The Autopian didn’t exist 30 days ago. It was just a dream shared by two car-loving weirdo journalist buddies and an absolute badass of a car salesman. But the dream is becoming more real everyday thanks to you, our dear readers. We’re finishing up our first month of existence, and we’re delighted to say that we’ve reached 1 Million pageviews. Thank you!
What does this mean? I’m not really sure. But I do know that, if you’d asked me a month ago how many folks would be reading our site after 29 days, I wouldn’t have guessed a number anywhere close to seven-digits long. Nobody knew what an “Autopian” was, we had no background in launching sites, and we weren’t partnering with a media company — this has been a jump into the unknown. Scary, in some ways, but we’re just happy to have you, our amazing contributors, and our partner Beau by our side.
The Autopian has a long way to go before it’s the website Jason Torchinsky and I want it to be. He and I are the only two full-time staffers right now (Thomas Hundal has been crushing it, though), so we’re an incredibly small team, and there’s only so long we can continue at this pace before we wear out our cylinder walls (I’ve been pouring zinc additive into Jason’s Diet Cokes to get him to hold up a bit longer). That’s just one of the many things we need to figure out. The user experience/commenting system could stand to be improved, I’d really like to build a stronger community, I think this place could stand to get even nerdier content-wise, and on and on.
But despite our growing pains, and despite the fact that we’re still a far cry from being anything close to profitable, we’re growing. Sure, we’re barely 5 percent of what the big-dog sites are size-wise, but our outlook — as engineers at my former company Chrysler often said — is “directionally correct,” and for that we thank you from the bottoms of our hearts (basically, our hearts’ oil pans).
P.S.: The Autopian has adopted the Toyota Manufacturing Process for article-production, so that means our team lives by “Kaizen,” or “continuous improvement.” So please keep sending in your feedback, either in the comments below or at tips@autopian.com
P.P.S.: Just a reminder that the two people in charge of running The Autopian are these two nutjobs — I mention this video so you’ll realize how much of a miracle all of this is:
From Torch:
David pretty much said what I’m thinking here as well: A month ago–actually, a leap year-February ago, not even a real month–there was no Autopian, and if you approached someone and asked if they were an Autopian, chances are they’d have sat you down and suggested you seek out your clergyperson, and likely requested that you let go of their arm because you’re gripping pretty tightly.
Now, though, everything is different! We live in a world where The Autopian exists, and I can see this amazing community of car dorks forming and somehow the world feels like a slightly better place.
We have so far to go still, and, sure, it’s a bit exhausting, but that could also be because my doctor said something about zinc poisoning? I guess I should look into that.
More importantly, thank you all for reading and supporting us and being the reason we do this. We can’t wait to do even more.
“I think this place could stand to get even nerdier content-wise”
-swoon-
Congrats guys. I really enjoyed reading your articles on that other site and really enjoy reading them here. I’m also you guys could take a leap and create your own site with your own rules!
BTW, can you put the reply comments box at the top of the comments?
Thanks again for creating a great site to visit
Congrats! I love the neutrality and the motorized vehicle focus of the articles. I love reading about obscure facts and subsystems.
David has 100% brought the Rust/Jeep quota. Need more actual “I wrenched all weekend and failed” articles.
Jason has the Head/Tail lights up to snuff. Need more Changli tom foolery and Pao updates.
Again, congrats on the successful launch and best wishes into the future.
Thank you for sticking to a car blog and not going to work for The Verge or anything like that. We need you to create these amazingly crazy articles about rust and tail lights.
Oh yeah, have I missed Jason’s first use of the word “cloaca”?
Excellent work! Now get Kancy Fristen (name changed for Legal Herb purposes) and Alanis not-the-morissette-one, back into the fold!
I have to say I’m impressed. The content is working it’s way out of trickle into stream, but they’re all articles I want to read. I tend to lurk but for this site I’m going to make an effort to post and interact more frequently. Also impressed with the growing collection of writers. You guys, here’s what I want to say. The cast and everyone involved with “Frasier” said from the very beginning of the show that they knew they were creating something special. That’s what this website feels like. Unless you all hate “Frasier” then it’s exactly NOT like that.
P. S. I was Swiss Family Bitchypants but then I sneezed. (bonus points)
I’m glad I found y’all here. I haven’t been to the other site since Autopian got a bookmark. If y’all had inline ads, I’d click on a few. Not the obnoxious “cover 60% of the page shifting all the content” ads like, well, you know where. But enough to hopefully make you a buck or two every time I visit. Just saying….
