afl 50th anniversary patchAs this is the last post of 2012, I wanted to take the opportunity to thank all of you readers, commenters, former players and fans, for reserving a few minutes each day to read and respond to Tales from the American Football League.  When I first began writing Tales roughly two years ago, I truly had no idea about blogging.  However, I had some neat autographed football cards, and plenty of stories, and I wanted to share them with folks who like me, enjoyed the AFL.  So I began writing, and put together a new post every week, or every month, and with no idea about how this whole thing worked.  A few readers checked things out, but it appeared that I was writing mostly for the sake of writing.

And along things went for the better part of 18 months.  In fact, it wasn’t until April of this year that I decided to put a greater effort into blogging.  I transferred Tales from the old Blogger platform to a WordPress site, which allowed so much more flexibility.  I started building new pages, photo galleries, and adding as much interesting AFL content as I could find.  I began posting more frequently, and made sure to put up something interesting each day.

Now, some eight months into this process, I have to say that I am thrilled with the way things have turned out.  At the time of this post, we have 160 subscribers to the blog, and are averaging an additional 350+ daily views.  It is peanuts in the world of big-time blogging, but we are growing, and I couldn’t be happier.

Recently I have been fortunate to have some very skilled and highly-regarded football historians contribute articles to the site as guest bloggers.  A few former players have approached me about contributing articles as well.  I feel that having articles written by several different viewpoints can only make the daily content stronger and more interesting.

As we move into 2013, I have a few new ideas for additions to our little slice of AFL heaven.  I am planning more pages, photo galleries and areas of research.  I am hoping to secure more candid images of AFL players and teams, hopefully directly from players personal collections.  An extensive AFL bibliography is also in the works, as well as a greater number of player interviews.  In short, the new year will be packed full of great AFL content.

As I wrap things up for the day, allow me to give you all my sincere thanks for reading, commenting, and sharing this blog with others.  My efforts would be for naught without you, the reader.  So please keep checking back, reading the daily posts, and letting me know what you think.  Thanks, and Happy New Year!

 

Todd Tobias