Archive for September, 2010
Blogiversary III: The Y-O-U In Y-H-L?
As much as blogiversary week is an exercise in narcissism for us, we still like to carve out some time to talk about you guys. More specifically to ask you guys to talk about yourselves.
At the end of Year #1 we surveryed you and summarized the 199 responses. Last year we did it again, though the 1000+ comments proved too overwhelming to sort and calculate. So this year we’re breaking out the polling plug-in that we use on our Burning Questions to not only ask the questions, but also let you guys see some real time data as others weight in. Because surely I’m not the only numbers dork out there. Right? Anyone?
We’re only asking the basics this year since I can’t figure out how to make the plug-in allow for open-ended responses (and we figured questions with a million multiple-choice selections was overkill). But once you’ve clicked the buttons below feel free to comment to elaborate on the subject of who you are, leave a link to your blog, or tell us anything else about yourselves that you’d love to share. We can’t wait to learn a little bit more about who the heck we’re writing to each day! Let the polling festivities commence.
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Blogiversar-A-to-Z: Freebie Winners!
Back in May of 2009, Z Gallerie taught us that four digits don’t fit in our comment box when they were our first giveaway to break the 1,000 mark. Now they’ve taught us that our comment box doesn’t even show the fifth digit should that craziness occur. Yep, 11,688 of you entered to win the $500 Z Gallerie gift card this week. Insanity.
But the hullabaloo doesn’t stop there. Z Gallerie was so excited by the response, they’ve upped the ante. That’s right, they have generously added two $100 gift cards to the prize pot (which means we get to surprise two runners up with a pretty sweet consolation prize right here and right now- along with our big winner). Thanks Z!
So on to those three lucky random winners. Random.org revealed that our $500 gift card winner is… Kristen (of the blog LoveK, who’s considering some new accessories and art)! And our two $100 gift card winners are… Sheri (who wants to take her place from drab to fab) and Christina (who has artwork, pillows, more accessories, and chairs on her list). Congrats to all three of you! And please let us know if you need any suggestions for spending those gift cards (“cough… ceramic animals… cough” says Sherry).
And if you were hoping that this week’s giveaway would help you trick out your office (but didn’t snag the win) there’s always next week. Stay tuned…
Note: We weren’t paid or perk’d for hosting this giveaway, we just take them on to reward our lovely readers! See our Giveaway FAQs page for more info. Pics from Z Gallerie.
Blogiversary III: Our Days Are Numbered
For every blogiversary that rolls around we like to have some mathy fun with numbers to break down some funny (and admittedly horrifying) facts when it comes to all things YHL.
1527- Our number of published posts to date (crazy considering we only had 380 on our first blogiversary)
258,904- The number of comments we’ve amassed from you, our lovely readers
13,039- The number of comment questions that we’ve answered to date (we do our best to answer every single one)
4- Number of people who live in our house (counting Burger, who thinks he’s a person)
3- The number of days we were in the hospital after Clara was born
0- The number of posts we missed publishing during that time (we don’t even remember how we did that)
6- The average number of pickle slices John puts on my lunchtime turkey sandwich (even though he hates touching them)
21- The number of amazing homes that we’ve barged into and officially “House Crashed” (and there are more to come…)
145- Custom mood boards completed to date (check out a bevy of them right here)
94- Total number of weekly giveaways that we’ve held since starting them back in November of ’08
Over $14,000- The total monetary value of all of our fab freebies combined (including this week’s awesome gift card prize which, btw, Z Gallerie just upped to include $100 gift cards to two runners up)
43- Our average number of posts per month
1765- Average number of words written per post (we’re chatty, huh?)
17,650- Average number of words written per week (admittedly, this is kind of insane)
561- The total number of projects that we link to on our Projects page
14- Sweet Clara’s weight (we love that chunky monkey)
8- Cutie pie Burger’s weight (we love that beefy boy)
14- Number of days that Burger weighed more than Clara (poor guy didn’t stand a chance)
97,024- Most blog pageviews we’ve received in a single day according to WordPress.com stats (thank you amazing readers!)
