The next site is ready to go. Indeed the template seems 99% there and we’re not launching yet because I never launch a site without some serious content up.

It’s going up within the next 2 weeks.

But I digress.

The new site covers a niche. It’s opposite to The Inquisitr which was always about volume.

I’m not saying volume is wrong but this site will never scale like The Inquisitr. What I’m hoping is that the CPM’s are so much higher that we can build strong traffic, but traffic that pays far higher rates.

I’ve already been asked by friends why not do a similar model again (like Inq) I mean, 8m+ page views in the third year were and remain awesome.

Maybe I’m a sadist, but I love a new challenge. I love taking on a new model and seeing if it works. Sure I could repeat what I’ve done before, but where is the fun, and challenge in that.

The new site is different, and a risk, but in many ways that’s the joy of it.

What I will say is the template is 99% finished and the team is starting to post. But we won’t launch until later this week or early next week. When I launch, I launch with content.

Thanks to everyone who has encouraged me, sent me good wishes, and also been my friend. I know that what I do for a living is a bit nuts…least the banks always tell me that when they refuse me money But each time I start a new site, I am for higher traffic and more support than the one before. I can only hope that you all like it and will support me once again.

This site won’t appeal to everyone, but we will own an unmet niche, and I’d hope define a new media niche that hasn’t ever seriously been covered before.

I’ll be back in a week with the launch. Wish me luck

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It won’t be a surprise to most readers of this blog that I’ve always created content primarily aimed at an American (well North American) audience, but in 2011 for the first time as I’m preparing my new site I’ve stopped to wonder whether it’s the best decision I can make..well, a little bit.

There’s two primary reasons why I’d express any concern at all about aiming a new site towards North America: the US economy and the exchange rate. We’ll get to that a bit later on, but I thought I’d brain dump the pros and cons of aiming for this audiences.

Rewards
Scale

The North American market offers far far more opportunities to scale a site, particularly in a niche vertical, vs a site aimed at a primarily Australian audience. It’s simple maths: 307 million people in the United States as a potential audience vs 22 million people in Australia.

This would apply to many countries as well, particularly the UK and Canada. This is not to say that there are not opportunities to attract a non-local audience to your content (Australia, Canada and the UK were 2nd, 3rd and 4th in terms of traffic for The Inquisitr) and there are a few examples of non-US sites attracting strong US audiences (Times.co.uk particularly comes to mind) but it’s easier to chase the larger market first and then supplement it with local traffic vs the other way around (particularly if your local site uses a local domain such as .com.au).

Costs

The sad but true reality is that it remains cheaper to run a site focused on a North American audience hosted and written primarily by those living within the United States than it is for an Australian site.

Hosting, while getting far more competitive in Australia (and I’m surprised regularly by some of the good offerings emerging in the local market) you still get a lot more bang for your buck in the United States when it comes to hosting.

The difference in running costs is  greater again. Minimum wages and taxation make it expensive to hire people in Australia and run a site. While contracting people in Australia is perfectly legal, you open yourself up to taxation issues if it turns out any of your contractors were working for you the majority of the time (they would be deemed full time employees) and subsequently administration becomes far more difficult (PAYG Tax, Superannuation etc etc..even payroll tax, liability insurance etc etc..). You simply don’t have that problem with hiring people in the United States, and any tax liability issues with a US based contractor falls on the contractor.

Writing for a US audience with US advertisers also means that you are exporting, which means a GST exemption on sales vs dealing with local advertisers and a local audience, which incurs GST.

Talent

One of the biggest advantages of running a US based site for an American audience is the ability to tap into an enormous, and most times affordable talent pool. This is not to say that talented, affordable writers aren’t available in Australia, but there are far, far more on offer in the United States.

The quality of applicants, let alone quantity that have applied for positions with me in the past (and even lower paying positions) will always stagger me. One of our very first writers at The Inquisitr has two Emmy Awards…for writing. I’ve had everything from out of work TV foreign correspondents through to senior people from the newspaper industry apply for jobs with me before, let alone a pool of new media bloggers with a wealth of experience with big US online companies.You simply just don’t get that in Australia.

You can hire some of those people to write for a site targeted at a local audience, but only if you’re primarily writing non-local content…which would in a way defeat the purpose of writing a locally targeted site to begin with.

Risks

US Economy

Everything I’m reading at the moment screams to me that not only is the US economy not in a good way, it’s likely to dip back into recession shortly, and maybe even worse. That said, the same economists predicting this outcome are often the same economists who failed to predict the GFC and last US recession, so perhaps they’re just playing it safe…but where there is smoke there is often fire.

