Shacknews LoL

Two years without a drink today 🚫🍺, and I just turned in the last assignment to finish my Bachelor's in Human Services w/ a substance abuse counseling concentration and psychology minor. To celebrate, I'm eating pulled pork and enjoying time with family, and I might even treat myself to some Quake when I get home. Feels good, man!

So many of you were supportive of me through this whole thing, and that really helped to keep me going when things got overwhelming. Thank you so incredibly much!

It has been 3 years since I became CEO of Shacknews, and I wanted to provide our most loyal users an update on how the site is doing. Shacknews has grown our monthly unique visitors by 152% in that time. We continue to refine our process and have consistently put out quality content.

The team was planning a cosmetic design update to the site that would have gone live this month, but I scrapped that idea. Instead, we are focusing our efforts on a major redesign of the site that includes the Chatty, Mercury subscribers, and new ways for users to express their opinions.

If there is one thing I have learned in my time here, it is that Shackers love to share their opinions. This site needs user reviews and a more modern way for users to share content. Shackers deserve profile pages with game libraries as well as integration of tagging.

We face several problems as a company going forward. On the monetization front, it is becoming more apparent everyday that display advertising is not the way forward. We will be shifting our focus towards sponsored content, like the Show Important live streams you may have seen on our Twitch channel, as well as incentives to subscribe to Mercury. Another issue we face is user retention. Over 90% of our visitors last month were new to Shacknews, but not many of them stick around. These are issues that are not unique to Shacknews, but I believe we have a plan in place that will address both of these very important problems.

Shacknews is bigger than most folks on here think. We are held in high regard by many developers and our competitors in the games media are even taking notice. Features like or Doom Select highlight how we are approaching the changing landscape of games media by creating what we believe is needed. We are currently working on a massive Quake feature and its release will be a moment that Shacknews reclaims its identity. So many sites are struggling to find their voice in 2017, and I hope our mission is becoming more clear to you.

Shacknews will provide gaming news from the cutting edge of technology, but that requires a site that functions better than it currently does. Yes, functional search is a priority in the current redesign as is better mod tools that allow users to help flag threads for moderation. Beyond this, our Shacknews community has to become more welcoming to the new generation of gamers while staying true to our roots. This has proven to be one of the most difficult parts of my job.

About a month ago, eonix asked me what keeps me motivated? I didn't answer at the time, because that question deserved a proper amount of thought.

http://www.shacknews.com/chatty?id=36728580#item_36728580

I love video games. I have ever since I picked up a controller back in the 1980s. I think games provide an escape from things going on in a person's personal life and in the real world. Shacknews has given me the opportunity to share my opinions with millions of people, and meet some of my heroes along the way. Shacknews also provides a sanctuary for many of our users. The Chatty is the best online community I have ever been a part of, which is why so many people come here before they go anywhere else. We celebrate here, we grieve here, and we post dank memes here. This community holds a very special place in my heart.

Running this site is taking up the majority of my time these days, and it doesn't actually make me any money. I continue to do this because I love to do it. Most days don't even feel like work. It is that love I feel for video games and this community that keeps me going.

There will be a day when I am no longer needed here, and I will go the way of Steve and Maarten. This job requires 100% of your heart, and it can be draining, but what I have realized is that the joy is in the journey. I promise to continue to give my all to this site and this community as long as I am needed.

I will be providing more updates about our 2018 plans and reaching out to the community for feedback as we approach the biggest relaunch in the history of Shacknews.

Thank you,

Asif

Effective immediately, Canada banning all military grade / assault style firearms for regular citizens.

Finally.

Last day at my current law firm. Starting my own law firm on Tuesday. Goodbye regular paycheck.

Today marks five years since I became CEO of Shacknews. Each year, I like to look back at how we are doing and highlight areas where we are differentiating our company in the increasingly competitive games media landscape.

2018 was a record-setting year for Shacknews.com monthly unique visitor and pageview stats, and that has made 2019 a bit of a grind. Year-to-date, the site is experiencing a slightly down year, having hit our peak monthly visitors for 2019 in January. This is attributable to a few factors like 2018's game release lineup being stacked with RDR2, God of War, Smash, and countless other titles.

Overall pageviews at Shacknews.com are down 1.94% year-over-year from 2018, with Shacknews.com/chatty experiencing 22.7% declines in the same time period. Despite the decline, Chatty remains our most viewed page on Shacknews.com in 2019.

Our most viewed article YTD in 2019 is All Wishes for the Wall of Wishes in the Last Wish raid in Destiny 2: https://www.shacknews.com/article/107433/all-wishes-for-the-wall-of-wishes-in-the-last-wish-raid-in-destiny-2

We continued to expand our brand into the esports space in 2019, with two tournaments this year. Shacknews Champions League kicked off with an over-30 competition at E3 2019, with a special live music performance from Marc Rebillet. We also returned to QuakeCon 2019 with The Great Quakeholio Tournament 2. Shacknews Electronic Sports remain one of the most fun and unique things that we are doing at the company, and it has been a joy to put these special events together.

From a content standpoint, while the Shack may not be having a record traffic year, we are seeing some wins from a brand visibility standpoint. Our reviews have been quoted in accolade trailers for some of the year's biggest games including Super Mario Maker 2, Borderlands 3, Remnant: From the Ashes, and Days Gone. We were also very visible at events this year, with a massive E3 2019 presence on the showfloor and SDCC 2019 partnerships. Shacknews Long Reads Editor David Craddock also recently dropped a massive Everquest long read, in case you missed it. Developers and PR firms are taking notice, as Shacknews has been given access to some of the top studios for interviews, previews, and reviews this year.

From the business side, Shacknews.com reintroduced our Mercury subscription service earlier this year, and the results have been great. Revenues from Shacknews Mercury subs in 2019 amount to four times the total advertising revenue at Shacknews.com in 2019. We didn't run ads in 2018, as we began our transition to a subscription service model during that year.

While the early success of Mercury is encouraging, the company is still not profitable. It is entirely possible that the only way that I will ever make money off of this investment is by exiting it with a sale to someone else. I remained focused on ways to generate more revenue at the company, but I am still committed to keeping the lights on with a larger staff than Shacknews Founder Steve Gibson ever had. I could trim our budget in an effort to reach breakeven financially, but it would undoubtedly hurt our growth. This has been a delicate balance, and the name of the game is to keep Shacknews afloat while a lot of our larger competitors flounder and shrink.

On the dev side of things, I am currently outlining the next phase of the redesign that began last year and continued with the LOL page integration update earllier this year. Phase 3 of the redesign will be a huge update that will change how Shackers interact with the site while keeping some things exactly the same. I look forward to sharing more information about the update once we are closer to launch.

Shacknews celebrates its 23rd year in 2019, and it has been a pleasure reviving the site over the past five years. My time here is not over by a longshot, and I remain motivated by my vision for the future of Shacknews. This is truly a special place on the Internet, and I will continue to do right by the community as we continue to grow. Thanks to our Shascknews staff, readers, viewers, Chatty posters, and filthy lurkers for your support.

Hey Shackers,

I am really excited to share that Shacknews.com saw 106% growth year over year and 24% growth month over month in monthly unique visitors! This continues a trend that started in May of last year and it was our best February since we bought the site.

Thanks for being awesome!

Love,

Asif

Big day for the Petrone Family. I just wanted to say again how thankful I am for all the help that you guys have to us. It helped out so much more then you will ever know. Thanks again for everything.


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