This past year has been great for us, thanks to our readers, and next year is looking to be even more incredible!
When Jon (@OrangeMan3142) and I (@NateCheat) first talked about getting into fantasy football analysis we were thinking small. We wanted to start a podcast to talk about something we thought wasn't well covered: IDP. So I invested in equipment, and we got going with our very first show. We wanted to do something that was entertaining and we didn't know how long we would be able to keep it up. We just did it. This was the summer of 2017, we were roommates, and it annoyed the shit out of my girlfriend because we recorded in the living room during PRIME tv watching time.
With Out Our Readers IDP Guys Wouldn't Be Anything
After our first full season podcasting, we choose to start this website IDPGuys.org and bring on staff to write IDP content. The very articles you frequent our site to read each week. That first season I kept bugging Jon to write for the site. He was unemployed that year, and I thought it would keep him occupied. Boy did it, his first article was 15,000 words and would become his weekly waiver article which went through every player on every team that was relevant to IDP. A staple article for this site now for two years running.
During that first season we were graced with the presence of Sam Lane (@FFStompy) who rose to notoriety in Fantasy Football Twitter by winning the Scott Fish Bowl in 2018 and went on to FFStatistics and creating his own website FFMercs. We discovered Joey The Tooth (@JoeyTheToothIDP), who has helped take our platform to greater heights with his spot on analysis and work ethic. The end of that season, IDP Twitter legend Antonio Vasquez (@IDP_Dude) joined the staff and we were ready to rev-up for the offseason. Since then we have brought on numerous writers and editors that have helped us, and are thankful for the time an effort each one puts into advancing our websites.
The Positives and Negatives Of The Beta Subscription Program
This past February we launched our premium content and through the course of the year over 600 members signed up! For a beta program it was pretty successful, but there were failures. From the successes and failures we have learned a lot! We started out with simply ADP data, and the first offensive and IDP mixed ADP data that I've seen sourced. We expanded our rankings, and eventually created a trade calculator for evaluating trades with both offensive and IDP. This calculator used an algorithm with both our ADP data as well as our rankings. It was pretty swanky, but we have realized that it was difficult to keep up with. This offseason we will be tinkering with it to perfect it going forward.
Our subscription program also came with access to our slack chat, something many of you took full advantage of. It was really nice being that close to some of our listeners, even creating leagues from that chat and having conversations about things outside of fantasy football. With the low price point for our premium content ($1/month) there quickly became apparent a flaw in our system.
You could pay $1, not renew and have access to our slack channel as well as take in enough of the rankings and data to help you get by.
Coming Premium Content Changes Means An Increase In Cost
To bring you better quality content, across the board we will be making some adjustments to our subscription structure. We will be increasing the cost to a price that hasn't yet been fully determined, and doing away with the monthly payment option. For those that are currently paying monthly for access, we will be deactivating the monthly accounts at some point in mid January after the holidays. To keep access you can upgrade to the yearly option, currently still at $11.99 before the price increase and keep full access at a much lower rate when we increase the yearly cost. If you have an automatic payment set up with PayPal, you will need to delete it or it will still be active after the change.
Will the yearly plan be worth it? Obviously I'd say yes, but what's important is that ALL our premium content from both IDP Guys and Dynasty Football Digest will be covered under that cost. So you'll immediately see double the data, rankings, and premium content. We are also partnering with some soon to be announced brands that will be contributing to our premium offerings. We will be focusing this offseason on creating an easier experience in using our premium content on the website, as well as sign up and sign in.
Moving Forward With Our Other Brands
You may have noticed also this year with have launched our sister site www.dynastyfootballdigest.com where we are publishing our offensive and dynasty content. We've also established a LLC business in which we now operate, Reiter Design Co LLC and the fantasy football umbrella Reiter Digest Network. Under these brands we are producing video content on YouTube (subscribe to Reiter Digest Network) and publishing a network of podcasts that will be expanding in this coming year. We launched the t-shirt website www.MyFantasyFootballShirt.com as well, and have partnered with outside podcasts and websites to bring their merchandise to their audiences.
Tapping resources from all these brands, as well as partnering with our friends, we are beginning to undergo the task of creating a Dynasty Rookie Draft Fantasy Football Magazine that will be published in mid to late April that will have all the information you will need for your Dynasty Rookie Draft, both IDP and Offensive rookies. More information and how to pre-order will be released in the coming months. A subscription to this magazine will be baked into our new price for subscribers, and we hope to have a physical copy that can be sent out to all that purchase.
Thank You For Helping Us Get Here
Without the support of those who visit our website, we would not have grown as exponentially as we have. This season we saw the total visitors to this site break .5 million total visits. We have doubled our page views over each year, and look forward to an even brighter 2020.
Thank you for supporting us, and please email me if you have any suggestions, complaints, or ideas!
