Wednesday, July 2, 2003
Pocket PC Thoughts Subcriber Services Launched
Posted by Jason Dunn in "UPDATE" @ 12:43 AM
The moment I've been waiting for is finally here: we've launched our subscriber services! Let me give you a little sense of history so you can understand why I've taken this step…
Pocket PC Thoughts was first launched as a personal blog back in October of 2000. The Pocket PC had just come out in April of that year, and I was riding the Pocket PC wave. I was writing full time for PocketPC.com, and managing a team of writers - it was a career for me (Microsoft pays well, what can I say?). Pocket PC Thoughts was a little side project I started where I could be more opinionated, more open, and basically blather on about whatever I wanted. I started Blogging before it was the "in" thing to do. ;-) It was inadvertently funded by Microsoft in a way, because when I wasn't writing articles for them, I was working on Pocket PC Thoughts. That freedom allowed me to spend an insane amount of time working on the site, and it gained a reputation for being frequently updated. And people seemed to like it. :-D
When the site started, it was a one-man show created and updated using Blogger, hosted on a shared server along with my other personal and business sites. The only cost I had was my time, which was under-written by that well-paying gig from Microsoft. The next phase came when I started doing trade shows for Microsoft – I was away from my PC for days at a time, so I brought on Marlof to help me. Eventually we outgrew Blogger – it wasn't stable enough, so I switched over to Greymatter. It took a lot of time to set up, but it was still hosted on a shared server and the only cost was time.
The site continued to grow in popularity, and once I received my first $300 bandwidth bill from pair.com, I looked for a new host with more bandwidth. I added more team members to keep up the pace and cover for things like…sleep. The new team members added new points of view, and the site got better and better. I jumped over to a new host (West Host), but their "unlimited bandwidth" was a marketing lie – I paid a few hundreds bucks in excess bandwidth bills there, then moved on to a new host. More people kept coming, and while it was exciting, it was putting a financial strain on me. I jumped hosts for a while, always running out of bandwidth as more and more people visited the site daily (hourly?). For a while the generous Sonic Mobility was hosting me, but I needed certain things they couldn't provide. I eventually settled on Rackshack, and a dedicated hosting solution. I think somewhere along the way I added a single banner to the top of the site, and I might have made $50 a month on it. It was a big step, commercializing the site, and I was initially very reluctant to do it. But as the hosting costs grew, I knew I needed to at least break even. I loved what I was doing, and I didn't want to stop.
During this time (early 2002), the writing work with PocketPC.com dried up (all good things must end, right?). Being completely self-employed, it was quickly time for me to find something new to pay the bills. I wrote and edited a couple of books, did some consulting on the side, but my real passion was writing for Pocket PC Thoughts. I loved the freedom of expression, the thrill of doing something I enjoyed, and evangelising a platform I was passionate about. It was then I decided to try and make a career out of it, and the Fabrizio-designed (what a genius!), fully commercialized Pocket PC Thoughts was born in late 2002. My hobby turned into a job – and there is nothing else I'd rather be doing.
There's a line where a hobby has to either be curtailed, or it becomes a career. I've chosen my primary career as running Pocket PC Thoughts and other Thoughts Media sites. With any luck this little enterprise will grow and I'll be able to hire some people and give them careers too. :-)
The real cost of Pocket PC Thoughts has never been the hosting – it's the time. We're now paying about $300 US a month for hosting, which is manageable. The real cost is the time it takes for me to work on the site. I'm a full-time employee (the only one right now), and I need to draw a full time salary from this. I have mortgage and heating bills to pay, just like most of you. The team I work with is made up of volunteers, but each year I buy them gifts because I appreciate their enthusiasm for the site so much. Then there all the costs of running a business: computer, business cards, etc. The point is, there are real costs involved with doing this. While the advertising market is starting to pick up, the reality is that Pocket PCs are a niche within a niche (PDAs). No one is getting filthy rich writing Pocket PC software, and this means that no one is handing me ten-thousand dollars advertising cheques. Yet. ;-)
And so we come to the subscriber services. The last thing I wanted to do was take away what we've always offered for free and start charging for it (you'd all revolt!), so my team and I created a system whereby we'd make being a subscriber something valuable – something worth a couple of bucks a month. We'd give you new ways to access the information and community you enjoy, and work with vendors to get you discounts and special offers. We'd let you turn the site into whatever you wanted it to be – stripped down and fast, or huge and content rich. And we'll continue to add services and benefits to being a subscriber.
Have you ever saved money from a deal we posted? Subscribe and get them faster. Have you ever found a solution to a problem you were having? Subscribe and support the work we do. Have you ever been bored sitting in the doctor's office? Subscribe and get access to our mobile forums, so you can tap into the awesome Pocket PC community we have here anywhere, anytime. Have you ever made a buying decision based on a review you read here? Subscribe and support the time it takes to write them.
I won't make silly predictions about us shutting down unless we get "x" subscribers – I'm going to keep this site going for as long as I can. That's not what this is about. But if you want to support the work we do (I hope you do!), and if you want to help us grow and get better, please consider being a subscriber. The advertising market goes up and down, but with a strong subscriber base I can take this site to the next level. We've worked hard to make it worth your while, and your support will ensure that we stick around for a long time to come, taking you wherever the Pocket PC platform goes in the future.
I thank you for your support.
