Can you believe  it’s been exactly 12 months since the last time Tom and I worked on Creative Boom!? Believe me, we can’t either!

In fact, this time last year, we launched a brand new web design and lots of new features to keep on supporting the creative industries.

Since then, it’s been an amazing year as we became part of The Guardian Culture Professionals Network and got recognised by lots of other huge brands and names, such as Vimeo, the BBC and (my personal favourite) Paul Van Dyk.

And for the past four months, we’ve been working hard behind the scenes on a brand new design and website structure - something that you’ll hopefully find really helpful when it’s finally launched in the next few weeks.

As you know, Creative Boom is something Tom and I run in our spare time. We’ve got our own business Boomerang to contend with and that has to take priority over anything else as we’ve got to pay the bills! So this means we work on Creative Boom during early mornings, late evenings and weekends. We take little opportunities whenever we can afford the time and money to keep improving the site.

This latest version will be our seventh (I think) re-design and launch since we started on 24th July 2009. It will also have lots of new features - ones that we hope will address all of your needs based on your helpful tweets, emails and general feedback.

So keep your eyes peeled - big announcements are coming very soon! Can’t wait!

Katy

I know it’s halfway through January but I wanted to reflect on 2010 as it was a very hard working and difficult year. One that we’ll never forget but will always be grateful for experiencing. So what did we learn?…

People are generous:  Throughout 2010 we made a lot of new friends on Twitter and through our business and we’ve been overwhelmed with the kindness of people. We can’t get over how generous and supportive people have been. 

You don’t have to spend a fortune on web design:  Halfway through 2010 we were convinced that a strong web design would be the best thing for Creative Boom, one that was distinctive and stood out from the crowd. When we dipped our hands into our own pockets and did so, we soon realised we’d made an expensive mistake. People didn’t want flashy web design, they just wanted to see the content. After all, it’s the content that people come back for, nothing else. So we sat down and designed our own Creative Boom with basic wire frames and produced - alongside friend and Manchester web designer Marc Remblance - a new design that has attracted more people than ever before. Even though it’s very basic and we spent no money, it seems to do the trick.

It’s ok to change things:  We’re forever changing things around on Creative Boom. For example, the site has been redesigned five times since its launch 18 months ago and we’ve added and deleted so many features and aspects of the site I’ve lost count. Despite being worried about affecting visitor numbers or making unpopular decisions, change has brought nothing but more people to our site. Change is positive and will help you to grow.

It’s ok to say ‘no’:  There have been many occasions throughout 2010 when opportunities have come our way. For example, people requiring link exchanges or wanting to run competitions that weren’t quite right for our site. It’s difficult saying ‘no’ but we’ve had to do a lot of it throughout 2010. It’s ok to say ‘no’ because we believe in keeping Creative Boom’s original ethos and value. Saying ‘no’ isn’t a negative thing, it’s just sticking to your principles and doing what’s right for you and your work.

It’s ok to admit when something isn’t working:  In March 2010, we set up an online t-shirt design community and shop called Boomtique. We invested a lot of our own money into the project but we soon realised (the hard way) that it wasn’t going to work. We learnt that you need at least £10,000 to start a decent t-shirt business and even then the market is saturated with too many other firms, providing the same thing. So we put our hands up, admitted defeat and closed it down. We just about recovered the costs but made no profit whatsoever. It was fun at the time and it was no big deal that it didn’t work. But I know a lot of other people would’ve let pride get in the way. 

Don’t take on too much:  After Boomtique, we realised that we’d taken on too much and were heading for burnout. Not only did we have Creative Boom to look after, we had our own respective businesses and then of course a t-shirt shop! It was too much. We certainly learnt that taking on too much isn’t a good thing.

A healthy work/life balance is essential:  We worked too much in 2010. My recent operation on my elbow is evidence of that. And when I say worked too much, I mean 12 hour days, seven days a week for months on end. It’s not good for one’s physical or mental health. Lying on that operating theatre table, I felt incredibly vulnerable and also thankful that I wasn’t lying there for anything more serious than a compressed nerve, from too much typing no doubt. But it certainly brings it home to you that downtime is incredibly important and work is just secondary.

