It's been on my mind recently—a big anniversary of sorts coming up.
Only, as these things go, I thought about it and forgot it.
What's the big deal? Well, yesterday marked the 10 year anniversary of BirthdayShoes.com.
I launched BirthdayShoes on April 17, 2009. Here is a look back at the lead-up — something I sent to my siblings as I deliberated on what domain to register and just what angle to take:
As I think I've mentioned to you guys, I'm hellbent on creating a site dedicated to vibram five fingers. It could be a total flop, who knows, but it'd be kinda fun to build it and see what happens. I was honed in on the domain betterbarefoot.com with the intention of shifting from the notion that "barefeet are better than shod feet" to "it's hard to be barefoot around town" to "five fingers allow you to practically barefoot around town" -- then I realized, this was entirely too complicated and I'd be better off just going straight the point, which is FIVE FINGERS ARE COOL AND YOU SHOULD GET SOME! Start there, and explain why later -- and the why is all post-hoc justification anyway. So now I'm leaning to the domain name birthdayshoes.com ...
I registered birthdayshoes.com on April 16, 2009. Then, on April 17, 2009, I made a grand announcement over a chat with my big brother:
"one STEP at a time" ... Oh boy.
BirthdayShoes' first "real" article came on April 19, 2009, with "The Painful truth about Sneakers." and was folllowed up two days later with my original review of the FiveFingers KSO.
Ten years is a long time. Over that time, a lot has happened:
- BirthdayShoes over 6 million users have made their way here,
- reading from the site's 800 posts ...
- ... and over 300 shoe reviews.
And boy have I had a lot of shoes come my way.
Like so many things in life, I never would have predicted all the strange and great ways BirthdayShoes has affected my life. From the people I've met to even the work opportunities it's sent my way, my fear about whether this site might be a "total flop" has never been realized.
What About the Future?
What does the future have in store? Plans are still underway to update this site's aging (painful! I'm sorry!) design and pump some fresh blood into this site. Thank you all for supporting BirthdayShoes. Special thanks to all the reviewers over the years and especially Jarvis, who has really kept the train chugging along.
... And for the few of you who have been here from the beginning, thanks for sticking with it.
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