It is such a delight to be able to say that we have achieved that. While folks have been grateful right from go, we have had so many notes of thanks this year and this is a huge encouragement to us.

We are now closing in on 4300 articles from over 800 contributors and are read world-wide. On most days, at least 500 of our articles are read and on some, as many as 800. A huge thank you to all of you who continue to read and share our publication.

As always, I want to thank the authors, artists and photographers for all of their great contributions. As well, an enormous thank you to our Associate Editors for everything they do and for their friendship and support which keeps me going. It’s a privilege to work with all of you!

We will continue to expand our content on topics such as food, cooking, wine, sciences and philosophy. That said, we are always open to your thoughts and ideas if you feel there are topics that we should cover. Of course, you are also very welcome to contribute

Thank you for your support over the last six years.

Here’s to number 7!

Photo Credit

Happy Birthday – Creative Commons via www.tOrange.us

Wow! Another year has passed as we close in on 4000 articles from over 750 contributors!

Life As A Human continues to be read world-wide. While the USA, Canada and the UK continue to be our top three visitors, our exposure has grown significantly in Australia, India, France, The Netherlands, Brazil, Singapore, Ireland, South Africa and New Zealand. This, thanks to some great contributions from authors, artists and photographers in those countries and of course because of you, our fans, reading and sharing their great posts.

I am continuously humbled by the great efforts taken by our Associate Editors to bring words and images to life on our pages, for their ongoing moral support and their great sense of humor! It is a privilege to work with them and to call them my friends

We are all grateful for the authors, artists and photographers without whom we would have a very empty website. Thank you all for everything you have contributed and for promoting our site in your circles.

And so we head off into our sixth year. We have plans to increase our content in areas such as food, cooking, wine and the sciences. If there are things you think we can do to improve our publication, we are always open to your feedback and you are welcome to contact us at anytime or simply leave your thoughts and ideas below as comments.

Thank you for your support over the last five years. We really do appreciate it very much!

Photo Credit

Happy Birthday – Joey Gannon on flickr – Some Rights Reserved

I am constantly amazed at how time passes. We work, we play, we love, and we get a little bit older every single day. What makes it precious is the time we spend with those who mean the most to us, and, doing things we believe in. And if we do what we do because we have a vision … a vision that is predicated on the belief that the things we do make a difference in the lives of others, and the ones who mean the most to us also believe in that vision and support it, then we have found a very high measure of success.

Life As A Human is now read world-wide. Its authors have touched hearts and minds across this little blue globe we call Earth. Our home. Our world. A world that needs inspiration, love, ideas, beauty and above all else, truth.

In our own humble way, this is what we strive to bring to the table. Something of substance. Something that encompasses all beliefs and presents all points of view. Something that does not leverage the sensational, but rather provides a venue for those voices that need to be heard.

I am so very grateful to our authors, artists and photographers who provide the heart and soul of our pages. I thank you all from the depth of my being.

But, most of all, on this birthday, I want to thank all of those amazing people who have been a part of this journey. Some are new. Some have stayed the course with us for four years. Without you, we would not be here. You make this possible.

Thank you!

Happy Birthday!

Photo Credit

Bon anniversaire – Wikimedia Creative Commons

Today, we posted our 3000th article!

3000 articles, spanning some 170 topics, written by over 150 authors from around the world.

Quite a milestone, says I.

I just wanted to take a moment to express my appreciation to all of those who have made this possible.

To our writers 

Thank you for gracing our pages with your words. You have inspired many people, provided them with food for thought, made them laugh and made them cry. You have shared your insights and your experiences. You have opened your hearts and in so doing, you have opened the hearts and minds of people around the world. Have a peek: With the exception of a few places in central Africa, your words are read across the globe.

Life As A Human Readership

To the Life As A Human team

Thank you for your commitment to our vision and for all of the work you have done to get us to this point. Many people believe we have a corporate office where we all hang our hats when in fact, you are all located in different parts of the world. Some believe that we are a well funded entity, when in fact we are a sweat equity shop. That you continue to work towards our goals is a testament to your character and your integrity. I am humbled and privileged to work with you and to call you friends.

To our readers

Thank you for your continued support. Thank you for all of the comments you have left. Thank you for sharing us with your friends and through social media. Thank you for the times you have written me with encouraging words, ideas and the typos you spotted…usually mine! Without you, we would be a very lonely website!

In closing, I would like to ask you all a favor. Recently, we started our Making A Difference series. These are interviews with amazing people that give their time, their treasure, and their energy to make a difference in lives that otherwise might continue in hardship or be lost altogether. Please…share these stories. By doing so, you will be making a difference by encouraging those wonderful people and by bringing light onto the amazing work they are doing.

