Another Life Update, Another Small Surgery

We are going to be getting back to talking about business soon, but we're not quite out of the woods...

Image credit: Harvard Health Publishing

It’s been a hot minute since we published anything here on Substack and there’s a few reasons for that—I’ll get to that in a minute, but let’s start with some good news for The Esports Advocate!

If you are looking up esports news on Google you may have noticed that TEA is a lot more visible in the results—typically in first place or at the top of first page results on both Google and Google News. This is because of Tobias Seck’s strict adherence to all the changes Google made when it came to SEO content over the last six months to a year. 

We have never chased this dragon, never created empty calorie content or lists to tap into the SEO monster. The reason is because, as you have seen with a lot of other websites, when Google changed the rules (for better or worse) it crippled these publications, stripped them of any revenue they were generating, and forced them to issue massive layoffs or shut down altogether.

Frankly, I didn’t want to create a website like that in the first place: we are covering the topics we think are important to this industry and not worrying about the latest characters in Valorant, or how to find the most popular Pokemon in the latest Pokemon game.

Also, another milestone is that we have gained a LOT of subscribers to this newsletter. Growth has not been great on Substack if I am being honest, and I was “this close” to moving to somewhere else because of it, but we are closing in on 1,000 subscribers as of this writing. My goal for 2025 is to end the year with ten-fold that number and to diversify with other products on other platforms. 

Now, of course you may have noticed that we haven’t published a newsletter in a long time as well, and this was mostly due to my recovery from a Laryngoscopy /Microlaryngoscopy surgery I had six weeks ago. I had a follow-up procedure on Nov. 12, and I have another appointment on Nov. 15, and with much hope this should be the end of this ordeal and we can get back to the important work that needs to be done in my life. They found some other growth and cleaned it up yesterday so I am recovering from that as we speak (figuratively as I can barely talk today!)

I have a lot of plans for TEA, this newsletter, and at some point sooner rather than later, some select video content that I want to do, so when we get out of this situation I am going to turn things up 1000%. 

Finally, and more importantly, I quit smoking after more than 40 years. I started smoking when I was 11 years old, so this was quite a challenge for me, but I’ve stuck with it and I'm not looking back! I really credit video games (Skyrim) with getting through this tough period, and even though I still think about it every day, I realize that if I want to last another 20 - 30 years, I have to start taking care of myself. 

Anyway, that’s where I am at, and where we are at as a publication. Things are good and it’s time to think about how we can create a sustainable model that gets us to the next level, keeps us creating decent and useful content for our readers and generally helps the industry get to a healthier place. We also have to answer the question, how do we pay to do all of this and expand, bring on more great people to do the best work of their careers and generally make the world a better, well informed place. There’s a real fight right now to avoid living the plot of the film Idiocracy, so we all need to do our part to tell the truth, avoid the lies and fake news, and find solutions. 

I’m here to do that for you whether you pay for it and help me do this work, serve as sources to uncover evil, or just be a passenger in this incredible journey. Get on this bus with me, brothers and sisters, and buckle up.

Thank you for reading all of this—your continued support means everything to me.

Your humble servant,

James Fudge