Kyle Thomas

The Website of Kyle Thomas (KyleWith)

This is where Yellowknife Online is at

Something that has been on my mind lately. It is talking about what we do. For some reason, we keep what we do within our own little circle. We refrain from telling the world for fear they might take it away from us.

This is wrong.

I have reasons about why this is wrong, but this post isn’t about that.

This post is about what is happening with one of my labours of love: Yellowknife Online (ykonline.ca).

I have invested thousands of hours since 2009. Writing, developing, building and creating Yellowknife Online into what it is today.

Does Yellowknife Online make me money?

Nope.

It is a labour of love.

It is like volunteering for a non-profit organization. The mission is to make information about a community more accessible.

Except the non-profit is an online brand run by one person. In his spare time or when he should actually me working.

Yellowknife Online has never made any profit and very little money.

It currently makes no money.

It has never received government funding.

It actually cost money to keep Yellowknife Online online.

Approximately $5000 is the past 7 years.

It is not seen relevant within the community it supports. It is not taken seriously.

Yellowknife Online is an online resource for information about Yellowknife.

It is for visitors. It is for residents. And it is for newcomers.

Does it have every bit of information each of these groups needs to know about Yellowknife?

No. Not yet.

Not yet.

There is a post idea list a mile long. All information and resources that should be online on Yellowknife Online.

Some of that information already exists in many places. Some of that information is not written and online yet.

The point of Yellowknife Online is to bring information together into one easy to find place. Resources might jump off to another site. Or it might be right on Yellowknife Online.

What is not understood about Yellowknife Online is that is not a “news site. Even though new posts aren’t published every day, doesn’t mean there is no traffic to the website.

Where Yellowknife Online excels is in publishing timeless content. Content that remains relevant with minor updates.

This has built a strong reputation with Google and the like.

Yellowknife Online receives approximately 20,000 visitors a month.

20,000 visitor a month.

Oh, and I have spent $0 on advertising it.

How?

For exactly the reasons mentioned above.

Trusted and relevant content.

Site longevity. Been around since 2009.

Link sharing. Linking to those other resources in posts and pages. This built incredible search engine credibility.

Trend following. Yellowknife Online is where the people often are. Facebook. Twitter. Instagram.

Few residents might know about Yellowknife Online, but visitors and newcomers do.

On a daily basis, Yellowknife Online receives emails from visitors researching Yellowknife. Other emails from people researching moving to Yellowknife.

Just yesterday I helped a young professional understand utility costs. And where to find an apartment. All before even moving to Yellowknife.

The simple act of helping that one person made Yellowknife seem all that more welcoming. And even less isolated.

That person may not have felt as comfortable finding a place with the help of Yellowknife Online. All because it appeared as a trusted resource.

Without any consistent publishing, Yellowknife Online will continue to be an online resource. All because people will continue to search for the information it hosts.

Posts will stay relevant.

Podcast episodes will remain relevant.

And I’ll always answer emails and comments.

What is next for Yellowknife Online?

There lies the grand question. Here are some general ideas.

New content follows a regular publishing schedule. That post idea list is long.

Become a Yellowknife tour listing directory and booking engine.

The How To Be a Yellowknifer podcast follows a regular publishing schedule. Always featuring different Yellowknifers

The How To Be a Yellowknifer podcast picks up a sponsor.

Yellowknife Online partners with other local non-profit organizations to help distribute their resources.

Other contributors come on board to help fill information gaps that I don’t know enough about. Sports. Parenting. Houseboat Living. Music Scene. And so on.

Yellowknife Online becomes a non-profit organization. With the mission of helping visitors, residents, and newcomers thrive.

What is the financial model for Yellowknife Online?

There currently isn’t one.

There has never been one.

I can not sell advertising. I try and fail time and time again.

It will always be free to access the information without question.

To grow it needs some sort of financial model.

It doesn’t have to be a business.

It could be a business if advertising or sponsored content was a viable option.

It could be a non-profit organization. It could tap into different funding programs. Programs through different governments and other non-profit organizations.

It sounds like I’m bragging about Yellowknife Online’s success because I am. I’m proud of the brand that it is. I get excited each time I get to help someone learn more about Yellowknife. Or when I hear that someone has used the site.

But Yellowknife Online, as much as my ego wants to believe, is not about me. It is about making this community a great place to live, work, play and visit.

One of my own downfalls has been bringing like-minded people together to build this brand. Yellowknifers have so much to offer each other.

I recognize I can’t do it on my own.

