MediaLoot: First Month In Review

It’s only been a month and a half since we launched MediaLoot but already we’ve had an incredible number of people join our community and a lot of amazing things have happened.  Over the last 6 weeks we’ve released icon sets, texture packs, print templates, web elements, and more—all while working to deliver the most intuitive and beautiful web-interface we can.

Throughout this whole time you guys have been instrumental in offering feedback and shaping our future, so we thought it would be really cool for us to share some of the things we’ve done, some of the things we’re working on, and some of our progress over this first month.

Let’s take a look.

First Month by Numbers

One of the most interesting ways to see our progress is by looking at some of the statistics. While we can’t share all of our numbers, we can certainly give some interesting numbers.

• Total Pageviews: 205,429
• Number of Downloads: 66,296
• Bandwidth Costs: (ouch)
• Twitter Followers: 1,684
• Facebook Fans: 624
• Number of Hours Worked: off the chart

The Greatest Hits

We had a bunch of cool things happen in our very new existence—here are a few of the best of the first month:

• Top Free Resource: Incredibly Detailed 3D Icons by Tatyana Suhodolska
• Top Member Resource: Soft Satin Web Button & Icon Set by Mason Hipp
• Most Vocal Member: Yigit Ozdamar (17 comments)
• Most Popular Tutorial: How To Create a Stylish Navigation Bar In Adobe Fireworks

Of course, there were hundreds of other really great things that happened, but we can’t fit them all here so we’re going to wait until next month

Most Stressful Moment

We had a few moments during our first month of operation that were a bit, well, hectic. The first one almost took the whole site down, and makes for quite a funny story:

Oh crap, we broke it!

In wee the hours before launching MediaLoot we were doing our best to streamline the code and optimize the site for that inevitable first day of traffic. As we were going through all of the key pages of the site, we found some javascript on the ‘join us’ page that Natalie and I were SURE didn’t do anything… final last words, right?

Anyhow, we took it out and didn’t have any second thoughts. A few short hours later, just as we were about to launch, all hell broke loose:

Natalie: “I think the checkout is broken, don’t send the launch announcement yet”
Me: “WHAT! I just sent it!” (cue heart attack…)
Me Again: “Okay, what’s broken?”
Natalie: “Members can join and pay but it won’t give them access to the site. The sign-on isn’t working…”
Me: “Oh no…”

Needless to say we retraced our steps and managed to fix the problem within a few minutes, but boy was it scary. In the end we only had two or three members who ran into the problem, and we promptly emailed them and gave them usernames and passwords. Moral of the story: Don’t delete code minutes before launching a major new website.

What’s in the Works

This wouldn’t be a complete “month in review” if we didn’t give some indication as to what is coming up in the future. While the first month was really great, we want to make sure that the second, third, and fourth are even better.

Our primary focus right now is on new resources. We know that to be as valuable as possible we need to have the best collection of desgins on the web, and we’re doing everything we can to make that possible. I know the last week has been slow, but keep your eyes open because we’ve got a few bangs coming up soon

Our secondary focus is on site features. We’re working to open up registration to the public so that anyone can post in the forums and save resources to their favorites. Another feature that’s been requested frequently was an affiliate program, so we’re putting together a custom script that should integrate flawlessly with your MediaLoot account. Finally, we have a few secrets that should make MediaLoot an even better deal for everyone—so we’re really looking forward to the growth over the next few months.

Thank You

To finish this post off I just want to say a quick thank you to everyone who has participated in the MediaLoot community, and especially to all of our MediaLoot members who have shown faith in us and have been willing to support our growth right from the start.

Thanks everyone, we could not have done it without you!