2,144,976- Total number of blog hits we received last month (thanks again amazing readers!)
36,698,957- Total blog hits to date (did we mention that you’re amazing?)
23- Number of woven baskets in our house (it’s a sickness people)
10- Number of storage ottomans in our house (somebody stop us)
7- Total number of steps from our bed to our desk (which explains why we write posts when we can’t sleep)
15- The number of ceramic animals that we own, including 4 ceramic pic hooks. Somebody help us.
Flipping Out: It’s not a number, but it’s our favorite semi-home-improvement-related show to watch while blogging (although there’s a fair amount of pausing so we don’t miss any of Jeff’s insanity)
So there you have it. The how long, how many, and how often. Thanks for the blogiversary fun!
Psst- Wanna see last year’s number rundown? Or our first blogiversary rundown? Look no further.
Blogiversary III: On The Move
And now for some news that falls in the “big” category: we’re in the market for a new Casa Petersik.
That’s right, after tons of thoughtful deliberation we’ve decided that it’s time to sell our current home after four and a half amazing years spent here. Why? Because we love a project and we’re can’t-sleep-excited about the prospect of taking on a new home makeover and sharing every moment with you guys. We know it’s a sickness, but we actually crave remodeling and painting projects, so instead of feeling overwhelmed at the idea of starting all over again we’re actually pretty psyched about it.
Of course it’s bittersweet to leave the place that we love so fiercely, but as John put it best “we’ve enjoyed transforming an old dated house way too much to stop at just one.” And there are definitely some old houses out there that could use some love. At first I was in denial, making statements like “I’m never leaving- this is our forever house!” but John knows me too well. One day I just woke up (a few months ago) and was like “maybe we should look around at some open houses, you know… just for fun.” That sentiment soon turned into “oh my gosh, if we got a new place we could do this… and that…” and my mind nearly short circuited from all the possibilities. It was like someone turned on a light or opened a door and I suddenly couldn’t wait to explore.
So we mulled it over for a while to be certain it was what we both wanted (there’s no sense in being rash about matters of the heart like leaving your first love, er, house). We also discussed the idea with both of our parents (who are all so wise beyond their 35 years, har har) and they were amazingly supportive and excited for us.
So it’s official. We’re about to put our house on the market and we’re actively looking at other homes for sale. For any interested locals (wanna buy our house?) we figured we’d share the news here before it hits MLS. So feel free to email us if you’re seriously interested and ready to move (we’re in Bon Air which has awesome schools and charm to spare, and well, you can essentially take a virtual house tour here).
As for where we’re going, we’re planning to stay in the Richmond area, and we’re definitely in the market for another older dated home that could use our help. So we’d welcome suggestions for areas with great schools and charming older neighborhoods beyond our beloved Bon Air (which we’re definitely still considering, but not limiting ourselves to).
Oh and it’s probably fairly obvious that this won’t happen overnight. Finding a house to love as hard as we’ve loved this one definitely isn’t something we expect to do in a day (plus the act of selling our current house could easily take a few months or even longer). But we’re already actively on the hunt, and we plan to keep you posted about all the projects that we’re tackling to get our house in prime selling condition. We’ll also take you guys along on our journey when it comes to touring other houses, considering other areas, and figuring out exactly what we’re looking for (and what we’re not) before signing on that dotted line and grabbing the keys to our new casa. Of course with the holidays coming up we’ll still be taking on a lot of seasonal decorating projects along with whipping up gift guides, and serving up the regular blog fare like mood boards, House Crashings, Reader Redesigns, Look & Learn posts, and more. Can’t wait.
Slightly altered moving box image from here.
