Sunday, October 29, 2006

Doing The Unthinkable
This is bold.

Our newsletter has over 300,000 subscribers.

I sent a mailing tonight to all of them saying that unless they re-subscribe with email confirmation, they won't receive any further mailings.

Am I crazy? If 5-10% re-subscribe, that will be a great success in my eyes. I'm effectively discarding hundreds of thousands of emails.

So what's my motivation?

Simple: I'd rather have a small and passionate list of people to email than a huge and idle one.

Quality is far better than quantity and the costs of maintaining a ridiculously large email list are prohibitive.
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Friday, October 27, 2006

Very Pleased
The quality of the fan manga site has been astounding thus far. And it will only improve from here.

It might seem that the # of submissions have been low on the site thus far. However, a few notes:

(1) A fan manga series can have dozens of pages. The fan art site would count each of these pages as a separate entry.

(2) The site isn't linked in our hubs or portfolios yet.

(3) In terms of traffic, this is our best site launch yet. Compare it to wallpapers, our most popular area:

When wallpapers launched in March 2004, it received roughly 5,000 page views a day. The fan manga site receives about 8,000 now. It took a full two months for the wallpaper site to reach that number.
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Monday, October 23, 2006

I love the fan manga site.

Massin is in the midst of heavy exam studying, so I was thrilled when he agreed to take a few hours to help me implement some much-needed upgrades to the section.

Mark my words, this site will become insanely addicting. You'll want to visit to see new manga, you'll want to visit to keep up with old manga, and you'll want to visit for quick one-page laughs.

Mark my words...
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Friday, October 20, 2006

Our Most Exciting Site Yet
It's going to be a lot of fun watching fan manga fight its way up our traffic ranks. I predict it will overtake all but wallpapers and fanart within the next six months.

The beauty of the fan manga site is in its interface and programming. You have no idea how many variables Massin and I had to design through for the site...overall the site took a full month of work.

What do you think? It will be awesome watching how this evolves.
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Thursday, October 19, 2006

#1 thing a guy never wants to hear:

"You're like one of my best girl friends!"

GROAN.
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Monday, October 16, 2006

- I "tetris'd" today - that means it was a week with five trips to the gym. If you keep gym trips short (30 min.) and ultra-frequent, they become a lot more fun. Anyone want to "tetris" with me next week? I think I entertain people at the gym too because, in between things, I do quasi-acrobatic martial arts exercises.

- Sorry that the network was down for about three hours today. Websites are like cars, the longer they exist, the more likely random things are to corrupt and require repair.

- I have a final fantasy temporary tattoo on both my wrists. It features two snakes intertwined and their tails both point together like a dagger toward my fingers. People are going to think I'm amazingly cool tomorrow at work.

- Massin has been doing an incredible job with the fan manga site. Right now it's in closed beta; we've invited a few artists to submit works to iron out the bugs. I can see it launching in 1-2 weeks. Am I right in saying there's no fan manga site anywhere else online? (Yes, you can submit fan manga to our fan art site or other general art sites, but that honestly sucks - fan manga deserves its own layout.)
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Sunday, October 15, 2006

- I encourage you all to see the movie Click with Adam Sandler. It's a strange and unique film that's a dual comedy/tragedy.

- I've picked an amazing Halloween costume. I'll tell you what it is closer to the date.

- The Mask has been profiling members on his myOtaku site, including myself. Good idea.
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Saturday, October 14, 2006

Got Beta?
Are you an artist who's submitted comics to the fan art site? E-mail me and you could take part in a closed beta for our upcoming section.
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Thursday, October 12, 2006

Halloween Contest
this is indeed scary.
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Wednesday, October 11, 2006

A Contest For All
Whether you're a traditional fan artist, a digital designer, or a writer...check out our Halloween contest.
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