Below is a brief history of Toys N Bricks and the work that we do as a hobby! Thank you to all of our readers, visitors and fans for the continued support. We hope you enjoy the site. ( :
Timeline of Toys N Bricks LEGO Fan Website
Site Growth
- April 17, 2009: Toys N Bricks was founded
- May 2009: Set Indexes were created briefly. However, they were shut down shortly afterwards as they weren’t too popular and took too much time to create and maintain
- December 2009 – Toys N Bricks Facebook Group and Twitter Fan Page Launched
- August 2009 – phpbB Forums officially launched (created in May 2009)
Shown below is the original LEGO Forums at Toys N Bricks.
- March 2010 – Flickr Group Launched
- March 2010 – First Toysnbricks Sponsored LEGO Building Contest Launched (Create your own LEGO Star Wars Scene)
- April 2010 – Newsletter Launched
Shown below is the May 2013 Toysnbricks Main Website Landing Page.
- August 2012 – Pricenbricks.com Amazon USA Price Tracker Project launched providing current prices and previous prices
Shown below is the Price N Bricks Website Landing Page.
*2010-2012: Various other initiatives were launched including “Toys and Bricks” and “Sales N Bricks”. Toys and Bricks was formed to offer different LEGO news coverage from Toys N Bricks. Sales N Bricks was formed in hopes to make it a dedicated LEGO Sales site while Toys N Bricks would focus on LEGO News. Both “Toys and Bricks” and “Sales N Bricks” were eventually scraped with everything going back to Toys N Bricks.
Site Decline & Deterioration
- November 2016 – Pricenbricks.com Amazon USA LEGO Sets Price Tracker Project Shut Down. We are not allowed to track past price history. It was taking a lot of time for us to maintain it as well with adding new sets frequently.
- January 2017 – Work on the site begins to decline, news updates decline, emails and messages not answered, categories on the news portal are merged, forum categories are merged
- November 2017 – Toys N Bricks left the official LEGO Ambassador Network and is no longer an ambassador
- 2017-2018 – Further decline in news updates and activity and consideration of closure of site
There were weeks and months where the founder started abandoning the site due to health issues he was facing since 2017. In 2018, the founder’s health deteriorated to the point where he was eventually hospitalized. It was very serious and severe.
Shown below are images of when we were struggling with our website.
Most of our readers, fans, members and visitors have left and we don’t blame them judging the decline in service.
We considered closing Toys N Bricks. Fortunately, we decided to keep the site and persevere through the difficult times. Though, due to the inactivity that occurred in the last few years, site traffic is very low. The forum was pretty much dead starting in mid 2017. 2017-2018 were some of our worst years.
Rest assured though that we will continue to maintain the site moving forward starting in 2019. We will be focusing work primarily on the news page as that is the core of the site. The forum is dead as previously mentioned, but it will still continue to be accessible for archive purposes.
Recovery
We are starting from the bottom. New initiatives include rebranding and restructuring of how we deliver our service commitment to our readers and visitors.
- August 2018-March 2019: Financial restructuring to keep the site afloat
We cancelled the comments integration of the news site with the forums. The news site now has its own Disqus comments functionality that is separate from the forums.
- January 2019 – Instagram Fan Page Launched
- September 2019 – New Mainpage Website Layout
Shown below is an image of our new website layout at Toysnbricks.com.
- April 2020 – Launch of our new LEGO Forums at Toysnbricksforum.com
Shown below is an image of our new LEGO forums at Toysnbricksforum.com.
- April 2020 – Launching back our popular LEGO Building Contests. This time, its the LEGO City Building Contest (April-June 2020)
- February 2021 – Launched ShopToysnbricks.com: A place to shop for Toys N Bricks branded merchandise and more.
Shown below is the official Toys N Bricks store.
- July 2021 – Launched Patreon page: You can now send gratuity (tips) to Toys N Bricks through a completely optional monthly financial subscription. Subscriptions start as low as $3 USD per month.
Shown below is the Toys N Bricks Patreon financial subscription page.
Below are the website traffic statistics for Toys N Bricks as measured on Google Analytics since our recovery. These are our website strategic growth achievements.
Year 2020 Website Statistics
- 693,684 Page Views
- 167,367 Users
- 417,171 Sessions
Year 2021 Website Statistics
- 893,746 Page Views (29% increase from 2020)
- 271,409 Users (62% increase from 2020)
- 579,195 Sessions (39% increase from 2020)
Year 2022 Website Statistics
- 1,051,384 Page Views (18% increase from 2021)
- 392,097 Users (44% increase from 2021)
- 710,385 Sessions (23% increase from 2021)
*Higher website traffic levels are during the holiday season in Q4 for October, November and December.
New Beginnings
Due to multiple demands, responsibilities and commitments pulling at the founder of the site, he will primarily be focusing the LEGO news website on an operational and maintenance basis.
The focus will no longer be on strategic growth as he has very limited time to keep up with all the latest digital marketing trends. As such, website traffic may take a hit and drop.
The founder maintains a regular full-time job outside of Toys N Bricks working 40 hours a week while balancing family/relationship commitments. Daily operation of the Toys N Bricks site already takes up a lot of time and unfortunately, he just does not have the time to focus on more strategic growth.
Rest assured that the founder is committed to the highest levels of service excellence and in ensuring that you get the latest LEGO news.
- Mid 2023 – Start of running Toys N Bricks on an operational/maintenance basis
- June 2024 – Successfully moved the archive phpBB forums that was previously located at Toysnbricks.com/forums to its own web address at Toysnbricksarchive.com
Shown below is the migrated phpBB Archive Forums (active from 2009 to 2017) to Toysnbricksarchive.com.
Below are the 2024 website statistics for Toysnbricks.com. We are running the site on an operational/maintenance basis starting in the 2023 year.
Year 2024 Google Web Searches Only
- 3.35 million total impressions
- 62.4k total clicks
Year 2024 Google Image Searches Only
- 3.64 million total impressions
- 9.34k total clicks
Year 2024 Website Statistics
- 587,652 Page Views (average 48,971 page views/month)
- 241,509 Users (average 20,126 users/month)
The vast majority of all websites online get less than 10k pageviews per month. Toys N Bricks is at almost average 50k pageviews per month. This is in the estimated top 10-15% of all websites online.
*Higher website traffic levels are during the holiday season in Q4 for October, November and December.
Toys N Bricks is your destination for the latest and hottest LEGO News, Sales News, Creations and Reviews! (www.toysnbricks.com)
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- Buy: Check out Toysnbricks Branded Merchandise at ShopToysnbricks.com.
