Best Laid Plans

CEO/President/Founder Aaron Phillips gives us a status update as to what is happening at Lone Gold.

Introduction

For those of you who have never met me, my name is Aaron Phillips. I am writing this blog to update you on what's been happening at Lone Gold. When I started Lone Gold in 2013, we were just a simple little sports website that ranked teams from top to bottom. Today, we have taken a multitude of steps to get where we are right now.

How we got to this point is a story that took over two years in the making. To spare you from the long days and late nights of what happened, let me give you the highlights of what had transpired. This is our story.

The Pandemic

When the COVID-19 pandemic shut down the sports world in March of 2020, there was a brief moment that I thought that Lone Gold would not survive. From the time we started in 2013 until 2019, we were doing a fairly good job. However, during that same period, our struggles were becoming more evident.

It was in that brief moment of struggle that I was willing to let Lone Gold go and be on my merry way. Then one day, I had a conversation with my mother and my mood began to change.

In that conversation, my mom wanted me to start from scratch by finding a better platform to put my skills to use. As I followed her advice, I ended up building a new website on this newly discovered platform she found. That, as a result, would end up re-building my confidence. So in August of last year, I ended up launching The Gamer Experience Review.

The Gamer Experience Review (The GXPR) was initially created to be a website for gamers who desired to have the ultimate gaming room. Since then, our focus on this site is to help people find the right furniture and accessories to convert any room in the home into the ultimate gaming or recreational space.

For the most part, The GXPR has done an excellent job in those regards. While it is still a work in progress, this new site is going in the right direction and I believe it will continue to expand its influence in the near future.

Snatching success from the jaws of failure

As I have continued to work on The GXPR, I couldn't shake this nagging feeling that I was giving up on Lone Gold too quickly. I remember back in 2018 when I had many discussions with my friends about advertising with people like myself.

While they were interested in this endeavor, there was one fact that did not escape me. Over half of those folks who were interested with me made it clear that they did not want to advertise on a sports website.

It was around that time, I attempted to split Lone Gold into two separate platforms to no avail. In that moment of failure, I was almost certain that I should cut my losses and move on. That was in September of 2019.

But instead of taking the easy way out, I decided to keep my eye on the prize and make the necessary changes to give Lone Gold a fighting chance. So in November of 2019, the first thing I ended up doing was overhauling the ranking system on our sports site.

When I initially did these rankings for college football, it felt convenient to have all that detail in those rankings. But, as we expanded into other sports and leagues, the ranking system simply just took up too much time and space to be effective. Plus, it was becoming increasingly difficult to explain why all those details mattered. So, I made the necessary changes and the rest is history.

While we kept some elements of the old ranking system in place, we wanted the ranking system to be more focused on the scoreboard and less on overblown details. We also wanted to have more of a focus on momentum. There are other details that you can see on our website by clicking the link below.

Click here to see the evolution of our ranking system.

It was also during that down time, that we decided to apply the new and improved system to our archives. Thus, Project 13 came into existence. Sometime in the future, Project 13 will become the baseline for other future developments here at Lone Gold. At this point in time, we will be focusing on other developments already in progress.

Now that the ranking system overhaul out of the way, I would be able to take the opportunity to find a new platform that would better accommodate Lone Gold and the mission we have always been working to accomplish. By the time I had The GXPR published on this platform in 2020, I made another attempt to see if I could make Lone Gold and Lone Gold Sports two separate sites.

This time around, we found success and we are now ready to proceed with our plans. Here is where we are now and where we are planning to go with each site in the future.

Our sites

Lone Gold (lonegold.com)

From 2013-19, lonegold.com was the official site for our sports platform. Since we were able to move our sports content to a different site last year, we are now using this site more for corporate use. You can contact us, receive pricing information on our available platforms, and establish a more robust marketing and advertising experience. Any questions that you may have with our platforms will be directed to this site.

Follow @thereallonegold on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram

Lone Gold Sports (lonegoldsports.com)

With all the changes that have been happening with the Lone Gold Sports website, the one thing that has not changed is how we value each team. As a result of our ranking system overhaul, we are now able to assess teams from more angles than ever before. For the most part, the rankings will still be conducted as they have been in years past.

The major difference is that the system is simpler to explain and takes less time to complete. We are planning on getting the rankings back on schedule by no later than January of 2022. However, with the way things are going right now, it could be soon as this month. We'll keep you posted on those developments.

