We here at the Art of Manliness work hard every day to bring you high quality, entirely free content that edifies, instructs, and entertains. We try to maintain a really high standard for content, so that we never put anything out we don’t feel is top-notch. Because of that, I’ve had several people tell me they thought the website was run out of New York City and had a big staff behind it. The reality is that Kate and I run this thing from my home office in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Jeremy Anderberg, our project manager who works remotely from Denver, rounds out our mighty team of 3. We have no editorial board, no marketing staff, no PR people, and no assistants.
The folks who do know that we’re small and lean often ask how they can help us out and support the Art of Manliness. And in fact there are a lot of ways to do so! Below I share 16 ways you can help support the Art of Manliness in 2016. Do one or two or do them all. We truly appreciate any and all support our readers provide in keeping us running, growing, improving, and spreading the good word of manliness far and wide.
1. Subscribe to our newsletter.
We have a daily and weekly newsletter. The daily newsletter gets sent out at 6AM every morning and contains the articles that we published on the site the day before. We’re one of the few websites on the internet that send out our articles in full rather than giving a teaser that makes you click over to the website to read more. Why do we do that? Because we want to make things as convenient as possible for our readers, even though that means we make less revenue.
Here’s another difference between our newsletter and most: Our newsletters are free, you can unsubscribe at anytime, we’ll never SPAM you, and your email will always be private. And we don’t sell or trade the emails on our lists to third parties.
We’ve just updated our newsletter template so that it’s smartphone friendly, allowing you to read the Art of Manliness on the go from your phone. If you’re not much of a web surfer, this is a great option for you. Plus, you can archive the newsletters you like for later reading. Join almost 200,000 people who get our daily updates, and enjoy AoM articles each morning with your breakfast or while you ride the subway to work.
If getting an email every day is too much for you, consider signing up for our Weekly Digest. It goes out every Monday morning and provides links with short summaries of all the articles we published the previous week. You can simply glance through the list and click the links that most interest you.
2. Follow us on Facebook.
If you’re on Facebook, give us a follow. We promise we won’t flood your feed with stupid stuff. Each day we share one new article as well as one classic article from the AoM archives. At the very most, you’ll see three items from us in your Facebook feed each day.
3. Get notifications on Facebook.
If you actually want to see the stuff we share on Facebook, it’s not enough to follow our page. In recent years, Facebook has taken steps to “declutter” users’ news feeds by creating algorithms that determine what content to include or not include in feeds. So even if you follow a page, you might not see any of the content that page shares, because Facebook has decided for you that you wouldn’t be interested in it (even though you decided to follow them). If you follow AoM on Facebook, but haven’t seen anything from us in a long time, this is why. On average, our FB posts go out to less than 10% of our fans’ feeds.
To ensure that you actually see the content that we share on Facebook, you need to select to see all our notifications on our Page Updates option. To do so, simply hover over the “Liked” button, and click on “Notifications” in the drop-down box, like so:
After that, a window will pop open. You’ll then want to check “All Posts” if you want to be sure that you get all of our posts that we share on Facebook:
If you want to go a step further and ensure that our posts are among the first things you see whenever you check your Facebook feed, click News Feed and select the “Show First” option.
4. Like, share, and/or leave a comment on our Facebook posts.
The algorithm Facebook uses to determine how many of our fans see our posts in their feeds is largely based on how many likes, shares, and comments the post gets. The more of these things a post garners, the more people’s feeds Facebook shows the post in. So likes are very appreciated, and if you think a certain article will be helpful to your friends, please give it a share:
Finally, please consider leaving a comment on FB posts, even if it’s just “Great article.” Really, since Facebook’s algorithm doesn’t know what the content of the comment is, telling us a post is a pile of caca is equally helpful; ironically enough, saying how much you hate a post ensures that more people will see it. (Thanks trolls!)
5. Follow us on Twitter.
We share new content, archival content, and even do quick little giveaways on Twitter. You can follow us at @artofmanliness. There’s over 130K folks following us there. I’m not on much during the day, but during the evening I’ll hop on and answer questions or just banter with folks. Consider 7:30PM CST to 8PM CST my Twitter office hours.
6. Follow us on Instagram.
Instagram has become one of my favorite ways to connect with AoM readers. I love seeing folks sharing stuff they’re doing because of AoM. You can follow us at @artofmanliness. On Instagram, we share behind-the-scenes pics of the goings on at Art of Manliness, occasional shots of McKay family life, as well as pics of readers doing awesomely manly things inspired by the Art of Manliness. I also do quick little giveaways on Instagram from the AoM Store that you won’t find anywhere else.
7. Follow Us on Other Social Media Networks.
We’re also on networks like Tumblr, YouTube, and Pinterest. (Yes, Pinterest. Pinterest was actually one of our big sources of traffic last year. It’s not just for moms! Or there’s a lot of moms that like the Art of Manliness. Thanks moms!). We post different types of content on Tumblr and Pinterest and not just stuff from Art of Manliness. It’s our way of sharing cool stuff that we stumble upon while out on the world wide web.
8. Subscribe to the podcast.
Did you know that we have a Top 100 iTunes podcast? It’s true! On the Art of Manliness Podcast, you’ll find interviews with writers, thinkers, and leaders on a wide variety of topics of interest to an Art of Manliness Man. At the end, I always try to suss out some practical takeaway from my conversation with my guest to help you become a better man. For an idea of the types of guests I have on, check out our podcast archives.
I publish the podcast twice a week and the interviews last between 30 minutes to an hour long. I try to keep them as long as a commute to work.
To get the podcasts sent directly to your smartphone as soon as they go up, subscribe with the podcast player of your choice. We’re available on the following services:
Don’t see the podcast service you use? Here’s the podcast RSS Feed to our podcast so you can subscribe using the one you like.
