Dear readers of Earn This,

I am thrilled to hit the “Publish” button on this post, because Earn This now has 500 articles in its archives!

The site will turn five years old in August, and we’ve had an amazing run so far writing about everything under the sun (but mostly music and movies). When Grant and I started the site — and wrote this mind-blowing first post — during our senior year of college, I never dreamed we’d still be writing for it well into our mid-twenties.

Colton joined the site just a week or two after we founded the site, and Brian joined our ranks in 2013. The four of us, plus a few guest writers, have poured hundreds of hours into this little project.

Here are a few stats about our five hundred articles:

• Our articles have been read almost 450,000 times, and we’ve had almost 300,000 visitors
• Our articles collectively total just over a half million words
• Our readers have come from more than 200 countries
• Our most popular article has been read more than 50,000 times
• About 90 of our articles have been read at least 1,000 times

It’s small potatoes in the grand scheme of the Internet, but we’re proud of our site. It’s helped us all stay close friends, and we thank our scattered readers for engaging us.

We’re constantly publishing new stuff, and we’re gradually making changes to the site to make it more interesting and usable for readers, so please click back over here whenever you think of it. We promise to keep writing our asses off and sharing our passion with you.

I love you all.

-Dan