First anniversary of offbeatbride.com!

Happy new years, everyone! It was exactly one year ago today that I officially unveiled (har har) this website. And what a crazy fucking year it's been.

I spent the first half of 2006 aggressively promoting the hell out of my book the traditional ways, with readings all over the country and lots of press with radio interviews, newspaper articles, and tv appearances. It was really REALLY exhausting, often demoralizing, and didn't seem to do much for book sales, honestly. I mean, the book did fine … but not great.

The second half of the year I focused exclusively on promoting the book via this website and not only did book sales markedly improve, but I started making money from offbeat advertisements! Yay. That makes the entrepreneur in me happy. Traffic has gone from 8,000 visits in January 2007 to over 60,000 in December 2007. DAMN! You could draw all sorts of conclusions from this (mainstream media dead? print being eclipsed by web? elvis still alive?) but I'll just say that I'm happy it's working out. Thanks to each of you for being a part of that working out-ness!

With a year of content on the site now, I know it's easy for things to get lost in the archives … and with there being a whole new wave of freshly engaged offbeat brides for 2008, I'm going to start occasionally linking to older posts that I think have stood the test of time, just as a way to keep older stuff fresh in the minds of newer brides and to keep from having to repeat myself.

Also, incidentally, today is Andreas and my "real" anniversary. We don't really celebrate our wedding anniversary but we're all about our "kissaversary," which was New Years Day, 1998. WOOHOO! That baby wearing the pink wig? That was me the first night I kissed Andreas.