Saturday, August 06, 2011

Happy Birthday JohnnyMercyside.Blogspot.Com !

Hey everyone, I hope you like the new website layout. You can comment below if you want to give me feedback on it.


One year today I started this website. I had roughly a three year 'hiatus' before then, having finished my education in Wales, I moved to Hampshire and my computer broke down. I then started working full time. Not long later, my now wife, got pregnant. Everything  that was happening in my life was new to me and with no computer, I stopped writing.
 

Then last year I got a computer, with the help of a good friend in Michele, I was determined to write again. In those three years beforehand, I was gathering ideas, and developing interests, the main one being the Noughtie series that you might have been witnessing for the last six months. So I started this site, and in the past 12 months I've written more than I ever did in the past eight years.  Whether it's been a review, or a 3000+ word opinion piece, a mixtape or a listing, it's been a great journey for me personally, I'm really developing my writing skills and I'm exploring my interests further. A year ago I had never written about football or wrestling, I had only written about games and music, the latter very infrequently. I still find writing about video games to be the easiest thing to do, but I hope my opinions and writing style are pleasing to some of you in the other fields. 


I just wanted to write a few paragraphs thanking everyone who has supported me not only for the past 12 months, but in my writing in general. I still have high ambitions to do this professionally one day, just on my terms. At the moment though it remains a hobby, one I'm passionate about. I've had nearly 28000 page views in that time. For me personally, that's an incredible statistic. I'm sure a lot of bloggers are out there with much more than me, but I don't mind, I'm just hoping I can continue to grow. I average around 3000 page views per month, the peak being April, where I had over 4100. These stats are just awesome, for me anyway.

Just in case you're relatively new to my work, or spontaneously found this website by chance, here are the Top 10 projects in order of pageviews that I've done on this site in the past year:


Type: The Mercy Side Opinion Article
Pageviews: 138

I only wrote this days ago and it's already my tenth highest viewed section of the site. Here I explain how CM Punk's amazing surge in popularity in recent weeks solidifies his position amongst the elite in drawing power in wrestling.

Type: Video Game Review
Pageviews: 182

This is the only video game review to make the Top 10, which is a shame. I rated the game ****1/4 stars and I compare it with the original game, explaining why I personally, rate the first one more.

Type: Listing
Pageviews: 187

Just in case you didn't know, in the winter GameFAQs did a competition to find out what is considered the best game of the last decade, with The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask winning the entire competition. It started off with 128 games, and from that list, I picked my personal 10 favourites.

Type: Listing
Pageviews: 252

I reminisce over my favourite levels in platformer titles. There's some great nostalgia here, as the platformer is a dying art unfortunately.

Type: The Mercy Side Opinion Article
Pageviews: 256

An article going back in time at all the shock rockers of the past, and how they all eventually all are influences on Lady Gaga's rise to superstardom. To answer the question of whether or not she'll be a long term success or fall to mediocrity and outlive her gimmick, it still remains to be seen but her second album is a commercial and critical success so things are still going in her favour. Good luck to her I suppose.

Type: The Mercy Side Opinion Article
Pageviews: 291

My first major opinion article on the site. It's still one I'm proud of and I still feel the same way 10 months later. I'd love a FF6 remake, it'd be fricking awesome. It sparked some decent debate too, some purists think it'd be a bad idea, an opinion I understand but disagree with. It's a good read if you haven't read it yet.

And then, there's the big four...

Type: The Mercy Side Opinion Article
Pageviews: 3209

I couldn't believe how much interest there was in this article. It's got the most pageviews for a single post on the site. I still get people reading it today, and it's just awesome. I basically talk about how there's a lot of British talent in the WWE and TNA now and it's about time we break our duck in terms of getting our first ever British World Heavyweight Champion. 

#3 - The Top 50 Greatest Wrestling Catchphrases Past and Present
Type: Listing
Pageviews: 4330

The above post may have the most pageviews individually, but the above project was only three posts long, and they take up the spaces of 2nd, 3rd and 6th place in the Top 10 individual pageview tallies. The best part for me personally is the fact that if you seach the term "wrestling catch phrases" in Google, my site is the top option, which is brilliant. It's a good set of wrestling catchphrases, even if you're not the biggest wrestling fan in the world you must have heard of some of them. The first of the three posts is above.

Type: Listings and Mixtapes
Pageviews: 4764

My six month project finally came to an end around two weeks ago. I cover everything to do with the decade of music, from my personal favourite tracks each year to the songs I think will be cemented in music history as the greatest tracks of all time. It's a very long read, the total project is over 70,000 words long, but I thoroughly enjoyed writing it. The first post is above and you can follow the links in the logo section.

Type: Listing
Pageviews: 6094

Yep, in total for pageviews my most successful project was my first major one, my personal favourite Final Fantasy characters. I absolutely adored writing this list out and I think people enjoyed reading it too which is a good bonus. All the 11 posts in the series all have a decent amount of pageviews, unlike the Noughtie series above where some posts weren't popular, so it's the combined effort of consistency that decided this one. So it may not be the biggest, but according to the pageviews, it's the best. So if you haven't read my Top 50 FF Characters, give it a look above if you like the series. It's a project I'm proud of. The first of eleven posts is above.

And there we go. Thanks for reading my work, I thoroughly appreciate it. If you like it, you can 'like' me on Facebook, the link is now to the right after a site reshuffle. Here's to the next 12 months! Take care.

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