Farewell Good Readers!

As might be apparent from the title, I, Brambleten, will be finishing writing for Noobs and their Paintbrush once this final article is written. The blog itself isn't going anywhere - that's the beauty of a group blog - cut off one head and two more will rise. Nope, that's Hydra, but its the right message (the more popping up part, not the lopping off of heads).

I have no doubt that there will be someone out there for whom the blog would be an ideal platform for to allow them to create content for an already developed and growing audience. If you think that you are that person, fire Merkeysa a message at noobsandtheirpaintbrush@gmail.com.


I was asked to join the blog by Merkeysa right back near the beginning of January 15, which feels forever ago. Getting on at the ground floor, it's been great fun seeing the blog pass landmarks - 100 articles, 50 followers, 100k views, 250 facebook likes etc but over the last few weeks I've come to realise that for me, that was the addictive bit. I'm a numbers geek - thousands of hours logged on Football Manager will prove that - so seeing page views increase, working out which sources produced the most shares and interest - that quickly became as interesting to me as the actual content creation side.

For those that haven't seen it before, here's a quick look at behind the scenes of the blog. The first shows the articles and their comments & views, while the second shows more general stats such as where our biggest weekly views are from (the map bottom right) and general page activity. 

With these stats, it becomes easy to get caught up in finding patterns - that first image shows Necropocalypse's article with far more views than the others - what did he do to get people interested in that piece, how can we take advantage of that again (post it to Eavier Metal in FB as a link rather than pictures is the answer to that one). Kickstarter unboxings are popular if you get them earlier than other people, but general GW reviews and content outstrips most other stuff.

All of a sudden that's a lot of thinking and time. Hobby mojo comes and goes, so over the last few weeks while I haven't have the mojo to be painting, I also haven't been creating the content and in turn I haven't been spending the time boosting that content, leading to noticing how much time I was spending on stuff not directly involved in creating the content.

All in all, I've had a great time writing for the blog but at the moment witing is more a chore than a joy, which means it's time to put it aside for a while.

While I've been at the blog we've published over 500 articles and has over 200,000 views, which is absolutely fantastic so I'm looking forward to stepping back into the shoes of a reader and seeing the next 500 articles - no pressure guys!

Thanks for reading,

Bram