Happy Blogiversary to Us!

November 16th, 2010 marks the 11th year since I first began publishing under the title Voice Actors in the News.

Over the course of a decade [you can read about the blog’s history here], it has progressed from a periodic newsletter focused on voice actors in animation to a blog covering entertainment news about voice actors in all forms of media.

It also used to be a newsletter that I self-published via The Voice Actors Appreciation Society, which even though the group had a few hundred members I didn’t even know if anyone was reading it since I rarely ever got any feedback on it. It was just something I did as a hobby.

After upgrading to a blog format in March 2009, I discovered that not only were others reading it, but within the few first months I was averaging around 100 readers per day.

And after seeing my readership triple in the first year, it became very clear to me that this was not a task I could continue to attempt on my own. I began reaching out to others in the fandom to assist as staff contributors and as of this posting we’re up to a staff of eight.

And just in this month of November, we have reached four more milestones with the blog:

– 150,000 blog views.
– 800 followers on Facebook.
– 500 followers on Twitter.
– And this wasn’t planned but it’s certainly appropriate that this marks my own 600th post on the blog since March 2009.

A very special thanks to my friends Brian and Harley at toonzone.net for being the first to give me a platform to publish my newsletter and for the continued years of friendship and support for my efforts.

Also special thanks to my longtime friends and fellow voice actor fans Kristy (Voicechasers.com), Doreen (Sites By Doreen), and Hillary (CultofCummings.com) — seeing their devotion to bring recognition to voice actors motivated me to spend the last 11 years writing about them.

And I attribute the incredible boost in blog traffic in 2010 to the addition of our staff contributors, whom I am most grateful that they have joined in this team effort: Doreen, Jeff, Mark, Kyle, Ashley, Sonia and Rosemary.

I’m very excited about some of the upcoming additions and expanded coverage for the blog, the first of which we will announce in the first quarter of 2011.

Thanks to all our readers out there — both the professional and fan community — for their support over the last 11 years. We will strive to continue and expand our efforts to serve the fandom and bring recognition to and appreciation for the work of voice actors.

Also thanks to my wife Joy being supportive of my non-profit hobby. She’s been very patient to wait for her chance to use the computer in little windows between the time I spend in service to the fandom online, and has tolerated my spending time blogging when I could have been doing other (and perhaps more important) things, and I love her for it.

~Craig “Voiceroy” Crumpton
Publisher, Voice Actors in the News