At Sportmemorabilia.com, you can find and discover an extensive assortment of autographed Chicago Cub merchandise, for instance a signed glove, collage, or picture. Known as the “loveable losers” of Major League Baseball, Chicago Cub history is riddled with bad luck. The last time the Cubs have won a World Series is 1908, after 1908 they lost 7 straight World Series appearances, due to the dreaded “Curse of the Billy Goat”; the story is explained in Wikipedia Encyclopedia. The greatest Cub is the beloved Ernie Banks, one of the best all-around baseball players of all-time. Having an Ernie Banks collectible such as an autographed bat, jersey, or baseball, is having a piece of baseball history that will be the jewel of your Chicago Cub collection at a price you can...
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At Sportmemorabilia.com, you can find and discover an extensive assortment of autographed Chicago Cub merchandise, for instance a signed glove, collage, or picture. Known as the “loveable losers” of Major League Baseball, Chicago Cub history is riddled with bad luck. The last time the Cubs have won a World Series is 1908, after 1908 they lost 7 straight World Series appearances, due to the dreaded “Curse of the Billy Goat”; the story is explained in Wikipedia Encyclopedia. The greatest Cub is the beloved Ernie Banks, one of the best all-around baseball players of all-time. Having an Ernie Banks collectible such as an autographed bat, jersey, or baseball, is having a piece of baseball history that will be the jewel of your Chicago Cub collection at a price you can afford. Each and every sport collectible is guaranteed to be authentic.
Interview by : Stefan Tesoriero, CEO of Sportsmemorabilia.com
Interview with : Joe Aiello, Viewfromthebleachers.com
Stefan : I guess, the first question that I had is what is your background? Kinda rolling into that, when did you start The View from the Bleachers and what lead you to start it?
Joe : Okay, my background is, I was born and raised in Chicago in the northwest suburbs there and moved down to North Carolina about five years ago so I am a big Chicago sports fan, always have been and never really was much of a writer when I was a kid or growing up. And the site kinda came about after 2003 season when the Cubs were just five outs from the world series. And it was just unlike any kind of pain sports related that I have ever felt, so I needed some sort of an avenue to get that pain out, to get those thoughts out and so really, what started the site was just pretty much for my own benefit, it really was just kind of talk about what I was seeing and maybe, you know, a friend or two of mine might read it and nothing else. Gradually, it kinda became, kind of one of the favorite Cub sites in the general blogging atmosphere and then now it has probably been the top two or three in all the Cubs blogs. So, it is kind of an interesting ride.
Stefan : And you know, it is a great looking site and very clean. Something that I have come across speaking with people, you know, I have checked out a lot of sites and they tend to be just so loaded up with either advertising or way too many messages at the same time. It is very easy to see what you are looking to do here as someone who is browsing the site, very easy to see “ok, hey, here’s the information, here’s the commentary, etc and ok, now this is what I am looking for” and I am not getting bombarded with several hundred messages, so it is kinda kudos on that. So I guess the real function behind the site was to deal with the pain of that fan kinda taking away the Moises Alou catch?
Joe : It really was and that was kind of how it started. Gradually, it just became fun. You know, it really became a way that I could really, in the reality study the game a little bit but deeper because when I was growing up as a kid, being a Cubs fan, I was very much of a homer. And I was very Cubs oriented, and I really did not focus on anything else that was going on the Major Leagues. And now, even if you were to ask me about a season like 1989, when the Cubs went to playoff, I couldn’t tell you aside from the Giants, who they played with. I couldn’t tell you who won the World Series on that year, who was in the playoffs besides the Cubs and the Giants because I just really did not focus on anything other than the Cubs. What this has done is help me be very knowledgeable but not just the Cubs but about where they fitted in the realm of baseball as a whole.
Stefan : Okay. And what is your readership, in terms of like if you can give me, you know, how many people visit the site on a weekly or monthly basis?
Joe : You know, with baseball site, it really depends on what’s going on and during the peak times which is generally in beginning when the season is fresh, everybody still on it or around trade deadline time, we can average anywhere from about six to seven hundred unique visitors a day. And then about a thousand to eleven hundred paid views so we get some refreshes in there.
Stefan : And one thing that we come across, you know, my end at Sportsmemorabilia.com, real finances of the Chicago Cubs fan, we have a lot of Chicago products because of one of our suppliers being based in Chicago. And a lot of specifically, a lot of autographed Chicago Cubs memorabilia, amongst the other Chicago teams like the Bears, etc., and they are consistently some of our best sellers. You know, for a team that hasn’t won the World Series in what is it? Is it eighty plus years now, right?
Joe : Hmm, hmm. The World Series for the Cubs it is getting ready to turn into that hundred year mark.
Stefan : Yeah, yeah.
Joe ; Oh, wait, with our last World Series, so it we don’t win it this year, it will eventually be a hundred years.
Stefan : yeah, wow! And it is amazing to see the dedication that is there and some of our best sellers, etc. are you know, Chicago Cubs memorabilia, you know, it just is always up there. And Cubs fans have endured so much and basically what I want that to lead into is we see the fanaticism and do you see on this site, I mean, you allow people to, looks like, react to postings.
