Wednesday, October 10, 2012

State of the Site - League of Extraordinary Bloggers

Finally joining "The League", this is my first assignment: State of the Site!



Created in 2009, JoMiToys has grown 10 times since then. Hopefully in quality too.

During 2012 it reached the 1 million hits milestone and according to some of the most popular counter softwares, has 400 daily average unique visitors.

Founded by 4 friends, for different and professional reasons, in 2012 most of them left making my life (just) a little bit busier. Even though one of them still gives a hand from time to time, I managed to keep it alive just enough to keep the project going. The writting is kept as simple as possible because the whole idea was not to "review" per se, but to to show the toys and leave the opinions to the visitors. Of course I end up giving some thoughts but nothing too deep or negative, since I always considered that beauty is in the eyes of the beholder especially about toys.  This was actually a premise since day 1.  

Things done this year:

- Included the eBay link to flow (out) the excess of toys around this place and answering the requests we (as a team since the beginning) had for this or that toy.   
- Evolved the quality of the pictures and tried to update the most popular posts.
- Introduced a couple of videos linked to the YouTube account.

Goals and objectives for next year:

- Heavy video presence for toys that really need it such as battery operated or otherwise mechanized. This is the main goal for next year. Posting 1 video per week would be wonderful. I have a huge video data for really cool toys that will finally show them off properly and do them justice.

- Try to hit the 200+ members (Google Friend Connect) milestone and hopefully see many of them actively participate with comments and requests.

- Include G.I.Joe figures and vehicles. Since the creation of G.I.Joe Portugal (www.gijoeportugal.com), a side project I created independently, I´ve been keeping that Ace up the sleeve for JoMiToys, and even with the moderate success of the portuguese blogsite, JoMiToys will see a lot of G.I.Joe next year.

- Keep JoMiToys as a reference for Chap Mei collectors and enthusiasts. That has been a point of honor with nearly 250 Chap Mei-related posts, that is almost 1/4 of the blog. Hopefully Europe keeps seing the new CM creations, and I will keep sharing as I get them in my trips around the "old continent".  

So this is the State of the Site! Be sure to visit coolandcollected.com and wonder around having some fun. A lot of great articles there and a lot of great League members with great sites!

- mike

4 comments:

  1. Holy crazy ton of toys!!! Really enjoy your site! Man I am drooling over all this amazing stuff!

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  2. Thanks man! A looot more to come... :)

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  3. Hey, Welcome to The League! And thanks for commenting on my post, too. Looks like I'm going to have to clear a Saturday to dig through all this great stuff you've got here. ;)

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  4. Hey! Thank you. And lookout when you do, you may have to step out of your comfort zone :) Feel free, feel at home :) And great writting there!

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