Over the next few weeks we’re going to experiment with some new types of posts here at Spinfuel. Today’s new ‘column’ is a look at the past week. Well, almost a week anyway, it’s actually just the last 5 days, beginning with Monday, September 10th.
This was an interesting week. We made some physical changes to our online magazine, posted a few excellent reviews, we announced the newest, and last, winner of our first of many “Historic” giveaways’, and more… so, let’s get started.
We began the week with a whole lot of readers still stopping by to read the enormous ‘part 2’ review for the newest mini-eCig to hit the market, 777 eCigs. 2Part came in at more than 5000 words and consisted of the Spinfuel Staff Review Team’s (SSRT) take on the 16 flavors offered by 777 in both prefilled cartomizers and separate 15ML bottles. My own take on this new eCig is pretty positive. I tried their flavors in the form of the prefilled cartos and found several of them to be much better than 99% of the other prefilled cartos offered by some of the older mini-eCigs. My favorite? Italian Crème and Pina Colada.
Later in the week we finally posted the short interviews with the 2nd and 3rd winners from our historic giveaway. Brian Fattler has an Internet problem for a few days and it wasn’t even aware that he won, for 5 days! He was thrilled, of course, telling us he never wins anything (welcome to the club Brian) so it was especially sweet to win these amazing prizes. Then there was our 3rd winner, Sunny Z, a young woman that has been vaping for several months and absolutely loved her Vapage Vmod.
On Wednesday we announced our newest, and final winner of the historic giveaway. Our last winner is Mira Dermody, a lovely young woman who appears to be wonderfully excited about her win. Her prizes arrive today (we always ship our USPS 2-Day priority) and hopefully her short interview will come next week.
Our next Giveaway will start in a few days. There will be a big announcement about it. The prizes this time will be a very much a popular item that I am really excited about. In fact, the prize is the one PV I use most of the time. I have many PV’s here to play with but the one I choose to call my own (and not the property of Spinfuel) is the one and only Johnson Creek Vea. Not only is the Vea a beautiful and subtle work of art, it vapes perfectly… Huge plumes of vapor and a big flavor await me every time I pick it up, which is a lot.
We love Johnson Creek, so when it came time to think about our next giveaway it just had to be something with JC. We reached out to them, they reached back, and over the next 4 weeks we’ll be giving away 4 Johnson Creek Vea’s to 4 lucky winners. Stay tuned…we’re still working on the details. It will be a much less complicated giveaway as well.
The new reviews this week featured an amazing 5800-word review for The Plume Room. So far, Andrea has put together a terrific selection of delicious flavors that are complete originals. Her choices for graphic designs and packaging put The Plume Room at the upper most level of professionalism. You can easily imagine her bottles on the shelves of some very fancy stores (I think Julia mentioned that in the review). The Review Team rated more of her juices at ‘5 Stars’ then any brand that came before. My favorite flavor (I didn’t get to taste them all) has to be her ‘Sweet Peach’.
In addition to the extensive review we published our Interview with Andrea. More than 9500 readers have read the review and interview since it’s publication.
Some changes were made to Spinfuel as well. Because we only offer a limited amount of space as advertising, our left sidebar was the least desired spot because the only page to see this sidebar was our main page. We finally pulled the trigger to add that sidebar to every page, giving us more opportunity to satisfy the demands coming in for highly targeted ad space. Because we have NO affiliate connections with any company, each Ad you see on Spinfuel is there because the company felt strongly about being a part of the Spinfuel community. We love them all, and appreciate their support in ways you cannot imagine.
Essentially, adding the left sidebar without losing the width for the actual articles meant that we had to widen the entire page to 1300 pixels. We understand that 1300 pixels is a bit wide, but with screen resolutions on computers and tablets being on the move again (following Apple’s Retina Display technology) most readers aren’t having any issues. Those that too need to do a tiny bit of side scrolling to see by sidebars, or widening their browsers, but very soon that will no longer be an issue.
Widening the entire publication also allowed us to double the size of our Cover Story slider. The new slides are 716-pixels wide. I think the new slider is the perfect size now, delivering powerful and enticing images to draw people to the articles they are linked to. As the Editor I publically thank Jon Locke, Dave Foster, and Julia Barnes for all the extra hours and hard work they put into this redesign.
Today we will publish some shorter reviews on a couple of Totally Wicked eLiquid products; their new Triple Coil Cartomizers (510-threaded) and a few drip tips are big hits with the staff. Don’t worry; even our most fluent writer couldn’t come up with 3500 words or more for a cartomizer. (At least, I won’t let them if they try!)
There is a piece we’ve been working on that we are calling “Behind the Scenes of the Spinfuel Historic Giveaway”. It’s supposed to be published about noon today. I’d say the odds of that happening are about 75%. (Crossing fingers).
Lastly, I wrote and published my opinion piece called “Crossroads”. I chose this topic because I feel that just about every Vaper goes through most of things I went through. That initial learning curve, the enthusiasm, and the passion you develop for vaping is almost universal the world over. I must have touched a few nerves because the past 22 hours it has been read by a huge number of people. Thank you for that; it makes me feel humbled and proud to be able to touch our readers on a personal level.
In the overall scheme of things this has been a pretty decent week. Readership is continuing its upward move, we’re getting more and more email from readers who are loving what we’re doing (they are always big stress relievers when we read them), and even our Facebook page is getting more popular. I’m looking forward to the day that we break the 1000 ‘Likes’ threshold. After only a couple of weeks we’re above 300, so we’re on the way. (Stop by and give us a ‘Like’ will you? We’re doing instant giveaways there!).
Next week we’ll have more reviews, more opinion, a new giveaway, and maybe some surprises. But, all in all, this has been a good week. Every one of us hopes your week was a good one too.
It’s TGIF, don’t forget to do your #FollowFriday’s today. Look us up on Twitter, @spinfuel_eCigs, @Spinfuel_blog, @Spinfuel_Julia, and @Spinfuel_Mag. Follow us from some often funny, always informational and informal.
Pay it forward people! Karma is real. Do what you can.
John Manzione
