Hello and welcome to the Casual Chat!

Today I wanted to talk about something that I didn’t really do last year, and really talk about the anniversary of this blog.

For those who didn’t know, my very first blog which was the announcement of the Daily Commander blogs was posted on October 21st, 2024, meaning that this marks the two year anniversary of the website.

I am surprised by all the things that have come from it, and I would like to share with you all some of the interesting things that have come from having the site up for two years.

TL;DR: Blog is doing well, I would like to improve it, poll on whether I should or shouldn’t start a Patreon is at the bottom of the post.

Blog Stats

I have hosted a good number of blogs on this site, and there have been quite a lot of them.

In total I have posted (not including today’s blogs) 583 blogs with 450 of them being either a Daily Commander, Weekly Commander, or Commander Bites and the 133 being the other blogs.

This has a total average of about 24 blogs a month, which is still a decent amount considering that for about five months I was not posting daily and I went on hiatus for four and a half months, having posted blogs for a year still made the average larger than I expected.

What was also larger than I expected was the word count that I managed from all of those blogs.

For those of you long time readers, you will know that I have a habit of getting pretty wordy, so it may not come to a shock to any of you that I have written a total (not including today’s posts) of 680,366 words from all blogs.

This averages out to 1167 words per blog and about 28,349 words per month of blogs, which is saying something because a lot of the early Daily Commanders were below 700-1000 words per blog, and it did balloon quite a bit as the blog went on, but also considering that Weekly Commanders were usually between 1500-2500 words it becomes less surprising, and I generally keep Commander Bites to around 1000 words so the numbers do make some sense, again more surprised at the consistency.

Viewer Numbers

While I did a lot of writing, you all did a good bit of reading and I wanted to post those numbers as best I can.

Doing this is a bit tricky since the number can fluctuate pretty drastically as the day goes by, but I will do my best to give as much accurate information as possible. The numbers I am taking from are from the 20th shortly after posting the Commander Bites for the day.

In total there has been 12,222 views from 9,391 visitors which is about 21 views per post and 16 visitors per post, which is pretty nice to see and was one of the reasons I was still motivated to write when I was deciding on whether or not to come back. The fact that I still had a decent amount of views on the blog despite being gone really helped.

What was also helpful was the like ratio, of 559 likes which is almost one like per post, which is a pretty solid average all things considered. The comments are not as high as I would like, with there being a total of 67 comments that weren’t my own or .11 comments per post, which I believe is the metric that is presented because there is one data point that is total comments which totals up to 96.

I am not too surprised at that number since only a few people have made comments on the blogs and I don’t actively say to either like or comment at the end of my posts.

What was surprising was the most viewed posts are, and not counting the views on the homepage (which are less than I expected at 1,158) the top three most viewed posts are: Weekly Commander: Maralen, Fae Ascendant at 266 views, Casual Chat: A Genuine Review of VCard Trading Card Game at 231 views, and Weekly Commander: Bre of Clan Stoutarm at 214 views.

Looking at the Weekly Commanders, I can probably guess that the reason Maralen was so popular is because they are a three color Commander that works well with two popular creature types in Elves and Faeries and since Lorwyn Eclipsed was a well anticipated set, the Commanders I looked at also may have gotten a boost from that which can also explain Bre of Clan Stoutarm.

In fact whenever I do look at cards from a new set, especially as it is nearing release, I tend to get higher numbers purely because people are looking to see what people are brewing with the cool new Commanders that will be available. That’s the reason I’ve done those overviews in the first place, no real shame in admitting that.

However for a good period of time my first look at the VCard TCG was my most viewed blog, and I think the reason why was that for a bit not many people covered the game, and to be quite frank not many people are covering the game besides super fans of the game and the people in the game, as far as I can tell.

So people who were curious about the game went searching for a review of it may have found my blog, at least that’s my theory as to why it’s still one of my highest viewed blogs, despite me levying criticism with the game at the time, which is now outdated because of all the changes that were made, with my updated thoughts on the game only having 56 views.

The blogs I am personally the most upset didn’t get the views I would have liked were the Magic Project: Omega blogs, which for those who don’t know was my attempt at making my own custom set which was an homage to Alpha.

I put in a good amount of work on those blogs, but the highest views that those blogs had were 14 views with five of those blogs having zero views. An ambitious project and idea that unfortunately fell flat, which does make me sad, but I may revisit the idea someday or at the very least find something that involves custom cards.

I am happy to say that at the very least Magic Super Cube is still going, with us up to Planar Chaos (if I didn’t post it late at least) and will continue to go until I have caught up to the current sets, slowing down until a new set arrives where I can pick and choose cards in slower intervals.

Plans for the Future

I do like being back writing again, because having something like this is helpful for me to better develop myself as a writer.

If you don’t know, I am going to be participating in the National Novel Writing Month this upcoming November and I am still in the planning phases, but excited to take on that challenge. I did have a stint of some creative writing here that while I liked, was definitely not my best work.

