Aldi Reviewer Turns Ten, Part 1: Our Story

This is the first part in a three-part series celebrating our site’s 10th anniversary.

The idea first took root in the June of 2016.

I was fresh off the launch of the first book in a traditionally published three-book science fiction series. With the manuscript of my second book in the publisher’s hands, I was currently between novels and looking to take a break from the fiction world. My wife, meanwhile, had been plying her trade as a freelance writer and editor.

My wife and I had both done our share of nonfiction writing for other people, but I thought it might be worthwhile to create something we could call our own. Blogging had flourished over the preceding decade: once a place for personal thoughts and musings, it now included sites devoted to content and information.

I told her I thought we should try piloting our own blog. I also told her I had a specific topic in mind: Aldi.

The inspiration had come out of personal frustration. My wife had been an avid Aldi shopper for many years, and when I’d come along with her I’d see all sorts of interesting products in the Special Buys (since renamed Aldi Finds) section of the store. Except when I’d go home and search for information on those products, I’d come up mostly empty. No one was talking about if the products Aldi sold were any good.

Maybe we could do that, I said. We could buy this stuff, try it out, and write about it. People searching online would have a place to go to get our thoughts, and with a comments section they could also chime in themselves.

My wife agreed that it was a good idea, so I set about getting a website up and running, all while scratching out a handful of product reviews to publish out of the gate. We chose just about the simplest name for a site you could think of, and a logo that was equally simple.

The site went live on July 3, 2016. To commemorate things, I wrote a brief launch post, then published five pieces that day. We followed that up with a steady stream of reviews and features that built the site out.

At the time, I thought of it as nothing more than an experiment. But by about the six month mark, we knew we had something altogether different. Visitors were showing up, reading our stuff, and commenting. By our first anniversary, we had 160 posts, and by our second anniversary, we had close to 400 posts and a million total pageviews.

Today, on our tenth anniversary, our site has over 4,100 posts and our content has been viewed some 25 million times. Under no circumstances could either of us have predicted any of that.

Of course, blogging and search have changed a lot over the years, and we don’t know what the future holds for us or other content writers. But that doesn’t change the fact that we have a lot to celebrate today.

First and foremost, we are grateful for the chance to help out other Aldi shoppers who, like us, may just have wanted to know if something was worth buying. We’re also grateful for a situation where we’ve been able to cultivate a place where people could talk about those products, too.

Over the next couple of weeks we’ll do a little more celebration and reflection over our labor of love that is Aldi Reviewer, talking about everything we’ve done the past decade.

And, as always, we’re already thinking about what we’re going to do next.