Well, it’s been a year now since I launched The Obelisk. I’ve been wracking my brain for something to say other than “thanks” for the whole weekend and continue to come up empty, so I’ll stick with that. Thanks.

January 2010 was our best month yet, with 13,574 hits in 31 days. Pretty powerful stuff, and the upward trend continues to astound me. Thank you, thank you, thank you. If you missed the January podcast, please feel free to check it out here, and as I seem to say every month, there’s more great stuff to come, so stick around. On the immediate docket are interviews with Floor, Dead Meadow, Droids Attack, Asteroid and, coming later today, Saint Vitus. So yeah, good things are happening.

I had no idea last year when I began putting this site together that it would be received the way it has, and while I know it’s far from the end-all-be-all of internet popularity, the consistent and loyal readership/commentship/etc. has helped me really understand the point in doing all this in the first place. It was a crazy year, but I feel like I’m where I’m supposed to be, doing what I should be, and for ending up in such a position I feel incredibly lucky.

I’ve alluded to changes down the pike, and I feel like it’s time to discuss a few of them briefly, just so everything’s in the open going forward:

Advertising: I’ve signed up for Google AdSense, and as soon as I can get the code up and integrate it with Analytics, there will be ads on this site. That is the way it has to be if I’m to continue the kind of posting I’ve been doing. Please know that probably more money than I’ll ever make from ads will be spent on CDs for review and Buried Treasure purposes, and if you find the ads intrusive, understand that I’ve tried to make them as minimally so as possible. As for banner ads and things like that, I’m not there yet.

Podcasting: Will now be a regular, monthly thing as best as possible. If I slip one month, don’t hold it against me, but to the best of my abilities, there should be a new one right around the middle of each month. We’ll see how it goes.

Merch: I have a t-shirt design coming, and I don’t want to give too much away, but it might just feature a wizard fighting a grizzly bear. More on that soon.

Graphics: One of the things I like best about this site is that the look of it isn’t intrusive and reading the pages doesn’t give me a headache. Keeping that in mind there are small improvements design-wise I’m going to see if I can’t pull together. I’m not a graphic artist by any stretch, but I’m not going for anything too fancy anyway. If something looks slightly tweaked, don’t be surprised.

Suggestions: I know I’ve said this before, but I really want to make it clear. If there’s something you want to see that I’m not doing (and that it makes any sense for me to do), please let me know at jj (atsign) theobelisk (dot) net.

That’s all I can think of in the immediate, but if there’s anything else, I’ll let you know. Thank you again for your support of The Obelisk in its first year. I hope this note finds you well, and that whatever you’re doing, you’re enjoying it as much as I’m enjoying this. If you run into me at the bar, next round’s on me.

In riffs,
JJ Koczan
Humble Pie Taskmaster

Tags: self-aggrandizing, The Numbers

This entry was posted on Monday, February 1st, 2010 at 12:03 pm and is filed under The Numbers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.