As regular visitors to the site will be aware, I launched this site on March 26th 2011, almost on a whim after writing for another website. In the following three months, the Aston Villa Life website has gone strength to strength recruiting top professional writers such as John Clark and Martin Laurence, and establishing itself as one of the top websites for Aston Villa news and views in terms of traffic.
Our business model
During the course of the site’s three months of existence, I have pursued multiple promotional campaigns across Facebook & Twitter, as well as advertising with Google. This has helped the site push traffic on a constant curve upwards, reaching days where we have had up to 700 visitors in one hour. That’s one visitor every 5 seconds.
As part of this ongoing growth, I have to ensure the ongoing financial sustainability of Aston Villa Life. If someone was to have told me at launch that I would be looking back on a third month traffic total of nearly 45,000 hits, I’d have sat back in astonishment. However, this is exactly what the site has seen, and the growth is still continuing with new visitors coming in to read the site with regularity. This growth does however come with an associated monetary cost.
In order to maintain growth at current levels, I have to engage in the inclusion of advertising. This means that adverts will be included in the site, although these will not impact the articles listed themselves. They should however help the site to maintain a more even balance between cost and revenue. Shortly the site will be moving to servers that will be able to handle continued growth. These servers are not cheap though, and currently come straight out of my own back pocket to the tune of over £1000 a year. This advertising cost should serve to offset the costs a little. The new servers, when installed, should also serve to minimise any access issues that some may have had at peak times. I can only apologise for any inconvenience this may have caused.
Engaging with visitors
As part of my aim to constantly develop new ways to engage with visitors, I have made changes to how the site operates. Following the new relaunch of the website, the focus will be shifted towards a portal style platform with equal publicity given to the blog, forum, chatroom, and general news sections. Our aim is to become the premier resource for Aston Villa fans, and to incorporate all news from the best Aston Villa news outlets out there, including Sky Sports News, Eurosport, and the official Aston Villa site, as well as the best of the Aston Villa fan sites across the internet.
In the up and coming months, more video and audio content will also be included in order to develop and maintain Aston Villa Life as a premier news and opinions resource for fans of the club.
Design & content changes
In keeping with an ongoing need to sustain growth, and thus the associated infrastructure, Aston Villa Life will be adopting a model in line with that which is found in the professional publishing industry. This model will include the following:
All writers for the site will be represented via full real names rather than usernames – This will help create a more focussed and professional look to the site, giving a journalism focussed experience rather than one that appear to just look like a host of anonymous usernames.
The establishment of an Aston Villa Life charter – The Aston Villa Life charter will serve to create a backbone of a commitment that we, as a site, will be making to the fans of the club. This includes the promotion of fan based causes, the ongoing work to develop links to fan groups across the globe, to reach out into the community to assist local people, to expand the repertoire of the site to include sections such as memorabilia trading, and to maintain standards of excellence in content and communication. Any suggested ideas of what you would like included in the charter are obviously welcomed.
Advertising will be put in place via external parties to sustain the ongoing infrastructure costs of the site – This needs to be done to supplement the cost of the running of the website. At present, I am forking out for all the costs of running servers as well as investing a full time number of hours into the site’s journalism, promotion, and maintenance. All of this is currently done without any pay at all, and thus advertising needs to be implemented to help me pay costs, and earn a living from the 30-40 hours I am putting in a week.
Increased inclusion of media – This means we will do our best to include relevant photography where possible, video links,
The site will be redesigned to reflect it’s role as a full portal for Aston Villa rather than just a blog. This will include, but is not limited to, the increased prominence of forum, chat, and extended news sections. People will be asked to beta test the new site before launch if they are interested in doing so.
Staff developments
In keeping with the continued growth of the site, I’ve hired John Clark to work as my sub-editor and manage the writers that we have working on the website. This means a slight change in workflow with John able to take on responsibility for publishing articles rather than having to go through me. With the seven hour time difference between me and John, this also means that there is a wider coverage of hours where writers can submit their articles for review. Obviously any current contributors can still contact me if they have any issues, and all business links will be managed via me.
On top of this, and in light of the growth of writers contributing to the site, we will be establishing a more concrete schedule for the publishing of content. In line with this, Eamon McElwee will write an article every Monday, John Clark will write an article every Tuesday, and Martin Laurence will write an article every other Thursday. I will obviously be reporting in every other slot that is free, as well as dedicating a day to my opinion based column.
So that covers a bit of what we have to come, and a bit of a look back on what we have done.
Last, but by no means least, I would like to thank everyone of you who has read articles, commented on them, or written them yourselves. Without you, we would be nothing, and we hope to expand the community to all Aston Villa fans, whatever your opinion, as we go.
The Author
