Today I am retiring
Croom
Crxxm Diaries after a successful three and a half year run. I am not retiring just yet, but will just no longer use the moniker on twitter or the website. If you still have your “Maroon is all that Matters” shirt, I hope you will use this as motivation to get rid of that too.
If you had asked me five years ago if I would be running a Mississippi State blog, or for any duration of time go by an alias of any kind for over three years I’d say you’re nuts. But it happened.
When I started blogging in the summer of 2010 I just did it because work was slow and I had some extra time. I probably wrote 100 blog posts that were literally read by no more than three people. Then my college roommate told me he started a website called Maroon and White Nation that would launch in October of 2010, and he asked me if I would write for the site since I had a degree in Sports Communication. I said I would.
I only blogged a couple times a week in those days (under my real name), and several times took 2-3 months without ever posting. Then for the 2011 football season I decided to post five times a week because I was really the only person involved with the site at this point. I did that and by the site’s first anniversary we’d gone from 10 page views a day to about 150. That doesn’t sound like much, and it isn’t. But I actually didn’t care if anyone read it because I was enjoying going in depth – plus it was more than the three people that had been reading my personal blog.
More from Mississippi State Bulldogs News
- College football schedule week 4: 3 must-watch under-the-radar games
- M&WN Staff – Week 3 SEC Picks and Best Bets
- Mississippi State football film study: Why did MSU’s defense fail vs. LSU?
- SEC football standings after Mississippi State football steamrolled by LSU Tigers
- College Football Schedule Week 3: Under the Radar Games to Watch
Then one day in January of 2012, Bulldog Sports Radio found my blog and offered me a radio show. At that point I was pretty excited because someone was going to pay me money to talk about MSU athletics. Then five minutes before the first show the BSR production manager said he just wanted to do a “content swap”, so he asked if we (another one of my college roommates) could do the show for free in exchange for exposure. I was kind of blind-sided by the new offer, but I figured that exposure would blow the doors off M&WN so it’d be worth it.
I don’t ultimately know how much exposure BSR gave us, but what it did do is motivate me to put forth my best effort. During that five week period I put out an average of two posts per day and our traffic numbers jumped to just over 1,000 page views per day….in February.
Then came the earthquake of my blogging career. The Ole Miss Tradition video, which was made by the founder of M&WN. It was pretty controversial, or at least seemed so at the time. Honestly I got a little nervous about the whole thing and took my name off the site, and went by “The Ghost of Hank Flick”. It was just something I came up with in the heat of the moment, and it was basketball season so I ran with it.
Without much delay, BSR cancelled our radio show due to the video. I was kind of glad I didn’t have to do a weekly show for free (while they made money), but also perturbed that this video that I didn’t create cost me that podcast….and the exposure for the site it was garnering.
In M&WN’s quick rise during that January, For Whom the Cowbell Tolls presented me with an offer to join their staff. I declined at the time, but then asked to join after the video was made. A few key things happened during this time because of FWtCT manager, Cristilmethod:
- He came up with the name Croom Diaries as I searched for a good pseudonym
- He gave me the condition of not writing about Ole Miss – which is probably the only reason I kept M&WN alive while writing for FWtCT
- I learned a ton writing with Cristilmethod – we were a great team as I was his understudy as we took that site from 10,000 views per month to over 200,000 in just 16 months
In August, after using “Croom Diaries” for six months, Sylvester Croom’s lawyer sent me an e-mail saying I needed to stop “using his likeness” on the site. SB Nation’s lawyers said there was nothing to the claim but I changed it to “Metal Building Dawg” anyway, since I’m a PEMB contractor. But I kept the @CroomDiaries twitter handle.
I can still remember September of 2012 when we hit 100,000 page views in a month for the first time. That was our goal and it was a huge deal at the time. Now, 100,000 views in a month means I didn’t lift a finger.
As an aside for those who say traffic is all we care about – traffic is what generates excitement for a blogger because you know people are reading. But I have never written anything with the intent to get page views. Over the course of time you come to understand what might generate high numbers, but never have I sat down to write a piece just for a bunch of clicks.
During my 21 months writing for FWtCT I kept M&WN alive by posting 3-5 times a week….almost the same amount on both sites. But for sure, I used my best content on FWtCT. I was unsure of why I was keeping M&WN piddling along, but it became clear in October of 2013.
I became aware of the FanSided Network at that time, and M&WN had an annual domain fee due. I never made a penny on M&WN, so in essence I was paying to blog. So I was ready to call it quits, but then found FS – a network that could absorb M&WN, paying for the domain fee and give me access to a plethora of pictures.
A few weeks into M&WN’s relationship with FanSided I decided to leave FWtCT. Maroon and White Nation was getting about 30,000 page views per month at the time, and I wanted to prove to myself that I could build up a website like we did at FWtCT, which had more than 5x the amount of traffic in the fall of 2013.
I set out to do M&WN myself. In November of 2013 I wrote over 100 posts….myself. That is a lot. It’s a whole lot when you have a full time job and a family at home. But the site also hit a milestone of 94,000 views. Then the next month went over 100,000 for the first time. And while I was at it, Justin Strawn, Bent Bulldawg and Dawg Smack were added to the fold – three huge additions that are still here today.
As the months went on we added even more incredible staff on M&WN and the site wasn’t about me anymore. Justin’s contributions were excellent, as well as Andrew Norwood when he joined in the spring of 2014. Over the summer we added Jake Wimberly and the site absolutely took off. Despite being a relatively new site on FanSided, we were the top grossing blog in 2014 (2.3 million views) for the college division and I was awarded Editor of the Year because of it.
It was at that point – the end of 2014 – that I felt like I was able to prove to myself I could lead a blog to the next level. Something people actually wanted to read, and have it be a success.
I’ve taken a step back in 2015. Justin was promoted to co-editor and our amazing staff of writers has put out some great content. To date, we are the 2nd highest grossing college blog on the FS Network this year behind Reign of Troy (Southern Cal). That’s due to our staff and their ability to keep the ball rolling.
Retiring Croom Diaries is just another step into the background. I already don’t write nearly as much as I used to. I’ve gone from 10 posts a month to 100 and back down to 10. Five years is a long time in the world of fan blogging, but I’m going to hang in there a little longer. It’s been a lot of fun and here’s to a great season – the first since 2011 without the infamous Crxxms.