Social media is king:   If there was one thing that helped to get our name out there in 2010, it was social media. We’re fast approaching 13,000 followers on Twitter and subsequently have reached a ‘critical mass’ on our site. When you think we had just 9,000 followers at the end of November, you can see how crucial social media has become. If it wasn’t for Twitter or Facebook, I strongly believe it would’ve been a much steeper mountain to climb to achieve the unique visitors we’re now getting.

Don’t give up:  No matter now hard things get, it’s always a good idea to keep going. Unless of course something isn’t working. Creative Boom will be two years old on 24th July 2011. I’m determined to keep the site going and making it bigger and better, even though it takes up a lot of our time and energy. I’m so passionate about helping others and providing something for free to freelancers and small businesses, that I just can’t and won’t give up.

And that’s what we’ve learnt throughout 2010. Here’s to another 12 months of learning!

Do you know, I still can’t believe it’s been 18 months since we launched Creative Boom. And with our second birthday coming up in July, I thought I’d dig out the old Analytics and see how we’ve grown over the past year or so.

Well, it’s a lovely graph with a line that keeps stepping up and up. All in all, there seems to be a peak and then it stays level after that peak until the next one. In 18 months, we’ve created a staircase graph.

It’s really interesting how you can guess what caused each spike or ‘next level up’ on the old visitors stats. It’s usually when we announce a new design. We’ve actually had five redesigns since we started in July 2009. Yes, that’s right - five! But most of those have been Wordpress themes. It was only the last two - including the current one - that were bespoke designs.

In our first six months, spikes in visitors was also coinciding with my social media activity… especially in those weeks when I didn’t have much freelance work and I had lots of spare time on my hands. God how I used Twitter! I networked like a demon and also made a point of approaching/cold calling loads of agencies across the UK.

When I look at the visitors we had on the 1st December 2009, we had around 500 people looking at our site. Compare that to over 3,500 on 1st December 2010 and you can see how far we’ve come.

I always worry the numbers will start to go down again, but they’ve always been consistent. It’s only really Christmas periods that we see a drop in visitors but on Christmas Day 2010 we still had over 500 visitors! Not bad for a humble, little website.

I do sometimes feel an overwhelming sense of panic that we’re not providing a good enough resource. But then, I have to remember that this is only a spare time project and one that I started after being affected by the recession. I guess that’s why people have supported us throughout these past 18 months and kept coming back for more. Because we’ve never really been in it to make money, just to help folks like us - trying to survive and keep our heads above water.

And I’m the first person to stand up and say we don’t know what we’re doing half the time. We don’t! Creative Boom has always been organic and an evolving project, something that will hopefully help as many creatives as possible. 

All I know is that we’ve grown so much since our launch and I’m determined to offer real value to our followers. It’s not easy when you have no budget or support, just your own skills/time. But rest assured, once we’ve finished off a few freelance projects to start off the New Year on an even financial footing, we’ll be investing some more of hubby Tom’s web development skills to make even more improvements to Creative Boom. Just watch this space! (Fingers crossed Tom will have time in February as planned)

Well here’s the first post for Creative Boom’s new blog. We’ve decided to do this separately, so we don’t clutter up Creative Boom with our own ramblings.

We also thought this would be a good place to chat about what’s happening with the site and how it develops over time.

There’s certainly a lot in the pipeline after recently relaunching our entire site with a bespoke monochrome design and custom-built CMS.

And there’s plenty more to reveal in the coming months, especially now we’ve conducted a survey (and a pretty basic one at that). Over 670 of you have responded so far and we’re taking everything you’ve suggested into account.

So follow this blog if you want to stay posted on what’s happening behind the scenes and have a good old nose at what the team are up to, including myself Katy Cowan, husband Tom and my younger brother Alex.