Today is a special day. It was on this day four years ago back in 2010 that I officially launched the blog!
That’s right! Sunnyvillestories.com – the official blog for the alternative comics series, Sunnyville Stories – is four years old!
And to think that it all started with that very first blog post.
I never thought I could keep the blog running this long. You’re probably wondering how this blog came out. I talked about the origins of Sunnyville Stories in the past, but I never explained how this blog came to be. Allow me to explain.
It started around the early summer of 2010 with the School of Visual Arts, my alma mater and the institution that fueled the rise of Sunnyville. I had finished the very first episode of Sunnyville back in the spring of 2010; it was completed during a special comics seminar. (On another note, I was the ONLY one in that seminar that produced a finished project.) I really needed to learn how to market what I created, so I signed up for a summer class taught by Matthew Archambault about marketing for artists. I learned a lot about how to market and to sell myself. But I had a problem. I lacked a website as a central base of operations. It was on Matthew’s advice that I had to do something about that.
As some of you may know, building a website from the ground up is not easy. I did not want to learn complex coding or hire someone to do it for me. It was during my class that blogs were suggested. They were more dynamic than a static webpage and were quite easy to update. I was familiar with blogging; I used to be on LiveJournal years ago. It was recommended that I purchase a domain name however. Having something like “sunnyvillestories.com” as opposed to it being hosted as a pre-existing platform (i.e. sunnyvillestories.livejournal.com or sunnyvillestories.blogspot.com) would have others take me more seriously.
A trip to my friendly neighborhood bookstore led to me purchasing a book on WordPress and blogging via said platform. I read the book inside and out while consulting others for advice. Then I made my big move. On the weekend of July 4th, 2010, I purchased the domain name of Sunnyvillestories.com via Pagely. For the rest of July, I spent time putting together the blog and studying strategies for promoting the blog.
Sunnyvillestories.com remained inactive through July 2010, but was launched officially on August 1. Since then, I’ve gotten thousands of pageviews and raised awareness of my creation.
I’m very pleased with what I’ve done these past four years. But I know I have a long way to go; while Sunnyville Stories has gotten critical acclaim, I need more sales and more exposure.
May the next few years for this blog be productive ones.
