Hye there Cheap Eaters.

I’ve sort of hinted at this new project of mine over the past couple of weeks. It’s still “in the works”, but I figured I should probably officially announce it right now.

The website is called Cheaplander and this will be similar to Cheap Eats in that we’ll focus on reviews of cheap, inexpensive products. But the difference is we’ll be talking about EVERYTHING cheap, not just food.

I’m also going to be putting up some articles and other content (hopefully not boring your socks off) as time permits. I haven’t really told anyone about the site yet, so I figured since this blog was the inspiration for it, I should let the readers know about it.

First, I need to get something out of the way: Cheap Eats itself will NOT be discontinued. In fact, if anything, I’m going to ramp up posting here in order to try get eyes over there. I’m going to have SOME food reviews over on Cheaplander, but the majority of them will still land here.

The thing is: I’m not a very good promoter. I’m a halfway decent blogger I guess. But the blogging world has completely changed - there are just TOO many good blogs out there. So, the only way I could think of right now to try and get people interested was to spam you cross-promote it here.

Sorry if that sounds a little lame. Nevertheless - I’ve been writing on Cheap Eats for almost 4 years now. I haven’t asked readers for anything in all that time. But I guess I’m asking now - if you enjoy Cheap Eats and you have the time, would you please check out the new blog? And, if you would like to, please leave a comment. Also, if you’re into the whole RSS feed thingy, I’m using Feedburner for that - I’d be ever so grateful if you could add the feed to your reader.

Now - about Cheaplander. While it seems awfully opportunistic with the crazeee market bailout bababooey going on right now, I’ve been planning that website for about 2 years now. I enjoy writing, and to some extent, I enjoy helping people out. When I started Cheap Eats, I never thought it’d be possible to create a blog that would be entertaining, yet helpful. But I went ahead anyway - I figured at some point the blog would gravitate toward one side or the other. I’ve been told by many that eventually you have to “choose” between them.

(This sounds very Jedi-master-ish, I know. Or perhaps Pepsi-Coke-ish.)

I’ve been extremely surprised that to this day, some people enjoy the writing purely as entertainment, while others come here to actually get help. I get tons of mail about both sides, and it’s pretty gratifying.

I like writing about food and have made a lot of great contacts that way. But, I always felt that there was a whole spectrum of content that was being missed. That was the beginning of my plans for Cheaplander. Along the way, I realized that the gist of the content could focus around the idea of living within your means, since I’ve been sort of practicing this since I was a kid (haha, well more like brainwashed into it by the folks. Must say, I owe all my “success” to them, however.). Indeed, Cheap Eats itself came about because I needed to live within a budget.

As you can imagine, I couldn’t have predicted how timely that phrase would be. Just look at the state of the markets today.

Ok, I’m not going to go on and on - you can read more about it on the About page for Cheaplander.

But one last thing - whereas on Cheap Eats I’ve always been a bit hesitant to get involved with the “community”, I’m going to make more of an effort to include fellow Cheaplanders in the new site. I’ll probably be making a few more posts about it over the next couple of months - but, I’m looking for contributors to make a few posts once in awhile.

Up front: I can’t pay you. However, if exposure is what you’re looking for, then that’ll be taken care of in a byline on your post and inclusion on the “contributor’s page”. Also, I tend to get occasional free stuff from companies. I’d be willing to ship some of that out to people who might review it. I’m still trying to figure it out, but let me know if you’re interested.

Thanks for reading this non-Cheap Eats post. Full “coverage” will resume in a few days.

Bryan

p.s. I apologize in advance if certain things on the new site don’t function yet and if the look is still rather bare. I’m still in the midst of changing things day-to-day.