But other than a byline I’ve never been sure what I can offer anyone. See above where I mention it makes no money.

Am I open to working with others on Yellowknife Online?

You bet!

I’d love if there were others who shared this vision and were willing to take a chance with me on it.

Maybe you are reading this? Contact me.

That, my friends. Is where Yellowknife Online is today.

Sorry Wrong Number Yellowknife

Lately I have been getting a lot of calls for people around Yellowknife asking me questions about what is going on around town. I love this, because I love sharing it. I mean it is the whole point of YkOnline, to share what is happening. Anyways along with those calls I have gotten some calls from, for lack of better words, confused people. Three calls really stick out in my mind and I will share them with you. By the way I never answer my phone by saying anything about YkOnline, it is just normally “Hello, Kyle speaking”.

1) I received a call from a lady who wanted to pay a bill. I asked with “Hello” and she said “Hi, I would like to pay my hydro bill”. I was then confused and said “excuse me” which led the woman to say again “I would like to pay my hydro bill”. At that point I knew she had the wrong number and asked her who she thought she was talking to. She replied with “Isn’t this the City if Yellowknife” and I semi chuckled and said “No”. She then hung up without saying anything.

2) A man from southern Alberta call me asking for a Newspaper. That really confused me, I thought why would I have a newspaper. He explained that his friend had won a gold medal and he wanted a newspaper from every capital in Canada.  As I told him I didn’t have any, he questioned why a newspaper company wouldn’t keep any. At that point I was shaking my head, I then explained to him what YkOnline was. He told me I was the first website he landed on when he searched Yellowknife Newspaper. I thought I would help him out so I tried to find the number for the newspaper on their website, but couldn’t so I frantically rummaged around to find a two month old paper with a phone number in it and sent him on his way. I wonder if he actually got that paper?

3) The Final call was just this morning. A lady called me about the Snow castle, I thought okay, whatever, I’ll help her with the information I know but apparently that wasn’t good enough for her. She wanted to know how much snow was used to build the castle, and I had no idea. I said that and tried to explain how it was built, but she wanted to know. She told me that this is the kind of thing someone helping build the castle should know. That confused me and I apologized but explained that I really have nothing to do with the Castle or Festival except that I have been there. She replied well this is stupid, it said to call you for details. Now I was really confused, but I don’t know where she would have gotten the idea to call my number for details about the Snow Castle. In the video I said check YkOnline or the Snowking website for the schedule, but nothing else. I told her the best place to get a hold of someone would be the Snowking website, but she hung up on me mid sentence.

I’m wondering if maybe I’m not clear about YkOnline and who actually operates the site. I’m a life-long resident just like anyone else. I have a passion for Yellowknife and want to share it with everyone. I have a large knowledge of the city but am not really affiliated with any group or organization. I am also not part of the City of Yellowknife. I’m happy to see that the site is gaining ground and more than willing to answer questions about the city and what is going on but am wondering if I should explain who I am a little better. What does everyone else think?

The Explanation

I guess I owe some the explanation of where I am and what I am doing.

Let us start at the beginning, where I was down at school in the little town of Dawson Creek, BC. School wasn’t going that great. I was there for business and even though I was finding some of it interesting, I began to feel it wasn’t what I truly wanted to do. On top of that the college’s campus I was at was not a very populated one. There were only 2 other people in all 5 of my classes and almost no student life outside of those classes. I think some of this lack of student life apparent to me was because I didn’t live in the residence. I lived in a nice, little, newly renovated apartment downtown only seconds from a very modern Cafe. The Internet was also 100x more reliable than what the residences apparently had, which I needed. So due to the lack of interaction with people I was starting to go nuts.

On to the other determining factor, which would be my other blog, YkOnline. It seems I have stumbled upon something and I am afraid of it! Turns out I love Yellowknife, who knew. Most of my life I have wanted nothing more than to leave the place, but that has all changed. Having lived in Yellowknife all my life I have gained a lot of knowledge about the place and am constantly seeking to find out more about it. So with that and my passion of Blogging I create YkOnline in May of 2009 and at the end of August of the same year it started to grow and fast. At that time I was just about to start school, which I was excited about and didn’t know what YkOnline could become. Thinking back now and I’m sure most people will agree with this that the turning point of YkOnline was the Municipal Election that just wrapped up. That and the Dump Fire links. The hits on the site went from 30 unique hits a day to 130 overnight and they haven’t come back down. In fact they have grown, I am now receiving around 200 unique hits a day with over 2000 this month. Granted more hits come when I post an article that day. At that point I knew I had something and I ran with it. I kept updating as frequently as I could from down south. I used Google Alerts, the local paper, CBC, and friends online as my sources of information and it worked quite well but it was still difficult not actually being there.

