It may be hard to believe, but Freezenet.ca turns 5 years old today. Drew Wilson looks back at the accomplishments the site has experienced in that time.
On January 3, 2013, Freezenet came into existence. I wish I could say it started one bright sunny afternoon where I decided to open up the site to report on news when copyright and technology was in its infancy, but that is rather misleading.
In all honesty, it started during a rather difficult time for me. Before Freezenet started, I was one of the top journalists for another website called ZeroPaid. If you know filesharing and technology news before 2013, you very likely heard of ZeroPaid. At the time, things were going respectably well. Then, sometime in December, I received the bad news that ZeroPaid would effectively cease news production operations.
It was a difficult pill to swallow to have a rather good run of journalism suddenly come to an end like that. At the time, other opportunities were offered. None of which would see me write another word in news again. Having tried a few other things, I realized nothing really fit quite like being able to report on the news of the day in the world of copyright and technology.
At that stage, I had a choice: either call this whole journalism a career and say it has been a great run or find someway to stick around regardless of the circumstances. Unlike any other point in time in my career, however, there were no websites left to turn to. No website was left in existence that would accept non-blog style news that I could find. So, the only option left is to start my own website.
I set to looking for a host and researching WordPress technology as this is what I knew the most about at the time. By January, up goes the site with the default template. I write my first post and start this long journey.
Of course, I knew at this stage what it is that I was going up against. That became very apparent when I saw days where there is literally 0 hits on my site. When you are used to literally thousands of views a day, seeing nothing can be quite gut-wrenching because most might feel like they are nothing in spite of years of being in the public spotlight.
So, I buckled down and got to work writing content piece by piece. It involved long hours and even some burnout from time to time. Still, I pushed on by believing in myself that I can do it even if others had their doubts. Nothing was ever going to come easy, but with raw determination to build something, I forged ahead.
After more than four and a half years of dedicated hard work and determination, I got the site to the point of finally being able to write news. Last month, I was finally able to write news. Backed by all the years of hard work, in the matter of a mere 11 days, Freezenet became one of the largest news sites in filesharing and technology.
Freezenet still has a long way to go. Considering the circumstances I find myself in, I can only look back on these last 5 years and say that I can be proud at what I’ve accomplished so far. With no staff compliment to support this effort, it really is astonishing what has been accomplished here.
Of course, a lot of this wouldn’t be possible without you, the reader. I want to thank everyone who stops in from time to time to see read this site. Thank you for your dedication and patience. Here’s to another 5 successful years of independent journalism at Freezenet!
Drew Wilson on Twitter: @icecube85 and Google+.
