I just noticed that this website comes up 25th on google when one searches for “anime blog.” When I show up before Hot Step Jump and Momento in Google, that actually makes me feel like that this place is actually being noticed and read by someone other than myself, so I’m glad.

I’ve had personal webpages of one flavor or another for a long time, and I’ll have owned my own domain for 7 years come October, but I’ve never had a site that’s really taken off (partly because a website about just my personal life isn’t exactly an attention drawer).

It’s kind of amazing in a way since almost everything that has to do with this site was done almost on a whim. I just started watching anime because I had played a fanmade dating sim based off of DNA² and was curious about the anime it was based off of.

This anime blog, I planned for maybe a week before I started it. Basically I wanted a place to review anime that I had watched, and thus the site was born. I’m not sure if I actually believed that I would not only still be working on it a year and a half later, much less that it would be 25th in google and getting over 1,000 pageviews a month and include a podcast which is very rapidly getting toward’s it’s own 1 year anniversary.

And the podcast itself…that was literally me on a Thursday being “hmm…that would be cool” and then getting an episode up that Saturday. On a whim, as I said.

I guess looking back, I should have named it something more creative than “Josh’s Anime Blog,” but oh well.  After 18 months I feel that it’s a little late to change it, especially since I have the domain name registered until the end of time (at least in blogging years).  It still works.

This has all come back to the idea of ads on websites. I have never put ads on any personal website which I took seriously. Partly on principle, but also just because I wouldn’t think it would be profitable. However, if I could find a way to unobtrusively include ads which would actually make money, I think I would do that, and I came across a possible solution at Sea Slugs! Anime Blog this evening.

Yes, all of my website costs come out of pocket – this site costs about $70+ a year for hosting, plus the domain plus just the time to do it, but I’m willing to pay it because I like what I do. (By the way, I never like flaunting it, because I feel like I’d be begging if I did, but I do have a donate page). I could pay a heck of a lot more for hosting if I wanted to, though luckily I’ve had very few complains with my most recent host. It seems fast, up most of the time (I’d say even more than my last host, and they were pretty good), and I have more server space and bandwidth available than God, which is what I was looking for because of my podcast.

Oh, and I’m sorry about being slow about posting School Days 11. I was ready to post it Tuesday, but I downloaded it so late, that I was beat by the time I watched it in the wee hours Wednesday morning. Of course, since I stayed up until the wee hours Wednesday morning, I was beat when I got home form work yesterday, and so basically went to bed early. This afternoon I was working on a website of mine that has absolutely nothing to do with anime, but it took most of the evening. I double triple quadruple swear that I’ll get that review up Friday afternoon or evening. If I don’t, you can come and burn down the apartment building next to mine or something.