A million views without slideshows? Who’da thunk?
Congratulations! As someone who has had a passion for cars but not a ton of know-how, your drive (so to speak) has been inspiring and encouraging. The Autopian has been everything I hoped it’d be and so much more. Here’s to all the future Greep think pieces and illuminating headlight takedowns!
Well done, fellas. Can’t wait to see how this community grows. Don’t forget to keep learning about what makes your business tick and stick, or assume you know your customers. Best of luck for the next 29 days!
Will we be getting a daily email option or does that already exist? Great start so far!
Congratulations to the team. This is now my go-to. Bookmarked and have a great read every 2-3 days. Maybe we could add images in comments? The variety of content has been great!
This is awesome! I love what you guys are doing here. It’s quickly become my go to automotive site. Really happy for your early success and can’t wait to see what the future holds for this site.
Congratulations on your tremendous early success! With you two having complete control over your own creative content I have no doubt you will continue to grow and be successful for years (hopefully decades) to come.
Just please don’t let the success change your style as your bank accounts grow. You guys are perfect just the way you are.
Sometime early 13 or so I got on that other site. Enjoyed it for many years untill well…I didn’t. Too biased, too political, like headlines for car stuff were just coverups for personal blogs and opinions on non car related things. I got sick of it…. Glad you guys jumped ship and started this site, finally nice to read up on real auto articals and even get solid comments on response to them.
I think I’ll stay here for a while
Congratulations on a great first month, guys. Keep the great content coming, and I’ll keep reading. Looking forward to everything you’re working on!
Keep bringing interesting, I’ll keep reading. This site has helped soften the blow of having the mass talent exodus over at that other one.
I come by several times a day as the RSS feed drips silly headlines into my computer and I have to say that beyond knowing what I was going to get from the long resume of the site’s founders I also love the Ye Olde Internet vibes of just two dudes starting a website to talk about things they like. No World Domination, just silly car takes and wrenching stories.
Definitely will be commenting more as time passes and the commenting system gets better ????
Needs more ads and slideshows!
Nah I’m kidding. My only suggestion is moving this comment field to the top of the comments instead of the bottom of them.
Otherwise keep up the amazing work, guys!
The comment field belongs at the bottom! You should be required to read what was already posted before reposting it. Once you’ve done the required reading assignment, plagiarize away, friends!
Unless you want to move the comment field all the way up above the article. That would be great. Then we could all avoid the misery of reading this crap and base our comments on skimming the headlines. 😉
Just a simple word: congrats….
Page is now on my favorites bar for browsing.
Headed toward my home page soon I think.
It’s been great watching this thing take off over the last month. So many memorable articles already! Also, the comments section has been way less tribal and hierarchical than that of the old joint, so let’s keep it that way.
I’d love to see an in-depth article on the rise of Bring a Trailer and how it has effected the enthusiast car market. This guy who lives up the road from me, Jason who goes by Denwerks on BaT, is a superstar on there and would be a great source of insight. He’s selling my Land Rover Series 3 soon and I’ve been studying all of the nuances that make or break an auction lately. It is a strange scene and worthy of some real reporting due to how it has changed the market, in both good and bad ways, in such a relatively short time.
What makes me happy about this site is that in the span of two articles I now know (sort of, barely, at least have a working barstool babbling understanding of) the difference between forged and billeted wheels, and what the hell I am looking at (and the how and why) regarding suspension set-ups.
Sure, I could have googled both topics, watched some hit or miss YT vids, and a few hit or miss writeups, but you guys made it happen in one shot each. Pretty thoroughly at that. Awesome.
Fantastic start for the site and congrats on generating 1 million dolla…er, clicks so far!
That ^^^^ was comment 69, btw. cool…hehehe…yeah, yeah.
If they would just give us an option to throw money at them, they’d be (at least a little bit) closer to that million dollars 😉
That’s amazing! Congratulations!
Let’s put this in perspective old school: When Automobile magazine came out, it was from former staffers from Car and Driver and the only reason why they got off the ground was that David E. Davis leveraged everything to get sponsors from Chrysler.
Reader wise, you already got them beat in comparison.
Congratulations and keep soaring!
Oh, that was just me hitting reload.
Needs more likes!