9. Leave a review of the podcast.
If you’re a subscriber of the podcast and enjoy the show, please give us a review on iTunes or Stitcher. Giving us a review helps increase our podcast’s ranking on these services, which in turns allows more people to discover the Art of Manliness podcast.
It takes two minutes, but really helps us out a lot. Just open up iTunes or Stitcher to leave a review.
10. Sign up for Roost updates.
If you don’t use Facebook or Twitter, but want to get updates from the site as soon as we publish something, follow us on Roost. When you visit the site on Chrome, Safari, or Firefox, you may get a prompt asking if you want to receive updates from us (you may need to clear your browser’s cache and browsing history to see it). If you select “Yes,” anytime we publish a new article you’ll get a little notification in your browser saying that we’ve published something new. You can click on it and go read the article straightaway. It’s pretty nifty. I swear by Teddy Roosevelt’s mustache that we don’t abuse it. At most, you’ll only see two notifications a day from us.
11. Share our content via social media.
One of the best ways you can support the site is to simply share it with others. We’ve tried to make it easy to share our content via social media. We’ve got a little bar on the left-hand side of our articles that has different ways to share our content.
If you’re reading the site on your mobile phone, the share box is in the upper right hand corner:
12. Tell a friend about the site.
Lots of people first discovered the Art of Manliness because some friend or acquaintance shared the site with them in conversation. Guys have told me they’ve had some great discussions about our articles with their buddies. So be an evangelist of manliness and get some good conversations going by telling your friends and family about AoM.
13. Whitelist our site on AdBlock.
I get it. Online advertising is annoying. And it seems advertisers are getting more and more aggressive about trying to grab your attention: pop-ups, those annoying videos that start auto-playing while you’re reading content, not to mention the memory space that ads take up. So I understand why folks choose to use AdBlock.
But like most magazines, we rely on advertising to support the maintenance and growth of the site. And with a well-trafficked site like AoM, it takes quite a bit of money just to keep things up and running. Server costs run into the thousands each year. When folks visit AoM with AdBlock on, they use those servers, and enjoy the free content, but we don’t earn any money in return. People might justify it by saying, “Well, it’s just me and they’re probably losing maybe $.25 from me having AdBlock on, so it’s no big deal.” But when thousands or tens of thousands of people with AdBlock visit the site multiple times a week, that .$25 very quickly adds up.
Again, I understand why people choose to use AdBlock. But if you do, and you’d like to support the site, I’d ask you to consider adding Art of Manliness to your AdBlock whitelist. Here’s my promise if you do:
I don’t allow pop-up or pop-under ads or those stupid video ads that start playing with sound as soon as you scroll over it. I’ve also kept the number of ads on the site served from third party ad networks to four, so our page shouldn’t hog too much memory in your browser. I also work really hard to ensure that the ads that we do show on the site are congruent with AoM’s message. So if I see any of those dumb Filipino wives ads or ads for emoticons, I immediately blacklist them from our site. (If crappy or offensive ads do show up, let me know — I could use some help in ferreting them out. Just send us a Tweet with a screenshot and I’ll take care of it.)
Online advertising is how we can provide the FREE content we produce at AoM for you all. We’d appreciate your help in that effort and being as square with us as we try to be with our readers.
14. Buy something from the AoM Store.
Okay, so even after reading my earnest plea to whitelist artofmanliness.com in AdBlock, you still don’t want to. Well, there are some other ways you can support the site instead. We have an online store where we sell a variety of Art of Manliness goods. We have our world famous coffee mug as well as our newly released, one-of-a-kind Detective’s Wallet. You’ll also find AoM apparel, posters, books, and even grooming gear. Your purchases in the Art of Manliness Store directly support the content we produce on Art of Manliness, so spend liberally there!
15. Make a purchase through our affiliate partners.
We are an affiliate for two companies: Huckberry and Amazon. What that means is whenever you click on a link on our site to either Huckberry or Amazon and you buy something, we get a small percentage of the sale. There’s no extra cost added on to the price of what you’re buying, so it’s an easy and no-cost way to support Art of Manliness financially.
With Amazon, you have to buy something within 24 hours after clicking the link for it to count as an affiliate sale for us. We’ve got Amazon links scattered all over the site, so you’re bound to run into one at some point in your AoM surfing. If you see something you like or need, buy it through that link. If you really want to do us a solid, bookmark this link as your Amazon homepage. Now, whenever you go to Amazon to do your shopping, we’ll get a small percentage of the sale. By shopping Amazon, you’re supporting the Art of Manliness.
With Huckberry, the timeframe to buy something after you’ve clicked the link is a bit longer. We’re always doing giveaways and promotions through them because 1) they’re great people and 2) they’ve always got some great stuff featured in their store. If you see something on Huckberry that you need and fits your budget, we’d appreciate it if you used our affiliate links to purchase it.
16. Print out our content and share it in clubs, classrooms, and bulletin boards.
I’ve gotten many letters over the years from folks telling us how they’ve printed off our content and used it in classrooms, dorms, homeschool programs, clubs, churches, and many different non-profit programs that work with boys and men. One of the coolest ways people have used AoM is creating a curriculum for young men in prison. If you’re a teacher, mentor, or leader of a non-profit organization, please feel free to print off our content and use it as part of your curriculum. If you’re a RA, hang pertinent AoM content on the dorm bulletin board.
I’ve also gotten letters from barbers saying how they print articles off and leave them in the waiting area for patrons to read. If you have a business that requires men to wait around, this is a great way to share the Art of Manliness, while keeping your clients edified and entertained.
Well there you have it: 16 ways to support the Art of Manliness in 2016. Thanks for lending a hand and stay manly!