Letter From the CEO
4 Years?
by Robert Pritchett
Well actually, we've been publishing for more than 4 years, but pumping out an issue of the magazine each month is something we have officially been doing here at macCompanion for 4 years, as of this month.
Like any business environment, a few of our excellent all-volunteer staff have come and gone as life has taken its toll, while we've moved forward through this particular time continuum. It has been gratifying to see some of those who began with us, have moved on to their own successes and we've prayed and fasted for those who have had to battle through the exigencies of mortality, such as job losses and changes, relocations, hospitalizations, marriages and births, graduations and other family activities that make life interesting and are much more important than a monthly magazine ever could be. How's that for perspective?
macCompanion has been an experiment in publishing, with a desire to learn about books, computer hardware, software, training materials and in offering opinionated columns on a variety of topics that interest us, and probably you. And we intend to be here for the long term, as long as each of you click through our affiliates, purchase items in our Bazaar and touch base with those who paid to advertise with us on our website and in our magazine. Currently, we are almost breaking even as we pay bills for the monthly overhead charges we incur by maintaining both the website and publishing the magazine.
Of course, we'd like to get to a point where we are actually generating income to do more than just "break even". And that is where you come in. Spread the word about macCompanion and the work we do for you.
Along those lines, apparently many of those manufacturers, book publishers and software developers also are enjoying what we do and have done, over the last 4 years, based on their overwhelming generosity in offering products in our July celebration that will be "gifted" to lucky subscribers of the magazine and listeners of the Mac ReviewCast at http://www.macreviewcast.com each week, when we do the "gift-away" the 2nd weekend of July. Well over $4,000 USD worth of gifts will be distributed either by us, or by those who offered their wares, to "direct-ship" products. We feel during a celebration that it is better to "gift" than to receive, don't you? We thought so!
We also feel we are "riding the wave" and "hanging 10" as we surf the crest of the Apple-induced tsunami that is beginning to sweep over the computer industry. This is really exciting!
Your gift to us would be in letting others know we exist and that they too can read our free monthly commentary and reviews, either online or in the downloadable PDFs we produce each month at http://www.maccompanion.com.
We really would like to see an increase in traffic from around 2 million page views per month and see that move closer to 3 million or more by year's end. How about it? It's really simple. Just talk about us.
After all, by our count, there are close to 80 million people around the world that use Macs and with around "5% marketshare", as if that were a real indicator. There are 95% more potential readers of the rest of the computer users on the planet that probably never heard of us – and they should. Would you agree?
Yep. Hard to believe, isn't it? Four years and by our estimate, getting better by the month. All because of you.
From the bottom of our hearts, we thank you for reading, linking and communicating with us about this "Lifestyle" that Apple has bestowed upon us. Without them and those who produce products for this industry, we would not have anything really to discuss now, would we?
