PGPoA Turns 5

Quietly this past Saturday, December 1, Poe Ghostal’s Points of Articulation turned five years old. I thought about doing something to celebrate this milestone, but I just didn’t have the time to get anything together.

Still, I wanted to meditate a little on having kept up a blog for five years. I’m the type of person with a million ideas and not much follow-through, and that impression of myself has become deeply ingrained over the years, so I really have to force myself to stand back and appreciate what I’ve done here.

In five years, I have

• Made over 3,500 individual posts (including photos). That’s 700 posts per year, or about two posts per day.
• Typed over 1,082,000 words. That’s ten average-length novels (or one George R.R. Martin novel).
• Reviewed 308 toys.
• Conducted 81 interviews.
• Posted 969 photos.
• Highlighted, sadly, 119 instances of Toy Aisle Trollery.

My most popular post of all time (so far) is, appropriately, my review of Masters of the Universe Classics He-Man; but just behind it is 20 Things I Learned While Watching Spider-Man 3. Some of the others in the top ten aren’t necessarily what you’d expect. My review of the NECA TMNT is there, of course, but so is “Red Hulk vs. Red Hulk”,  my review of a Toy Story Alien, and the Top Five Batman Outfits. The most recent article among the top 25 or so is Robocop vs. Robocop (in fact, a number of “comparison” articles are among the top forty).

My longest review was DC Universe Classics Wave 1, which clocks in at an embarrassing 5,824 words (these days I try to limit myself and all guest reviewers to 1,500 words per review), followed closely by my review for DCUC Wave 2. Both of those reviews were of multiple figures, so it’s somewhat forgivable.

Over the years, as the word has gotten out about this site and my cache of search engine-friendly content has increased, the traffic to the site has steadily gone up. It still hits peaks and valleys, mostly dependent on how many reviews I’m posting. It seems that, despite my worry that people don’t want to read reviews of toys that have already been reviewed elsewhere, I’m quite wrong and you all have an insatiable appetite for toy reviews of all kinds.

Speaking of you, dear readers, you’ve clicked on my sponsors’ ads or links 18,700 times. Thank you for that.

I also need to thank OB1, who designed both iterations of PGPoA and to whom I owe more than I can repay. I want to thank all my contributors, who help keep people interested when I get particularly lazy. Thank you to artists Mecha-Shiva and Red Kryptonite, who provided the art direction for the current and previous versions of the site, respectively. And of course, thank you to Dr. Mrs. Ghostal, who puts up with all this with great patience.

I know this site has had its ups and downs. Keeping a blog like this going, even when it’s just a hobby, can be surprisingly difficult. But I’m still here, still going. And there may be some new developments soon that, if they work out, could mean PGPoA has an even brighter future.

For now, I just want to thank you all for reading and for continuing to read PGPoA over all these years. I started out writing it for myself, and I still do; but on those days when writing for myself isn’t enough, I’m glad I have that urge to write for you. It’s kept this site going. Without it, one of the best accomplishments of my life might not exist.