2010, the birth of Subie-Life.com. From just an idea that sprouted at 2am in my head to a full out obsession to find the freshes news, great event coverage, and in depth interviews. 2010 has been a huge learning curve and I’ve learned a ton from it!
2011 will be a huge year for us at Subie-Life.com with some changes coming up! We have been blessed by the support of our readers and fans from the events that we attend to our personal friends that go out and spread the word about Subie-Life.com.
EVENTS: That’s right! Now, there’s two sides to Events in 2011. We will be at MANY events including: Redline Time Attack, SubieFest, Wicked Big Meet, SubieTech Cruises, and S3: Subaru Summer Solstice! We will be there promoting Subie-Life.com and all the cool stuff. Now, here’s the exciting part.
We are going to be putting together our very own: Subie Life Matsuri! Now I bet about 90% of you guys are asking what the heck is “Matsuri”? Simple, it’s the Japanese Word for “Festival” and since Subaru is a Japanese company, I figured that it would be a perfect name for our favorite Japanese vehicle brand! Not only will SubieLife Matsuri will be a great festival with vendors, contests, a car show, and entertainment, we will be incorporating a drag race with the “Traction: The AWD Battle“. We want to open this up to the Subaru vs. Mitsubishi crowd (STi vs EVO) AND we will allow other AWD vehicles to compete including GT-R’s, Audi A4, S4, etc., VW R32 etc. Competition will be open to street cars all the way to full race cars. We will include “Fun Runs” as well! We’ll keep you all informed on what happens at this event!
Format: When I first envisioned Subie-life.com, I just wanted to have a news source that everyone can go to and read about Subaru News. As things have evolved, I’ve been compelled to do interviews, event coverage, and reviews however, I needed some original content. This will include fun articles, vehicle reviews, and Subie Features with photos taken by highly respected people within the industry!
Now as things are growing and so has my readership, again this is going to be taking a lot of funds and time. We have gone well over 6 months without having to have advertisements on this website, but we need to “keep the lights on”. You will start seeing SOME banners, links, and ads but we promise this won’t be packed full of useless links. No, you will see RELEVANT links and banners that have to do with YOU and YOUR Subie! So you won’t be bombarded with “growth” ads like “other” blogs.
Content: I touched a bit on the content when I talked about the format. Well, here’s a little more info on that. We want to do more original work like reviews. A lot of websites (well, almost all of the websites) that have done reviews on the new Subaru Models have been from people who are automotive experts, NOT Subaru experts. Luckily, I love Subarus but I can be very critical as well. That is why I am going to work with Subaru to get the hands-on approach on looking at these models and hopefully they’ll let me take them on a spin at a local track!
Additionally, I will have some original video pieces that will come along with those and some event coverage! I am looking into getting a decent camera that isn’t a point and shoot and will be using that to my advantage as I practice my picture shooting skills!
Lastly, I will be bringing on some guest bloggers that will be covering events for us from around the World! This will allow me to share as much Subie News as I can so that everything and anything will be covered onSubie-life.com!
Subie-Life.com Ambassadors: Now, spreading the word of Subie-Life.com has been pretty “grassroots” aka not-much-money-to-spend-on-advertisement. So, we have been doing what we can to link up with other groups like Subaru of Las Vegas, Apollo Performance, Apartment107.com, and various other sites but you’ll start seeing requests for people in other parts of the USA and the WORLD to help spread the word of Subie-Life.com. We need foot soldiers out there to let other Subie Fanatics know about Subie-life.com! We’ll be sending you a care package including your exclusive Subie-life.com shirt that ONLY ambassadors will have, fliers, goodies, and stickers. This will happen soon so please keep on the look out on our Facebook Fan page and this blog!
Subie-Cast: A few weeks ago, I asked on our Facebook Page (don’t forget to add us if you haven’t done so) if we made a postcast if you would all listen. Seems like it will be done! Now, what we’ll end up doing on this Podcast (SubieCast) is simple. We will review what we put up on the Blog and go more in depth with it. I am in the process of working on this but the format will be fun, informative, and we’ll also throw out some chances to win prizes (and we’ll talk about this later), have guests in studio (aka in my office), and have guests phone in! What kind of guests? Well, we’ll be talking directly to Subaru Race Car Drivers, Subaru of America representatives, Key People in the Subaru Community, and people that I know (because they’re so darn interesting!). Expect this to happen in the Spring of 2010!
Contests: The advantage of having a great group of supporters, sponsors, and advertisers is that they want to promote their products and services. What better way to promote their products and services through a campaign where we spread the word of their business and let YOU our readers, a chance to win their great stuff? Exactly! We’ll be giving away great prizes from multiple companies that will be through our blog and our facebook fan page! So if you haven’t had a chance to “like” our fan page, do so now so you have a chance to win!
Conclusion and a Message from Me: So this is pretty much sums up what will happen through 2011. Also, be on the look out for a newly designed blog and a slightly different format but not much will change as far as content. We really do want you all to come here as often as we post up and help spread the word. This has been done as a passion and less as a way to “get rich” because I’ve been doing things like this for the Subaru Community for the past 4 years and it keeps me going strong. I love what I’m doing and I don’t think I’ll ever stop loving the Subaru Brand as long as they know that I’m letting people know how awesome Subaru really is!
I know people are always asking me for more content and I’ll do what I can to find the best content out there and keep you all entertained. The more you send me feedback the more I want to do keep doing this. I will do my best for you all as long as you keep coming here, spreading the word, and coming to the events that Subie-Life.com will be at! Again, I can stress this enough but you, the reader, have been my inspiration, my motivation, and have given me the strength to do this great blog. I don’t think I would be here writing this if I didn’t have people coming here often as I’ve seen. This has been an amazing trip through 2010 and I am looking forward to seeing what 2011 has in store for SUBIE-LIFE.COM!
Subie Life: For the Love of Subaru 
Nice man. I’ll help drive some traffic to the site for you.