And so, we move on towards 4000.

Again, thank you all so much!

Cheers,

Gil

Time flies!

Has it really been three years?

It seems like only yesterday that we launched Life As A Human.

In three years, we have come such a long way. The last two birthdays, I gave you all a bunch of numbers and statistics to illustrate our growth and how we are doing. I’ll provide a few for you but I thought on this birthday, I might get a bit more philosophical to offer a different measure of our success.

From our About page … a mission statement:

“A multi-author blog featuring more than 150 international writers and bloggers, Life As A Human is a multicultural matrix for writing that moves and inspires – a venue for the authentic voice, regardless of age, nationality or perspective.“

We really wanted this to be a place for everyone and that is exactly what it has become. We are now read in 218 countries/territories and our 2700+ articles are written by authors from around the globe. Some are as young as 11, others well into their 80’s. These writers who come from a wide variety of cultures, perspectives and spiritual beliefs have indeed moved and inspired about 2 million visitors who have read over 4 million pages.

We wanted this to be a place that builds people up, not rips people down. And while we have published some thought-provoking articles, we believe that we have achieved our goal of being a site that celebrates our similarities – and our differences – through stories that unite our experiences in meaningful ways.

We continue to receive a lot of positive feedback from our readers, and that remains our most important yardstick. Our readership and our traffic continues to grow steadily. We are also getting noticed by many other sites and have begun forging some very interesting relationships with publishers and publicists. A year ago, we might have had one or two enquiries each month from publishers and publicists. Now, a week does not go by where we don’t receive at least 5 or 6!

Our server has been extremely busy serving up over 221 million hits, 12.4 million pages which all translates to over 4.5 terabytes of data transferred!

In the coming months, you will start to see some new types of content at Life As A Human including school writing contests, articles on repurposing, food and recipes.  As well, we will be publishing many more photo essays from some very talented photographers and putting a lot of energy into our art site.

Thank You …

I want to thank all of you, our readers, for your continued support and for sharing our site with your families and friends. I am so grateful to all of our authors for their excellent contributions and for sticking with us as we grow. And, enormous thanks to the entire Life As A Human team for all the work that they do to make sure there is always fresh content on our pages.

I ended last years birthday note by saying “This year, we learn to run.” We have done that, but I can also tell you this:

We’re just getting warmed up!

Photo Credit

Birthday Balloon – Microsoft Office Clip Art Collection

“That idea was to build a place, this website, which would present excellent writing across a wide range of topics. A place that would not feature sensationalism, but that would always strive to be sensational.”

Today, two years later, we celebrate our second birthday. It’s been an amazing journey so far and I just wanted to take a few minutes to describe where we are at and to express my thanks to many.

Where We Are

Our site has enjoyed constant positive feedback from it’s readership and to us, that is single most important metric. Here are a few other metrics of what we have achieved.

• As of this moment, Life As A Human has published 1,866 articles written by over 100 authors, from around the world.
• We are ranked as #45,932 of the top million sites in the USA and #3,330 of the top million sites in Canada. It’s important to note that there are hundreds of millions of websites in North America.
• We have been host to over 958 thousand visitors who have read close to 2 million pages.
• We have transferred over 2.7 terabytes of data and for those of you who still think about hits, we have had 122 million hits.

While numbers don’t tell the the whole story, they are useful to us as they spell out our growth in measurable terms. And while there have been ups and downs, we have grown steadily since the days of our first articles.

As you can see in this chart, things are really picking up … we’re just getting warmed up!

Thank You …

To our authors, for everything you have brought to the table. Your words, your pictures, your ideas and your willingness to be a part of our online magazine as we have gone through our growing pains. It has been particularly rewarding to develop friendships with so many of you.

To our readers, for your continued support of our website through your readership, your comments, the encouraging emails that many of you have sent in to us and for telling your friends about Life As A Human.

To our fans in Twitter, Facebook and Stumbleupon, for sharing our site, individual articles and photos with all of your friends.

To the many site enablers we have worked with on everything from the style-sheets for the site to featured widgets, to SEO and so much more. Many of you have provided a great deal of help and encouragement to us.

To all of the photographers and artists out there who generously share their work through creative commons. Our pages would be pretty bare without you.