I do imagine that the novel I do end up writing will also not be ideal, but it is intended to be a first draft where a lot is expected to be bad, but it can be fixed if I decide I want to publish it or keep it to myself or even post here on the blog a la Andy Weir and The Martian, but that is a future me problem.

Commander Bites will continue on, potentially as a permanent blog because there are almost 3,500 legal Commanders in the game and I have only touched on 450 of them in the blogs history. At this rate I will reach the current number of Commanders in about eight years, where probably at least another 3,500 will have released between now and then.

As stated earlier, Magic Super Cube will go on until I have caught up to the (then) current Standard sets and then wait until a new set releases to add new cards to the Cube, which with counting the currently announced and anticipated releases will take me about 2 years, give or take a couple of months when considering new sets.

Casual Chats will still be happening, still weekly if I can remember to get them done in time, and will be more of the free form, bloggy styled blogs where I pick a random non-Magic topic and talk about it. It could be something relating to my life or something I watched, or even something I want to ramble or rant about but having it around will still be helpful to break the monotony of just Magic talk for me.

As far as newer blogs…I honestly don’t know. I could say that I have a brand new blog that is coming soon, but I really don’t know what that sort of blog you all would like to see from me. The BLOG SHOWDOWN series was meant to find a new blog to write, but those didn’t really get much traction and could be posted as a variant for the Casual Chat.

If there is a blog that you think would be interesting for me to start, let me know. It could be something Magic related or something completely different, I genuinely would like to know what you all think would make for a good blog series.

Next comes the final point, something I have been mulling over for a while now.

Patreon Conundrum

I have considered starting a Patreon, but I have had some conflicting thoughts on whether or not I should go with it.

The positives to seem solid. It is a bit of a tough financial situation for me at the moment and if I had something like the blog to act as supplemental income, then that would be one less stressor for me and I can put more time and effort into writing, and who knows maybe can become a primary job.

However, while I know I am having a tough financial situation, I am not alone in that boat, as the way things currently are in the world, money is tight for everybody. I mentioned this in the return blog, but I don’t like asking for money in the situation that the world is in right now.

I do have a Donate button near the top of the banner, but I also don’t advertise that it’s their when I probably should, and if people were to give small one time donations that they could afford, that could also help the website.

Another thing that is keeping me from doing a Patreon is the whole idea of keeping content behind a paywall. Seeing that this is a blog website, keeping blogs behind a paywall is not necessarily a new concept, but not something that I would like to do.

I would eventually want to release those blogs, which means why would you subscribe to the Patreon if you would just need to wait in order for the blogs to become public. It doesn’t benefit me and it may just irritate you all.

I could intentionally hold content back, and disregarding my own feelings on that front, what sort of content would I post? Unique Patreon specific blogs? A random podcast? Videos? I really don’t have too many ideas on that front.

One idea that has floated around is doing it so that if you are part of a certain tier then I would ask you what Commander to talk about next, which I could do pretty easily and maybe add something else to make the incentive better, which I wouldn’t mind doing since it involves you guys and would be a decent way to have people chip in.

The downside to that is how much would I charge in order for it to be special but not breaking the bank? Too low and a lot of people get their suggestions in and I don’t talk about some Commanders I want to talk about. Too high and people don’t do it at all and it just becomes a restrictive tier to even have.

I could do a one tier donation system where you all pay a set amount regardless and all have the same benefits, maybe early access to the blogs or a poll for new blog idea or maybe a Discord thing, but that has it’s own can of worms that I would rather not want to deal with.

As you can see, this is something that I have put a lot of thought about, and I would rather have your guy’s opinion on this matter. I will have a Patreon “technically” up because I don’t want someone stealing the name, but I won’t explicitly talk about it until a decision has been made.

I will be posting a poll here on whether or not I should start a Patreon. If you do vote yes, please, let me know what sort of content you would want to see on the Patreon and sort of what tiers you would like to see if that’s what you like and if you don’t want a Patreon, please tell me why not and what I could do to potentially start getting something to help keep the website be more than just a hobby blog.

I want to upgrade the website, I just can’t afford paying people right now to help me improve the website and pay my own bills at the same time. I want there to be much more interesting blogs that delve into all sorts of topics, but I can’t do that without people helping by giving suggestions. I want potentially more people to contribute to the website, but I would like to pay them to do so and I just can’t right now.

There is so much I want to do, but am held back by not being able to do so without your help. Even if you are just a casual reader, please participate in the poll to let me know if you would want a Patreon and would potentially like to become a Patron.

In Conclusion

Overall the blog has been going really well, and while I do like that things are going well, I do want to level things up for the blog.

Whether that is through Patreon or through some other means, I’ll find a way to make it work.

To all of you who have read this whole post, thank you very much. To all of you who skipped to the end to do the poll, thank you very much. I know I spent a lot of words talking about Patreon, but the whole point of this post was to celebrate what the blog has grown into.

There have been ups and downs, but this blog has been a wonderful experience and something that I want to continue doing in the future.

Thank you all so much for reading, I’ll see you next time.

Peace,

From, J.M. Casual