Just so you know who’s talking, I’ll start off by saying it’s Elise narrating again!
We’ve been getting a lot of really good questions about the way we do things here on More Than Just Surviving recently, and so I thought I’d take the time to work together an FAQ. If you have any questions you feel should be answered here, as usual, just drop us a line by email (find out how via the Contact Page) or write us up a comment on absolutely any blog post!
General FAQ
How can I support More Than Just Surviving?
The very best way you can support this site is by helping us spread the word about it!
This means doing things like: showing our website to friends, sharing our posts on social media, referencing our articles + reviews on forums you take part in, etc.
Also, if you happen to have any sites of your own (even if you no longer post to them, or if you have a Tumblr, a Blogger, a LiveJournal, etc. – those count, too!), placing a link to More Than Just Surviving in your blogroll would be an enormous help! If you’d prefer to use an image link over a text link, you can find different sizing options of banner images here; you won’t have to upload the banners to your own site, just copy and paste the code and you’re good to go!
Why don’t you have a donate button?
First off, thank you; we’re enormously flattered at the fact that some have even thought to ask us this before.
Now for our response: we don’t have a donate button primarily because, personally, we feel as though when others come back to More Than Just Surviving, read what we write, share our articles and reviews with friends, on social media, on forums, etc. – this is more than enough thanks to us.
Can you give me a specific product/gear recommendation?
Yes, sure! Let us know your budget, specifics of what you like and are looking for (locks, materials, etc.), and we’ll certainly let you know which particular products we think will suit your needs best!
Why do you re-share old posts on social media (Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, Tumblr, etc.)?
Wish we could constantly be pushing out new content, but it takes us a lot of work to come up with new articles and reviews for this blog, especially since we do our best to concentrate on quality rather than quantity.
In the meantime, we figure we might as well post something! Especially for those who are new to following us on various channels and are new to following the blog. Otherwise it’d be crickets on our social media channels besides the 2-3 times a week we post new content.
Besides that, we make sure that the old posts we re-share are evergreen, and are thus still relevant and true today. Doesn’t matter whether we first hit “publish” on a post yesterday or a year ago, we make sure what’s written is consistent with what we still believe about the topics/products we have written about.
If you’re interested in only being notified of our new posts feel free to subscribe to our email newsletter or to our RSS feed and unfollow our social media channels.
Article FAQ
Can you do an article about [insert topic here]?
Yes, yes, yes! In case you haven’t heard, we love answering reader questions and writing about topics our readers ask us to write about. Please either let us know your question by commenting on a post or by contacting us directly.
Don’t you think it’s a good idea to add [important information] to this article?
Likely, yes! Let us know what information you think is missing and we’ll be sure to include it, or write another article about it!
You’ve made an error here. Shouldn’t you fix it?
Sure should! Whether it’s a grammar error, a spelling error, a mistake in naming a product, or an incorrect fact – if you see something wrong with what we’ve written, point it out! We’re no strangers to the edit button.
Do you accept guest posts?
Unfortunately, no. This blog is run solely by a two person team and it’s going to stay that way. All articles and reviews are penned by either myself or Thomas – you won’t be seeing posts by other people here.
Review FAQ
Thomas wrote up an entire post about his review process. You can check that out here if you’re interested in more answers about our reviews than the questions listed here.
Can you review [name of gear]?
Likely yes. A lot of what we review is determined by one of two things: 1. popularity/interest in a review, and 2. our own personal interest in an item. If there’s an item that gets requested a lot, we’re far more likely to do a review on that item, and much more likely to do that review sooner, so please do keep requesting reviews! It helps us know what to push out and what to get out there first.
Why do you post so many knife reviews?
So in case you haven’t picked up on this already, I’ll put it plainly – we do really like knives. We try our best to switch things up every once in a while with reviews of different products, and while we don’t always do the best job of this, that’s in part because the ratio of knives to non-knife items on our “to-review” list is pretty greatly skewed in favour of knives.
Thus, while every once in a while we’ll turn up with a review of a multi-tool, bag, MRE, tactical pen, water purifier, etc., when it comes to gear, knives have and will always be our bread and butter. Part of this is because there’s just so much more diversity when it comes to product offerings in the knife world than between different flashlights, for instance. Another part is, like I said, we just really like knives ourselves, and Thomas knows quite a lot about them so it’d be a shame not to put that knowledge to good use ;).
As usual, if there’s a particular product or type of product you really want reviewed, do make a request by commenting on a post or contacting us directly. But going forward, honestly, we’re going to be continuing with a hell of a lot of knife reviews, so if you absolutely cannot stand it, this may not be the blog for you.
Why are most of your reviews positive?
We buy the vast majority of the products we review, and as a result, we tend to choose things that we feel we’ll really like. There are so many products out there, we figure we might as well enjoy the gear we pick to review. So while every once in a while we’ll end up with a product we really do not like (the Gerber Gator Machete, the Victorinox EvoGrip S18, the Granite Rocx Tahoe Backpack, the Camillus Les Stroud SK Mountain, the Spyderco Sage 3, the Urban and the Manix 2 FRN, for instance) even at times while originally thinking that the product would be a good fit for us, typically we know ourselves well enough to know what we’ll like and what we won’t.
You’ll notice we pretty much always opt for the fully plain edge versions of knives. If we opted for serrations or partial serrations, the reviews we publish would probably be a lot more negative cause we’re just not fans of that. Thomas is not really into spear points for EDCs – we picked up the spear point version of the CRKT M16, but not much else. If we’d gotten more knives of the spear point variation, our reviews would be a lot more negative.
Even when we are offered products to review from companies, we always ask which products they’re interested in sending us, and if it’s a product we know for sure we won’t be interested in, we’ll ask them if we can do a different one. As Thomas likes to say, we’re just not masochists, and as a result, really don’t like the idea of putting ourselves through using product after product that we really won’t like. We want to actually enjoy adding products to our collection, not dread the process.
We screen our items beforehand. If we think we’ll like ’em, we get ’em. That’s why most of our reviews are positive.
Can you add star ratings to your reviews?
This is something we unfortunately won’t be doing. We understand the value (it’s easier to browse that way!), but we don’t like boiling down products to number ratings, as things we perceive as negatives, others might not mind, and those things we perceive as positives others might not like. Basically, since whether you like or dislike a specific knife, multi-tool, bag, or other piece of gear, depends a lot on your own taste, giving a piece of gear a rating would feel too biased (and very unfair to the products we’re biased against!)
Can you post reviews more frequently?
Wish these took less time to get up, but unfortunately, one a week is all we can do without killing the quality of our posts (something we’re definitely not willing to do!).
Can you make it easier to browse reviews?
Sure can! Always looking for better ways to organize products, so if you’ve got an idea for how I could make things easier, let me know! I’ll do my best to make it happen.
That’s it for now! If you have any other questions for us, or would like to see a couple more answered up on this page, like I said, let us know by commenting or getting in contact with us directly. Happy browsing!