Follow @lonegoldsports on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram

The GXPR (thegamerexperiencereview.com)

As of I have said in the beginning of this post, The GXPR is a website that is focused on gaming room design. While the idea is to help you find the right furniture and accessories, our main focus is to help inspire your creativity for your ultimate gaming room. You can access our site to read our growing list of resource articles to help get you started. Currently, we are working on providing a free gaming room guide when you sign up for a membership.

Follow @thegxpr on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram

Lone Gold Blog

When we were just a sports website, we have always wanted to keep you informed and engaged. Because the old ranking system model was taking up the majority of our time, it was difficult to maintain that point of contact. Now that we have that issue out of the way, there are no more excuses.

As part of this new platform we are using, we found out we can do our blogging here without jumping from one platform to another. This new blogging feature will now have three parts that will make communication easier. The first part will be the new president's blog.

I have always made it a goal to be more engaging with our customers. Even though the pandemic, along with our other struggles that have made things difficult, I have never lost sight of that. With all the major hurdles cleared, we can have a clear dialogue that is so desperately needed. The plan is for me to have a new post every month about what is happening at Lone Gold and our platforms.

The next part of our blog is the RTP. The RTP (Recognizing the Perspective) was an old scouting blog that I had built prior to starting Lone Gold. As Lone Gold has evolved, so will the RTP. Aside from doing analysis on sports teams, we will be providing more research on products and other services featured on our platforms.

For you sports fans, you will also see a complete ranking list of the teams we are following on our sports site. As we continue to work on Lone Gold Sports, we will show the top teams on the site and have a completed list top to bottom here in our rankings section.

Coming in 2022

Lone Gold Shop

Over the last several months, we have been working hard to sell merchandise and other products for our platform. I can tell you that we have come a long way and have made significant progress in getting this storefront setup. Even though there are some more hurdles to clear, we are expecting to get the store off the ground fairly soon. Once the store is launched, we will be selling shirts, coffee mugs, and much more.

Gold Star Member

We are really excited about this development coming to Lone Gold. It has always been a goal to build a network from any of our websites. You can catch up on news and events from Lone Gold, The GXPR, and other platforms that we have featured. There will be a free option and a premium option.

The free option will let you leave us comments on our general posts and developments that are occurring. Our premium membership will be called the "Gold Star VIP". As of right now, this will give you special access to our quarterly webinars. We will also be offering special discounts on our items in the Lone Gold Shop.

As of right now, the plan to launch the membership page is scheduled for December. Because this part of the development is out of our hands, it could possibly be sometime in 2022. We will keep you updated throughout the process and we should have a better idea in December.

Gold Ticket Broadcast/Podcast

We have always been finding a way to produce live streams that showcase all of our platforms in one broadcast. There is still lots of work to be done to make this happen, but I'm confident we will get there. For the most part, we have the general idea of what and how our content should be presented. Currently, the biggest obstacle is finding the right production location.

For the time being, we are working diligently to giving you the high quality production that you rightfully deserve. We will be giving you a more concrete start date as these developments come to fruition.

Mobile App

As the majority of people are on their mobile devices, Lone Gold needs to going to where those people are. While our mobile sites are very high quality and accessible, people are downloading apps because of their ease of use. We have found an app developer who can help us take that next step. However, coming up with the content that matches our promotional strategy has been a massive undertaking.

You will be able to access our other Lone Gold sites on the app that will be named later. There is a chance that the app could be developed later this year. But, with all the other developments that we are working on currently, I feel that next year is more realistic.

Conclusion

At Lone Gold, we have come a long way since 2013. While we have made some big changes to our platform, our work ethic has not. What should have shut us down for eternity has turned out to be the most effective motivational tool ever created. I give credit to my friends and family who have helped me through these difficult moments. Without them, Lone Gold would not stand a fighting chance.

No matter how hard we continue to fight, I cannot predict the outcome of the future. As far as guarantees are concerned, I can tell that you that we will always give you our best while we are still here. Lone Gold has, and always will be, a company that goes beyond the use of gimmicks and buzz words to accomplishing our mission. By keeping things simple for our partners, employees, and customers, we will achieve the all around success that we all rightfully deserve.

It all starts by focusing all of our sites on marketing and development. We understand that everybody has different interests. My hope is that we provide a platform that will help us communicate better with you.

If you are interested in a platform or website that you would like us to develop, please don't hesitate to let us know. We are always striving to promote a safe environment and having providing an outlet that best fits you is a big first step.

We are going to achieve great things here at Lone Gold. I hope you all enjoy the ride as we move onward through this journey. This quest will be challenging, but given everything we have been through, I have no doubt we are going to make it after all.

Aaron Phillips

CEO/President/Founder

Lone Gold