TheFloatingRumShack.com Turns One Year Old!
 The first day of February 2010 means that TheFloatingRumShack.com has been running for a year. Party hats might not necessarily be on and there's certainly no jelly and ice cream, but we think that we are going to celebrate anyway - a glass of rum might feature - you just never know!
The concept of TheFloatingRumShack.com might have been born much earlier than the beginning of February 2009 (actually the middle of 2008), but due to a large amount of faffing around, it took our first Rum Club [click here to be reminded of that one] to actually cause the wheels to start turning. Having decided to go to Rum Club and front up as Rum Bloggers - we thought actually having a blog might be really important to our credibility. In the manner of students the length and breadth of the land (and I'm sure throughout the entire span of history), I pulled an all-nighter to put something together. It was not pretty (but then current incarnation isn't 'all that' either!), but it was ours all the same.
So we started at Rum Club and it's ironic (to me anyway) that the night of the 1st February 2010, will see us heading off to Rum Club for an informative talk on Skipper Rum as well as rum's predecessor (apparently) - Arrack. There will also be a darts contest, which might require the guests to wear body armour if the quantity of rum consumed is excessive! I'm not going to comment one way or the other on TheFloatingRumShack.com's skill with a set of arrow in ones hand. Let's just see what happens eh?
I think it would be an understatement if I said the last year has been extremely good fun - we've met so many great people and been to some cool places, all in pursuit of rum. If the year ahead is half as good, it will be brilliant - but it feels like 2010 is already shaping up to be amazing.
What's the goal for the year ahead? Well, to keep bringing rum news to the UK. But to grow the scope and readership so that anyone in the industry automatically adds TFRS to the press release list so that we can continue to big up Rum! At the end of February last year (the first full month), we had 283 visits to the site, with 134 unique visitors. During this last month: January (which is nearly finished as I write this) we had 1,329 unique visitors and 3,461 visits to the site alone! Over 16,000 visits in the year just passed.
In general two thirds of the visitors are from the UK (give yourself a big round of applause UK), with the other third comprising so many other countries - primarily America, but also the Caribbean region, China, Russia, all over Europe and Scandinavia, large parts of South America, Asia and surprisingly the Middle East - nearly 70 countries in all this month.
It's a little humbling to us, but also amazing. Having the opportunity to reach so many, surely the UK rum industry would want to grab the opportunity and share its news with us? Whatever happens, we will continue to work hard and take the website to bigger and better things - promise!
(It still) sounds like it's going to be fun! We really hope you'll come along for the ride.
Cheers,
Pete & Pauline
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