The FG 2009 Year in Review - Swimming Upstream...

When I started FrugalGuitarist.com, I must admit I thought it was going to be much, much easier than it has been. I mean build a site with niche content, build up some traffic and the advertising dollars would flow in. I mean, I at the bare minimum I figured that I would be able to easily offset my hosting costs and that companies which offered affordable gear would jump at the opportunity to be featured on the site. My father always told me my biggest flaw was that I was an idealist and nowhere has it become more apparent than my experiences in 2009. So here we go, the 2009 year end review and lessons learned:

FrugalGuitarist.com saw an increase in unique visitors from  7,226 in February to 11,834 in December. The period in between was full of ups and downs but the December number, the highest we’ve had to date, is a sign in my eyes that the content on the site is a valuable to many of you out there and I’m extremely proud to have achieved this level of  traffic.

Subscribers have grown in excess of 500 which is quite a bit short of my goal, The FrugalGuitarist.com Facebook page has 165 fans as of this writing, and the recently launched forum membership is nearly 100 (though a vast majority are inactive).

Unfortunately, there has not been any significant review growth tied to the increased traffic and popularity. I started this site with the assumption that much of the more affordable gear on the market was being ignored by the big publishers due to some type of agenda, but in the end it’s much simpler. The big guys have mouths to feed and profit from their publication is their very livelihood.  As such, many if not all of the products reviewed are paid advertisers. Of course this puts a bit of a question mark on the validity of their reviews as the magazine and products reviewed have a symbiotic relationship in which each needs the other to survive. The way FrugalGuitarist.com differs is the many of the products reviewed have been purchased out of pocket or on loan from friends. A handful of distributors have offered products for review for which I’m extremely thankful. 

So the question I ask as we enter 2010 is how can I ever expect FrugalGuitarist.com to become profitable? I’ve grown it about as far as I feel I’ve can and put much more time into it than I care to admit. Time which I hope those of you reading this appreciate but frankly time which I could have (and perhaps should have) spent on a more profitable endeavor from both a monetary and emotional perspective. It’s been a bit of a roller coaster for me at times obsessively tracking visitor referrals to try and find ways to boost traffic. So here I am asking you. Is FrugalGuitarist.com worth keeping alive and if so what can I do to make FrugalGuitarist.com a destination which will attract enough traffic boosting the web presence to entice both advertisers and smaller manufacturers/distributors to be the absolutely best community on the web for lovers of affordable gear?