ScienceFiction.com tops 1 million monthly pageviews and reshuffles its ownership.
Domain name investor Braden Pollock is now part owner of ScienceFiction.com, LLC, joining Patrick Ruddell in the online site that wants to be the “TechCrunch of science fiction”.
I caught up with Ruddell today to understand what this means for his business and how the site is doing.
Ruddell said that he and Pollock bought out the previous partners, so now both own and equal share of the company.
Domain Name Wire: How has ScienceFiction.com changed since you started?
The short answer, besides a new partner, is a lot has changed. After the launch via TechCrunch.com in December of 2010 we were looking at about 45,000 visits per month. Problem is there wasn’t any growth the first six months. I let my previous partners run content and social media until June of 2011 when, with the help of my kick-ass wife, we took over every aspect of the business, including a website redesign.
DNW: When you first started on ScienceFiction.com you weren’t a real SciFi buff. Has this changed?
This is true, I only saw this as a business opportunity. Although I still see this as a business opportunity, I am now a big fan of anything Science Fiction. The site has really brought me back to my childhood. After not reading comic books for 20+ years I now own hundreds. In addition to comic books my wife and I watch a lot of sci-fi tv shows and movies. Oh yea, my wife has fallen in love just like me.
DNW: How has the site grown so far? What are your plans for growth?
Once we took control in June we made a big push on social media, something I love, and added more writers. With this we were able to more than double traffic to 102,000 visits in July. As we continued with this course traffic grew, September we saw 205,000 visits. The next big step for us was to be included in Google News which I submitted for in September/October. Finally, on December 1st we got approval and inclusion. With this one change traffic took a tremendous leap as we closed December with 439,000 visits, over 1.2 million pageviews.
January is already looking good, average daily visits are higher than last month. At this point it is about putting out quality content on a consistent basis. We have roughly 15 excellent writers putting out 7-13 article per day.
Plans for growth, we still have a lot of SEO work to do. To date we haven’t done much, everything has been organic. We are adding our first in-office employee next week. It will be her job to get unique content via exclusive stories from production studios, comic companies and book publishers along with interviews from actors, writers and so forth. Content is the single most important part of our business. If a story is good then other sites pick it up, link to us and readers share it socially.
On a closing note, because I know my team will read this, without their continued help and support we wouldn’t have the success that we have today and will have in the future. We all see great things for this site.
Francois says
Nice job Patrick, congrats!
@Domains says
For some reason I keep forgetting you own this domain/site. A real category killer, great to see traffic up so much!
Poor Uncle says
Are you cash flow positive and/profitable?