We believe in the long term value of Apple hardware. You should be able to use your Apple gear as long as it helps you remain productive and meets your needs, upgrading only as necessary. We want to help maximize the life of your Apple gear.
Low End Mac has been around since April 1997, when I posted two
dozen Mac profiles to my personal webspace as I began to learn how this
World Wide Web thing worked. Since then we added more and more
profiles, expanded with editorial content and support groups, moved to
our own domain, and grew from a few hundred hits a day to over 10
million per year.
We quickly became established as the place to go for information on
older Macs. We have always advocated the long-term value of Macs, using
them as long as practical, upgrading when necessary, and only replacing
them when they became a bottleneck. And then we often suggested moving
to a less-old Mac, not a brand new one.
Growing Pains
I left my full time IT job in January 2001 to do Low End Mac full
time, and we've had our ups and downs since then. The dot-com bubble burst,
greatly reducing ad income, and since 2008, the Great Recession once
again reduced site income.
The solution has always been to supplement Low End Mac's income with
a part-time job, and the first time around it didn't interfere much
with publishing lowendmac.com. I worked Saturdays and 1-2 afternoons a
week at a local camera store and was still able to dedicate plenty of
time to Low End Mac.
Not so much this time. I've been working a part-time third-shift job
to help make ends meet, and it averages three nights a week - sometimes
just one, sometimes as many as five. For two-and-a-half years I've been
burning the candle on both ends to make ends meet, and it's taking its
toll on the website. I have less time to work on it, which means less
new articles. Traffic has dropped from over 50,000 pages per day to
about 20,000. Income last year was down 15% from 2007.
This year we've lost two affiliate programs that really made a
difference, one of them being the online Apple Store. That's been about
7% of our income, so it's really starting to hurt.
A Big Opportunity
Chase Bank and Living Social have teamed up to create
Mission: Small Business, which will award $250,000 grants to at least
four small businesses - and perhaps as many as 12. We could really
use that at Low End Mac.
First of all, this would let us get caught up on our debts, making
us debt-free. Secondly, it would let us put aside money to better ride
out the ebb and flow of income from month-to-month and
season-to-season. Best of all, from my perspective, it would let me
quit that third-shift job and go back to doing what I love (publishing
Low End Mac) full time again.
This would also allow us to hire someone to help us move Low End Mac
to a content management system (CMS), something I have wanted to do for
years but never quite mastered on my own. With a CMS, writers would be
able to submit articles via the Web, we would be able to hire a couple
part-time editors and proofreaders to approve those articles for
publication, and I wouldn't have to be the one who proofreads and edits
everything we post.
That, in turn, would give me time to find new writing talent for Low
End Mac, others who love older Macs and have a gift for writing. And
that should do wonders to boost site traffic, which will boost
income.
On a personal note, this would let me have a regular paycheck
instead of the "catch as catch can" system I've been using for too many
years now. (There have been times when I've gone months without a
paycheck just to keep the site solvent.) And I could get better health
insurance, which is important when you're in your 50s.
A Dream
For years, I've dreamt of having an office, a Mac museum, and a
small coffee shop where I could work, people could see and use older
Macs, and Mac users could hang out with each other, using WiFi to
connect to the world. Nothing big or high-end, just a place to get some
coffee and a cookie or cupcake, relax, and be surrounded by fellow Mac
lovers.
That's never going to happen without something big happening, like
winning the lottery (unlikely, since I don't play it) or getting a
Mission: Small Business grant.
Low End Mac has always offered something unique, a non-consumption
advocacy of getting by with older technology, which saves you money and
keeps things out of landfills. We want to continue doing that, but
until the economy takes off again, it's very likely to become a
part-time hobby once again.
If you'd like to see Low End Mac get on a solid financial footing,
please vote for us in Mission: Small Business. Follow this link, click on
the "Log In & Support" button, then enter Low End Mac as the
business name. We are in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and we need at least
250 votes to be considered for this grant.
Dan Knight has been using Macs since 1986,
sold Macs for several years, supported them for many more years, and
has been publishing Low End Mac since April 1997. If you find Dan's articles helpful, please consider making a donation to his tip jar.
Links for the Day
Mac of the Day: Blue & White Power Mac G3, introduced 1999.01.05. The most colorful Power Mac introduced an innovative 'drawbridge' enclosure.
