Let's Celebrate - the 100th entry!

It's party-time!

Hello everyone!

It’s true – this is my 100th entry and this is the entry that I’ve been implying to for a while now. When I first started my blog, I would’ve never believed that I could get this far with my blog. A long time I debated, if I should write on Finnish or in English and in the end I decided to write in English. I’m glad that I did. If you have been following my blog for the very beginning, it must have been interesting to see how my entries have developed during time.

Since this is the 100th entry and since I love statistics, I’ve gathered some interesting statistics from my blog during the 100 entry-span. I’ll also walk through the remarkable dates that were important for my blog’s popularity and that have greatly affected the wide-spread conspicuousness of my blog. I’ll also tell you about how the idea of my own blog came to me. I know this might not be useful information, but thankfully it’s fun and interesting information! (At least in my opinion!).

So, let’s start dig deep in the past to the first remarkable day of my blog. I hope you enjoy!

The Journey

20^th of August – The Idea

It was after Worlds 2011 when I came with an idea of my own blog. I’ve always been interested in writing all kinds of things I’m pretty sure that I’ll start to writing my own novel once I’m done with my blog. I’ve always had an urge to write. However, the idea for my own Pokémon TCG blog came from my big brother. He started his own (Finnish) TCG blog in the beginning of 2010-2011 season, but after Finnish players weren’t happy with his texts, he stopped it very early. I knew that the Finnish community would be more satisfied with my blog due my accomplishments in Finland.

However, I thought that the Finnish player base would be too small to spend that much time on writing to only to them, so I was thinking if I could write in English. However since I’ve never been to grammar or precise while learning English, I thought writing in English would be impossible. I asked Finnish players’ opinion if I should write in Finnish or English and the consensus among Finnish players was leaning towards English. Then it was settled, as almost an unknown player, I would start to writing a TCG blog in English – I had no idea how it would end up like.

2^nd September – The very first blog entry

I had spend time creating my blog’s layout with my girlfriend and since I’m not that good with computers, I settled to what it is. I thought that the content of the blog was more important than how the site looks like. If you haven’t yet read my very first blog entry, now is the chance. You can find it here.

13^th of September – The Deck Out becomes known for the public

This was one of the biggest turning points in the history of The Deck Out. I had e-mailed for a while with Adam from SixPrizes and he was kind enough to let me advertise my blog on SixPrizes. Without this, it would’ve been very difficult to ever become known for the public. SixPrizes had the most daily page viewers from the non-official Pokémon TCG websites, so it was a perfect place to start. I’m ever grateful to Adam for helping me out.

14^th of October – The Decklist Out

After a while, I decided to put together The Decklist Out, which covers all the decks in the format. When I was younger, I had usually 16-20 decks together IRL at the same time, so I would be able to test them all, so just writing down the lists wasn’t that much of a work for me.  I was pretty used to deck building.

17^th of October - Eye on Japan: Part 1

I’m pretty sure many of you heard from my blog for the first time thanks to Eye on Japan. It’s still the top rated article of SixPrizes and even though it’s not lengthy, it offered something a precious look behind the Mysterious Japanese Pokémon TCG community. After the first Eye on Japan, I was happy to see that other sources from Japan was found and that Japan became everyday knowledge for all of us.

18^th of October The Deck Out on Twitter and Facebook

I had never thought of this before Adam told me about it. I don’t personally use that much Facebook and since Twitter isn’t as big in Europe as it is in the U.S., making an own FB and Twitter for my blog seemed like a weird idea. Howerver, over time, I’ve learnt to use social media better and better and I’m very happy that I did this.

17^th of November - Six-Corners –article

This is important, because the Six Corners was surprisingly the most viewed article of my blog until yesterday! Yesteday the Eye on Japan: World Qualifiers surpassed Six Corners article in page views.

5^th of December Double - Tournament report /w Chandelure

Chandelure wasn’t that familiar to most people when I won double Cities with it, so this article quickly became the main source to look for Chandy skeleton.

It was also interesting since this was the first entry that caught the attention of the users from HeyTrainer. I didn’t follow that much HeyTrainer at that time, but since Finnish players started giving me links to HeyTrainer, where everyone bashed the deck, I became interested in it. I’ll always remember how everyone in the HT said that the deck sucked because I played no Gloom. In the end of the Chandelure developing process no one played Gloom… I guess I was just lucky to get it right in the beginning ;)

15^th of December – The First Power Player Interview

I should do more of these interviews. If you know any players, you would like to see an interview of, let me know!

