It was just over three years ago today that Todd, myself, and our friend Jonathan sat in the center of the Fayetteville square at a tall bistro table in the basement of a restaurant that closed a long time ago to discuss the prospect of starting a new website.
The site, as we decided, would be dedicated to this place where we’d all grown up, that we loved so much, and we’d use the new website to talk about the things we thought were interesting about this place.
A few days later, Todd had whipped up the first iteration of the Fayetteville Flyer, and on Dec. 21, 2007, we made our first post.
Since then, we’ve made 3,372 more of those posts. We have 22,248 approved comments on the site, and the Flyer has become more than just something that we did to make each other laugh in the evenings and on our lunch breaks at our jobs. For Todd and I, it has become our livelihood.
We’ve grown our readership from a handful of dedicated friends and acquaintances to more than one million pageviews a year, which is no small feat for a locally-focused site in a college town of 70,000 or so people.
We’ve conducted countless experiments, Todd has redesigned the site at least three times, and he’s probably made one zillion modifications to the Flyer over its lifetime.
Anyway, it’s been exactly three years since we started this madness, and we’re humbled, overwhelmed, and extremely thankful for the fact that so many of you come back and visit our site every day.
We have 38 amazing sponsors who have decided that you guys are exactly the type of folks they’d like to reach. Without them, Todd and I would have gone back to our old jobs a long time ago.
We know that three years is not a long time for a local business to survive. We’re still babies as far as that goes.
But we’re really proud of the community that has formed here. We’re thankful for everyone who contributes to the discussions here, and we’re thankful for all of you guys who take the time to stop by to see what’s going on in this place that we all love so much.
Here’s to (at least) three more years, Fayetteville. Thanks again.
