Yesterday was the second birthday of BikePortland.org.
When I started this thing (it began as the “Bike Fun Blog” on OregonLive.com) I didn’t think it would end up like this.
Photo by Dat, 4/8/07
As you can see by that photo (taken yesterday by Dat Nguyen), the site has made me a bit crazy. I wouldn’t recommend this as a career path for anyone, but for me, there’s no turning back.
It takes a lot of time and 100% commitment to keep this thing running, but I would not trade the experience for anything.
There’s no way I can recap everything that’s happened in the last two years (trust me, it’s a long story), but I can tell you that there have been a total of 2,562 posts and 16,803 comments and traffic has gone up over 300% in the last year.
Yet despite all the success (96,585 visits in March!), I am still not making it financially. I don’t make enough from ads to pay all the bills (nor do I want to sell every inch of the site) and I don’t receive much in the way of regular, monthly donations from you, my esteemed readers.
If you read this site everyday and feel that you (and/or our community at large) gain something valuable by the existence of BikePortland, please consider a small donation (there’s a PayPal button in the sidebar).
Soon, I hope to launch a new program that will (hopefully) encourage some of you to become monthly subscribers, but I’m still working out the details.
Thanks for being such great readers and for taking time out of your day to visit and join in the conversation. I can’t wait to see what this year holds for us…