In one of Alice Cooper’s signature tunes he sings that “I’m Eighteen and I Like It” and believe it or not today marks the 18th anniversary of PiercingMetal’s online life. Yes my friends I launched this humble enterprise on this very day back in 2005 and over those years so much has been written, photographed, discussed, given away and shared with you all. The changes in site aesthetics and overall content has changed dramatically but for the better and the base of things being added to the mix has grown exponentially. We’ve maintained the use of WordPress as our base software and as of this post have just hit our 8300th post. I had hoped to reach 9K by this anniversary but this will do just fine. The aforementioned changes had been instrumental in what our coverage base is and now the site focuses on three distinct areas – Features, Pop Culture and Reviews. Each has a number of sub-categories that succinctly organize the content for your convenience.

Speaking of content, the website isn’t only about doing reviews anymore and has served up scores of news items, tour announcements, memorials, editorials and more for a number of years and probably doing things this way since integrating the onetime side blog that I called “PiercingMetal Musings”. PiercingMetal has given away more than 1700 tickets for thrilling concerts, conventions and films and our popular events calendar has listed more than 3.7K events since employing a WordPress plugin back in 2014. In addition to the 8300th post, there are more than 32K images in our media library. The posts, photos and event listings grow by the day and all are under the same dotcom which helps keep the website traffic being sound. PiercingMetal has been pulling in close to or above 2 million pages viewed each year for the past few years. For several years I’ve been running under the tagline of “Where Heavy Music and Pop Culture Collide” and since converting to a full WordPress back in 2014 have embraced my geek side and upped the level of comic book content and toy features along with film stuff. Sure there is Metal and lots of it, but we seem to be half and half in terms of what’s presenting nowadays. I love those three things and this site is an extension of me so you’re going to get a lot of it. For the most part the response remains positive and this might be because we don’t get political or over preachy. I should also point out that PiercingMetal sometimes works hand in hand with our companion website “The Chronicles of Piercing Ken” and the pandemic created executive arm of Ken Pierce Media. The site is very active on the social media side and while we are on this part of the overview let me say a few things about it all.

Socially speaking the main networks remain in play but truth be told there hasn’t been a huge surge in the number of followers, subscribers or likers which I hate to say is brand damaging at this point in our history because of the overwhelming amount of others doing this very same thing. With more than 60 million Facebook Business Pages, 51 million YouTube Channels and 450 million Twitter profiles its very hard to be seen unless those of you who are already a part of our networks don’t bring in your friends and like-minded colleagues to see what it’s all about. These algorithms are constantly changing things and its nearly impossible to determine what they might change next. So if you’re on our Facebook and you see a post, be sure to like said post and comment on it since that shows the network you are in this corner. The same applies for Instagram, YouTube and the TikTok. When you like stuff its calculated and if you don’t it just gets pushed farther down the pole where you won’t see it. Personally, I try to respond to every comment we get on these networks so let’s put some zeal into this since it helps the brand keep pace with those who have big advertisers and sponsorhips behind them. The links are Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and TikTok. While most of the networks do not help website traffic grow, they expand the brand reach which is quite important too. My favorite of these networks are the YouTube, Instagram and TikTok. There are “468” videos on YouTube, “10,621” photos on Instagram and almost “200” TikToks. I’ve also tweeted more than 6.3 times over the years. The YouTube world is a tough one to build up and monetize with what we have right now so please pay mind to that one.

Wrapping this up I will say that if you’ve been with us for any length of time or maybe even since it all began, the I extend a heartfelt “Thank You”. This site has kept chugging along with a very limited budget and its almost always been an out of personal pocket expenditure to give you entertainment. While we don’t have anything to give in a Patreon setting, a Ko-Fi was set up under our Ken Pierce Media banner since that serves as the professional face of all the creativity you’ve been enjoying. Thanks for your patronage, I hope to keep this website online for the duration and my hope is that it continues to keep you entertained and informed.

Cheers,

KP, Editor In Chief, PiercingMetal