Question: How Does Freezenet Grow Moving Forward?

I wanted to take a moment and ask you how Freezenet continues to grow and evolve. Do you have any ideas?

If there is one thing I’ve been dedicated on, it’s continuing to move and grow the website. Over the years, I’ve done a lot to expand and grow the website.

The first thing I did was offer guides on a variety of things on the site. I felt that imparting some of the knowledge I have gained over the years would be useful to others. Next, I added game reviews and music reviews. Since it was adjacent to the technology news coverage I have, it seemed to make sense to add that as an extra feature to attract more visitors (to be clear, before Freezenet, I never actually did reviews of any kind, so this is a Freezenet exclusive feature). I added a massive Wiki featuring several life times worth of music ripe for general exploration (development on it is currently paused as I work my way through the game reviews I promised to make).

From there, I also opened up various social media accounts on platforms like Twitter (now defunct), Facebook, Tumblr (discontinued due to lack of interest), Mastodon, and Bluesky. At one point, I added a web forum to build a community right here on Freezenet (also discontinued due to lack of interest). I also attempted to share my articles on Reddit, (got automoderated to such an extreme that I couldn’t submit anything), Fark (which rarely gets any green lights to here and I ended up opening the site up to harassing comments).

Over top of that, I opened up revenue streams like adding a Ko-Fi account, Patreon account, and ran Google Ads for a bit of extra revenue (hooray on getting a couple of pennies every month!).

On top of everything else, I added two YouTube channels (one for games and one for news content). Sadly, the algorithm just suppresses everything I do regardless of the content I put out there.

Then, as part of last ditch efforts to expand my reach, I also paid for Google Ads (Google took the money and didn’t bother showing the ads), offered my expertise on other websites through comments sections, and even submitted articles to other sources (mainstream outlets didn’t accept them due to covering politically inconvenient facts, smaller outlets didn’t publish them for reasons that were never disclosed to me). I even regularly meet with a business mentor who seems to insist that I write news content only for myself and no one else without actually reading the content I write in the first place because they are “not interested in that kind of stuff”. Moreover, I tried contacting local media outlets to at least get in better contact with both owners and fellow journalists alike (it resulted in getting stood up, ignored, or ended with the equivalent of “beat it, loser” – one of the many reasons why I’m convinced that media outlets are frequently run by idiots).

I’m not completely out of ideas, though. I still am looking at paying for advertising on (shudder) Meta. I’m not exactly thrilled with the idea, but it’s one of the only ideas I have left. I’m also trying to produce short form content for YouTube as well to help expand the channel. So far, this has been met with a largely muted response.

The other idea is, of course, what I’m employing today. I wanted to ask you, the reader, how I should expand Freezenet. I ask because it was never supposed to be just about what I write. I wanted to build a news staff and turn this into a full fledged business that actually concerns itself with what is in the best interest of consumers and average every day people. Yet, everything I try seems to result in overall stonewalling and stymieing this great and badly needed idea. I’m already stretched exceedingly thin and I’ve wanted help for some time, but apart from getting help with editing of an audio podcast at one point (left the project and now the project is dead due to lack of interest), there really hasn’t been anything in the way of people helping out with general operations.

So, if you have any ideas on growing this website (apart from getting a Twitch channel. I still haven’t worked out how I could devote time for something like that), I’m all ears. I’m currently getting increasingly convinced that there isn’t a market for good high quality content any more and that lies and disinformation are all that people are interested in these days (not a line I’m ever going to cross). I’m really scraping the bottom of the barrel for how to grow the website at this point and I really want to, at minimum, be able to pursue this full time. There just hasn’t been a launching point for me to accomplish this goal as of yet. So, please comment below if you have any ideas o how to build up this website.

Drew Wilson on Mastodon, Bluesky and Facebook.