WOW! Can you believe it? It was exactly one year TODAY that Pizza Xtreme Team (PXT) rolled on to the internet, and we're still going strong! What do the founders of the site have to say about this massive achievement? Take the jump to find out!
Cody Pinnick
Hey, whoa! It's been a year already! No way! That means we're going to start getting paid for this, right? No? Damn. Well, anyways, writing for this site for a whole year has been pretty awesome. It feels like just yesterday I was buying the domain for this whole site... which is something I probably should of put some more thought into. Pizza Xtreme Team? Well, now we're kind of stuck with it, and hey, it's wonderfully quirky, right? Right? That's what I have to tell myself at least. Have I learned some things over the year? Yeah, totes.
1. Just because you build it, doesn't mean they'll come. While we haven't been unsucessful by any means here at PXT, I had hoped we would have a loyal commenter base by now. Guess not! Advertising is hard, and something we're going to have to focus on in the coming year-- we have the content, we just need the come-back readers!
2.Consistency matters. Before starting the site, I figured ocassional updates would work to build that group of repeat viewers we need-- the truth is, it doesn't. Any time we update regularly, the overall readership goes up. Miss an update? You've got to build the back up again nearly from scratch. That goes for the podcast almost double!
3. People love Lego Batman 2 Seriously. To this day we still get tons of hits on this article.
4. People really wanted pictures of Kid Icarus AR Cards at one time. This was also one of our highest hitters.
5. I really love and missed making webcomics. Seriously, I'm having a blast making this.
So thanks for everything readers! It's been a pretty good year for the PXT and we look forward to bringing you many, many more! Hopefully after the holidays we'll be able to refocus and bring you loads of great new content!
Samantha Cross
(Samantha could not be reached for comment at this time. I assure you though that she's enjoyed the year we've had here at the site and appreciates all you readers out there. Her craft articles are some of our most popular things we post, and probably by far the most popular recurring feature. Perhaps I'll get her to update this at a later date - Cody)
Sam Dunham
I can't believe it. What started off as a simply a place for us to express our humble opinions on movies, games, and comics has turned into a respectable news blog with over 30,000 unique hits... not bad for a site with little funding and a funny name. But it hasn't been all wine and roses (or in my case, vintage comic books and Dr. Pepper), so I've come up with a quick list of the five things I've learned from running PXT:
- 1. If something can go wrong with the site, it probably will - From bad plugins, to botched page edits, to massive server issues, I've seen it all over the last year.
- 2. Saying an article series will be weekly is one thing, actually sitting down to do it is another - I'm at a bit of a disadvantage when it comes down to writing articles... Cody and Samantha are both college-educated Writing majors, and I'm just some dumb guy who likes comics too much. Despite this, early on I attempted to start a weekly article highlighting some of the better (and worse) comics on the stand. Was it ambitious? Yes. Did I misjudge the amount of work that would have to go into the pieces every week? Most certainly. Eventually, I kind of settled on a "frequently-infrequent" release structure for the articles, but I'm still striving to get it out whenever I can.
- 3. There's a lot more to podcasting than a couple of mics and a topic - The sheer amount of editing, converting, leveling, coding, uploading, and posting that goes into an hour-long podcast is, in a word, staggering. So the next time Pizzacast! is a little later than usual, please keep that in mind!
- 4. Advertising is my kryptonite - This one's pretty self-explanatory. I've learned that while I can certainly build a working website, I have NO IDEA how to market it. Have I mentioned we have a Facebook page?
- 5. Never underestimate the power of smaller news articles - Over the past year, my friends and I have generated a ton of great original content, from reviews to opinion pieces... and yet our most popular articles consistently are the quick news releases. The lesson? Even if it is just a movie trailer or a news blurb, all news is good news.
From all of us here at PXT, thank you for checking out the website, and here's to another year of great content!
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