Year Eight Retrospective

Simone wrapped up in tentacles

Yay! This site is now eight years old. Admittedly there is not much to celebrate once more, since updates have been drastically curtailed. That’s not to say that I’ve stopped collecting figures – in fact, I have so many of them that the unopened boxes are piled meters high. Finding the time and motivation to shoot has been tough, mostly due to the new job, World of Warcraft grinding, and a resurgent interest in watching NBA games (I used to collect basketball cards with the same enthusiasm as I collect figures). Nonetheless the figures are here and as I don’t unbox them before I review them, I have considerable motivation to keep posting, since I’ll never get to display my figures if I don’t. (Well, unless I shut down the site, which I’m not amenable to doing, being that not only do I enjoy running it, I’ve already paid my hosting bill for the next year.)

The site stats haven’t changed much from the last year, or the year before that; the site doesn’t get many new viewers, but doesn’t lose many, either. That probably means that I’m not doing a good job of optimizing this site for web search but one beneficial by-product of not posting as much is that I don’t care about my traffic stats. Regardless, the stats aren’t too bad. For the last eight years, the site has gotten about 1.7 million visitors and 14 million pageviews, which is pretty nice, I think.

One thing that lowers posting frequency is that I don’t do any dakimakura cover reviews or doll posts anymore. The dakimakura posts weren’t personally interesting to do or to write about, but I actually got more questions about them than anything else I’ve ever written about. The doll posts were more interesting but I always had the feeling that they weren’t all that popular. I generally don’t pander too much but their large size made them kind of a pain to photograph, so it didn’t seem worth it to continue posting about them. I wonder if anybody misses those posts, as all I do these days are figure reviews and the preorder posts.

Anyway, new review should be posted soon; I really want to photograph some of these Bikini Warriors figures, and it would be pretty silly for me to not have reviewed any of my 7 Deadly Sins figures by the time the anime airs this summer.

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11 Responses to Year Eight Retrospective

  1. wieselhead says:

    8 years, that is impressive. Even with less posts this year, it’s great to have you around.

    I wouldn’t know what to do, if sensei would stop. Well, I would probably get lazy and just post reviews with 300 words and 15 pictures ahahaha.

    A little suggestion, maybe a little rude from me is to sell most of your unopened figures, yes that sounds crazy, but even with top motivation you won’t be able to dedicate a post for everyone in the next few months. And I imagine it to create too much pressure on you.

    lol I guess your blog has the highest stats of any western figure blog or of them alltogether,
    I guess I merely have 8,66% of yours, not that I think that I’m on your level, sensei ^^.

    Yeah, I miss the doll posts actually, although the fetish dresses were not the main reason, I just like pretty dolls ;D

    • Tier says:

      I wonder if any other anime figure blogs have gone on this long? I notice that foo-bar-baz is still soldiering along with the auto posts …

      Ahahaha, I like my figures, boxed or not XD I do want to sell some figures though, mainly to fund some other hobbies (cameras and wristwatches). I’m trying to see if I can sell off maybe 20 or 30 figures that I don’t care as much for now.

      I remember really obsessing over stats and I can’t quite remember why I cared about them so much. I spent a ton of time trying to improve my search result ranking. It seems to have made no difference in the end. Without specifically worrying about stats, I do kinda wonder if there’s anything I can do to improve traffic, as it’s been absolutely stagnant for years.

      Haha, maybe I’ll do more doll stuff then XD I do have more doll outfits than the bondage suits but somehow, that’s what my dolls end up wearing XD

  2. Shashin says:

    I just got into NBA a few seasons ago myself, and have been having a great time following it lately. It went from a sport I really didn’t know anything about, to my favorite sport, almost overnight. Probably going to try to go to a game or two later this year, or maybe at the start of next year’s season. I don’t have a “home” team, so it would involve some travel and planning to figure out what game I’d want to go to.

    I noticed the lack of dakimakura cover posts, not that I’ve been around much lately, and wondered. I could definitely understand it, since there really isn’t a whole lot of things to discuss about a particular cover. Do you still collect them anymore, or has interest in that portion of the hobby died out? I’ve pretty much lost all interest myself, sadly, and have been trying to downsize my collection the last few months. Ideally, I think I’d want to keep a handful of covers from my favorite artists, but not really much more than a box or two worth of storage space.

