Back in January, the site's founders Samantha and Karen, mentioned the option of closing the site down and the rest of the writers (who've been on "staff" since last summer) gave a resounding please, no! But life interferes, as it tends to, and over the past few months they've concluded that it's time to put the baby to bed.
A lot of this is Regretsy's fault, of course. I came on board to Craftastrophe at the suggestion of my friend Stephanie, who saw their open call for new bloggers and forwarded it to me with an emphatic, "You should do this!" And while I'd seen the site (probably via Stephanie as well) I wasn't an avid reader or anything.
The same can be said of Regretsy, minus the part about me eventually blogging for them.
If you read a blog that trashes other people's crafts, it's likely to be Regretsy. And this is not because Regretsy is inherently better or funnier, but because the woman who started Regretsy was already famous when she created the blog. And if you didn't know, being famous gives you a leg up on publicity. It also makes it really easy to get books published, which in turns brings in more readers, and on and on.
Being more of a mom n' mom operation (and Canadian to boot), Craftastrophe couldn't really compete. In years past Craftastrophe was easily clearing several thousand hits per day, but over the recent months traffic has dwindled to the point where the expense of the site is exceeding its income, and Karen and Sam have made the executive decision to pull the plug.
My boyfriend said I should ask to take over the site myself, but honestly I have so many side projects going on at all times that the thought of another endeavor (at least right now) is more tiring than fun.
One of the things I've been trying to put together over the past 2 months is a book proposal, which is almost finished. It feels like bad luck to talk about it before it's done though so I don't want to say anything more, but the majority of my before-regular-job hours have been taken up by it, so much so that today I woke up thinking, "You know what, let's not work on the proposal today."
Nevertheless, I am bummed to see Craftastrophe go. I'd been the top trafficked writer since September (which meant a $100 bonus each month) and looked forward to my weekly search for awfulness. But everything comes to an end eventually, and now that I'm not posting for them anymore, maybe my own blog will experience a resurgence in update frequency.
I can hope, right?
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