Shacknews LoL

Today marks five years since I became CEO of Shacknews. Each year, I like to look back at how we are doing and highlight areas where we are differentiating our company in the increasingly competitive games media landscape.

2018 was a record-setting year for Shacknews.com monthly unique visitor and pageview stats, and that has made 2019 a bit of a grind. Year-to-date, the site is experiencing a slightly down year, having hit our peak monthly visitors for 2019 in January. This is attributable to a few factors like 2018's game release lineup being stacked with RDR2, God of War, Smash, and countless other titles.

Overall pageviews at Shacknews.com are down 1.94% year-over-year from 2018, with Shacknews.com/chatty experiencing 22.7% declines in the same time period. Despite the decline, Chatty remains our most viewed page on Shacknews.com in 2019.

Our most viewed article YTD in 2019 is All Wishes for the Wall of Wishes in the Last Wish raid in Destiny 2: https://www.shacknews.com/article/107433/all-wishes-for-the-wall-of-wishes-in-the-last-wish-raid-in-destiny-2

We continued to expand our brand into the esports space in 2019, with two tournaments this year. Shacknews Champions League kicked off with an over-30 competition at E3 2019, with a special live music performance from Marc Rebillet. We also returned to QuakeCon 2019 with The Great Quakeholio Tournament 2. Shacknews Electronic Sports remain one of the most fun and unique things that we are doing at the company, and it has been a joy to put these special events together.

From a content standpoint, while the Shack may not be having a record traffic year, we are seeing some wins from a brand visibility standpoint. Our reviews have been quoted in accolade trailers for some of the year's biggest games including Super Mario Maker 2, Borderlands 3, Remnant: From the Ashes, and Days Gone. We were also very visible at events this year, with a massive E3 2019 presence on the showfloor and SDCC 2019 partnerships. Shacknews Long Reads Editor David Craddock also recently dropped a massive Everquest long read, in case you missed it. Developers and PR firms are taking notice, as Shacknews has been given access to some of the top studios for interviews, previews, and reviews this year.

From the business side, Shacknews.com reintroduced our Mercury subscription service earlier this year, and the results have been great. Revenues from Shacknews Mercury subs in 2019 amount to four times the total advertising revenue at Shacknews.com in 2019. We didn't run ads in 2018, as we began our transition to a subscription service model during that year.

While the early success of Mercury is encouraging, the company is still not profitable. It is entirely possible that the only way that I will ever make money off of this investment is by exiting it with a sale to someone else. I remained focused on ways to generate more revenue at the company, but I am still committed to keeping the lights on with a larger staff than Shacknews Founder Steve Gibson ever had. I could trim our budget in an effort to reach breakeven financially, but it would undoubtedly hurt our growth. This has been a delicate balance, and the name of the game is to keep Shacknews afloat while a lot of our larger competitors flounder and shrink.

On the dev side of things, I am currently outlining the next phase of the redesign that began last year and continued with the LOL page integration update earllier this year. Phase 3 of the redesign will be a huge update that will change how Shackers interact with the site while keeping some things exactly the same. I look forward to sharing more information about the update once we are closer to launch.

Shacknews celebrates its 23rd year in 2019, and it has been a pleasure reviving the site over the past five years. My time here is not over by a longshot, and I remain motivated by my vision for the future of Shacknews. This is truly a special place on the Internet, and I will continue to do right by the community as we continue to grow. Thanks to our Shascknews staff, readers, viewers, Chatty posters, and filthy lurkers for your support.

Hey Shackers,

I am really excited to share that Shacknews.com saw 106% growth year over year and 24% growth month over month in monthly unique visitors! This continues a trend that started in May of last year and it was our best February since we bought the site.

Thanks for being awesome!

Love,

Asif

Big day for the Petrone Family. I just wanted to say again how thankful I am for all the help that you guys have to us. It helped out so much more then you will ever know. Thanks again for everything.


https://i.imgur.com/pfjapTJ.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/NuA59J6.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/NfF4CWj.jpg

[deleted]

http://chattypics.com/files/ScreenShot20170821at93943AM_p2spg4y6f7.png

[deleted]

Today was my first paycheck after being unemployed for seventeen months. What I thought was going to be Gross pay (based on the number they gave me on the letter of offer) was actually Net pay. I'm looking at this and thinking "holy fucking shit, this is AFTER they deduct taxes and other stuff?"

They also give me another $600 related to health care on top of the pay that I initially thought was gross pay.

And they also do 7 percent matching.

I'm so fucking happy. I think I'm going to buy a new hearing aide so Intothefray won't bitch at me so much about hearing him or the killer when I'm playing a survivor in Dead by Daylight.

I love you all, shacknews.

HOLY FUCKING SHIT BALLS OF NEPTUNE!!!!

We're getting a house! The one I posted the other day with the really nice kitchen and shit. They accepted our offer! Well technically our second albeit slightly higher offer. But we outbid the other two offers and OH MY GOD I'M FINALLY GETTING OUT OF THIS FUCKING SHIT HOLE!!! Shack party at my place this summer!!!

Hey Shacknews, it's time.

My heavy metal horror indie game is out now after 3.5 years! Check it out!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1807810/The_Axis_Unseen/

I made the whole thing with no publisher, there's no MTX, Games as a Service, etc. I mostly made it solo with someone to do the music (Clifford Meyer from the band Isis), someone to do the drawings and some writers, but I was the only fulltime dev.

I hope you all like it! It's only $25 with a 10% launch discount, so $22.50. There's also a soundtrack and stuff. It's about 20 hours long, way more if you're a completionist.

I've been on the Shack since I think... 2000? Maybe late 90s? I don't know haha, but now, I'm finally an indie dev who has put out their own game. I've done all the AAA stuff for years, but this is the first game I can say is just mine. \m/ Hope you have fun with it!

One year sober - my last drink of alcohol was this day, 2019.

My life is now better in every way compared to a year ago. Physically, mentally, financially. My relationship with my family is vastly improved. I am in better shape than I was in the entirety of my 30s. I have so much more time, energy, and focus available for activities and projects - and the clarity to know what's worth my time.

If you feel like alcohol is controlling your life, walking away from it is possible. If I can do it, so can you. Happy Sunday.