100th Post
This is my 100th published post on One Yard Hex. I'm going to talk a bit about how the blog has been so far and where it might be going.
I started One Yard Hex on April 14, 2014, as a place to post fragmentary material (especially for GURPS) that I had laying around my hard drive. This had two benefits. First, I had a lot of material for my new blog. Second, I could get rid of files that were cluttering up my drive.
Eventually, I decided to combine One Yard Hex with my existing Patreon project. To make this work, I increased my blog output to five days a week and created topics for each day: Mystery Monday (focusing on the GUMSHOE system); Toss-Up Tuesday; *World Wednesday (about the Powered by the Apocalypse rules); GURPS Thursday (following a cross-blog convention that has been going for some time); and Fate Friday. Each week I would choose one post as a Sponsored Post and send it to my Patreon backers as a paid creation.
At the time of this writing, One Yard Hex has had 12,476 page views. By far, the most-viewed post is What If: Disney's Frozen Were a Dungeon World Adventure, with 1,333 views. I'm sure I can attribute this to its being shared by the official Dungeon World twitter account and Google+ community. Similar effects happened with the next two most-viewed, Fate Tokens on Kickstarter and GURPS Horror: The Madness Dossier.
The most-commented post is the recent Announcing Dungeon Accelerated. That's because the comments on One Yard Hex run through Goole+, so any comments on posts there linking to posts here show up here as well, as does G+'s +1 upvoting.
Overall, I'm happy with how this blog is going. Since switching to the Patreon model, I've been diligent about getting a post up every week day, something I've had tremendous difficulty with in the past. I think I've produced some good posts along the way. Hell, I wrote an entire mini-RPG/hack on a dare from my wife.
Speaking of Patreon, however, it is disheartening how poorly the project is doing there. Switching to the new format actually cost me patrons that had been supporting my earlier efforts. The blog has gained me no new support. Maybe I'm not a good self-promoter. Maybe the blog just isn't worth a dollar a week. Whatever. I'm going to keep doing it for now.
Going forward, I can see a few things I want to change, though I am not sure how feasible doing so will be. First, I would love to have to have posts go up at a more regular time of the day. However, doing so requires them to be written farther in advance and scheduled using the Blogger scheduling tools. Right now, I do a post whenever I have time in my day. Some days, that's in the morning, while others its rather late at night. I simply don't have time most days to get ahead of this pattern.
Second, I want to loosen up the daily topic schedule a bit. I've had days where it was hard to come up with a blog post because I had to fit it into the day's theme. In the future, I'm going to let the themes slip a bit if it means producing a better post.
I hope you've enjoyed the first 100 posts on One Yard Hex. If you've read this far, I know you're more dedicated than about 80% of the people who come to this blog. (Thanks, Google Analytics!) I'm looking forward to bring you more great material in the weeks and months ahead.
I started One Yard Hex on April 14, 2014, as a place to post fragmentary material (especially for GURPS) that I had laying around my hard drive. This had two benefits. First, I had a lot of material for my new blog. Second, I could get rid of files that were cluttering up my drive.
Eventually, I decided to combine One Yard Hex with my existing Patreon project. To make this work, I increased my blog output to five days a week and created topics for each day: Mystery Monday (focusing on the GUMSHOE system); Toss-Up Tuesday; *World Wednesday (about the Powered by the Apocalypse rules); GURPS Thursday (following a cross-blog convention that has been going for some time); and Fate Friday. Each week I would choose one post as a Sponsored Post and send it to my Patreon backers as a paid creation.
At the time of this writing, One Yard Hex has had 12,476 page views. By far, the most-viewed post is What If: Disney's Frozen Were a Dungeon World Adventure, with 1,333 views. I'm sure I can attribute this to its being shared by the official Dungeon World twitter account and Google+ community. Similar effects happened with the next two most-viewed, Fate Tokens on Kickstarter and GURPS Horror: The Madness Dossier.
The most-commented post is the recent Announcing Dungeon Accelerated. That's because the comments on One Yard Hex run through Goole+, so any comments on posts there linking to posts here show up here as well, as does G+'s +1 upvoting.
Overall, I'm happy with how this blog is going. Since switching to the Patreon model, I've been diligent about getting a post up every week day, something I've had tremendous difficulty with in the past. I think I've produced some good posts along the way. Hell, I wrote an entire mini-RPG/hack on a dare from my wife.
Speaking of Patreon, however, it is disheartening how poorly the project is doing there. Switching to the new format actually cost me patrons that had been supporting my earlier efforts. The blog has gained me no new support. Maybe I'm not a good self-promoter. Maybe the blog just isn't worth a dollar a week. Whatever. I'm going to keep doing it for now.
Going forward, I can see a few things I want to change, though I am not sure how feasible doing so will be. First, I would love to have to have posts go up at a more regular time of the day. However, doing so requires them to be written farther in advance and scheduled using the Blogger scheduling tools. Right now, I do a post whenever I have time in my day. Some days, that's in the morning, while others its rather late at night. I simply don't have time most days to get ahead of this pattern.
Second, I want to loosen up the daily topic schedule a bit. I've had days where it was hard to come up with a blog post because I had to fit it into the day's theme. In the future, I'm going to let the themes slip a bit if it means producing a better post.
I hope you've enjoyed the first 100 posts on One Yard Hex. If you've read this far, I know you're more dedicated than about 80% of the people who come to this blog. (Thanks, Google Analytics!) I'm looking forward to bring you more great material in the weeks and months ahead.
Comments
Post a Comment