At the beginning of October I hit an interesting point. I was desperately lacking interaction with people in real life. Sure I talked to people everyday, people who were online Yellowknife and else where, but some would say I was border lining on depression. 80% of my time was spent hiding away in my apartment staring at computer screens. I had decided weeks before any of this to come back to Yellowknife over Thanksgiving, to 1. see family and 2. to attend 2 social media gathering and meet with a couple people about YkOnline. But when I came back I made the very tough decision to move back. Although in this post it seems pretty clear but it definitely not.

I feared people would think I was giving up and would think less of me. That and I, myself thought I was giving up and if I couldn’t handle this, how would I ever get anywhere in life. I also had to amazing friends who lived 45 minutes outside of town. They had once lived in Yellowknife and I really value their friendship and knew going back to Yellowknife would mean I wouldn’t be able to see them very often.

On the flip side here as some positive reason for coming back. Family would be one and I guess I’m obligated to put that in here, as I know my father reads this blog. One of the others and a big one would be YkOnline. Like I explain above, that little site I created because I’m passionate about this place grew and gained momentum. I have so many ideas and am so excited about the site I felt I couldn’t continue it unless I was back in Yellowknife and the majority of that is true. I hope to explain more about what I have in store for that site in the next couple days.

So here I am in Yellowknife, ready for a fresh start. I should maybe reread this and make sure it all makes sense but I’m just going to “Go with it” today.

More will be uncovered about what I will be doing over the days to come. Just need to make that clear, haha. Smile.

Must be Friday

Here I am again, so that must mean it is Friday.

Seems every week that passes by I do less and less. Lets start with last weekend, where once again I ended up out at East Pine. Go figure. All day Saturday we tried to clear a football field behind the house.  We were hoping that when people come out to visit we can have a full on football match. No, don’t believe me. Smart, you have learned well. We were clearing trees though, lots of tree. What we were trying to do was strengthen the satellite Internet signal. Did it work? I have no idea.

On Sunday we had plans to go quading but do to an incorrect part for one of the quads we were unable to go. So what did we do instead? No really, I can’t remember. I am trying to think about it very hard and I just can’t seem to pull it out of my memory. All I seem to be able to remember from Sunday is that I drove home late in the evening. Lets just move on to Monday where I had my first economics class. Ugh. That is all I have to say about Economics, ugh!

The rest of my school week went swiftly. I am enjoying most of my classes. Although it may take me a bit to understand Accounting I really enjoy listening to the instructor. He has definitely been around for a while and has many stories to tell and wisdom to share and is also my Principles of Management instructor. For years he was a local journalist and I would love to pick his brain about what that was like.

I guess that brings us to today. I have once again found myself in Cafe Europa. It is definitely my new hang out spot, I seem to be coming here several times a week. The food is good, the service great and the atmosphere wonderful.

Until next Friday, have a good week. Remember if you want to read my more focused writing you can check out YkOnline and Dawson Online

Update, which is long over due

Well folk I suppose I owe you some explanation as to when I have been up too, well here it is.

First I will explain the new name and its reason. The reason I chose I attempt to take a new name was because 1. I wanted something that was the same over almost all sites. Which looks like this one is, except for YouTube. In that case I will use the name kylewithDOTcom. 2. I wanted something that will be with me forever. You see The Bushman is/was a nick name (one which I gave to myself) and like most nick names you grow out of them eventually. So I wanted something that is me, therefore Kyle WiTh was born. See the Wi Th are the first 2 initials of my middle and last name. I thought it was neat it spelt a word so I ran with it. For example when telling someone my website I can say just go to Kyle with dot com and there would be no confusion. I also am using the word With as a business name, which is With Media. Apparently I specialize in Web Development, Design and Marketing, who knew. That is the story behind KyleWiTh.

So with that I had to created several new account, register a new domain name (only $9.95), create another new e-mail address (up to 7 now) and transfer my WordPress blog/files from The Bushman directory to this one. That was a scary process as I didn’t know if I was doing it right but know I do.

I apologize for the absence in both this blog and YkOnline and will be getting posts out semi regularly again tomorrow. I also have a couple idea for YkOnline which may benefit Yellowknife Online as a community so stay tuned.

If there are any spelling or grammar mistakes with in this post, just bite your tongue. It is late and I’m trying to get this out before I fall asleep.