A Farewell from [H] Consumer

[mp666]

I bet you all knew that but :

http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1184312

[Jon Gerow]

Not to make this all about me, but I can't help but to feel a lump in my throat reading that. I just recently had to upgrade the server to accommodate for my growth and yet with every review I chase away potential advertisers and future review product because of the fear that I'm going to blow something up and nail someone to a cross.

Hind site is 20/20, though. I mean, I can understand the guys having high expectations and the idea really did warrant consideration. But you're also putting your neck on the line twice over...

1. You're alienating potential advertisers with honest reviews.

2. You're lowering traffic from your main site (in this case [H] Enthusiast, which used to be just [H]ard|OCP) to gather traffic at another. Essentially you're spreading the same traffic, perhaps a little more than usual because of the expanded coverage, across more sites. This devalues the other sites, unless you're selling advertising site wide and not on a "per site" basis.

Ultra had asked me to help out with their advertising a while back because I knew a lot of the review sites, knew who did what, what people read and held in higher regard over others. Man, I learned some things in that short time. I won't name names, but there's some sites that have split into multtiple sites and have actually cut the traffic of their original site in half because the other half is now visiting the new site. In a sense, you end up competing against yourself. You would think, "ok, you just split up your advertising dollars across the two sites and you're making the same amount of money," but really you're increasing your overhead with two sites and it's easier for a site with 50% more traffic to ask for double the money in ad space, so you actually lose money there too.

I don't know if any of that applies to [H], and the post Jason made primarily focused on how the reviews chased away the advertisers. Not sure. But.. well... you just have to be careful. That's all. I just hope everyone at [H] bounces back unscathed and financially "even". They do really good work and deserve only the best.

[Jon Gerow]

Ok. We've gotten a bit off topic here.

I'm only inclined to discuss the state of the [H] sites closing.

Even discussing how other sites that have split into multiple site would be more on topic than discussing the bias of a particular editorial.

Thanks!