Well, it’s Christmas day, and what better time of year to reflect on the events of the year than now? I launched Get Out Glasgow on the 14th of March this year, having worked on the concept and original website for about a month before that. In the first 30 days of the website’s life we welcomed 1,600 people to the website. Now, we regularly see single days which bring in that amount of traffic. It’s absolutely phenomenal how quickly things have grown, not to mention the fact that now, thanks to Google Adsense I can actually cover the relatively steep monthly hosting costs without dipping into my own pocket! The website’s still run on a not-for-profit basis though, so any extra revenue generated is just pumped into the likes of Facebook campaigns to drive more traffic to our articles.
Part of the website’s success, particularly over the last few months, has been thanks to a few pillar articles such as 10 Brilliant Bars in Glasgow City Centre and 9 Great Pubs in Glasgow’s West End. A large part of my day-job is search engine optimisation and, using this same knowledge, Get Out Glasgow now has number 1 authority in Google for keyphrases like “best pubs in glasgow”. This is so important for the site’s traffic as the people of Glasgow certainly like a bevvy! It does mean that a handful of articles receive thousands of views per month, and certain others can fade a little into obscurity, but at the end of the day it’s about getting people onto and using the site at all, with the hope that they may then click through to other posts.
All of that being said, there are still so many areas which can be improved around the website, and I’m all too aware of this. Our social media accounts, for example, aren’t updated anywhere near as regularly as they should be which reduces engagement with our potential audience. Secondly, it’s extremely difficult to maintain a balance between quality and regularity of content. I work a day job, Monday to Friday, 9 to 5, so everything I do on GOG is in my spare time. There are times in the year when loads of people have been involved and I can easily get out a great, original piece of content every day. However there are other times when it’s just myself (and the ever loyal Stuart Bell with his weekly Monday gig post!) holding down the fort, and that’s when you lose motivation and the quality may slip.
These things (and more) I’m all too aware of and I have a huge number of plans going into 2014 to make Get Out Glasgow bigger and better than ever.
Thanks very much to anyone who has visited the site in 2013 (either once or on a regular basis) and particular thanks to anyone who has enough of an interest in the site to actually read this post. The website means a lot to me, and I’ve sunk hundreds of hours (and pounds) into it this year for nothing but the personal satisfaction of building the community, so every single view, comment and share really is hugely appreciated!
Merry Christmas from everyone here at GOG!
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