The online ad market in the United States has never been as good as it was pre-recession (in my experience, even if sales are at a record high) due to several reasons, including the ongoing volatility in local markets, best represented by changing spends month to month. Another problem is one of supply and demand: there’s so much more content out there now that getting good, regular money for content is getting harder, and that’s more so a serious problem in the United States than Australia (indeed you’ll get far better CPM rates in Australia on most content these days…but you’ve got to scale it to match.)

That aside, a serious double dip recession has to see some sort of slowdown or decline in online ad spend; I’d suggest that like the last US recession that more money will flow out of old media than new media, but a downturn will affect all segments of the ad market, and that’s offers a serious risk to anyone targeting a US audience.

Exchange Rate

The exchange rate continues to be my biggest concern…by an old fashioned country mile.

The reality is that the US dollar has continued to decline against most world currencies, and even more so against the Australian dollar. I have to make far more now in US dollars to make the same amount I did in Australian dollars vs even 4 years ago.

To give you a rough idea
In 2007, I’d cash out US$5000 for around AUD$8000
In 2011, I cash out $5000 for around AUD$4500.

Before I even start, my rent is approx AUD$2000 a month (I live in a tiny 2bd apartment that doubles for my office) and utility bills (electricity/ gas/ water/ internet/ phone) add another approx AUD$500 a month on top of that again, and these figures continue to rise.

If the US dollar continues to drop, so does my income unless the site increases its income conversely to the drop in the US dollar…which it never does.

Conclusion

I’m unlikely going to change my mind and write primarily for an Australian audience (although like The Inquisitr, we will always have Australian readers) but in 2011 vs say 2007 the risk is far higher a concern than it was 4-5 years ago.

If you’re an Australian (or non-US based blogger) looking at a local market vs the United States market, I’d still recommend the latter, but the choice isn’t as clear cut as it use to be.

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As part of the preparation for my next project, I’ve spent half a day looking at what’s going on in the New Media industry as a whole, so I can get a better grasp on the trends in the industry, everything from companies that are hiring (and likewise how they promote this) through to corporate announcements, site changes, and even design changes.

But there’s one thing that struck me: new media seems to be particularly bad at promoting itself.

Content is king, but likewise sites/ networks of a particular size should also be talking themselves up outside of the content itself. Some sites do; some of the bigger players have media pages where you can subscribe to media releases or a corporate blog. The content is varied, but it’s there.

But what struck me is how many don’t.

I’m not talking about small sites, I’m talking about big networks and big sites.

The likes of Gigaom, VentureBeat, Gawker and TechCrunch for example don’t offer site news pages. Mashable does…but there’s no way to subscribe to it. b5media (or B5Media as they’ve re-branded themselves) offer news page but with no way of subscribing to it, and I’m not talking about email (although that wouldn’t be a bad option vs none at all) but RSS as well.

That’s but a small cross section of names I’ve stumbled across today.

I can’t break glass houses without saying that I haven’t done it in the past either, but The Inquisitr at 8m page views a month was hardly a Mashable at 40 million page views. Perhaps I’m too old school in terms of PR: I’d expect large businesses to self promote and announce, where as the fact is that I’ve found it hard to even subscribe to feeds from NASDAQ listed companies.

There’s another post to be written on defining exactly what is a new media company, but I think I’ve just identified one difference where new media needs to catch up to old media in.

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I haven’t taken a proper break yet post sale of The Inquisitr, but I’ve taken a few days off reading and sorting a few things out. My plans to sit on a beach for a couple of weeks have been delayed to late July, so although I’m still in semi-retirement for the time being, I thought I might start writing here again on duncanriley.com far more regularly than I have for years.

But what about?

Twitter is for the more mundane things in life in 2011, so I won’t bore you with that side. I still have to deal with a number of personal issues but being able to not work and not worry about money for the months, even if I play it conservatively, years ahead, helps a bloody lot.

I guess it comes as no surprise to anyone who read the press release on The Inquisitr sale that I’ve already worked out what I’m doing next. I have no intention though of disclosing what that is. I own over 100 domains, so if anyone wants to play detective, you won’t find an answer. I could be going into anything from porn through to online analytics, but it naturally won’t be any of those things.

I will confess three things though

1. The Inquisitr will do much better without me, and I hope and indeed perhaps know that it will thrive under new ownership.

Because of my personal life distractions (not the least was having to deal with a divorce and custody issues) I haven’t given it the time and attention it really deserved for some time. That site should have been pumping out 12-15 million page views by now had I been running it more hands on (and I’d expanded the content as was in my original plan)

2. I really need a break. I had a semi-break post b5media, but never actually stopped working in a proper sense. Bar a week in Cairns and a couple of work related trips to the States (with a coupe of side trips) I haven’t really stopped working properly online since 2005-2006ish.

