Those photos displayed next to the comments are so cool! How can I get one?
Go to Gravatar.com and sign up—it’s free and will follow you to other blogs as well.
- I left a comment and didn’t see it—what’s up?
My comment policy is “be nice and add value.” Constructive feedback is allowed, but no anonymous or hateful comments will be published. Similarly, self-promotional comments will not be posted—your website belongs in the “Site” field, not the comment itself, for example. Also, sometimes a legitimate comment gets stuck in the spam filter, so feel free to try again later.
Keep in mind that the site receives at least 1,000 comments every week, and it takes a while to process all of them. If we get behind, my volunteer editor or I will try to post as many as we can.
- Can I write a guest post for you?
I don’t currently offer guest posts on the site. I also don’t have forums because I’ve seen from other bloggers that forums require a lot of moderation, and only a small percentage of the readers tend to participate.
Criticism
- What do you think about the environmental impact of air travel?
I think that each of us should consider how our total lifestyle affects the environment as well as those around us, not just one aspect of it. For me, my main environmental choices are to forego owning a car and to be vegetarian. Each of those choices reduces my carbon footprint considerably, especially compared to the average North American.
However, it’s true that I fly a lot, and I don’t believe that air travel is evil. People like to travel in a globalized world, and to me the better answer lies in finding ways to make it more efficient and carbon neutral. Virgin Atlantic and other future-minded companies are already doing that, and I support their efforts by helping them remain profitable.
- I don’t like the world domination theme—can’t we all just get along without taking over the world or making enemies?
Any good social movement needs friends and enemies. See this post and the discussion in the comments for more details.
- Hey, I work at a real job and you are making fun of people like me!
If you are fulfilled in your work and can sleep well at night, good for you. That’s the goal. The problem is that many people are not able to say that. They write in from Google, Microsoft, and other great companies and say that their job is sucking the life away from them and they desperately want out. Those are the people I am trying to help—if you’re doing great stuff, by all means, keep doing it.
- I don’t like what you’re doing because [insert reason here].
Like any writer, my work is definitely not for everyone. If it’s not for you, I wish you the best, and there are lots of other web sites and people out there for you to connect with. (And even better yet, start your own blog and share your own views for those who will relate.)
- If everyone becomes a non-conformist, what will happen then?
The idea that everyone will become a non-conformist is kind of like world peace—a nice idea, but probably not going to happen for a while. Until then, the more, the better.
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Final Thoughts
As I define it, non-conformity is not merely about opposing something; the idea is to stand for something. It’s too easy to be a cynic; it’s better to be a believer.
Hope defeats fear, and abundance defeats scarcity. Besides, which side do you want to be on?
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