Wow, the second year of the site has come and gone. Can you believe it? We’re all still here.
It’s a good thing too. I’m nowhere near caught up enough on all the stories I want to be writing on a daily basis.
A lot has happened over the past two years. We’ve been through a lot together, dear reader. Just since 2020, we’ve been through the COVID-19 pandemic, we’ve watched people take to the streets in anger, election follies and attempts to overthrow the system, economic shenanigans of all kinds, and locally a lot of news that continues to make me shake my head in annoyance and anger.
Through thick and thin, we (Jess and I) have carried on and covered the news and provided interesting tidbits that you might find useful or enjoy. It’s not been easy, and because of the nature of the news, it’ll never get any easier. The stories only get wilder as time goes on. You think you’ve seen it all until you walk around the corner, and something crazier happens.
When I started Polk Today two years ago, I had ambitious goals for gaining fame and fortune beyond my wildest dreams. Instead, it has been an immense struggle as both professional and personal problems get in the way of the success I seek to achieve.
Positives? We definitely busted through our 1,000 user a day average goal. I haven’t taken a deep dive into the numbers yet (Google Analytics has a STRANGE way of telling you how many people have visited a site, TBH) but I can tell you for sure we did better than 365,000 users for the year.
We did get the site moved to a new, more reliable server. The downside is I have to do all of the troubleshooting when something goes wrong – say, for instance, a percentage of people who want to visit the site from Facebook can’t click through on the app for some reason. Or having to implement planned downtime for upgrades.
Another positive: we have more websites now. There’s PolkSportsWire (launched in August 2021,) Paulding Today (launched in March 2022) and now I even have a corporate landing site for advertising and other services: Myrick Multimedia.
OF course, this site finally got off the ground as well.
All that I consider net positives for 2021-22.
Some downsides have occurred. Working with businesses is never easy, and we’ve lost customers along the way. People get annoyed and blame me for the coverage they receive on issues I have no control over, like arrests or deaths.
Personal tragedies I can’t talk about have provided a lot of setbacks in the past few months from the growth I wanted to achieve heading into the summer, but none that I ultimately won’t overcome with time.
Yet lately, I always feel like time is running short.
There are not enough hours in the day or brainpower in my head to spit out all of the stories that I’m told on a daily basis.
So as we begin our third year of Polk Today, I hope that A) you’ll continue reading, B) you’ll provide some more feedback, and C) you’ll subscribe to Kevin the Editor here and help keep local news on Polk Today free for all.
Other than Happy Birthday, Polk Today! That’s all I’ve got to report for now.
-KtE
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