I wanted to write and share what we’ve been creating for you. We’ve taken a step back to evaluate how The English Major’s Guide (formerly Proofwriting) can better prepare English majors (like you) to have a great career.
More importantly, we wanted to determine why we are working to create the best career prep resource in the world for English majors.
Today, I’d like to share some of the things we’ve created, what’s coming next, and how you can benefit.
The changes we’ve made to the site can be grouped into three simple categories:
- Technical
- Content
- Administrative
Let’s dive into some more reasoning for each.
Better Security, a New Domain, and Greater Visibility
The biggest change we made was moving the site from our old domain, www.proofwriting.co, to its current home at www.englishmajorsguide.com. The reason for this was simplicity – the new domain is a lot easier to remember. Note that ALL content from the old site is available here, and membership login info for those who purchased the guide transferred over without a problem.
Another change we made was moving from http to https. This allows us to take secure credit card payments via Stripe directly on the site, giving you (and us) a different option than PayPal. It also helps protect our site (and your login information) from attacks.
As an added bonus, both moving to https and changing the domain should help our SEO and enable greater visibility in search engines.
New Content
We’ve been working hard on adding new content to the site. Here’s what we’re launching now and in the coming weeks:
- The English Major’s Guide to Getting a Job v1.4 – Includes new and updated chapters and better resources to help you land a great job out of college (coming next week).
- New career resources – We’ve been hard at work developing in-depth job guides so you can know exactly what skills you need to land a specific position.
- A brand new print workbook – It’s kind of like a cross between your favorite issue of Highlights and our job guide. The beta is launching in October.
- Better email content. We’re redesigning our emails to deliver more value.
- A free member library – Now, all of our free resources (like the newsletter bonuses) will be available in a convenient member’s section.
We’ve also completely updated the bonus section for those who purchased a copy of The English Major’s Guide to Getting a Job. Here’s a preview of what it looks like:
As you can see, we’ve tried to organize the content in a more logical, easy-to-follow way. The look is much cleaner, and it’s more usable on mobile devices.
That’s just a sampling of what we’ve been creating for you. We’ll announce more as they get closer to launch.
Helping More English Majors
As a one-man show, I realized creating the resource this site needs to be was too difficult. That’s why I’ve enlisted a team of writers, artists, and more to help manage the site.
Taking more of an entrepreneurial approach, I’m now delegating as much of the writing and designing as possible. Giving up control over everything actually helps the site grow without (and in spite of) me. Delegating will also allow us to be more consistent with our content and give work experience opportunities to English majors.
We’ll also be unbundling the English Major’s Guide into smaller, affordable modules. While the guide and its bonuses are already highly affordable (costing less than a textbook and about the same as a new hardcover), we understand it’s important to balance affordability/accessibility with the realities of running the site. Unbundling is a way to accomplish this.
This is all part of our 20-year mission to put more English major leaders in the workplace. The mission/vision statement will be ready shortly, but for right now, just know this project isn’t going away anytime soon.
What This Means for You
At the end of the day, these changes mean we’ll be able to deliver better value to you, fellow English major. You’ll be better prepared to enter the job market and pursue a creatively satisfying, financially lucrative career.
If you have any questions about these changes or want to shoot me some suggestions, I’m eager to hear your feedback. Simply email matt@englishmajorsguide.com, and I’ll respond as quickly as possible.