Year Nine Retrospective

Simone wrapped up in tentacles

Ahem; we interrupt my void elf and lightforged draenei leveling to celebrate this website’s ninth birthday. While the dearth of recently updates here is both embarrassing and regrettable, this site is still operating, at least in a nominal sense. What’s more, I’ve probably actually bought more figures in the last year than in any year that I’ve been collecting figures, and I certainly have no shortage of material to cover. I’m not certain how long that trend will last, though, as figure prices at the 12,000 yen point and beyond are a strong deterrent to purchasing on impulse, and I’m thinking I may be more selective in my preorders this year than my financial discipline typically dictates. But we’ll see if I hold to that; SkyTube and Native are certainly intent on testing my restraint.

Site stats for the preceding 365 days show that the number of users dropped compared to last year but pageviews are up by a couple hundred thousand. I’m not sure why that might be. Total site stats are about 1.8 million visitors, 3.2 million sessions, and nearly 16 million pageviews.

Despite the lack of reviews, this last year has been the best of my professional life and 2018 appears poised to be even better. And while figure prices continue to climb, my review queue has blown past 150 unopened figures and I’ve certainly got enough stuff ready to keep this site going for at least another decade. I just need to log off Warcraft once in a while to get posts up. In that vein, reviews of Matsuri and Rei and that one tied-up Native girl whose name currently escapes me ought to be going up soon.

Oh, and incidentally, my current job devotes an inordinate amount of energy to a slavish devotion to agile development processes, which I loathe and has thus made me question the usage of the term “retrospective” for these posts. Truly a random thought.

A less random thought: this site is really going to be entering its tenth year of existence soon. It’s an auspicious event, and yet it’s frightening how fast time goes by.

This entry was posted in Random Thoughts and tagged , .

9 Responses to Year Nine Retrospective

  1. TomTheCat says:

    Happy Birthday TA! 😀

    Any idea what caused that spike in the pageviews around May/June?

    • Tier says:

      Thanks very much! Apparently someone must have linked the vampire Marie and Kozue Sakakibara reviews on Facebook. I wonder what they wrote? I know I’ve gotten linked from a couple of Tumblr blogs who didn’t appreciate some of the more loli-esque figures that I have here.

  2. wieselhead says:

    Happy Blog Birthday, senpai!
    You always are a great inspiration for many of us, with your elaborate lighting and figure pics and of course the entertaining reviews. Some used the inspiration to bring Nendoroid photography to a new level, too haha. 12,000? rather 14,000 for a mainstream figure, it became so expensive 😀
    I just cut back even when it’s painful not to have certain figures, even more since some never will
    have decent pictures anywhere else 🙁

    It’s regrettable that the 2010 community fell apart long ago, but I still blog anyway.
    Fortunately my job is not really that time demanding, so I can sit down and prepare posts.
    Sometimes I wish I would take more time to read books or play Games, instead of blogging.

    Please continue blogging even when its on your own pace and less regularly
    (^▽^)

    how did you end with 150 unopened figures?

    • Tier says:

      And getting back to responding to comments …

      Thanks a ton! XD Haha, I’m hopeful that I’ve helped some people get into taking pictures. I remember Happysoda and Heisei Democracy were huge inspirations for me when I was just getting started nine years ago. It doesn’t really seem like that long ago.

      Yeah, I do miss being able to read blogs, rather than looking at Twitter or Tumblr or whatever. My Twitter feed is kind of congested by retweets anyway so I don’t even know whose content I’m looking at, most of the time. I am glad that your website is still around at least XD

      Ahh, about the unopened figures … I usually don’t open a figure until I photograph it, and since I am so very, very far behind in reviewing things, most of them are unopened. I think I’ve only made a few exceptions to this policy, and at the rate I review things, I guess I’m probably going to be at 200 unboxed figures before long …

  3. BostonBrandon says:

    Good God, 150 unopened figures!?! I don’t know how you do it. Though to be fair since downgrading my living space this past year, many of my own have been boxed up and are just waiting to come out again.
    In a funny coincidence, my wife and I celebrated our 10th anniversary the other night. It was shortly after meeting her that I began collecting and in those early days your website was a great reference tool and source of enjoyment above all others.
    Thank you for sharing your passion.

    • Tier says:

      Yay, (late) congrats to you and your wife! I hope you have ten more years, and then a few more tens of years together after that. Yeah, I feel that it’s kind of a waste having all these figures unopened. I’ve got the Max Factory Psychic and Amakuni’s Asuka sitting on top of the stack and I’ve been staring at them for at least a few years now. But then, I don’t really have the shelf space to display them even if I did decide to open them up.

  4. DLawrence says:

    May you stick around for another nine years!

    • Tier says:

      Thanks very much! XD I don’t know if I’ll make it another nine years, but I’m definitely planning on continuing this as long as I want to.

  5. Artomato says:

    Hey, happy 9th Anniversary Tentacle Armada

    Been following your blog for a few years now. There’s a lot of great stuff here and you’ve certainly come a long way with some.million viewers. I for one would be very interested in a post showcasing your humble beginnings of this site. What challenges and hardships you’ve faced along the way. I’m sure this will be quite an inspiration for newcomers interested in blogging and starting up a site as itself.

    P/S: Figure prices are going insane. The number of figures I’ve purchased over this passed year has dropped a bit due to the prices.

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