Celebrating a Year of Learning from You

Today is Pictory’s first birthday! Here’s a note I wrote yesterday on the pictoryblog:

364 days ago, I launched Pictory. I’d put months of sweat and savings into it and over-thought every inch. Take it from me — getting hundreds of thousands of hits in the first few days of a solo startup feels like standing on a football field as a stadium full of people turns to look at you. Despite my initial, well, embarrassment, I was elated. I knew then that this thing I’d put so much into was actually going to work; people were interested in submitting and reading photo stories.

It’s been wonderful. I love the work. I love the stories that people share. I love being the person who gets to fiddle and tinker and edit them into tidy packages. I love it when they make me cry, or laugh, or start to figure grief out. I love seeing people submit over and over again. I love people. I love working with mega-talented guest designers, curators, and editors. I love photographs, and always have.

It’s also been tough. Anyone who tells you that it’s easy to make a living from an online publication is either lying or knows something I don’t. My husband and I have had countless conversations about the possible angles we could come at this, the ways we could make it work. Every time, I stubbornly held on to this ad model: big, beautiful photo-based ads with the designer and photographer of the ad credited. I believed if I could pull that off, I could make a home for great advertising on the web.

I still believe it, and I’m endlessly appreciative of Levi’s for being the first sponsor to think I might be right. There’s a lot of things that my readers and the impressive women in this showcase have figured out that I don’t. But I’ve been lucky enough to learn from their dogged commitment to their passions. So here’s to a new day one.

Celebrating a Year of Learning from You

Today is Pictory’s first birthday! Here’s a note I wrote yesterday on the pictoryblog:

364 days ago, I launched Pictory. I’d put months of sweat and savings into it and over-thought every inch. Take it from me — getting hundreds of thousands of hits in the first few days of a solo startup feels like standing on a football field as a stadium full of people turns to look at you. Despite my initial, well, embarrassment, I was elated. I knew then that this thing I’d put so much into was actually going to work; people were interested in submitting and reading photo stories.

It’s been wonderful. I love the work. I love the stories that people share. I love being the person who gets to fiddle and tinker and edit them into tidy packages. I love it when they make me cry, or laugh, or start to figure grief out. I love seeing people submit over and over again. I love people. I love working with mega-talented guest designers, curators, and editors. I love photographs, and always have.

It’s also been tough. Anyone who tells you that it’s easy to make a living from an online publication is either lying or knows something I don’t. My husband and I have had countless conversations about the possible angles we could come at this, the ways we could make it work. Every time, I stubbornly held on to this ad model: big, beautiful photo-based ads with the designer and photographer of the ad credited. I believed if I could pull that off, I could make a home for great advertising on the web.

I still believe it, and I’m endlessly appreciative of Levi’s for being the first sponsor to think I might be right. There’s a lot of things that my readers and the impressive women in this showcase have figured out that I don’t. But I’ve been lucky enough to learn from their dogged commitment to their passions. So here’s to a new day one.

Posted 2 years ago 8 notes