It's Our Anniversary!!!

That's right party people! Break out the Cyber CapriSuns™ and celebrate. Today is the 2nd Anniversary of AB.com! Feel free to send celebratory congrats, or drop a lil' somethin' in The Tip Jar if you're feelin' festive.



Waaay back on April 1st, 2007, this blog was started with the basic "Rounders" blogger template, little fanfare, and no readers. I eventually conned AverageSisInLaw into reading and leaving a comment here and there. I worked my Rolodex and told friends to tell friends about the blog, but not that I was the dude behind it, since I wanted to remain anonymous. To get the word out, I did something I'm not particularly proud of. I went to other blogs and hijacked their comment sections with hyperlinks to AB.com. It took weeks before I got over the 10 visitors/day mark, which, as I understand it, only 1% of all blogs do. After months of blogging, and little feedback or readers, I felt like this was a huge waste of time. It was sad.

My wife reminded me that I wrote for self-expression, it is my talent, whether or not anyone else notices. She was right, so I kept it up, and tried to focus on finding my "voice" and developing my own style rather than mimicking that of the bloggers I really liked (ie: DP). Slowly, but surely though, folks started finding me, and the daily visitors went from a few dozen, to a few hundred. When my seminal post about The Jena Six ended up on the boards over at Michael Baisden's (whom I bashed) freaky deaky singles site, I was officially on the map. Hits continued to grow, I won a Black Weblog Award, I got asked to do the now-defunct NPR show, and The Washington Post name-dropped me a few times. The blog is now stronger than ever, with over 1200 posts, several regular guest contributors, hundreds of daily visitors, and plenty of active commenters. While I make a little pocket money from ads and merch sales, AB.com has become a priceless part of my daily life.

As I've told you guys before, comments are any blogger's payment for their hard work. You can pretend that writing in a vacuum is fun, but reality is, it ain't. Getting feedback (good or bad, doesn't matter which) is what makes the weekend hours I spend running this blog worth the time. And for that, I thank ya'll. And one of these days, I will quit being lazy, stop expecting someone to knock on my cyber-door, and go create my own opportunity to turn blogging into a steady 2nd paycheck.

If I can be obnoxious for a moment, I feel like the content, originality, and most of all community that's grown here at AB.com is worthy of an even bigger stage. A stage that will allow me to push my message of Negro Nonsense and Go Sit Down's community service via The AverageBro Challenge™ to even more people. A stage that will put me around the sort of people with the money and influence to broadcast that message and make a big change in the future of our youth. Or at the very least, a stage that will pay me enough extra scratch to buy a newsed video game, and fund regular visits to Jamba Juice. Again, I'm not being greedy here. If you are somebody, or merely know somebody who can make this happen, holla at me. I'm easy to find.

In the meantime, I hope ya'll enjoy this site and stick around, because you (nor I for that matter) never know what's coming next. I appreciate the support and would send shout-outs now, but who do you know that works on his anniversary?

Two Fingers,

Jay (aka: "AB")