Vaping With Julia October 28, 2014

This has been the first time in many weeks that I, Julia Barnes,  have been able to sit down long enough to write a new column. Things have never been busier in my life. Keira and I recently took on several new clients for our stock photo business, and as always Spinfuel is up to its virtual eyeballs with new and interesting projects. I thought today I might go over a few of the projects that are about to come to fruition, and one that already has.

Spinfuel Video Channel

You know, as soon as I saw the first video that Smokenjoey and John made at the VCC show in Tampa earlier this year I knew that John would, eventually, want Spinfuel to get into video in a bigger way. As much physical pain that he was in that weekend, and trust me he was in agony in Tampa, just ask the people that ran into him there, he looked like he was enjoying himself immensely. John thinks the world of Joe Di Salvatore (Smokenjoey) and despite John’s dislike of travel he gets excited when it gets close to attending another show with Joe.

When Smokenjoey and John hit the VCC in Springfield MA a few months later I watched the videos they did there and realized that “eventually” would become “sooner rather than later”. John was having a little too much fun in Springfield not to want to do more of it.

Then, in Chattanooga, where Spinfuel and Smokenjoey had their own booth at the VCC the entire staff knew that video projects were coming soon.

John told me that he met Nick Bessette in Springfield, and that Nick lives near there, and he loved Nick’s enthusiasm and his enormous wealth of advanced vaping. When John returned home he decided that he’d like to so “something” with Nick, and I think Nick wanted to do something with Spinfuel, and the Spinfuel’s Daily Vape TV was born.

Shortly after Tony Brittan introduced himself on our Facebook page and after watching the production values and the “mass appeal” of Tony’s on-air persona, John invited him to post his videos on Spinfuel eMagazine.

Spinfuel has been posting Smokenjoey videos for 2 years, and after adding Nick and Tony to the mix we suddenly had the making of the Spinfuel Video Channel. After setting up the channel John took off with Joe to Chattanooga and he came back wanting to explore possibilities of producing our own videos, right there in Port Saint Lucie. So, what does John have in mind?

1 – The Smokenjoey and Spinfuel Hour – Realization Factor – 50/50 – John and Joe are always so busy so I don’t know if this idea will ever become a reality, but the show, according to John, is supposed to be a 2-shot video show where both of them would share the screen and do reviews, talk about the recent Vapers News, and even bring on guests for interviews.

This weekly show is supposed to be distributed on iTunes and on Spinfuel.TV. I would be surprised if it becomes a real video show before the end of the year. If it does, I think it will be more like March 2015…but I’m guessing.

  1. The Cold Open – The last time I talk to John, a few days ago now, I think he was set on calling “his” videos ‘The Cold Open’. These videos would open with an amusing true story told in 60 seconds or less, followed by short reviews, editorials, and guide to vaping videos. – Realization Factor – 100% He’s already doing them.
  1. The Spinfuel Giveaway – John is considering making a weekly video giveaway as a way to get free stuff into the hands of vapers that need them, and as a way to get the word out about the Channel. The giveaway would last a week and the prize would be something big. Realization Factor – 99% – John did a down n dirty Giveaway last Friday with an eVic Supreme as the prize. The only thing that is preventing an official statement from Spinfuel is that John doesn’t like giving free stuff away to “professional contest players”. These are people who use social media for one reason, to win stuff.

I’ve heard John say a million times that there are thousands of people in the vape community that have a hard time buying eliquid and/or new devices. To many, these things are out of reach. These are the people he wants to award free stuff to.

The problem is how to do that? How do you make sure that the prizes go out to people struggling to get by? No one here is against people that spend their online time entering contests, we are all free to do as we please, to a point, so more power to them, ya know? But Spinfuel resources are not unlimited, we don’t sell things, so the prizes we give away are “mostly” products we buy. With that in mind, it’s best that the prizes go to Vapers who have lost their job, returned from the wars, or are otherwise financially ‘compromised”. How do you reach them?!

Hey, I know, maybe you guys might have some ideas. How would YOU solve that problem?

The New Spinfuel eMagazine

If you follow my Twitter feed you may have read that Spinfuel is undergoing a major revision. After a summer of experimentation with new looks, it was decided that instead of modifying a look seen elsewhere we would hire a developer to build Spinfuel a custom design. A layout that would accommodate our needs. One that our readers would find easy to use and especially easy to explore.

Exploring Spinfuel eMagazine is key to this new design. The developer, and Dave, decided that a large search box should be integrated into the design, right smack dab in the middle of the page. So in addition to categories and sub-categories in the menus, readers will be able to just type in anything they want to read about and the search engine will gather up all the articles and present them in a nice, clean and attractive manner. I think it’s going to be used a lot.

Of course, website design is always a bigger job then you think it will be. That being the case the deadline for the new Spinfuel eMagazine had been missed three times now, the latest was yesterday, October 27th. We are 99% there, only 1% left and it is a nagging 1% indeed.

