If you've been following along with my blog and social media pages you're probably aware that I've been working on a fairly big project. Last year when things took a turn in the wrong direction I admit I was lost for a while. Loss of a friend, family, income, and peace of mind took some time to get over. And I'd be lying if I said I was over any-damn-thing. I just know if I don't snap out of it now, I may never.

A few months ago I became involved in a business arrangement that went south rather quickly. And as emotionally traumatic as such occurrences are to me these days in my fragile mental state, a world of good came from the experience.

I was working on revamping, branding and marketing an AirBnB on a five acre permaculture farm in Ocala, Florida. I hadn't done something quite like this before so I got to studying. I needed to learn as much about running a bed and breakfast and how the marketing for such a thing would look and work. When I get involved with marketing or designing/producing anything these days I like to really immerse myself in the role and become as much an expert on the subject as I can.

I started following some AirBnB host groups on social media. I took notes. One of the things I needed to figure out was a way to produce some sort of written material for guests to refer to for things like rules and resources. Of course, there are tons of options in the marketing and printing industries. I could have created something entirely from scratch using professional apps such as Word, Illustrator and Photoshop. I came up with a few ideas of my own. Then one day, while perusing one of the groups, I saw a comment from the owner of a BnB which mentioned a website they were using to produce a guidebook for their guests. And when I did just a little more research I discovered this particular website is hugely popular among the AirBnB community. That website is www.touchstay.com and their product is called Touch Stay.

Touch Stay is a fairly simple and straight forward product. For a very fair annual cost you gain access to a very user-friendly interface which allows you to easily create different sections, enter text, images and links and add a cover. Once you're finished creating and editing the website spits out a very nicely formatted book and a link to it which can be shared with the public. There are several ways to views this book, either as a smartphone app, in your browser or as a PDF which can also be printed as an 8.5x11 booklet.

I won't get into all of the bells and whistles Touch Stay offers with their guidebook, but one of the coolest features is that when a customer saves it on their smartphone it appears as a customized app with your logo and title. It's really no an app, it's a link which opens the book. It is viewable on or offline and when you update it and someone opens it while online it automatically updates their version to the latest content. And if you've ever had to design and produce a professionally formatted PDF for print you know how tedious and time-consuming it can be. With Touch Stay it's literally just a click.

I mentioned that the arrangements I had with the BnB in Ocala didn't work out in the end. And so far I have only described how Touch Stay is designed and marketed as a tool for creating guidebooks for the hospitality industry. Well, what I realized is that this thing leds itself well to really any sort of publication. A guidebook, brand book, catalogue, press kit, magazine or even just a book. I'd been wanting to create something like a brand book or marketing kit for my business for some time now, and so... voila!

There are some features I'd like to see Touch Stay add and even some I'd love to remove to make it more like what I envision. But for now this thing is coming along and I'm very happy with how it's turning out. So far, everyone I've shown it to is very impressed. My plan is to launch this as a monthly journal. I'm almost done putting the first one together and when I am I will share the link on a Hive post and will have the link on my website and Linktree.

Touch Stay has a podcast showcasing their guidebook and having discussions with their customers and partners. I'd love to get a chance to show them what I'm doing with it and see if I could convince them to either make some tweaks to the features or possibly create another verson of thier product catering more to the publishing industry. Maybe I'll just go ahead and send them this blog post and see if it grabs their attention. If you'd like a sneak peak at it anytime leave a comment or message me on Discord - AbadaniSolutions#0266