The Last Day

It’s an inauspicious sending off of the old blog, I must say.

Andrei Arshavin is all over the press because something he said 6 months ago was reprinted in the World’s Least Reliable News Source. Felipe Melo (L’Equipe) has reportedly renewed his contract with Fiorentina until 2013, all but ruling the player out for an Arsenal transfer. And, as you no doubt know by now, Amaury Bischoff has been released by the club.

As if I wasn’t nervous enough already!

In hindsight, I should have just gotten the damn thing up when I first bought the domain. It really wasn’t that much work and having your own domain, not a page hosted by WordPress.com, gives you so much more flexibility that it would have been worth it. For example, now I can install Google analytics and have detailed reports of where my hits come from, how long they stay on site, what pages they read, etc.

Not to mention advertisements, hey, I want to get a little back for all the work I’ve put in!

I get up every day at 4:30am and continue my research from the night before. If it’s a complicated article, like say one on the 39th game, I have a lot of research to do and sometimes I have to split it over three days. For the RSS feed + jokes articles I just need to make sure my facts are all straight — and even then some things get past me.

Then I write. Depending on the size of the article, depending on the wakedness of my daughter, and depending on the deepness of my hangover/distractions that takes usually an hour, maybe more.

The rest of the day I check the wires, put aside reprts that are important and dream of Arsenal signing some commanding central midfielder who will give big lumps to all the c*nts ooop norf — and the Chelsea c*nts too.

2-3 hours every day… every single day for nearly two years has resulted in 605 posts, 273,000 views, and 4,300 comments. When I started doing this I was getting just 20 views a day and I nearly quit — it was frustrating to have one guy (Matt!) read the blog and tell me how well I wrote and yet see that no one else was reading. Then I got picked up by Gooner News and everything took off. Now, I’m pretty sure I have a following, several folks who come by nearly every day and say something. Sometimes they like what I wrote, sometimes not, but they are always here and that I really appreciate.

Along the way I’ve been called a cocksandwich, learned what a middle fielder is, and banned a few pricks but it’s been a lot of fun. A lot of fun.

It’s just, I want more. I want more people to see the site, more folks to argue over what I said or what they said, more people to know what a cocksandwich I am, more folks from all over the world building this community of people who get up at odd hours to watch a team we all love: Arsenal.

So, I’m moving and it’s going to be good. First, I’ve spoken with Arseblogger and he’s agreed to a link exchange which is, well, it’s fuckin’ excellent. Second, I’m going to keep knocking on the door of NewsNow until I get in, the new site will let me make my pages more friendly for their reader and I’m hoping that will help. Third, we’ll be doing some targeted advertisements and promotions (by the way, today is your last chance to win a free shirt!), things that will get people here. Fourth, we’re going to experiment with some technologies that will help build the community around the blog. And lastly, and most importantly, Arsene is going to sign Lorik Cana and I will have 1.21 million hits on that day and can retire.

So, I’m inviting all of you to join me over at 7amkickoff.com tomorrow morning for our very first blog on my very own domain. Until then, if you’d like to share your favorite moment or your favorite article of the last two years, please do, I promise not to cry and take videos of it and put them on YouTube.

Promise.

Victoria Concordia Crescit.