Why We’re Changing From RVFamilyTravel to HappilyRV (Domain Change)

After some deliberation and brainstorming, I have decided to change our domain name (and brand) from RV Family Travel to Happily RV.

From…

to…

I thought I would quickly explain why I made this change.

RV Family Travel was a domain that my wife (Malika) registered one day without me being involved. It is actually a pretty good domain. And, given that we never really had any intentions more than an RV blog to screw around with, it was perfectly fine.

However, as I spelled out in my last post…

I could be one of those bloggers who just blog about my travels. But, I know that if I do that, I will probably repeatedly run up against the same exact problem of letting the site fall by the wayside.

Let’s face it…

Blogging is part of who I am. I’ve been doing it for 20 years now. But, I’m not all that likely to spend a lot of time doing it just for giggles.

I have taken two blogs (the only 2 I’ve ever started) and turned both of them into six-figure businesses. This is what I do.

I don’t tend to go wide. I go big or go home.

And if I don’t do the same with RVFT, it will never take off.

Simply put, we want to do something bigger with this site. I want to see what I can do with it. And yes, if that leads into some monetization, that would be nice. 😉

But, there’s a problem…

A highly obvious brand conflict.

There is another well-known RV site out there called RV Family Travel Atlas.

They’ve got a great site. They do campground reviews. A great podcast. I mean, they do a great job.

However, those names are WAY too similar.

From what I can tell, they didn’t trademark it. Perhaps I’d be legally OK to continue using the name. But, honestly, even if that’s true, it is still a bonehead thing to do.

I wouldn’t even be able to rank for my own brand name! They would always come up in search first. The names are almost the same. We talk about the same things. It isn’t as if tacking that word “atlas” on there changes everything.

So, I decided to change the name of this site to something that will be more brandable and have no risk of confusion with another, established brand.

I spent a few hours brainstorming the matter. Just ask my wife. 😉 She thought I was overthinking it.

In the end, she and I both liked HappilyRv.com.

It is easy to say. Easy to remember. Short and sweet.

And I’d much rather make a change like this early on with this site than after it is getting a lot more traffic.

And so it is. 🙂

Now, I need to go change email address, social profiles, and more.

I’ve done this once before with my main business (changing from DavidRisley.com to BlogMarketingAcademy.com). And that site was far more established at the time than this one. It wasn’t that big a deal. I expect this one will be the same.

I’d be interested to hear thoughts on the new name. But, to be honest… I’m keepin’ it. 😉