Dethroner Housekeeping: State of the Blog t + 3 Months

It’s only been three months since we launched Dethroner, and it’s been a great experience so far. I’ve enjoyed talking and debating with most of you, and I think we’ve got the general pieces put together for a strong next year. I thought I’d take the time to let you guys know some of the details of how things are cooking, what our plans for next year are, and what you can do to help (besides just reading, which is plenty).

I haven’t even written this yet and I expect it’s going to get long-winded, so please join me after the jump.

The business

Following typical blog launch patterns, we launched to an exceptionally strong burst of initial traffic, only to quickly fall to a lower but slowly rising rhythm, averaging around 16,000 page views a day as of last week. That’s a solid but not stunning level of traffic; it’s expected to remain at those levels or below through the end of the year, as holiday traffic numbers tend to be low in general, plus we’re going to an abbreviated posting schedule next week.

Our internal traffic goal is to quadruple traffic by Q2 of next year.

At current traffic rates and average level of ad placement by Federated Media, we’re making between one and two thousand dollars a month, with a infrastructure overhead of about $200 a month (for hosting and occasional web development costs). Amazon referral fees are generating between $50 and $300 a month. I do not currently take any funds from Dethroner as a business, and will be putting all revenue back into the site, primarily through the hiring of full-time writer.

I am also considering establishing an LLC, although I’ve never done so before. (Could be a good theme week!)

The technology

While I remain frustrated by the general design ethic of Wordpress—having to hand-edit an increasingly large PHP loop isn’t my cup of tea—it continues to provide ample features and speed to handle what we’re doing. (Once caching was properly built out, that is.) It is conceivable we may have to move to a new CMS or to dedicated hardware in the future, depending on traffic load. This wouldn’t be a bad problem to have.

The invite-only forum works well and has been constructed entirely from the open-source phpBB and free plug-ins.

The editorial

For Dethroner to meet the traffic goals we have set out, we’re going to have to improve on two fronts: a great number of posts per day (12 or more); greater planning and presentations of themed content.

The first goal is simple enough, as we have hired another writer to start putting up at least six posts a day, plus the six or more that I have already been doing. While I have no specific desire to ramp post counts up to unreadably high frequency, it’s a basic tenet of commercial blogging that “more posts = more traffic,” and it’s critical to our continued success. That said, the challenge is to increase the post counts without lowering quality (or preferably, increasing it).

To that end, we will start planning our theme weeks out with more rigorous structure, including putting a schedule online in the forum. We will also adopt the stunningly obvious suggestion of gwg and build out each day of the week to be more structured towards a gentle slope from introductory topics to intermediate discussion throughout the week, culminating in a “snob finale” on Friday. (”Beer Friday” posts will remain, of course.)

I will also attempt a more diligent discovery of guest experts to come in each week, which will be made more simple by a more structured theme schedule. As Tonx’s week has proven, there’s no replacement for the strong voice of experience. As always, if you are an expert or experienced amateur about a subject and would be interested in guest blogging for a theme week, give me a buzz. I’ll help to build a theme week around what you have to offer.

This week I’ll also be putting together the first “Dethroner Guide to…” PDF—this one will be coffee, based on Tonx’s output. I’m unsure if it’s best to round-up the coffee posts online and in a more portable document (probably both are useful), but it’s a potentially useful idea, which means we should give it a shot.

We will also attempt to do more actual reporting for the site, starting with visits to real experts in the New York area, as both I and the new writer (to be introduced soon!) live in New York.

The participation

Going forward, we will attempt to develop more ways that interested readers can interact, promote good posts to their friends, and foster a stronger feeling of community should the need organically arise. While I am leery of spreading the areas of interaction too thin—there is already some confusion about what should be in the forum as opposed to on the site via “Ask Dethroner”—it may be useful to put our theme and editorial planning on a wiki to allow those interested in helping us to develop editorial to do so.

At this time I have no plans for any branded merchandise. (DIY, should you be inclined!)

The summary

So far so good, as far as I’m concerned. I’ve been very proud of some of my work (and disappointed in some), but I feel like we have a strong groundwork laid for 2007 to be a very successful year for the site. It has been both surprisingly easy to get the brand off the ground yet a constant reminder of how easy it is to allow something like Dethroner to fall behind. We are certainly approaching the “shit or get off the pot” portion of this fledgling endeavor, which will require a greater discipline than I’ve ever been able to muster. The responses I’ve gotten about our work so far are more than enough encouragement to keep moving forward, and I appreciate your continued patronage. Not only could we have not done it without you, there’d be no reason to do so if you were not reading and participating. You have my thanks.