So far I’ve managed to post a picture of a cat

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Someone who I’m happy to call a friend, Helen Perris, who has been a long time actor and music instructor in Australia, has finally decided to stop sharing her amazing voice with few, and share with many.

Helen is touring Australia, and I’ve already booked tickets to her Melbourne gig.

Her details and booking stuff here: helenperrismusic.com

A highlight below. It’s only a touch on her ability, and if you’re in a touring city, I’d encourage you to go.

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MELBOURNE, Australia, January 26 (AEST) – Web content development company Nichenet Pty Ltd today announced the launch of its latest online property fortytwotimes.com.

The new site is named after the late, great Douglas Adams, who famously wrote that “the ultimate answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything” is 42.

fortytwotimes aims to write about life as we know it, from science through to tech, lifestyle, entertainment and travel, and the site aims to ultimately deliver “a good read.”

The site is edited by Duncan Riley, who has a long history in online publishing, having previously published The Blog Herald and The Inquisitr, written for TechCrunch, and was a co-founder of blogging network b5media.

Most recently he spent years developing The Inquisitr before selling it.

“There are many sites that aim to target a broad audience, but many of them lack when it comes to intelligence” said Duncan Riley in a statement.

“fortytwotimes aims to be a great read; a mix of interesting stuff, from science, tech, entertainment, life and even travel. We aim to deliver a site that is sticky because it is interesting, not just to a few, but because we deliver a broad range of posts that will appeal to many.”

ENDS

Contact
Duncan Riley
e: duncan@nichenet.com.au
t: +61 412844237

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Before I start: let me state that I understand and respect that many people work in retail in Australia, they are good people who deserve jobs, and this isn’t about them, vs their employers.

Yesterday I decided to run the gauntlet of the post Christmas sales. For those outside of Australia, they have traditionally been our biggest shopping week of the year: a bit like Black Friday post Thanksgiving.

In years gone by millions would flock to Department stores to snap up amazing bargains that were only offered once a year. The other big sale, the end of financial year ones (financial year in Australia ends June 30) are fairly big, but it’s the post xmas sales that have traditionally kicked arse.

Not this year.

I headed into Bourke Street Mall, the main shopping heart of Melbourne to hit the Department stores.

I headed up to DJ’s (David Jones…one of our two biggest biggest department stores) looking for a bargain.

What I found was a joke. And a bit more beyond a joke.

Not only was the bulk of merchandise in menswear (I was looking for some new t-shirts and shorts…it is the middle of summer after all) not on sale, what I found was thin on the ground, and rarely available in my size. The most I found to buy was one t-shirt: $25 vs $40 or thereabouts.

But this is where it gets better: and this where I’ve had beyond enough with major offline retailers in Australia: at the main checkout in menswear (be it upstairs, there is two levels there, where the more modern stuff is) at a checkout of 3 cash registers there was exactly ONE person serving, and a massive line. I lined up and waited, like a lemming, until eventually as I was near the front (and the line just got longer and longer and longer) OMG a second one was opened.

But hey: I’ve been waiting for my bargain, so I should get good service: no f*&king chance. A surely salesperson who didn’t like being there treating me like I was privileged to be served.

This in what is supposedly the busiest shopping week of the year in Australia. The crowds weren’t huge (well not compared to past years I’ve shopped at this time) but it was clearly very busy. But do you think the owners at David Jones could care enough to not only serve their customers, but to deliver prompt and friendly service.

Apparently not.

And that’s why I’ve had enough with most online retailers. Not all: I did head up to a shoe store the other side of Swanston street and buy some shoes (service wasn’t great, I had to find them, but I got decent service after I asked for it) but the Department stores in particular: enough is enough. I virtually won’t shop at Myer any more because most of their stores are bereft of staff. David Jones has followed the trend. I don’t like paying a premium price anyway, but hell if I pay it I atleast expect some service, and that’s the core problem with the big guys in Australian retail: they charge max and they DON’T provide service.

I was in a Harvey Norman before xmas with a friend (well, more than that) and we stood around for the better part of 20-30 minutes waiting to find someone to help us with our PURCHASE question.

Sorry, complete and utter bollocks.

The likes of Gerry Harvey complain about GST and overseas retailers and all that stuff: but here’s the thing: I can buy most things I want, in Australia, for well below 50% off what the store have them, online. If I go overseas sometimes the margin is as much as a staggering 80%.

They charge huge markups, and then don’t provide anything close to a service worth paying the extra.

Enough is enough.

I will still buy things in stores in 2012, but I will always try now to buy things online, even if overseas, because our big retailers are just taking the piss, and expect us to take it. And I’d encourage anyone reading this to do the same.

The rip offs must end.

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Apparently no matter of orders make a difference in Victoria.

Take for example the above.

