Introduction

With all the various poison orbs plaguing my health at the moment, there is a still a rainbow of joy creeping through: 1  million site views!! I actually achieved this milestone around my surgery time frame and was actually lucky enough to catch this monumental occasion as close as I could possibly hope to get:

Video commentary

What does 1 million signify?

According to Wikipedia (which is the real MVP for all college students), a million seconds is equivalent to 11.57 days and for myself, the end result of just under 11 months of Mantastic PAD.

Most people refer to their first million as a milestone of financial success; however, this feels pretty Fantastic to me as I have managed to create something out of nothing and grow a loyal and caring following.

My progression and growth

I began this website in mid October of 2015 as way to help occupy my time as well as helping other people by sharing my PAD addition in what is perhaps the healthiest way possible. My start was distressingly slow along with my content not being as polished nor visually appealing as it is today. Perhaps I am like a fine wine and simply mature with age.

The following chart shows my growth over the months and it becomes quite apparent that the first few were rather lackluster:

With the exception of July suffering from the release of Pokemon Go (partially combined with the lack of new content that week), my growth has been relatively exponential and I managed to regain my momentum after people finished catching them all.

This month is a bit more fragmented due to my surgery (which I am slowly recovering from!); however, last month I averaged over 6,800 views a day which is approximately 283 views per hour or 4.72 per minute. Furthermore, the vast majority of my referrals come from Search Engines (with 99% being Google) along with more and more people bookmarking/going directly to my site.

Social media platforms

In my personal life, I am actually somewhat reclusive and social media shy (I barely touched my Facebook and did not have any other vehicles), but I have ultimately evolved into a small social media butterfly (kind of). If you do not already, I would greatly appreciate a follow/subscribe/like as these platforms will showcase content I do not share on my website:

Mantastic Social Media
Facebook	Twitter	YouTube	Twitch

I use my Facebook for more substantial announcements while Twitter is for quick thoughts as well as auto-tweeting whenever I publish an article or upload a video on YouTube. Twitch is for helping you know when I go live for streaming.

Where do I go from here?

The short answer is I want to continue producing entertaining and Mantastic content as this is something I truly enjoy. In addition, I know from sharing my health concerns that the Puzzle and Dragons community is the most kind and caring I have ever been a part of.

The amount of support I received when I shared my own personal health troubles was almost overwhelming as I never knew so many people (who are to a certain extent, strangers) cared so deeply and while going through the comments, I was nearly moved to tears (crying hurts so I try not to!).

Future of streaming

Over the week, I have had plenty of time to think about the direction I want to go with streaming and I came to the conclusion that I should try and diversify my content. There are only so many different dungeons I could continuously play and while they can be exciting (Arena 3), it may be beneficial to shake it up from time to time.

Thus, I would like to try and do more collaborative streams with various individuals in a similar format of how I was featured on the GungHo stream last month. I would try and arrange beforehand with each guest and Skype call them in so you also have another face to look at. This will not only add more dimension to the personalities you watch, but may also allow me to use a wider variety of teams as I would not just be restricted to Mantastic and Fantastic’s box.

In addition, I have been contemplating streaming other games, most notably World of Warcraft: Legion as that is the only other game I enjoy. However, I do not know of the feasibility of streaming something else, especially when I am not part of the top guilds in the world. But perhaps with the release of raids next week, I may give it a shot as I will be playing any way.

Conclusion

Thank you all for the continuous support throughout the past 11 months as well as this past week. I could not have achieved my success with out all of you as I am quite certain I did not hit F5 one million times to trigger this many site views!

One other way you could help support me is to turn off Ad Blocker (this LINK should provide step-by-step instructions). I do not run any pop ups and you should only see ads gently sprinkled around my posts. This will cost you nothing and it may only add a few pennies per month, but if every single person did this, it would make a world of a difference.

Once again, thank you for helping me achieve this milestone.

Happy Puzzling!