This is the second installment of “TBL At Ten” or, the first ten years of our existence!
In the first column we covered such areas as why did I create the original GeoCities site and why did I begin writing wrestling-themed articles. This time around, I’d like to look at a few more issues in the progression of TBL from my personal homepage into the wrestling site that it is today.
But first, I should explain what else was on TBL besides wrestling content. As I said in the first part of this series, the first column I posted on TBL was called “About Rats.” In addition to that little bitchfest of a column, I had a page with mini-profiles for some of my high school friends and my cousin. These were amateur at best – I recall one that I created for a friend of mind named Alaina that had the 7-Up spot dancing next to her little profile. As a matter of fact, I think her biography might have started off with something like “Alaina = Coolness” or something dorky like that!
Very basic here, folks!
With the response from my first wrestling column being so large, I figured that it would be good to see how I can increase my exposure in the small community of wrestling websites. I figured that common sense tells us that to bring more people into the lair and get more hits overall, you should play to a prospective base of support. A little internet wrestling history for you: some of the biggest wrestling websites back then were 411 Wrestling News (NOT related to the 411 site out there today), WICN Newsboard (long since gone and by far the biggest wrestling website ever on the internet barring WWE.com), and Scoops (run by Al Isaacs, since shut down).
I contacted these places to trade links and got a good response from the folks at WICN (I think the name of the who ran the site was Matt, but I’m not sure). They were looking for a “newsboard” reporter (these guys had the first newsboard-type set-up for their site) and I really didn’t have the time or the pro-wrestling contacts to help them out with that position so I couldn’t form a relationship with them. It is also worth noting that this original newsboard was nothing like the ones you see out there today, where most of the posts are followed by a fake plug for naked women and false stories.
After this disappointing forray into the world of online marketing, I took a few days to try to figure out a different strategy. The strategy I came up with is something that I still feel strongly about today and actively use on both my blog and on the TBL main site. This is a strategy that I will perpetually endorse no matter how big TBL gets.
The strategy? I went out and looked for smaller wrestling sites and tried to exchange links with them. My thought was that if I could draw in the the 20 or so people that visited Site A and then draw in the 250 people who visited Site B and so on, I would eventually have a huge fan base of my own.
And you know what? It worked! TBL’s original fan base was created by drawing in readers from smaller wrestling websites. And the best part of it was that even after the visitors came to my site, they would still go to the other site – so no one was losing any hits!
The first place that I exchanged links with was also the website of the first employee of TBL. The site was Vom DeKind’s Wrestling News & Rumors and the employee was Vom DeKind. The site is a shell of its former self, so you can click on that link if you want, but it’s certainly not the same as it used to be. Also, the dates have been changed on that site a little bit – couldn’t tell you why. Be that as it may, I’ll go talk about Vom’s association with TBL in a few paragraphs.
The point here is that TBL began to grow through link exchanges with other websites…except these were all wrestling websites, not personal websites. There really weren’t any other personal homepages that I came across that I would want to exchange links with. Simply put – wrestling fans were (and still are) the most creative when it comes to putting together a website! Well, the porn sites were interesting, too, but that’s another column for another time! =)
Naturally, hits began to flow into the lair. But wouldn’t you know it that they didn’t stay for the long-term? After about a week or so of good hits, they fell back down to pre-link exchange levels. This was not a good thing. Then it hit me – why not design a website that is wrestling-oriented and has more than just news and rumors, but fun little side pages to help pass the time? In short, I wanted to create a website that I would go to myself.
You could say that at that point I decided to turn the lair from a personal website into a professional wrestling website, but the truth is that I was really being quite selfish. I did not want to create a wrestling website for the people to enjoy – I wanted to create a wrestling site that I would enjoy and hey, if the people enjoyed it as well, then that was a great bonus!
The first thing that I knew I had to do was create new content on a near-daily basis. Seems like second nature when creating a wrestling site these days, huh? Believe it or not, daily updates weren’t overly common on the vast majority of early wrestling websites. Weird, I know.
Anyway, looking to create daily content, I contacted my new friend, Vom DeKind and asked him if he wanted to jump on with The Balrog’s Lair and become a columnist. Vom was quite interested (especially when I told him that I would let him plug his site in his columns). And with that, Vom DeKind became the first employee of TBL and I officially began the expansion of the lair into the online professional wrestling scene.
My idea was to have a new opinion column posted each day of the week. I took Sundays for myself with Balrog Babblings and Vom had Mondays for his column (which I no longer have any recollection of). This was a good start and after a while I had hired a few more writers including Wrestlebabe and Captain Gelfand (neither archive is anywhere NEAR complete, sorry). Wrestlebabe actually went on to write for some pretty big sites while still writing for our very own TBL Newsletter. Last I heard she increased her work schedule to something like 60 hours per week and had to give up writing on the internet, but she certainly was an internet original and if you can find any of her writing laying around the web I suggest reading it for a good look at what fan/opinion writing resembled ten years ago.
Mike (Gelf) wrote some of the best columns online at the time. Sadly, I never kept a proper storage of either Cindy’s or Mike’s writing so most of their work has been lost over the years. Still, they are both part of the foundation that made the TBL Opinions area the powerhouse that it eventually became and continues to be today. At some point, we had TWO columns being published on the lair each day! I actually set-up the main page of the columns area to list out the column updates by the day – it worked out well.
It worked out so well that my poor counter just started going nuts shortly thereafter! I had something like 250,000 hits. It was insanity for me. I was getting e-mails from all over the place from people wanting to write columns and to get involved. TBL was an internet original in the fact that it allowed the fans to actually get online – with a certain level of commitment – and publish their wrestling thoughts on a regular basis. Again, the archive linked is no where near complete.
To end this column, I just want to touch on what else was going on with TBL as I began to build what was and continues to be one of the most important parts of the site (the Opinions area). In order to get the visitors to stick around after they read the columns, I began doing a mini-news and rumor update each day. Sometimes I would manage two updates per day and sometimes I would miss a day, but what do you expect from a busy kid!? On top of that, I began putting together the “Extras” part of TBL. I started putting up Top Ten Lists, What If questions (one of the major highlights of the early TBL period), and some Quotes of the Week. You want to talk about response? I got more responses to that Top Ten List stuff than I care to repeat!
So folks, that’s a second look at the beginning of The Balrog’s Lair. During the next column I’m going to attempt to hit on the beginning of The TBL Newsletter, some of the more well-known names who have been associated with the TBL Opinions area, how the opinions area brought me extra credibility online, where my first “inside” contact came from, and where/when/how I started generating money from TBL. That’s an interesting little story that I’m sure you’ll enjoy!
Until that time, enjoy The Balrog’s Lair and everything that it has to offer!
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