24^th of January – My first SixPrizes UG article

I was very nervous when I first started writing to UG since I was afraid that it would destroy my blog completely. Fortunately, I was able to find the balance between my blog and UG and now they work very well in harmony with each other. Financially, as a student, this was a big step for me.

26^th of January - The First Featured Writer

Nuff’ said. I’m very picky while choosing featured writers, but I would love to have more of them!

9^th of February - The First “The Deck Out goes global”

This was a series that I was sure would create some arguments back and forth. I won’t probably be continuing The Deck Out goes global series, because it wasn’t that popular among readers, but I’ll try to stay international some other way.

21^th of February ECC Report

This was the first international tournament entry from me. I also did not so bad and was kicked out of top8 due bad luck. Maybe I could play this game after all!

5^th of March The Glossary of Pokémon TCG

I had this on mind a long time, but realized it only at this point due the business in my life.

28^th of May 6-Time National Champion’s Report

I won my 6^th National Championships and made Hammertime public. Now, I often think to myself I should have kept Hammertime a secret, but since I’m keeping a blog about Pokémon TCG, I thought it would contradict the whole idea of my own blog. This was a huge deal for me since it kept me ahead of everyone else in the amount of National Championships.

4^th of June – Hammertime! Explained

The thing, why I find this entry a very special one, is because it is very well-written. And it’s not me, who is saying that. This is an entry, I’ve gotten a lot of feedback about. In a lot of e-mails it says that this entry made them or their friends/children etc. realize how the deck functions, and how you play it. This article itself has helped some players (like the U.S. National Champion) in Juniors division to earn a travel award to Hawaii!

Today – the 100^th entry

When, I first started my blog, I was sure that I would never reach this point, but here we are. It has been quite a journey and I hope it will continue at least 100 entries more!

The Future

So what’s in the future. The new format. I’ll move study to Tampere (where there’s a very active Pokémon TCG league). I’ll go to Worlds and you’ll see my report from there. The future of The Deck Out depends on many things, but the most important thing is that you can affect it! Whenever you have questions, comments, praise, corrections or complaints about my blog, I’ll love to hear them. Developing my content is what keeps me going and I can’t do it without you.



Statistics

As I said, I love statistics. So, here I’ve gathered all kinds of interesting statistics about my blog that only I can see.

Total Page Views: 568 000

The most viewed article: “Eye on Japan: The Worlds Qualifiers in Japan”

The most used search word that leads to my blog: the deck out (Obviously, haha)

Words per article (average): 2400

Total words I’ve written about Pokémon TCG this season: 266 440 words (as many words as in the first three Harry Potter books combined!!!!).

I also wonder if there’s anyone who has written more about Pokémon TCG than me? And it’s good to remember that this is only my production in English, I’ve written a few 50 word page articles in Finnish to our forums.

The amount of Pokémon TCG articles, I’ve written this season: 111

The most commented article: “6-time National Champion's Report” (it was a pretty controversial)

SixPrizes UG articles amount:  10

Facebook likes: 518(and increasing!)

Twitter Followers: 180

And since Facebook and Twitter is the only real indicator of popularity /sarcasm, let’s compare these numbers with the other Pokémon TCG related non-official sites.

Facebook Likes:

1. SixPrizes - 1847
2. TheTopCut - 943
3. The Deck Out - 517
4. ProPokémon: - 263
5. PokeManDan - 186


Twitter Followers:

1. TheTopCut - 776
2. SixPrizes - 377
3. The Deck Out - 180
4. PokeManDan - 131
5. DotDeck – 9

(I hope I didn’t miss any site!)


With a quick analysis, I could say that The Deck Out is the third of the non-official Pokémon TCG related sites. However, I’m very glad that it has gotten this popular since The Deck Out is pretty much just a one-man show. When I first began, I would’ve ever dreamed of getting this far.

Conclusion

To conclude, I would like to thank every single one of you. I really can’t emphasize enough the fact that The Deck Out has surpassed my highest hopes. I’ll strive to give you the best content in the future as well and the only thing I ask is that you keep things cool in the comments. I’ve been surprised how well everyone has behaved in the comments and there is almost no real bashing. (Even if there is bashing, it’s usually well justifiable bashing).

So, once again thanks for everything and for the very warm welcome you everyone gave me when I entered the internet community of Pokémon TCG! This is the 100^th entry and it has been a fun journey, I hope it will stay as fun in the future as well.

Thanks for reading my blog.

- Esa Juntunen