One year ago today, I published my first post. Later that day, I got my first 5 visitors. Twelve months later, my traffic has increased more than I could have hoped, the Chicago Sun Times on-line edition has picked up eight of my posts (not including their smaller suburban affiliates), and I signed a contract with an advertiser.
It’s been an amazing year. I have had a lot of fun sharing my stories. Thank you for reading this year and a special thank you to those who return time and again. I’m glad you are finding posts of enough interest to return. If you’re one of my frequent readers, please become a fan of my page, or follow me on Twitter.
I have also been pleasantly surprised at how great the flog community is. I’ve met some great blogging friends and have enjoyed reading their stories and exchanging comments with them. I hope to even fish with one or two of them some day. Please visit some of them off my blogroll. They are a great group of fishing (and outdoor) men and women. All of them are a great read. And some of them are really funny.
I have had great fun reading the comments from all of you. I appreciate that you’ve all been appropriate and respectful. If you’re a lurker, please drop a line if only to say hi. I really enjoy hearing from my readers.
You may have noticed that I’ve moved to a new theme. I hope you like it. I thought it was time to freshen the site up a bit. This theme will give newcomers to my site a chance to peruse my recent posts more easily to find the ones they are interested in and skip the ones they’re not. This theme also gives me more advertising opportunities, but I promise they will always be topic relevant and not in-your-face. After all, the whole point of the site is to talk about fishing. Making some change to fund my passion is a happy side effect (and believe me, it’s really just change).
Quite honestly, when I started this blog I wasn’t sure I’d be able to fish enough or find enough to write about to last a few months, let alone a whole year. But apparently I’ve had a lot to of things to share. I hope you’ve found my stories interesting and my information useful. I hope you’ve put some of my lessons learned to good use and have caught an extra fish or two because of it. Please leave a comment if you have. I’d love to hear about it.
I’ve got a lot more fishing to do and I have a bunch of informational posts pending, so there’s plenty more to come. I’m also going to start what I call the Avid Angler’s Challenge. I hope to challenge a few of you to some unique situations and see what advice you come up with.
Thanks for reading!
Congrats on 1 year of blogging! Thats actually quite an accomplishment in the land of blogs. My understanding is most never make it past the 3 month mark. The new theme looks great and I look forward to reading what the next year brings your way~
Congrats on the first year, looking forward to reading year 2!
Congrats! I don’t know what it is about this year, but I’ve really struggled to get time on the water. All winter I was amping up to “get out there” but finding the time has been rough. Thanks for keeping the blog going, I really enjoy it!
I’m happy for you. Great accomplishment! And i’m definitely liking your new theme, looks great.
Congrats! Happy Bloggaversary! I always enjoy your posts, keep it up!
Thanx all, for your well wishes. I look forward to sharing my fishing experiences for years to come.
Indeed. Keep at it. I enjoy reading your blog. You’re in my top five. I’m coming up on three years in a little over a month, but of course, my anniversaries come with a reminder of why I started in the first place. Leaves me with a bittersweet feeling. Hopefully, I’ll continue to have enough time to fish and blog about it.
Thanx, Bassdem. That means a lot to me as I put you in my top 5 as well.
Happy Blogaversary! As Virginia Slims once said, “You’ve come a long way, baby”…congrats!