There was a lot of thinking, and plotting, and a bit of researching before I realized that it was the best option for me and my platypire world domination plots.
So, January 4th, it was a Saturday and I had nothing to do until the 6th, I created a weebly account. I fiddled about for hours to pretty everything up, and then I created a facebook page. I had about 100 or so people who liked it that first weekend, mostly friends of mine. That was pretty exciting, especially because I wasn't advertising it yet.
A week later, I decided to have a giveaway to announce the blog existed. It was pretty fantastic, and the page had hit about 1000 when it was around a month old.
When I first created it, I had to be super freaking active on everything to get it noticed. I was joining pretty much every blog tour I could get on, and sleep was no longer in my vocabulary.
I had invited a couple friends of mine, one was an experienced reviewer (Sara) who was in need of a blog and one was a hooligan I met at a book signing that was new to blogging (Mel). Everyone seemed to click, and soon everything was going pretty well. Mel even had a friend of hers come up with the logo - because she's fabulous.
A couple months later we hit 2000 likes, and I went from part time to full time at my job. We needed help. So I heckled a friend of mine (Bob), and she gave into my whims and started helping out. At first she was just helping organize things, then she decided she was cool enough to review books as well. She even helped me create and organize our Cafe Press store.
Shortly after we hit 3000 likes, Mel informed me that we needed to add Renee, because she reviews more books in a week than I do in a month. So we did. And she definitely makes me feel like a slacker. We also added Keagan Rae, she's been a friend of mine for years and has great taste in books - plus she makes us international, since she's Canadian.
I come up with a crap ton of ideas, but not all of them happen. There have been some really... insane ideas. Things that are good, in theory, but don't work out because I can't quit my job. I sometimes forget that time is a factor. Mel keeps reminding me that I need to keep things to a manageable level - she keeps me sane.
We hit 4000 likes late last month. So I've been pretty content with the growth of the blog. I love the platypires and everything we've done through this blog. I have a lot of ideas for 2015, including our anniversary.
~ J. Hooligan