Thursday, January 12, 2017

I'm mulling my options for 2017 ... and want your input

Happy New Year, folks.

I really intended to do more writing during the off-season than I did -- which turned out to be practically nothing.

As the season approaches I'm trying to decide which direction to go in 2017.

For the last several seasons I've tried to get every college baseball score in the state every day and also provide links to boxes or stories on each game. In addition, I tried to post in-game updates on Twitter.

Almost every school in the state do a great job of making their scores available. There are a handful that getting scores/updates from almost takes an act of Congress.

The labor-intensive work needed to make frequent updates evolved into me sitting in front of the computer for 11 or 12 hours each Saturday and several hours most other days. It was keeping me from really enjoying my favorite sport in the midst of its seaason.

I don't think I can keep that up. It's not worth it physically or financially. The only income I get from this site is from ad clicks, and I get far less than $100 per season from that.

So, I'm considering some cutbacks.

I hope to publish a daily schedule again this year, but there may be days when I give up on chasing all the scores until the next day.  I'm planning to quit posting links to game stories in the calendar. I'm hopeful of continuing to link to boxes.

I intend to do the weekly team rankings and team of the week. Standings and things such as weekly conference player honors are among the things I'm considering dropping.

Here's where I need your help. What new things would you like to see me do on this site. What items that I currently do would you wish I could discontinue?

Please make your suggestions in the comments section of this post, or e-mail me at RudyJones@PalmettoStateBaseball.com.

Thanks! I look forward to your input.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Respond to a fan when they tweet to you. This should be common sense if you are trying to build a brand/following. How do you not get this?

Rudy Jones said...

Thanks. I thought I did respond if a comment was made to elict a response. I'll try to do better.

ulmgrad said...

Thanks for anything and everything you do...it's all a plus as far as I'm concerned. My son plays at a DII school in SC (we're from Florida) and I appreciate anything above and beyond what the school posts. I'm glad I stumbled onto this site last year.

My feelings would be that I can find schedules, scores, game recaps and such pretty easily on the school website(s)...I like the conference awards, individual accomplishment recognition, season previews, any recruiting info that you write yourself or just pass along. But, again, anything is appreciated since you do this on your own time (and your own dime apparently).

Thanks.

Rudy Jones said...

Thanks for the kind words.

TJ Heffner Jr said...

As a JUCO parent your timely updates were top shelf sources of information!Greatly appreciated by all on our USC Sumter community...As a D1 Big South parent alot of the games are on TV or live stats so I believe it will be less informative because there is so much info available..I would suggest really focusing on Region X and JUCO in general where the quality of play is excellent and the press coverage is not!!!
Good luck in the future and thanks aga in for your hard work...

Rudy Jones said...

Thanks, TJ. All of the juco coaches in state are very cooperative.