I don’t have a perfect driving record: I ran a red light and was caught speeding about 3 years ago, just after I moved here. Let me tell you that I’ve never done it again. Have I got the odd small speeding fine and parking fine before that: yes, but I don’t believe I’m bad.

But apparently in this state, VicRoads can take on any old vexatious complaint and pursue it.

I will keep my license, but the mere fact that it’s free game for anyone to make a complaint like this is BS.

They say batter up, but in my case it’s lawyer up.

And enough is enough. Time to make representations to my member of Parliament as well.

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So I face a Christmas this year without seeing my son, for the first time in his 9 years.

For legal reasons I can’t say much at all, but I can say that I can’t even get confirmation that if I send him a Christmas present he will be given it.

I will say publicly that I love him and miss him.

He has always been my life, and always will be.

Merry Christmas to all, and I hope I didn’t bring anyone down.

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We’re over 3 months in with Medacity now, and although I still believe the focus and idea is a good one, without a round of funding and the ability to truly own the space, we’re not going well.

I believe we’ve done well, and we’ve had some good hits. But the overall traffic hasn’t been great at all. At least, it’s not growing at a sustainable rate.

It’s blogging: sometimes you hit well, sometimes you don’t. But when you don’t hit well, you know it’s time to change.

The Inquisitr (my last site) had 4 different templates, covered new areas then dropped them, and ended up a very different site to when it started. But I do know when I sold it, it was doing 8m pv on over 1.8m uniques. Change was part of that process.

And hence it’s time to change Medacity.

I’m consulting with the writing team now, but I’m thinking broadly that we’re going to move into tech (while still covering New Media), particularly startups and broader tech, but not gadgets.

I’m naturally disappointed the initial idea didn’t take, but when has any idea I’ve had (or many others for that matter) taken initially?

I think of Loic LeMuer and Jason Calacanis as my inspirations: two blokes who keep changing to try to hit that ultimate win.

It’s still early days, and I have the core of the same awesome writing team I had at The Inquisitr writing for me, a team that has already proved themselves from 1m to 8m page views.

I’d welcome your thoughts as to the direction we should head towards as well.

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It’s been just over a month since we launched Medacity, and although it’s still very early days, I thought I’d share some thoughts on how we are going so far.

As per the headline, there is still a bloody long road ahead for the site.

I won’t give specific figures but I’m confident we’ll come in at 20-25k pv for this month at our current rate.

I’m really only counting this month vs the launch month due to something that happened at home that I won’t discuss, only that it was significant enough for me basically to be away from the site for several weeks: the timing was horrible, but it wasn’t in my control. That situation is partially ongoing, but it’s passed to the point that not only am I writing again f/t, but I’m also active daily in working out ways to drive more traffic to the site.

The team is going well, and we also added Steven Hodson to the lineup at the beginning of the month, bringing the writing team to four (including myself.) Bringing in Steven means that we have a constant stream of opinion writing as well as the general new media news.

If the lineup sounds familiar, it’s because it’s the same lineup as the three key writers at The Inquisitr (note, I haven’t poached them, as far as I know they are still all writing there.)

But this is a completely new focus for all of them, after working with all of them for the better part of two years (Steven might have been 2.5 yrs, but I know Kim and James came in early in the second year on Inq) I have complete faith in each of them as writers. The best sign of any writer is their ability to write about anything, and The Inquisitr was always a perfect test with its broad range of topic coverage.

My general feeling is that we’re getting the content mix right, but unlike when we launched The Inquisitr, we simply don’t have the same profile I had back then at launch, and hence we didn’t have a huge attention boost at launch. Couple that with the fact that we are writing very specific niche content that doesn’t have that broad range of appeal the content at The Inquisitr had.

Given the narrow content stream I think we’re going ok.

20k pv doesn’t pay the bills, and we’re running Adsense ads at the moment as well as we won’t qualify for any major ad network yet. But even on the few clicks we get, the idea that by running premium niche content is proving itself true: I’m not sure if Google allows me to talk about CPM rates but lets just say that I’ve never once seen higher CPM’s from Adsense before, and we’re doing rates 10-20x higher on Adsense than The Inquisitr ever did.

The only key now is to find the traffic.

I’ve said many times in the past that it takes a good 9 months to prove whether a blog will work (I know Jason Calacanis says it’s 2 yrs, but I disagree with that) and we can hold out for 9-12 months without any major dramas.

This is, in many ways, a new learning experience for me as well, and I learn more every day. Indeed that’s half the reason I’m doing the site: I love a new challenge, and Medacity was always going to be a challenge from the day I came up with the idea.

We even had our first major exclusive today. The mind boggles how many people will notice it, but it’s one of those stand out posts I love to write, and I sincerely hope that it does find a broader audience because I do believe I broke a major story.

I’m confident going forward, but there is a long road ahead.

Thx to everyone who has supported us so far. I’ll be back in coming months with the good, and (hopefully not) the bad about how the site is progressing

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What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger.

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