Blogiversary III: Behind The YHL Scenes
Q: I know this might be a bit on the personal side, but I’ve always wondered what goes on behind the scenes when it comes to running a successful blog. I’m sure a lot of readers just think you write up posts and conquer home improvement projects but from owning my own small business I know all about the “maintenance” (like taxes, health insurance, business licenses, etc). I don’t know if it’s something you’re willing to talk about but I’m sure there are a lot of other aspiring small business owners and bloggers who would like to learn about everything that goes into keeping YHL going. Thanks so much for the daily inspiration and all that “eye candy” as you call it! – Miranda
A: We thought this question was perfect for the ol’ blogiversary since there are definitely a lot of behind the scenes undertakings when it comes to keeping YHL up and running! The good news is that the “maintenance” as you call it is absolutely worth it – because we’re doing what we love and – pardon the corniness – following our passion. Sorry, I cringed when I typed that but it’s true.
Back when we started YHL we didn’t have a business plan (read all about how our blog baby evolved here). We didn’t intend for it to be anything other than a hobby on the side to keep our friends and family in the loop when it came to our continuous house projects. So over the years as YHL grew and we slowly wrapped our minds around the fact that it could be more than just a nights & weekends hobby, we knew we had to not only learn about blogging, but also needed to learn how to run a small business since it slowly snowballed into my full time gig and is now John’s as well. The great thing was that it wasn’t too intimidating because we just decided to learn as we went- which is exactly our approach when it comes to home improvement. And thanks to people like our brother-in-law (who owns a small business) and our accountant (who we met through a close friend) we can definitely attest that it’s possible to go from knowing absolutely nothing about saving for your own retirement and paying for your own medical coverage to becoming knowledgeable in all of those areas and then some.
First we’ll mention blog hosting. Gone are the days when we’d spend $180 a year hosting our site through BlueHost (who we loved by the way, they’re always our recommendation for anyone starting a blog). Sadly we outgrew them as our traffic slowly increased. They’re a good starter web host because you can split the expense by sharing a server with dozens of other people. But as our traffic overloads started to crash our site last summer, we took dozens of other blogs down with us- oh the guilt! They eventually said we were too much for them to handle (basically they broke up with us – sniffle) so we set about finding another host with more room to spare. Happily we found LiquidWeb (thanks for the recommendation Nicole!) who placed us on our own jumbo dedicated server to keep from crashing (ourselves and others) when thousands of people click on a giveaway post all at once to enter. Whew. It was a bit stressful moving two years of files over to their server (let’s just say thousands of comments and hundreds of images went missing and we had to digitally restore them) but we lived to tell the tale! And the site has been humming like a well oiled machine ever since – even more so since we upgraded to an even larger server back in August. The only shocker was learning that we’d have to go from spending a couple hundred dollars a year to a couple thousand (it was quite the jump). But it’s just one of those hidden business costs that are all part of the equation of being bloggers- and we’re so glad to have so many people stopping by to see us. You guys are worth every penny it takes to support all the traffic!
On top of using LiquidWeb to host our blog we also learned that it was helpful to use another company to host our images (it keeps the page loading faster and avoids the risk of having everything in one spot). For this reason we use an Amazon cloud server to host all of our images which charges us based on the volume of images we use (lots) and traffic we get (also lots) so it also adds up to a couple thousand dollars a year. We tried using a much more affordable option like Flickr or Photobucket (which are nearly free) but many of our readers lamented that our images were coming up as blocked when they checked the blog from work, so we opted to keep the site as accessible as possible. For anyone interested, we’ve also been super impressed with their service and have never had an image issue since trying them on for size nearly a year ago.
Now for the taxes explanation. We pay quarterly federal and state taxes on every dollar that we make, so a good chunk of change goes right back to the government every three months. I’m not gonna lie, this was definitely the biggest adjustment. It sucks to go from the every-dollar-I-take-home-is-mine mentality to the every-third-dollar-I-take-home-must-be-saved-because-it’s-owed-back-to-the-government mentality. Of course we know that taxes make the world go round and that just because people who work for a larger company get them taken out before the paycheck is generated doesn’t make it any less of a hardship on them. But it really is a mind shift to look at your bank account and know that the number isn’t really what’s yours because you have to save a fraction of everything and send it in every 90 days. We’ve hired an accountant (which we definitely recommend to anyone else who aspires to blog as a full time gig) to help us make those quarterly payments four times a year. It’s definitely more expensive than paying someone to do annual taxes (since they’re filed four times more frequently) but it’s such a lifesaver. Our accountant is the best, and he’s definitely super knowledgeable about every single aspect of our business – so it’s a lot easier than blindly trying to navigate this new way of living by ourselves.
