2,000 not out
Monday September 6, 2010 - Email this article to a friend

We have just written our two thousandth news story here on PlanetSKI. So, what have we been writing about for 18 months?

Since we launched at the beginning of the 2008/09 season we have been producing an average of 3.5 different news and features stories per day, even over the summer months.

In fact last month, August, we averaged around 800 people per day looking at the site.

On one day we had 1,702 unique visits. We reckon that's pretty good for a ski web site in mid-summer.

Last weekend, September 4th and 5th, the stats shot up as people's thoughts turned from summer to winter. Over 100,000 pages were viewed - 104,321 to be precise.

Writing articles that interest skiers and snowboarders is not difficult. There's always plenty to write about, and we rarely have to call on that well-known journalist, Phil Space.

This week we hit 2,000 stories with this one about the ski brochures coming out and questioning whether people still need a brochure with the growth in the internet.

As a web site, rather than a magazine, it seemed rather appropriate to us.

The first one we wrote was this one about changes in Andorra, as it went up market.

In between we have tried to cover pretty much everything not just about skiing and snowboarding, but also stories that we think are interesting to skiers and snowboarders.

For the spirit of the mountainsFrom features about climate change with a slightly different perspective and giant icebergs breaking away from Antarctica to spectacular meteor showers over The Alps.

Sometimes they are stories set in the mountains; whether they be football teams training in the Austrian Alps before The World Cup or a man being fined $1m for speeding on a Swiss motorway.

One of them we even headlined, "This has absolutley nothing to do with skiing".

But most of them have been about skiing and snowboarding.

Whether it's been a feature on a powder day or tragic news of avalanche deaths.

Our snow reports do very well and people have praised us for our depth of coverage and telling it as it is.

The videos do well too whether they are about skiing, melting glaciers or something entirely different.

This interview with Glen Plake is one of the most viewed.

Our ski industry news is second to none and we like to think it tells it like it is without all the PR spin seen on other web sites.

We don't pretend to be a sport web site, but we do try to keep up to date with the main events like the Winter Olympics and the British Championships as well as covering the main freeride competitions and some more obscure sports.

So, where do we get all the stories from?

Simple. We keep our eyes and ears open out in the mountains observing what is happening and what interests people.

This winter we will have more people writing for us and keeping you informed and entertained with stories from the mountains. We will have many more videos too showing you what it is like out in the mountains.

Our thanks go to all our writers and people who feed us information and, most importantly, our gratitude goes to you; the PlanetSKI reader.

We are a news web site with content updated 24/7 so if you want to keep abreast of things then do click back.

Regularly, or you might miss something.

It is always tricky knowing when to move a story down or off the main pages; some people look on a daily, if not hourly basis, while others dip in and out a couple of times a week.

Hopefully we get the balance about right.

And just in case you were wondering this has been the most popular story and it has been looked at by tens of thousands of readers. Not surprising really as it's about sex.

This one was the least popular.

Read by only137 but you have just made it 138. Thanks.

Here's to the next 2,000!

For the spirit of the mountains