It was just over two years ago, when this iteration of the War On Terror News was started, with an invitation to five others to join in the effort. The previous site had its advantages, but seemed to come up short of my expectations, most notably in that I could not invite others to contribute. I had connected with a bit under 100 good people there and still have a site at multiply where I say hello to them from time to time.
Ms Marti is the sole remaining contributor of those five that agreed to join me here. She's a motivator with a great deal of experience working with stubborn little kids and that may be why she is able to put up with me. In those early days, we may have gotten excited over the record daily hits of each of us checking to make sure the site was still there, but eventually we did something right and we can certainly say that we've reached many others these days.
There are various ways to measure success and not all of those ways necessarily are true measures of it. A little over a year ago, I was offered the opportunity to chat with some of the best known names in milblogging. I hoped I could be enlightened as to what had caused them success and shared what factors I thought had gotten us to where we had gotten.
As I looked at the numbers, I was excited that we were hitting 100,000 hits at nearly the day of our 1 year anniversary, but I also noted how low a percentage of Americans that was. We had broken into the Gunny's top 100 and were climbing steadily if slowly. Our advertising had finally put us in the black and allowed us to pay for the first year's fees, along with the second. The rest was donated to Pro-Troop Non-Profits. We were yet to see regular commission checks from some of our advertisers.
Ms Hope came to us and has been steady and steadfast ever since. We also picked up the occasional contributor "Pale Horse," but he likes to stay out of the spotlight, as technology scares him.
As we hit the 2nd Anniversary, we were hitting 600,000 hits with continued steady growth and on the verge of a top 10 in the Gunny's List as well as a Top spot in the Military Top 100. While this might sound like bragging, it's more a recognition that there is much more room for growth. As happy as I am to see Subscribers greater than 400 and Newsletter distribution over 300, there's 300+ Million Americans, most of which haven't learned there's a place they can find out about Our Troops.
We're always looking for ways to give our readers the greatest flexibility in finding our words and the Newsletter is but one free way to do so. If there's an easier way for you let us know and we'll see if we can implement it. But the important thing is that the American People (as well as international citizens) have access to the Truth we deliver, whether on this site or elsewhere.
We'd like to thank our readers, for caring enough to find out the rest of the story, the story the MSM isn't telling. We'd like to thank our advertising partners for helping us to keep this information free. And we'd particularly like to thank our readers that support our advertisers and the Non-Profit Pro-Troop organizations we spotlight.
To those that said we were wasting our time, we have yet to get started. To the one that challenged me to challenge the MSM if I didn't like their coverage, careful what you ask for! To those that have contributed along the way, Thank You. To Ms Hope and Ms Marti: Thank you so much for what you do, for working so hard, when promised only that I couldn't promise you a thing. I still can't offer a financial reward, only the satisfaction you should know in contributing to the education and information available Our Citizens about the Honor of Our Troops.
