Avoiding the Drop

Believe it or not, Avoiding the Drop is about two weeks away from beginning its third year on the internet. That might not seem like much, but consider this: the average life expectancy for a blog/website is about a year. So, doing a a little quick math, we’re about a 157 years old in “human years.” Honestly, though, we don’t feel a day over 150.

 

From the start our guiding principle at ATD has been to “write about what we know” and to “write about what we like,” and thus far that has served us pretty well. Writing about what we know has (generally!) kept us from making fools of ourselves and has given our work a relatively consistent focus on a day-to-day basis. Following this principle has also resulted in a quality of content that allows us to stand behind everything we see fit to publish. We are pretty proud of what we do here and I think it shows. The downside of following this guideline is that on average we are a bit MLS and Premier League-centric, but that’s because what we know collectively about club soccer in Africa, could fit in a thimble with plenty of room left over for what we know about the Romanian Premier League and the Indian National Team.

Writing about what we like has also served us well. Our personal interests have meant that over the past two years we’ve covered a lot of the topics you’d expect us to (the World Cup, Bob Bradley’s tenure with the USMNT, the major European leagues, etc.), but our interests have also regularly led us to topics that don’t garner as much attention at other football sites (the financial side of the European game, the shortcomings of soccer coverage and commentators in the U.S., the conversion of football virgins into football supporters, etc.). It has also meant- whether you like it or not!- that we’ve all had a forum in which to regularly indulge in our football-related obsessions. In my case that means you’ve been subject to more than you could ever want to know about Ross County F.C., the Scottish National Team, and football shirts. Thankfully, we’ve all found that we have an audience for our particular interests- no matter how small it might be!

Over the last two years this approach to our site has meant that our readership has grown steadily- if slowly!- and we truly appreciate every page view and comment that our work has generated. We are thankful- and maybe a little surprised- that you’ve stayed with us for this long. All six of us make sure to express our appreciation for your interest in our work as often as we can- Two Yellows does it every Saturday and Sunday!- but I’d like to highlight two specific things that we really treasure. First, we love that the atmosphere is such at ATD that you feel you can send us story ideas, offer to write a guest post, etc.. Personally, I know that I am thrilled (and not just because it means less work for me) any time a reader sends me an idea for a Thursday Challenge- or even a completed one that I can simply cut, past, and publish. One of the reasons this website exists is because we all felt that one of the websites we used to frequent had become too big, too, impersonal, and quite frankly, too full of itself. That will never happen at Avoiding the Drop. We’ve gone out of our way over the last two years to avoiding advertising (and the “editorial confusion” that often accompanies it), to never publish a story for the sole purpose of generating traffic, to be careful with our “link exchanges,” and to remember that, at best, all of us on staff are just “passionate amateurs.” We’ve done this because we think the “feel” of this site is as important as the content. We think we’ve done very well in this regard and we hope it has made you feel at home here.

Second, we’ve said on numerous occasions that we feel like we have the best readers and commenters in the football blogosphere and we truly mean that. We appreciate that you are passionate, knowledgeable, often hysterical, and always civil. Allow me to linger on that last one for a moment… One of the scariest things about clicking the “allow comments” button when you start a website is the knowledge that some of what people are going to say about your work is going to be negative. Criticism can be useful in improving one’s work, but it can also be incredibly deflating when you’ve poured your effort, interest, and time into a piece and it gets torn apart. Thanks to all of you that never happens at ATD- ever. You disagree with us, you point out our factual mistakes and faulty arguments, and maybe even poke a little fun at us, but you are always civil- always. In our first two full years we’ve received over 15,000 comments and we’ve published every single one of them. Once in a while a new reader will swing by and try to start some trouble in the comments section, but it never works- never. It fails because you won’t take the bait. Usually that just means ignoring the idiot in question, but on many occasions you’ve not only defended us- thank you! It has also meant that you’ve taken the time to make it clear to these misguided souls that that’s not the way things run around here. As a result I don’t believe I’ve ever seen one of these people make a second attempt to upset the reasoned intellectual discourse and witty repartee we all enjoy at ATD. With all of these things in mind we have decided that we are long overdue in learning more about you.

Below you will find our first “Reader and Commenter Survey.” As has been the case with everything else we’ve ever done here, the survey is completely voluntary and informal. Answer only what you want to, in whatever level of detail you wish, and if you think there’s something we should know that isn’t covered in any of our questions feel free to include it! The goal of this survey is only for us to get a better idea of who you are, what you enjoy about the site as it is, and what you’d like to see more of in the future.

• What is your age?
• What is your gender?
• Where do you live?
• What is your educational background?
• What is your occupation?
• What is the highest level of football at which you have competed?
• How often do you currently play and at what level?
• What is the highest level of football at which you have coached?
• How often do you currently coach and at what level?
• Do you have a football-related blog/website of your own?
• What other football-related websites do you frequent?
• What league(s) do you follow?
• What club(s) do you follow?
• What national team(s) to you follow?
• What is your favorite regular “feature” at ATD?
• What would you like to see more of at ATD on a regular basis?
• How can we get you involved on a daily/weekly/etc. basis?
• Do you follow us/our writers on Twitter?
• Do you subscribe to our RSS feed?

Finally, if you have a question you’d like to ask your fellow readers/commenters please do so in the comments section. I’m going to try to repost this piece on a daily basis for the next couple of weeks and if enough people have the same requests for additional questions I will add them to the original list.

Please send your completed (or partially completed!) survey’s to us at avoidingthedrop@gmail.com by the end of the business day on February 15^th. The results will be published on February 17^th, our actual second anniversary.

On behalf of all of here at ATD, thank you for allowing us to keep doing this- we truly enjoy it and we truly appreciate the part you play in it.