Sincerely,
Jason R. Dunn
Executive Editor
Pocket PC Thoughts
PS - Now that subscriber services have launched, the free mobiles forum trial is over. I hope that those of you who have enjoyed using the mobile forums will sign up for one of our subscriber packages!
Pocket PC Thoughts was first launched as a personal blog back in October of 2000. The Pocket PC had just come out in April of that year, and I was riding the Pocket PC wave. I was writing full time for PocketPC.com, and managing a team of writers - it was a career for me (Microsoft pays well, what can I say?). Pocket PC Thoughts was a little side project I started where I could be more opinionated, more open, and basically blather on about whatever I wanted. I started Blogging before it was the "in" thing to do. ;-) It was inadvertently funded by Microsoft in a way, because when I wasn't writing articles for them, I was working on Pocket PC Thoughts. That freedom allowed me to spend an insane amount of time working on the site, and it gained a reputation for being frequently updated. And people seemed to like it. :-D
When the site started, it was a one-man show created and updated using Blogger, hosted on a shared server along with my other personal and business sites. The only cost I had was my time, which was under-written by that well-paying gig from Microsoft. The next phase came when I started doing trade shows for Microsoft – I was away from my PC for days at a time, so I brought on Marlof to help me. Eventually we outgrew Blogger – it wasn't stable enough, so I switched over to Greymatter. It took a lot of time to set up, but it was still hosted on a shared server and the only cost was time.
The site continued to grow in popularity, and once I received my first $300 bandwidth bill from pair.com, I looked for a new host with more bandwidth. I added more team members to keep up the pace and cover for things like…sleep. The new team members added new points of view, and the site got better and better. I jumped over to a new host (West Host), but their "unlimited bandwidth" was a marketing lie – I paid a few hundreds bucks in excess bandwidth bills there, then moved on to a new host. More people kept coming, and while it was exciting, it was putting a financial strain on me. I jumped hosts for a while, always running out of bandwidth as more and more people visited the site daily (hourly?). For a while the generous Sonic Mobility was hosting me, but I needed certain things they couldn't provide. I eventually settled on Rackshack, and a dedicated hosting solution. I think somewhere along the way I added a single banner to the top of the site, and I might have made $50 a month on it. It was a big step, commercializing the site, and I was initially very reluctant to do it. But as the hosting costs grew, I knew I needed to at least break even. I loved what I was doing, and I didn't want to stop.
During this time (early 2002), the writing work with PocketPC.com dried up (all good things must end, right?). Being completely self-employed, it was quickly time for me to find something new to pay the bills. I wrote and edited a couple of books, did some consulting on the side, but my real passion was writing for Pocket PC Thoughts. I loved the freedom of expression, the thrill of doing something I enjoyed, and evangelising a platform I was passionate about. It was then I decided to try and make a career out of it, and the Fabrizio-designed (what a genius!), fully commercialized Pocket PC Thoughts was born in late 2002. My hobby turned into a job – and there is nothing else I'd rather be doing.
There's a line where a hobby has to either be curtailed, or it becomes a career. I've chosen my primary career as running Pocket PC Thoughts and other Thoughts Media sites. With any luck this little enterprise will grow and I'll be able to hire some people and give them careers too. :-)
The real cost of Pocket PC Thoughts has never been the hosting – it's the time. We're now paying about $300 US a month for hosting, which is manageable. The real cost is the time it takes for me to work on the site. I'm a full-time employee (the only one right now), and I need to draw a full time salary from this. I have mortgage and heating bills to pay, just like most of you. The team I work with is made up of volunteers, but each year I buy them gifts because I appreciate their enthusiasm for the site so much. Then there all the costs of running a business: computer, business cards, etc. The point is, there are real costs involved with doing this. While the advertising market is starting to pick up, the reality is that Pocket PCs are a niche within a niche (PDAs). No one is getting filthy rich writing Pocket PC software, and this means that no one is handing me ten-thousand dollars advertising cheques. Yet. ;-)
And so we come to the subscriber services. The last thing I wanted to do was take away what we've always offered for free and start charging for it (you'd all revolt!), so my team and I created a system whereby we'd make being a subscriber something valuable – something worth a couple of bucks a month. We'd give you new ways to access the information and community you enjoy, and work with vendors to get you discounts and special offers. We'd let you turn the site into whatever you wanted it to be – stripped down and fast, or huge and content rich. And we'll continue to add services and benefits to being a subscriber.
Have you ever saved money from a deal we posted? Subscribe and get them faster. Have you ever found a solution to a problem you were having? Subscribe and support the work we do. Have you ever been bored sitting in the doctor's office? Subscribe and get access to our mobile forums, so you can tap into the awesome Pocket PC community we have here anywhere, anytime. Have you ever made a buying decision based on a review you read here? Subscribe and support the time it takes to write them.
I won't make silly predictions about us shutting down unless we get "x" subscribers – I'm going to keep this site going for as long as I can. That's not what this is about. But if you want to support the work we do (I hope you do!), and if you want to help us grow and get better, please consider being a subscriber. The advertising market goes up and down, but with a strong subscriber base I can take this site to the next level. We've worked hard to make it worth your while, and your support will ensure that we stick around for a long time to come, taking you wherever the Pocket PC platform goes in the future.
I thank you for your support.
Sincerely,
Jason R. Dunn
Executive Editor
Pocket PC Thoughts
PS - Now that subscriber services have launched, the free mobiles forum trial is over. I hope that those of you who have enjoyed using the mobile forums will sign up for one of our subscriber packages!