Being our own bosses also means that we pay for our own health insurance as opposed to having that covered by an employer, which has been another pretty major adjustment since we used to be covered by John’s office. It wasn’t hard to find insurance (we just Googled around for “freelancers insurance in Virginia” and got a few recommendations from other self-employed friends) but we will admit that it’s not exactly fun to pay for it each month since it’s a lot more than we were used to paying (let’s just say there’s an extra zero). But in the peace of mind arena, it’s priceless. Especially with Clara around.
We’re also now responsible to save for our own retirement since we don’t exactly get the amazing company-matching 401K benefits that we used to. Instead of being called a 401K it’s actually called a SEP (Simplified Employee Pension) and we basically divert a specific amount of our income every month to that account in order to ensure that we can retire someday! It’s funny how little things like retirement aren’t really things that you have to research or think much about when your company does it for you, but it was definitely something worth learning about when we were tasked with looking out for ourselves. In fact it was actually kind of fun to learn about how to DIY something like retirement. You know we love jumping in and getting our hands dirty (so picking the right company and plan was semi-enjoyable).
Of course we also pay for a business license and to maintain Young House Love as an LLC each year. There are actually a decent amount of annual business fees and expenses since we’re a bona fide two person “company” (even though the idea of being a company makes us laugh- we just consider ourselves to be two people sharing our home improvement trials and triumphs on the ol’ blog). If you’re looking to learn more about licenses and other “paperwork” items like this, just check out both your county and state government websites for business info (we’ve also found that our accountant and lawyer friends are a wealth of knowledge on the subject).
Also in the column of behind the scenes maintenance, there are those occasional times when we have to hire programmers to fix any bugs or glitches that slow things down for our readers. We also occasionally invest in business equipment – like a faster/bigger computer or camera just to keep up with the times so we can edit larger videos and take better pictures to enhance the site and our readers’ experience when they drop by. These few and far between expenses can be fun (who doesn’t like a little update here or there?) but it can also affect the time that it takes for us to save up for major or even minor projects here at Casa Petersik. So although we might have been dying to tackle the bathroom remodel or the basement overhaul, we may have had to wait a few extra weeks or months until we had the funds to take that on since we just got a new camera or paid a coder to fix some blog glitch to keep YHL looking up to par.
And speaking of undertakings like bathroom remodels and basement makeovers, we also take on non-stop projects here at YHL. It might sound silly to mention, but just to keep the blog up and running with new content and info calls for regular home-related investments (sometimes we daydream about being someone like Dooce who blogs about her life without any necessary home improvement store purchases… but then we snap out of it and realize that we couldn’t stay away from the paint and wood cutting aisles we tried). So we’ve gotten used to budgeting and saving up for every project that we tackle, both big and small. Even if we just tackle one mini project (like making a pendant light fixture or whipping up some cork vases) that’s still money that’s going out, so we’ve learned that it’s smart for us to save for and expect those expenses as well. It’s all a part of being our own business, but it’s worth keeping in mind if you’re looking to maintain a home blog- the key is that you have to keep tackling new makeovers and projects (which means they’ll probably know you by name at places like Michael’s and Home Depot since they’ll see you at the register so often).
Whew- so there’s a little behind the curtain look at how we keep YHL up and running. We can definitely attest to the fact that it’s not something that “practically manages itself” (we wish) but it’s so worth it because (corniness ahead again) we’re living our dream. There’s nothing we’d rather be doing and no one else we’d rather be sharing our adventures with. So a big wet kiss goes out to every single person who drops in to see what we’re up to around here.
Psst- Wanna know more about how our blog grew from a hobby into a job? Check out all the details right here.
