Celebrating Nine Years of Random Toy Fun

Welcome, world, to battlegrip.com, my website dedicated to whatever I feel like and updated however often I wish! If you’re new to battlegrip.com, then you’re in for a serious treat: This site is the home of almost fifteen thousand posts and, as of today, has been in operation for nine years. Nine years!!!

For those of you have visited the site before, thank you for your encouragement and for returning! Over the years, battlegrip.com has been a stress relief and creative outlet for me, giving me a place on the web where I felt free to post anything and everything, and where I collect and share advertisements from the post, post reviews of toys, and generally do all I can to entertain myself . . . and you, because I would quit entirely if none of you visited and enjoyed the site.

Numbers

Subtracting whatever happened those first six months after I launched the site (before I added analytics tracking), battlegrip.com has racked up a decent set of stats. These numbers cannot touch the bigger toy sites, but considering I am one person and not at all consistent or reliable in what I post, I believe I can be proud of these stats.

  • 14,783 posts
  • 17,431 comments
  • 2,625,388 page views
  • 991,178 visitors

Not quite at one million visitors to battlegrip.com, but it looks to me like we will hit that number in the next month or so. Thanks, guys!

Enlarge Image!

Random to the point of failure.

We’ve seen a decline in daily traffic this year, dropping about 20% per day since I last celebrated the site’s birthday. I know this is due to my own choices — I haven’t been posting as many reviews as I once did — and I am sorry to those we have lost over the year. But I don’t ever want any of the material I post to the site to be forced and unfun; I’d rather lose readers than transform this site into a chore. Even today, I update battlegrip.com because I enjoy sharing things with you.

Publishing books about toys.

When I first launched battlegrip.com on this day in 2008, I had not plan at all. I simply wanted a creative outlet, a place to call my own where I had total control, and I think that we, as a group, learned what the site was meant to be as each day passed.

After I grew confident and happy with the site, I found myself looking for a way to archive some of the work I was putting into the site. I’ve had data loss scares before — the worst was hackers getting into the site — and my background in publishing pushed me to take a stab at creating a book. Which I did . . . and have kept right on doing thanks to your support and encouragement.

Since that first hardcover release, Transforming Collections*, I’ve gone on to publish a total of ten hardcover books. You can find links in the sidebar, and I can safely say that I am not done. As long as you guys keep supporting me, I plan to keep writing and publishing books for many years to come.

Find my books on Amazon.com* today!

Finally, that Facebook page is live.

This year, I finally completed that BattleGrip Facebook page that I started a few years ago. Self-promotion has always been a weakness — I often feel like a fraud and a failure, and I don’t do a good enough job to push the site — and it was comments from some of you that led me to complete the page and activate it. Since opening the page earlier this year, over 500 of you have “liked” the page. Thank you for that. I’m still learning how Facebook rolls into the battlegrip.com site, and I thank you for giving me your support and the time to figure all of this out.

And if you have not yet “liked” the page, please jump over and do it now!

Sitting down and taking a shot at creating videos.

Just as self-promotion isn’t my thing, I have to admit that I am not a fan of getting in front of the camera. I do so for work from time to time, but it’s a stress point and I feel I never do a great job of communicating clearly and that I’m disappointng people. In today’s world, though, I need to overcome this weakness; video is important today, and I am finding that I enjoy well-produced videos. And it was that discovery that had me sit down and return to learning more about the video creation process.

I’ve posted some short videos to both YouTube and Facebook, and so far the Facebook videos have been a lot more popular and gained many more views than the videos on YouTube. Again, I am learning exactly what sorts of videos I want to produce, and finding time for the creative process, so I hope you guys will forgive me as I work to find my own voice and the time to regularly post videos to the web.

Top Pages in 2017

I posted fewer reviews and features in 2017, with more of my focus on capturing and sharing old advertisements, creating videos, and working on new books than on posting longform content here at battlegrip.com. All of this means that the top pages of the year were mostly older pages, and I hope you guys can forgive the lack of bigger, more detailed articles this year.

Let’s jump into year ten!

With nine years of battlegrip.com behind us, it’s time we turn our attention to the future and what is sure to be a fantastic year. I have a new hardcover book almost ready for Kickstarter, my brain is churning over a few other book ideas, and I plan to start 2018 by getting back into the video mines. And all while continuing to explore the past and rescue fabulous newspaper ads before they are lost forever.

Thank you, everyone, for your continued support and encouragement. You comments — here and elsewhere — help drive me forward, and I hope that many of you will still be here in one year when we celebrate a decade of the site’s existence.

Seriously, thank you.

– Phil Reed

2 thoughts on “Celebrating Nine Years of Random Toy Fun

  1. Thanks for everything, Phil! I visit the site at least once a day. You’re part of my morning coffee routine, and I’ve been a regular visitor for nearly the entire nine years. I do miss your more frequent toy reviews, but I also think it’s great and interesting that you’re following your passion for old print ads for the toys of our youth. Nobody else is doing it the way you are, and I have fun tagging along with you down that particular rabbit hole. I have a ton of nostalgia for all those Sunday mornings pouring over the toy ads in our local newspaper, or wearing the covers off of the Sears and Penney’s Christmas catalogs. Those were the days… Anyways, thanks for all of the interesting and fun content, and good luck in 2018!

    1. @rosewater – Thank you! I always mean to write new reviews. It’s just that the time to photograph — and the edit the photos — isn’t as available as it once was.

      I’ll try and post more fun stuff in the new year!

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