Recapping TechRaptor in 2019

This year has been one of many highs, a few lows (yay algorithm updates!), and a ton of growth for TechRaptor. We rocketed past last years’ metrics, improved the speed of the site, and spent a lot of time finding new ways to give and present good content to you. We accomplished a lot, and I’m excited to share as much of what happened this year as possible.

TechRaptor growth in 2019

Pageviews grew by 59% and revenue doubled in 2019. This was spurred on by growth in our SEO, as well as integration of a new ad vendor + Insticator, the Quiz widget you see below articles. We’re hoping to build on this in 2020 with new site features!

TechRaptor Articles in 2019

We published almost 5,200 articles in 2019. That’s 433 a month, or 100 a week, or 14 a day!

By comparison, we published ~3,000 articles in 2018. MASSIVE content growth in 2019!

Within that number, we published the following:

News - 3389
Features - 221
Opinions - 54
Guides - 62
Previews - 221
Reviews - 309
Originals - 157
Interviews - 64
Adult Gaming - 51
Videos - 69
Deals - 138
Blog - 17
Game Pages - 378

We published 315 articles during E3 (E3 2019 Content Hub), and Evolve PR recognized us as one of the top 10 outlets at E3 2019!

If you’re looking for all the places you can follow us to keep up, check out this page.

The New TechRaptor Site

In 2016, we gave TechRaptor a graphical overhaul and added features like game pages and membership. Little did we know at that time, adding those features would at times slow WordPress to a crawl, and that there would be very little we could do to improve the bloat that was put on the database. In early 2018 we started putting plans together to move to a new CMS, and re-launch a faster and more feature-full site.

In September, we did just that. We saw page loads go to a quarter of what they were before, added new features to game pages, and added some features we’d been missing in the past. We’ve also been able to tailor and display content in a more clear and organized manner, especially on the homepage, and various “category” pages across the site.

In 2020, we’re FAR from done. We have one really big feature we’re going to be implementing,that should be a great resource for gamers across the web, as well as the return of free/paid membership. Paid membership will start simple (ad removal), but we’ll be adding more benefits over time to add significantly more value to the package. We hope you’ll join us in this, because more sustainable revenue will lead to even more content for you to consume, as well as the ability to really expand our features and video offerings! P.S. Podcasts are coming!!

Growing our team

In 2019, we grew the TechRaptor team in a meaningful way. We focused on the people we had, developing them and their skillset, and working with them on creating awesome content. We hired less in 2019 than any other year, and we’ve got an incredible core team producing content daily.

We raised our pay 4 times over the course of 2019, with another raise in pay effective on January 1st, and made meaningful changes to how we pay out that sees our people getting paid faster than ever before. It's a really important thing, for me personally, that my people continue to see improvements in pay as time goes on and we grow more and more.

What really excites me, is our culture, though. When it comes to working somewhere you enjoy, the atmosphere is super important. We put a lot of effort into finding ways to make TechRaptor a more positive and uplifting place to work and chat, and in 2020 we’ll be building more tools to facilitate the best working environment we can have for this incredible team.

Growing our content

We post A LOT of news, as you can see by the numbers above. Every week day, you’ll generally have 10+ things to read, written 100% by our staff and the only copy/paste you’ll find are quotes from the developer, because our goal is to add value to everything you read. You’re coming here to read TechRaptor, not what the PR people wrote verbatim, right?

But we write more than news. Our TechRaptor Originals are chock full of interesting stories for you to read, and we’ve done some killer anniversary features, and features in general over the years, and this year was no exception. Here’s a few that we published this year that are worth your time!

The 100 Best Games of the 2010s

How Some of Vanilla WoW's Most Popular Dungeons Were Made

Surviving EverQuest's Hard-as-nails Classic Servers

The Rising Reception of Life is Strange 2

Plasticity Aims to Teach Sustainability to Everyone

Discussing The Legal Issues of the Protecting Children from Abusive Games Act

Better With Age: Thief: Deadly Shadows 15 Years Later

How Devespresso Games Crafted a Brand New World in Vambrace: Cold Soul

G2A Questions Why We Have to Pay For DLC and the Industry Responds

How Julian Gollop Created Influential Strategy Classic X-COM: UFO Defense

A World Of Demons - Demon's Souls' Unique Approach to Online Multiplayer

Queer Characters in Gaming - A Brief History

How Chucklefish Designed Wargroove

What is Cyberpunk?

Bullet Points: The Metro Series' Bullet Economy

Character Select: Vivi
 

In 2020 we’re expanding our non-news content. We’ll have more video reviews, interesting articles, and so much for your consumption. Make sure to give us a follow!

Improving Ourselves and Our Platform in 2019

I personally made a mistake last year, integrating Taboola into the site after some long discussions and assurances of quality. It's my fault that our website was negatively affected, and I'm going to do significantly more due diligence in 2020 and beyond.

We added recommendations at the bottom of articles, followed by the latest content we’ve posted, aimed at giving you more things that might interest you!

We work extremely close with our ad vendors to ensure that ads don’t slow the page, prevent you from reading, or impact the reading experience in any way. We spent a lot of time on this in 2019, and TechRaptor is faster and quicker to load than ever because of it!

We’re expanded our catalog of Game Pages in 2019, so that you can quickly find all the content about a certain game, as well as what games are upcoming you might be interested in! This year we plan to continue that in a big way, and are in the process of building a big new feature that gamers will love.

Looking to the Future

In 2020, we plan to change our commenting system to foster a better community, give you neat features to use, and get more people talking about what they love! (You’ll be able to use Disqus to login, or a TechRaptor account when membership goes live!)

In 2020, we’re looking to grow our Discord - a place where you can interact directly with our staff and other readers of the site.

In 2020, we’re expanding our social presence, doing more to re-post content that’s topical for current events, new releases, or just generally cool things to read and watch. (I'd like to mention that our feed will remain focused on stories and features about gaming and the industry, with the exception of some Geralt memes here and there.)

In 2020, we just launched a new Mascot. This doesn’t really improve anything other than having another dope raptor as our mascot. You can check it out, and help us name him/her here!

I have personally failed, time and time again, to fulfill Kickstarter physical rewards. I often get wrapped up in growing the site, and don’t put the right amount of attention into taking care of the people who have supported us. That said, Kickstarter rewards will be shipping at the end of January. If your address has changed since the Kickstarter, please get in touch with me (Use the contact us page!) so we can get things to the right place!

There’s a number of other things on the horizon, which you can read about in our site roadmap, but rest assured we’re looking to make regular changes that will make TechRaptor an essential resource, and community that you want to check in on every day!

Thank You

We’ve had an incredible year. We wouldn’t be here without you, though. Your support, comments, shares, feedback, and everything you do is incredibly appreciated.

We hope that in 2020, we’ll see more of you in the comments, in our Discord and on our social feeds! If you ever have a question or a concern, you can reach out to us!

Happy New Year!