About Mobile Home Living and its Creator Crystal Adkins

Crystal Adkins, Mobile Home Living founder

Hi! I’m Crystal Adkins. Thanks for stopping by

Learn how I managed to create the most popular resource in the world for mobile and manufactured homeowners. It’s my very own modern-day fairy tale and 100% true.

I created Mobile Home Living in September, 2011 after buying a 1978 single wide mobile home in Oak Hill, WV on a rent-to-own contract.

Joe and I are from a cute little town called Pineville, WV. It’s nestled in the southern coalfields and if you don’t work in or on a coal mine you probably work an hour away in Beckley like we did. We needed to live closer to Beckley because we had a square body Chevy truck with a serious drinking problem. We needed to either trade the truck for something easier on gas or live closer to work.

And that truck wasn’t going anywhere so the only reasonable option was to look for a new place to live.

I bought a local weekly trader and started looking. Thankfully, it didn’t take long to find an ad for a 1978 Homette single wide mobile home that read something like this:

I immediately dialed the number and a man answered on the 3rd ring with a half tipsy hello from a man named George Doug. We West Virginians are friendly folk so it didn’t take long for us to get to know each other.

After a few moments he was joking that I was a walking country song and he wasn’t wrong – I am a coal miner’s daughter named Crystal Gail and I used to drive Caterpillar 777’s on strip mine reclamations. I joked back that at least I didn’t have two first names. I made a few more sly comments about George Doug being a pain in everyone’s ass because he was a retired mine safety inspector for MSHA.

We arranged to view the property the next day after work.

I fell in love with the property the second we pulled in and the more I learned about the area the more I loved it.

We looked over everything and asked a million questions. He was ready to retire and wanted to get rid of some of the rental properties he had.

We had a local attorney handle the paperwork and moved in.

1978 Single Wide in WV - Mobile Home Living in West Virginia - Headquarters
Where Mobile Home Living began.

We Had Just Bought Our 1st Home!

I was ecstatic! Mobile homes aren’t perfect, but this one gave us the opportunity to own our first real home and a start at accruing some kind of wealth.

Wealth doesn’t always mean money in the bank. If you owe less than what an item is worth you’ve accrued wealth in a way. It may not be as much wealth as a site-built home but it’s damn sure better than nothing.

George Doug helped us the day he chose us to be the proud new owners of his 1978 mobile home. It was the beginning of many amazing things for me and my family and I will forever be grateful to him for that. I hope I can do the same for a few families someday.

Well, I reckon you can. It’s your home.

Do what you want with it.

A few months after settling in I asked George Doug if it was OK to paint the original wood paneling. We hadn’t paid the home off yet and just wanted to make sure. I have a terrible memory but I remember his reply (almost) verbatim:

Well, I reckon you can. It’s your home. Do what you want with it.”

That’s exactly what I was hoping to hear…

Like most anyone with a brand new high-speed internet connection (I’d only been online using dial up previously), I turned on the Google machine (aka my fancy new laptop that cost $277 from Walmart) and typed 4 little words into the search bar:

Ideas to update our new mobile home

A few articles, blogs, and dealership sites appeared in the search results, but I couldn’t find a single site that catered specifically to mobile or manufactured homeowners.

Google search for mobile home remodeling ideas

I was a bit upset after reading there were more than 18 million Americans living in mobile and manufactured homes.

Now, I’m not the brightest bulb but that seems like an awful lot of people being completely ignored by all the DIY brands and mass media.That’s almost 10% of America.

 Why were there no magazines or websites or TV shows catering to us mobile homeowners if there are over 17 million people living in them? 

Popular brands like Better Homes & Gardens and HGTV rarely acknowledge us mobile homeowners but I figured we’d at least have a website that catered specifically to mobile homeowners by 2011.

But, nope, not a single one appeared in my search results and, thus, Mobile Home Living was born.

Crystal Adkins. Creator of Mobile Home Living, and her new welding mask.

Mobile Home Living has a nice ring to it, huh?

I don’t know how, but I knew this blog would be a success from the get-go There was just one minor issue:

I didn’t know a damn thing about blogging or even how websites worked. I was a 35(ish) year old woman raised in one of the poorest areas of the nation – our schools were not stocked with computers in the early nineties, but I was always fascinated with them.

I had to learn the basics before I could even start the blog.

Thankfully, Copyblogger and Envato Tuts+ shared lots of helpful blogging tips. Those two websites taught me the most in the least amount of time. I eventually sent Envato a thank you letter, and they featured my success on their blog. How cool is that?

The Start of an Adventure Indeed

I worked my ass off for 2 and a half years before I finally started making a little money from the blog.

I really don’t know how Mobile Home Living became the most popular resource in the country for mobile homeowners. There was obviously a void that needed to be filled and none of the manufactured home builders or dealerships were doing anything.

Google claimed that Mobile Home Living has gotten over 60 million page views since 2011.

60 million page views, y’all!

Mobile Home Living’s Mission and Goal

I knew what the blog’s mission was even if I didn’t know what I was doing those first years. I was creating a resource for owners to find affordable remodeling ideas, DIY repair advice, and decorating inspiration for their mobile homes while also educating the public about factory-built homes.

I tried to create the website I was looking for the day I typed mobile home remodeling ideas into the google search bar.

Clayton Homes sharing my article
Clayton shares one of my articles! Whaaaaaat?

There’s Been a Shift in Opinion regarding Mobile Homes

People are tired of working 80 hours a week to pay for a fancy home they can’t even enjoy. They’re tired of car payments and insurance company BS.

People are mostly just tired of the way things have been and they are making big changes in their lifestyles.

Simple living, affordable living, living within your means, mobile home living – whatever you want to call it is catching on. 

Mobile Home Living has been mentioned by some pretty big websites. 

And I didn’t pay a single penny for any of them. In fact, I’ve never spent a dime on any kind of marketing or advertising.

Today, Mobile Home Living is the most popular resource in America for mobile and manufactured homeowners.

Curbed did a great article about mobile homes in America and quoted me quite a bit. You can read it here. 

Curbed

We’ve also been mentioned by Foremost Insurance, State Farm, BHG, MSN, US Today, SFGate, Hunker, and several other well-known brands.

Ironically, a few years after buying the domain from them I was asked to write an article for GoDaddy’s blog. I was putting together a website for Joe at that time because he was about to start his own plumbing company, so I wrote about plumbers needing a website.  

The day BobVila.com mentioned me by name was one of the best days of my life. I’m a girl from a hollow in southern West Virginia. I was supposed to marry and coal miner and have a bunch of youngins, not create a blog read by millions. Yet, here we are.

The

Oh, and Bob Vila has mentioned us. Bob Vila, Y’all!

I’ve never accepted a dime from any builders or dealers for articles, links, or ads. The display ads are through an ad service (Adsense and/or Ezoic) so I don’t handle anything on it. 

We are a respected resource that takes the advocacy of mobile homes and the people living in them seriously.

I’m proud of this blog and I’m super excited about Mobile Home Living’s future. I’m proud of the good it’s helped do but we have a lot more work ahead of us. If you can help us or if we can help you please contact me using the contact page.

Thank you!

Crystal G. Adkins