AccMan Pro (now moved to www.accmanpro.com)

3 month progress report

This post was scheduled to go out today. I just had to fill in the numbers. Ironic isn't it that when I originally penned this, I was planning to move on. The outtage simply accelerated the decision.

On 17th October, I said 

"One month and 136 posts later, AccMan has had 1,722 visits with 3,805 page views."

As of close of play today, we've had 6,270 visits with 13,350 page views. And I've now penned some 297 articles, receiving 84 comments. Thank you all. It's shaping what I do.

I'm particularly proud of the fact we got our largest audience ever on 15th October when I ran the analysis of the Arctic Systems case. Even more satisfying was the fact that on a Google search, AccMan comes out top and also appears at no.6 - Citrus also appears twice at no's 2 and 10. Tax Blagger gets a look in at number 3. So the top three slots all go to folk who use blog technology. The so-called trusted sources appear nowhere. Not in the top 10 where it matters.

The audience is made up as to: 68.7% UK, 15.8% US with the remainder scattered around the world in a couple of dozen countries. So now when people want to know about tax, technology and marketing in the UK - we're a credible presence.

Significantly, I've completed 5 podcasts and plan to expand that part of the biz significantly over the coming months. In the New Year, I will be launching the 15 Minute Round Up with some interesting collaborations to announce.

I now have commercial deals that have arisen directly from these activities. All of the projects are interesting and as soon as I can say more, I surely will. These deals are providing a significant boost to income and are personally satisfying in ways that traditional media could never be.

Equally exiting - at least to me - I shall also be moving the site, updating it and putting it on a fresh platform. Sadly I've grown out of TypePad and need to move on. So that's the first truly sunk cost $149.50. Not bad eh? thanks TypePad people for what you've done for me. But for the moment at least it's 'syonara' (as painted on one of Larry Ellison's boats.) or will it be 'see you later?

Technorati Tags : typepad+outtage, typepad, blogging+UK, accoutants+blog

TypePad hoses me - I'm outta here

Some readers know yesterday was Black Friday. I was really looking forward to it as it had been a cracking couple of days. Then disaster struck. Six Apart the developers and hosting provider for TypePad, the platform on which this site sits had a major outtage that lasted 18 hours.

This is not the place to argue the ins and outs, rights and wrongs. I know they were working hard to resolve it and I know execs were over-run with calls, email etc. Irrelevant in my eyes. This was the second outtage in several weeks. This time it wasn't a scalability issue but what to me sounds like basic housekeeping gone badly wrong.

This is a sure sign of an immature business that has ignored or not understood the issues of scaling up Internet service based applications.  Fortunately, switching costs are minimal though time consuming. So by the time you see the nextr post, I hope to have transferred services. In the meantime, you'll need to have a quick look through the Recent Posts in the sidebar because it looks like 6A hosed the email subscriptions reader as well somewhere along the way. Great.

I'm talking to the feed people about this to see what can be done.

I'm glad I didn't advise anyone to use this platform except to play behind the firewall. Pity I didn't take my own advice!

Technorati Tags : sixapart, typepad+outtage, typepad