Photo Business News & Forum Turns 1

At 11:16 pm EST on 1/16/07, Photo Business Forum & News' existence was pushed into the world when I shared with my friend and colleague David Hobby (Mr. Strobist) via e-mail:

David --

Ok....

deep breath here....

I've started my blog!

...My concern is that I will not be diligent about daily (or every other day) updates, which it why I was reticent to do a big e-mail/launch. However, with about two weeks under my belt, I feel a little good about it, so what the hell.

So, here goes. We'll see where this takes me, and let me know what you think.

And here we are, exactly 1 year later. We have almost four hundred posts up, and just over 100 in various forms of draft, awaiting the right moment to put up (Jess), Evergreen posts for when I'm traveling, or just a few sentences of an idea that need fleshing out, so, fortunately the concern about not being diligent wasn't a problem in the end.

I recall early on, a commenter posted his concerns that most blogs lasted only four months, and that he hoped mine did, as he appreciated what I was posting. That, however, gave me a goal - I wanted to last longer than four months, and, so, here we are, going strong 4+8 months later. Whew!

How strong? Well, we've grown steadily since David's nice mention on his blog. About 10% each month, until December, where the D3 & 1Ds Mark III blasted our views skywards. In November, we were over 60,000 readers a month, and this doesn't count all you feed-readers, figuring in over 900 feed readers, that's about 90k or so, all told. As of right now, we've had over 850,000 pageviews - not bad for a one-year-old!

How is this the case? Well, it's about and for you, dear readers. The commitment I made was to deliver news and commentary about our business, from the perspective of someone who want's to see it (and you) survive over the long term. On some controversial postings, people questioned what my agenda was, and it's been transparent all along, and is as stated above. Nothing more, nothing less. If you're an entity that's doing harm to the business or the creatives who call themselves professional photographers, expect more critical looks at what you're doing to expose the "make cash now, who cares about them later" mentality.

Thanks for reading, thanks for your private e-mails over the past year, of insights, leaks, praise & criticism. Thanks to the PR folks for the various companies that I've written about who have not taken issue with the criticism I leveled at their clients, but rather have sought to make slight technical corrections about employee titles, and so forth.

The more we share, the more we all learn, together. Yes, a rising tide does raise all ships. I'm doing what I can to swell the waters, please pay forward whatever you learn here to your friends and colleagues, and continue the wave of knowledge.

In the coming year, we'll take a look back every so often at the posts from the previous year around that time to encourage a fresh look at that material, especially content that is as on target now as it was then, but, perhaps, with far fewer readers. Hit this link to see what I was writing, in a vaccum last year, pre-launch, to get into the swing of things. Then, there's this link for material which was written around the launch.

(Comments, if any. after the Jump)

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