The part of the new Spinfuel eMagazine that I like the most is how we are folding in Spinfuel Vapers News, a standalone website we’ve run for 2 years now, into Spinfuel eMagazine. I always disliked the fact that people had to bookmark two URL’s, and believe it or not, there are tons of people, new readers mostly, that confuse the two and think Vapers News is the only Spinfuel there is. That has to stop, and when we launch the new site you’re going to see a very cool way to present the Vapers News and the eMagazine articles on the homepage.

From our developers point of view the most important part of the new Spinfuel eMagazine are two things: SEO scores and speed. According to Dave Spinfuel has never been truly optimized for search (on the internet) and it has never been remotely fast enough. The reason is pretty easy to understand.

When we launched in February 2012 our projections showed a slow upward trend into 2013. The plan, so I heard, was to continue to tweak the online magazine slowly, watching for patterns to appear. But, instead of a slow upward trend Spinfuel eMagazine grew exponentially the first year, then quadrupled in 2013, and in 2014 we’ve continued to grow at an alarming rate. I say alarming because Dave was always adding to the server rack, staring at monitors to make sure “load balance” was maintained during peak hours, and that despite never being truly optimized that our pages load as fast as they could, which was not fast at all.

With the new Spinfuel eMagazine all that changes. Spinfuel is being rebuilt from the ground up. Fancy JavaScript and CSS tricks are being kept to a minimum, all the 988 articles and 1290 news articles from Vapers News are being reworked for proper keyword density and H1 and H2 tags, and all the rest that goes into a properly optimized website.

Lastly, John and Dave have made sure that our servers are updated with the latest technology so that the sudden surge in traffic that is expected in the first month our servers will be able to handle it. I’m crossing my fingers and my toes that things go as they are supposed to go.

Reviews and Awards

Last week we gave out our first Spinfuel Vape Gear Award. This was something that we’ve wanted to do for a while, ever since our eliquid “choice award” became popular. But, we wanted to wait until the new Spinfuel eMagazine launched. The missed deadlines forced us to debut the award early. Well, the missed deadlines and the product that earned the award forced our hand because it deserved to be awarded and we didn’t want to delay the review.

Vape Gear Award – There is such a disparity in quality and workmanship in vape gear. We believe its time to give the products that we not only love but also are extremely well built and made to last years, the recognition they deserve. We want the Spinfuel Vape Gear Award to be a symbol of the recognition. The first winner was, by the way, the Council of Vapor “Stratos” Glassomizer Tank. This tank is such a pleasure to use, and it is designed like nothing I’ve seen before.

You can expect to see more Spinfuel Vape Gear Awards very soon.

Catching Up

Our eLiquid reviews have slowed down quite a bit because, again, of the delay in the new Spinfuel eMagazine. We are working on 7 new eLiquid reviews right now, all in various stages of development, with more on the way. Yesterday we published our Buku Vapor review and interview just to let off a little steam from the pressure valve holding back the number of reviews, both eliquid and vape gear. Once the new Spinfuel goes live you can expect a lot of reviews to get published quickly. We hope to catch up by December 31st.

Latest Giveaway

Spinfuel Newsletter Giveaways

If you’re not yet a subscriber to our weekly Newsletter you’re missing out on two new giveaways every week. You can subscribe right here: Sign Up, or in the footer on this, and every, page in Spinfuel.

Spinfuel Video Channel Giveaway

You still have 4 days left to enter the Spinfuel Video Channel Giveaway. Go to this URL: and simply Subscribe and Comment … do that and you’re entered. A winner will be chosen on Friday afternoon.

The Best of 2014

One of the first things I learned about John when I came to work with him in 2002 was that he refuses to celebrate anything early. Christmas presents are opened on Christmas morning, Birthdays, even for people who are only a few days apart, are celebrated on their birthday, never early, and never combined (like it was in my home), and he is always annoyed by yearly award shows that appear before the year is over. So, when we decided that this year Spinfuel was going to do a “Best of” Award Show of our own, it was going to done on New Years Eve.

I would like to take this time to officially announce that on the evening of December 31st, 2014, Spinfuel will publish a video and a written “show” that will award a “Best” Award for the following categories:

Best Advanced Personal Vaporizer

Best Mechanical Mod

Best New eLiquid Brand

Best eLiquid Line

Best eLiquid Flavor:

Vanilla/custard

Fruity/melon

Tobacco

Bakery

Other

On December 1st we will publish a Voting Page where our readers can come to vote for the best of the best. Nominations are being accumulated now.

Conclusion

Like I said, there is a lot going on right now in and around Spinfuel. We’re counting on 2015 as being our best year yet. We believe the electronic cigarette is still the best way to achieve “freedom from tobacco”. We also believe that more and more people will either slide right by the cig-a-likes market completely, so they can start off with at least an eGo battery and clearomizer because the vape experience is as different as night and day. While former smokers will continue to turn to vaping, the cig-a-like market will drastically shrink while the larger, better vape experience tools will propel the overall industry forward more than ever. We want to be there, helping those that want to leave tobacco behind, with the best tools for the job. And we’re working hard to make that a reality.

Until next time,

Julia