3. I was starting to become a bit bored by The Inquisitr, although this wasn’t the reason for the sale, it was profitable and ran itself, what more could you ask for in a site.

I want to address point three though in more detail: it’s not that I disliked the content on the site at all, indeed even today The Inquisitr produces high quality content, particularly in tech areas and sport, that people often ignore. Even the celebrity content (although not always to everyone’s taste) was often first rate and we were always quick on stories.

But I knew what worked, and the content that worked best wasn’t particularly in areas I was passionate about or held a great deal of interest in personally. But one example: our biggest day ever came from me writing one post on the Royal Wedding, then me subsequently live blogging it.

I am taking it easy for a while, but in the mean time I thought I might start to write here about blogging, my thoughts on the industry, its ethics, and even managing a site. It will be (I would hope) both interesting, and will help me get my head around my next project…without disclosing what it is naturally.

I’ll only say that I’m naturally going to return to online publishing, and I’m going back to my roots. Something I can dig my teeth into so to speak, and a new challenge (and anyone who knows me knows that I thrive on new challenges.) Whether it works or not time will only tell, but time to prepare and plan is something I now have plenty of.

Stay tuned for more, and thanks to everyone for their support and well wishes.

I can honestly say in the last few months (between the personal issues and the site sale) that I am truly humbled by the support I’ve received. I may have had a reputation as being a bastard who upset people at a time (think TechCrunch) but I take solace in knowing that many of you may actually find some value in me.

Duncan.

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Note from me: this is our official press release today. Timed at 10am EDT US Time 23 May 2011 under embargo.

As follows:

Nichnet Pty Ltd is proud to today officially announce the sale, and final transfer of The Inquisitr (inquisitr.com) to new owners.

As per disclosure by Flippa.com, the final sale price was USD$330,000.

Nichenet Pty Ltd CEO Duncan Riley had this to say on the sale:

“I had to sell for private reasons in the end, which weren’t related to the running of the site (indeed it ran itself) but you get to a point where you need a proper break (one I haven’t had for seven years,) and the site has gone into good hands at a good price.”

“I do believe The Inquistr was worth far more, but the quality of the buyer and the fact that they kept on the writers, who are the real assets of the company (which they have proved time and again) was an important consideration.”

“It was a clear cash sale (without conditions and with no clauses for me to stay on) which was the deciding factor in me accepting the offer.”

“The Inquisitr has been my heart and soul for three years, and as much as it hurts me to be forced to sell it, I know it goes into good hands.”

The identify of the buyer has been withheld at their request.

Riley went on to say

“Although it was a quick sale and I believe it was less than it was worth, the sale once again proves the viability of new media. The sale worked out at roughly 30x net monthly after writers, which is a good figure in the after market, and compares well to old media sales.”

Riley said that he intended to take 2-3 months off before launching a new site that would not compete with The Inquisitr in any way, but would tackle a new targeted niche that he believes is not currently being met.

ENDS.

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Just a quick note to Inquisitr fans and royal junkies: I’ll be live blogging the Royal Wedding tonight on The Inquisitr.

If you’re not near a TV, you can watch the royal wedding live online, or I’ll update this post later with the live blog link.

Yeah yeah, hassle away. But it pays the bills

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It’s been a while since I’ve done an update on stats for The Inquisitr, but a great month is always a good reason to share. We’ve floated in the 7-8m pv range for maybe the last 6 months or so (maybe longer, I didn’t check) and with the exception of Feb 2011 where we were just below 7m pv (28 days… with another two days it wouldn’t have been an issue) we’ve done well.

The good news is that in March 2011 we finally broke the 8 million page view mark, and we’re getting closer to breaking the 2m unique visitor figure as well. Indeed, in many ways the unique figure is possibly better again.

The good stuff from the breakdown: the biggest post only accounted for 1.63% of the page views, and the biggest posts after that 1.44%, 1.32%, 1.26% and 0.96%. In the early days we often relied on a couple of huge posts to get us up, today the traffic is well distributed across many many posts.

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We finally broke through the 7m page view mark in November, with all key stats showing new highs.

Highlight of the month was November 1, where we hit a new high in daily page views: 560,000 in one day.

The ad market remains rather subdued though, and although we were up for the month, we’ve booked significantly less than we did in the same period last year, although up on October.

My thanks to the team for their stellar effort, and hopefully we’ll do even better again in December. Who knows, 10 million page views is getting closer and closer

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RandomAltFood.com

My first attempt (ever) of writing about food. It only has a few posts up now, but I’m slowly adding to it.

It’s not a major attempt at creating a major food destination for Melbourne…yet, but more of a hobby and somewhere for me to write about food, given I have a tendency of tweeting about food on a regular basis.

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