Happy Birthday to Us - The Second Year

The Island of Pain blog has turned two years old!

We have gone through another year with the Island of Pain blog – And what a year it has been!

During the past year I felt that we had to change a lot of things as I started to think that either we concentrate on the blog or just drop it. So we changed a lot of things through planning and because we wanted to take things in another direction.

So we started with changing the design and the way we did things. We went from just being personal to being personal and informative on a general level – Our podcasts is a result of that change.

The podcasts are my babies and something that I have a passion for, even if the production time is quite long. As a natural progression we went into radio shows which enables us to have a totally different experience when it comes to the interaction with our readers. Through the shows we have a true dialogue with people and can act instantly on it.

We have also taken a clear stance when it comes to where we stand in regards to certain issues within BDSM activism – Something that we clearly try to expose in a lot of posts we do.

If we have an opinion on things then you will hear about it.

It is my opinion that all these changes have made this blog into something we have a passion for and love to work with – And that is something that our readers seem to have picked up on as well. We write about the things we do because we want to, but we also write about them because we want to educate, clarify, create opinions, provoke, communicate, spread the word or just help. I try to write things that reflects my personality and so has everyone else writing on this blog also done.

The fact that our readers have picked up on all this is something that is clearly reflected in our numbers.

We had 108 posts, 248 comments and 8500 unique visitors during our first year – Which were, to us, quite good. I was convinced that we could do better and that is why we started to do a lot of changes late august in 2009.

The numbers during the second year blew our mind: 250 new comments, 236 new posts,  and a whopping 60 000 additional unique visitors! In a addition to that we have about 6000 downloads of our podcasts and radio shows that we started doing in late october of 2009.

I would like say a big thank you to everyone that have contributed through writing a lot of interesting posts during our first and second year; Little Snowpaw, Cloud Bracken, Catastrophe Scaggs, Allsmiles Sideshow etc. And everyone that have left comments with insights; Delicia Dreschler, Dane Gundersen, Diana Allendale and Lordsir Ninetails and everyone else that have contributed to keep the discussions going.

Thank you everyone – You are all the reason to why we exist as you take a keen interest in what we are doing right now and what we are trying to do in the future.