It’s that time again we’re rapidly approaching the final spoiler of the series and it’s time for my annual thanks where I thank those who have contributed towards another successful year for the strictly spoiler. And it has been another successful year. At the time of writing the site has been viewed 2.5million times this series by over 550,000 individual people.
It’s been a mixed series though with some highs and lows and truthfully that’s shadowed my year in general which has also had some highs and lows. On a personal note my highs this year include graduating with a BA (hons) in Photography and meeting the person who last month became my girlfriend. But it’s also had some lows which included the breakdown of my 11 year long relationship (and the way in which it broke down).
The 2017 series of Strictly has been much the same. There’s been highs which include just how much my social networking accounts have exploded this series. There’s now over 15,000 of you following me on twitter and about 8500 of you liking the Facebook Page. Both of those networks have pretty much doubled over the course of the series and so much discussion is now happening on those networks (more than happens on this site this series).
However there’s been some lows. The press attention at the start of the series and around the time of the Christmas special spoiler. Truth be told I don’t like being the centre of attention like this and I don’t think a guy running a blog which posts information that is already out there if you know where to look really warrants front page news (Daily Star/Star On Sunday I’m looking at you!). Of course most the newspapers take a negative slant on what I do not because they disagree with what I do but because I’m doing something that they would love to do but they cant because they wouldn’t get invited to all the cool BBC parties anymore.
Anyway this is supposed to be a thanks post so I probably should start thanking some people. I’ll start by thanking each and every one of you reading this post. I’m more than aware that the majority of visitors to the site don’t actually read anything besides the 2nd paragraph of the spoiler post so you people who actually read all my content, engage with each other on the site and the social networks and make this community what it is deserve a lot of thanks.
I also want to thank those of you who donated money to help out with the sites growing needs. This series the site once again outgrew a web hosting solution. The solution I now have in place should (in theory) now be unbreakable as if you do break a server it will just make more but I guess we’ll find out in a few hours. The donation button/link has been actually surprisingly well used and your money has for the most part been ploughed straight back into the site to try and keep it up at peak times. If you want to help out with the hosting costs or just want to buy me a pint you can use the button below which paypal take about 5% of any money sent through or this link which sends all the money to me
I also want to thank those of you who have been patient and supportive whilst the site has had issues. I’ve actually had quite a bit of grief especially on twitter when the site has had downtime and I really don’t need grief when I’ve been trying my hardest to work on the issues (in between maintaining my social networking channels, looking after my boys half the week, studying for a post graduate degree and beginning a new relationship). Thankfully the majority of you have been patient whilst I try and resolve the site issues.
I also want to thank my girlfriend. Last weekend when the site went down again despite a change of hosting I was so stressed and so upset and actually close to tears because I care a lot about this site and the work that I do for it. She could tell I was stressed from my text messages to her and just spontaneously sent me a text message saying she loved me which made me feel a lot better and got me through that weekend.
Finally it wouldn’t be a thank you post without talking about my sources and as far as sources go I actually have more sources now than the one source I’ve had previous series that I’ve done this. I’ve also sourced moles myself some weeks through my social media channels and my thanks go out to them. However most of the spoilers you have read this series have come from a spoiler group on Facebook which is a similar community to the one I have built myself on Facebook. That group is managed by three lovely ladies who have sourced many of the spoilers through moles or other sources and just like I did last year for my usual source, this series I would like to arrange to send a thank you bouquet of flowers in the new year to each of the admin on that group as a thanks for all the spoilers they have supplied.
That pretty much covers everything I think so thank you all once again (especially if you’re reading this far in the post) and I hope you all have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year and I’ll see you all for the 2018 series!