Joe : Yeah. We’ve got a comments section and generally when we first started the site, we did not get many. There would be long stretches where each post would say “comments, zero” and that was frustrating but gradually we’ve built up kinda a little bit of community, you see a lot of the same commentors you know, day in and day out that really just like to talk baseball and you know, you could post something about something totally random. It might not even be Cubs related and they always got something to say. And another unique thing about the comments which we found is there are times when we may not be the first one to broadcast a brand new signing or a trade or something like that. We usually are pretty odd on the trade but you know a minor signing, you know, maybe a minor league contract or some kind of transaction happens inevitably you’ll find it in the comment section in the most recent post if we haven’t got to it yet. Somebody will comment that the Cubs has just signed so and so. So it is really kind of a nice little community that we have established and we try to make it a pretty strict community guidelines so that everyone feels comfortable, you know, participating in the discussion.
Stefan : Sure, sure. The fanaticism that we see, you surely see,
Joe : We do.
Stefan : I am sure the comments get pretty heated sometimes. [laughs]
Joe : [laughs] At times and that is why we had to kinda modify it a little bit.
Stefan : Sure, sure. What is the point of differentiation? It is a crowded space out there with the fan sites and blogs, etc. and you know, if everybody just posted game recaps, well you can catch that on ESPN or the AP or Sportsline. What’s new from The View from the Bleachers differentiation that keeps people coming back to you, you know, makes your site one of the ten sites they check in the first twenty minutes of every morning?
Joe : I think we really generally kinda shy away from the game recaps for that exact reason, you know, if you want to watch a recap, you can watch Sports, you can watch the game, you can read the Yahoo news. I think we try to take the feeling that we are not going to, we are not going to blow you away with the physics and savor metrics and all these things that really the common fans just doesn’t understand. So we going to try to throw in some stats here and there, and we are going to season it with that but generally we are just be somebody that maybe has a little bit more access to the media or to the players or to the people like that than the common fan does. We kinda try to be their medium. You know, we want to be their eyes and ears for what’s going on in the world of Cubs and just really commenting on it. And if you read the Cubs website, the homepage, they’re gonna take it from the point of view of we’ve got to be “Yes man” over there and we try not to. We try to be realist but we also try to be somebody that’s going to call off the organization when we feel like they are making a bonehead decision.
Stefan : Sure, sure. So people, in other words, can come to you from the bleachers when they are irate about something that the Cubs organization do whether it is resigning a player or resigning someone that people don’t approve of or what have you. They can go there for an honest opinion that may not be that shiny face you know, great skin on everything “oh everything we do is great!” So, I see, I see.
Joe : Exactly.
Stefan : What do you see the evolution of the site being, you know, a year from now? Or five years from now, etc? Where do you see it going? What are your key kind of goals and accomplishments that you have on the forefront?
Joe : Sure. Well, the site is growing every year. I am amazed at the amount of growth that we seem to be growing exponentially every year. You know, in the first couple of months that we started, we were averaging somewhere in the neighborhood of ten to twelve readers a day and going from that to maybe averaging forty to fifty and then maybe, in a low hundreds and now, even in the off season, at times hitting up around five hundred. Really, I expect good things to happen this year because I think this is a big year for the Cubs. I do think that they are going to do well this year and I think coming off from last year, the fans are going to be hungry and generally when the fans are hungry, we see our readership go up. So I would like to see the readership increase. Probably, my goal will be to see it double or triple this year which I think is very realistic if we stay consistent and if the Cubs stay in contention and for me, my personal goal for the site is to make that my full time job. You know, to be able to earn full time job income from the website and be able to devote my time to making it better because of more time.
Stefan : Okay. Gotcha. Finally, fantasy sports has just exploded and continues to get larger and larger every year. How does that affect your site? You don’t presently have fantasy games on your site but I think, right? I did not see it.
Joe : We don’t. We’ve tried things in the past. Last year or two years ago, I can’t remember which one, we tried to kinda get a readers’ fantasy baseball league going and it did okay but with fantasy baseball generally you know, you lose interest around middle of the season in June or July when you’ve got to be setting those lines every week and we just forget. So we kind of flopped on that. We tried to run some contest here and there, we’ve got a contest right now, it is a writing project but generally nothing like your typical rotisserie type baseball league or things like that. You know, we have ran some things in the past but nothing like your typical thing that you see in the MLB.com or something like that.
Stefan : okay. And how does fantasy affect your readership in terms of, do you think a lot of the people come February, March, beginning of April or all throughout the season, do you think a lot of people come for inside information on the Cubs or you know, so they can get ahead or do you think that is just, you know..
Joe : I wouldn’t think that they would. I think generally our readership is probably casual to more than casual Cub fans so I think that generally they were not typically a reference for their fantasy needs, you know occasionally, we will sprinkle in some information about prospects here or there, generally when we get a new prospect in on the team, whether it is from a trade or free agent, we generally try to kinda give the readers some information about what the player is like and what he is about. So I guess from a fantasy keeper standpoint we can probably be helpful a little bit there but I think that the good hardcore fantasy fan right now, they know where to look for their information. Definitely not on our site in terms getting the amount of daily update as you would really need to be fantasy dominant I would think.
Stefan : okay. Well, that makes sense. Thank you for such insight on the site and kinda what drives it.
Joe : No problem.
Stefan : Alright. Excellent. Thanks so much again Joe.
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