Tag: indies unlimited anniversary

Three Years and Going Strong

one million page viewsThree years ago today, the Evil Mastermind launched Indies Unlimited. Since then, we’ve had over one MILLION page views, been named as one of Six Great Blogs for Indie Authors in Publishers Weekly, and ranked as one of the top writing-related sites by Alexa.

We have evolved greatly since those early days, but never lost sight of providing free, high-quality content for independent publishers and readers. In 2014, IU instituted a stringent vetting process for books featured on the site in hopes of dispelling the myth that indie writing is inferior. We’ve added a KnowledgeBase and a wide variety of resource pages. We’re proud that readers and authors alike trust our content. We’re grateful to all of you for spreading the word about us.

Indies Unlimited is run by volunteers. Kudos to all the minions past and present for donating their time and energy to provide excellent articles, advice, and tutorials for our audience.

Thank you, everyone, for making Indies Unlimited a success and a community. It could not be one without the other. We look forward to another year filled with great things for all.

Superblog!

UK research company Netcraft estimates the global number of active websites sites is 187 million. Alexa is the leading provider of free, global web metrics. As I write this, the Alexa global rank of Indies Unlimited is 66,349. That number is a little meaningless without some context. Imagine a bar that shows the total number of websites, ranked in order of their page views and visitors. At the very top of the bar would be Google, in the number one spot. Indies Unlimited would appear in a position 99.96% of the distance from the bottom of the bar and 0.04% away from Google.

We are in the top 1% of websites worldwide. In fact, we are within the top one-half percent of websites worldwide. Visitors to Indies Unlimited spend an average of 17:55 minutes daily here and view an average of 10.70 pages. On Amazon, people spend 6.26 minutes on site and view an average of 8.25 pages.

Two years ago I launched Indies Unlimited into this cyber-ocean. We have come a long way in a short time, and we did it by providing quality content. No smoke and mirrors. No fancy SEO tricks. No marketing budget.

I want to express my deep gratitude to the readers of Indies Unlimited, not only for spending part of your precious time with us, but also for helping spread the word.

I also want to thank the scrappy band of lovable rebels who are responsible for the excellent content that has helped make this site a valuable resource and a real global presence:

K.S. Brooks, co-administrator
Laurie Boris, associate editor
And evil minions: A.C. Flory, Big Al, Carol Wyer, Carolyn Steele, Cathy Speight, Chris James, D.V. Berkom, Dick C. Waters, Jim Devitt, Kathy Rowe, Krista Tibbs, L. A. Lewandowski, Lynne Cantwell, Mark Jacobs, Martin Crosbie, Melissa Bowersock, Melissa Pearl, Rich Meyer, T.D. McKinnon, and Yvonne Hertzberger.

Happy Anniversary to IU

Ah, yes. It’s been a year since the inception of Indies Unlimited and nearly that long since I joined as co-conspirator…I mean co-administrator. So here I recline, upon a body pillow stuffed with the money I’ve made here, and showered with Canadian dollars (I prefer those because they’re colorful) by handsome hockey players I was able to hire cheaply because of the NHL lockout. Oh, wait. I guess that’s just in my mind.

After all, Indies Unlimited is staffed completely by volunteers. Any money I’ve made is thanks to Rich Meyer whose recent tutorials about how to make book covers gave me the brilliant idea to start printing money on my inkjet. Of course, I haven’t tried to spend any yet. Do you think they’ll pass?
In Hise We TrustOf course, I’ve never been in this thing for the money. I’ve been in it for the fame and adulation. Money usually follows that. I like that my weekly tutorials help people. But what I really like is that people now consider me an industry expert. Ha! People will believe anything, won’t they? But I digress. This isn’t about me. But what the hell, let’s talk about me some more anyway. Or not. Continue reading “Happy Anniversary to IU”