And last but not least, to the Life As A Human Team and their families, for all of the time you have invested in bringing this site to where it is today. Many of our readers are not aware that we all do this from our homes in the evenings, early mornings and weekends, after our day jobs and family commitments are looked after. Our journey has not always been an easy one, but I can’t think of a better team to navigate rough waters with. You have all done such an excellent job.

All of you have played a part in our success and we are very grateful!

And so, we enter into our third year. In 2011, we launched the Photo Site and the Art Gallery. Between the 3 sites, we look forward to bringing you more and more great content and engaging in more and more conversations with you. As always, we invite your feedback and encourage you to leave comments for our authors as they post new articles and images.

2 years old … we’ve come a long way, but we’re just a toddler really. This year, we learn to run

Photo Credit

Birthday Cake – Microsoft Office Clip Art Collection

It seems like only yesterday that we said:

‘To our readers, today we have launched the site with seven articles. In the days, weeks and months to come, you will be introduced to a group of excellent authors from around the world. We will also present you with talented photographers, movie-makers, artists and musicians. Through their articles, posts and comments, you will get to know them, and they will get to know you.’

So how did we do in our first year?

Check it out! Using round numbers, we have:

– Posted 1225 articles through the contributions of 71 regular authors and about 30 guest authors.

– Received 4513 comments from our readers.

– We’ve had 650,000 page views and close to 30 million hits!

– Received tremendous feedback from our readers and were selected by the Canadian Weblog Awards as first place winners in the Group Weblog category and third place winners for Best New weblog.

It’s been a great year and it has been a privilege for us to work with such great contributors every day. We are no longer crawling, we have learned to walk!

To celebrate, we have launched another site!

Life As A Human Photography officially went live today. We are looking for guest contributors so if you are a shutter bug, we know you’ll be interested in that too.

What’s Our Birthday Wish?

We have one wish on our birthday wish list. Please share us! Most of our growth has been organic fueled by our readers sharing our site with their friends and families. At the bottom of every article, there is a share bar that makes it easy to share our articles. There are further sharing options at the bottom of your browser on every page.

If you use any of these social media mechanisms, please share us! If you don’t use social media, then please e-mail your friends about us.

We thank you in advance

Thank You!

To achieve all of this has been a tremendous amount of work. But, without the ongoing contributions of our authors and the support of our readers, none of it would have been possible. The Life As A Human team thanks you all for your support, your readership and your engagement through comments.

We know you will enjoy the upcoming articles at Life As A Human and the photography at Life As A Human Photography. Please never hesitate to let us know if there are ways we can better serve you.

Our Very Best Wishes To You!

Your Life As A Human Team

Within a week of that idea, our team was built, and we have been working hard ever since to turn that idea into something real. It has been an honor and a privilege to work with this vibrant and dedicated team. Six months later, this is the fruit of their labor. It’s February 1, 2010 and our doors are finally open.

Life As A Human has begun!

To say that the writing community has expressed a great deal of interest in Life As A Human would be an understatement. Right from day one we have had tremendous feedback, all of which has been positive and encouraging.

We want to thank all of the contributors who have embraced our vision. Their support and the trust they have placed in Life As A Human has been extraordinary. Without them, these pages would be, well, pretty empty.

A huge thank you also goes out to all of our social media friends. Thank you so much for your tweets, stumbles and Facebook posts. Please don’t stop.

To our readers, today we have launched the site with seven articles. In the days, weeks and months to come, you will be introduced to a group of excellent authors from around the world. We will also present you with talented photographers, movie-makers, artists and musicians. Through their articles, posts and comments, you will get to know them, and they will get to know you.

Every day, new articles will appear in our Recent Articles section. As they do, the contributors’ names in the Authors link in the navigation bar will become click-able and you will be able to see their profiles and submissions. As well, you will see the Categories section grow very quickly over the next few weeks.

And so, with that said, welcome to Life As A Human! We hope you visit often and provide us with feedback and new ideas born of that wonderful quality called human creativity.

Cheers,

The Life As A Human Team

Photo Credits

Public Domain Photo – courtesy of  PDPhoto

Behind the scenes, your Life As A Human team have been busy little bees signing up authors that we know you will love. There has been a tremendous amount of interest about our little project and many of you have shown your support for which we are very grateful!

It won’t be long now before we open the doors to the collective efforts of some wonderful writers, each with a focused perspective, contributing their unique insights on all varieties of the human experience.

We are also looking forward to embarking on our philanthropic mission, getting to know and providing help to those who need it most.

So stay tuned … Life As A Human will launch on Feb 1, 2010.

Until then, be safe and laugh lots!

The human race has one really effective weapon, and that is laughter.- Mark Twain

See you soon!