    • Tier says:

      I started following the NBA in 1992, during Shaquille O’Neal’s rookie year. I followed it less during the mid-2000s, when a lot of my favorite players were out of the league and the quality of play wasn’t that exciting. However, the state of the league now is maybe as good as it could possibly be; the games are exciting, the rivalries are intense, and there are so many talented players, particularly younger ones.

      I don’t really collect dakimakura covers with the same fervor as I used to, but I do have a few that I’ve never photographed, and I’m planning on buying one or two that have recently caught my eye. I wouldn’t mind selling off some that I’m not as fond of now but I have a tough time thinking anyone’s gonna spend money on my pre-owned pillowcases.

      • Shashin says:

        I never really got into any sports growing up. Was definitely a nerdy kid and spent more time playing video games than anything else. Until recently, I had a fondness for football, due largely to my family being from a city that has a team that has done relatively well over the last 20 years. It wasn’t until relatively recently that my job necessitated that I learned a bit more about sports in general, which is when I started getting into NBA.

        Oh yeah, it’s exciting to watch right now. I fucking hate the fact that KD landed on the Warriors, and I hope it doesn’t mean they just steamroll championships the next few years (the outlook isn’t too bad for this season at least, with KD hurt and some teams in the East actually looking like they could compete with the Cavs,) Other than super-teams, I definitely agree that the next few years should be amazing due to the young talent; pretty much the entire Timberwolves team, and other players like Antetokounmpo or Booker, should make the game fun to watch for years to come.

        It’s pretty tough to do, honestly. My sealed stuff has sold pretty well, but everything else is a bit harder to sell, even with the promise that stuff was only removed from packaging for pictures, finding buyers for a niche item that has collectors with a reputation for doing questionable things with the item makes it challenging. If you were ever inclined to work up a list of items you were looking to get rid of, I’d be happy to offer some guidance (or may potentially be interested myself) on which I think you’d have a chance of selling.

        • Tier says:

          I got into sports entirely through collecting trading cards – first football cards and then basketball cards. I used to be just as committed to collecting basketball cards as I am to collecting girly anime figures. I think I mentioned this before, but I came across my old basketball cards some years back and I didn’t feel a thing, and I couldn’t remember why I loved the hobby so much.

          I’m interested to see if Golden State can keep their team together after this year; Curry’s going to want to get paid and I don’t think Iguodala will take a Finals MVP discount. With LeBron getting older, there might be a window for other teams to move up – unless the Spurs win it all, which wouldn’t shock me one bit.

          Yeah, considering what a niche product dakimakura covers already constitute, I have to imagine that moving a preowned pillowcase is a very difficult prospect. I’m not sure which ones I’d like to get rid of – I barely remember which ones I own – but I’m sure I can come up with a few.

  3. Philip Brownlee says:

    Still here. Lol I got into figures at the cusp of the quality wave (2007) and now most review sites have fallen by the wayside. Here until the site collapses down around my ears lol. What’s the new job? Still coding? And I must now admit to myself that I am a fair weather Warriors fan XD

    • Tier says:

      Thanks for sticking around XD The new job is uhh, systems engineering, whatever the heck that is. I miss coding, and I’m going to find a way to get back to software development (my employer is fairly large and encourages moving around within the company, so I’ll likely be looking for a programming project later this year). Ahahaha, I’ll have to admit I don’t really have a team; I’m a bandwagon Cavaliers fan I guess, ever since LeBron returned and I thought that was a compelling story. Really, I don’t have a favorite team as much as I have a favorite team to root against (the Lakers).

  4. Aya says:

    8 years that impressive sensei ^^ where else can see English based ero figure review :D, Honestly for all years visiting this site… dakimakura is the least post that I click ^^, I miss the dolls but if you can’t stand few audience complain like what you mention a while ago ^^(like fainted eyes thing,etc) what can I say XD.
    But personally in this declining figure/hobby blogsphere, why should care with post what is popular or not, while you are one of the few guys that still active 😀 just post what left of your passion 🙂

    • Tier says:

      Thanks XD Yeah, I had the feeling the dakimakura posts were mostly filler, and that’s really the way I regarded them, too. The post frequency goes down but I still love anime figures and I need to figure out a way to boost the post frequency. Maybe I’ll just get together the figures that I can photograph quickly (the ones that I don’t feel inspired to build backdrops for and that don’t require a ton of disassembly to get ready for shooting) and try to knock their shoots out quickly.

      • Aya says:

        So lay them on bed and shoot, write some words and tadaaa a filler post done XD
        see great to hear that ^^ because I was start thinking you might lost interest on these, yeah I understand Set up some backdrops take quite time and effort

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