Product stat down?

I was wondering how long it would take for anyone to mention the fact that Productstat was down. I actually took Productstat down last Saturday (a week ago now). It took 6 days before anyone actually mentioned it, which says a lot in itself unfortunately.

Doing Productstat was fun at first, but after a several of months it seemed I had absolutely no time to do anything else but work on PS and I was starting to dread it. The problem with my design for that site is all the steps involved just to do one blog post. For PS I had to:

#1 Find and schedule articles,
#2 Scan them,
#3 OCR the text,
#4 Format the text into a blog format,
#5 Proofread, which I'm terrible at,
#6 Cut out each picture, clean and format the picture,
#7 Find a spot for the picture in the article and insert it properly,
#8 Send the post up to the site,
#9 Advertise the post so I could get more than just a few readers of the post.

It was highly time consuming, so much more work and time than doing an Ephemera Library document.

Then to top it off the readership was very sparse, the smallest by far of any site I run. I asked readers multiple times that if they liked a post please on occasion share it on Facebook or other social media to help get the site more active. That hardly ever happened and I felt that it just wasn't worth the effort.

Now if I didn't have a full time job on top of everything else I would consider continuing it, but at this stage of my life I was definitely biting off more than I could chew so to speak. So I decided to take the site down and not maintain it in any way.

I may resurrect it at some point, but unless it happens after retirement, I'll need to find a way to re-design the whole thing to make it way less time consuming for the sake of my sanity.

Thanks guys for understanding!


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Post# 801011 12/26/2014 at 22:45 (3,411 days old) by mattl (Flushing, MI)
Checkrate/Likes when I go to the site all I get is a white page. Tried Safari, Chrome and Coast all the same. Is it me or the site?

Post# 801026 , Reply# 1 12/27/2014 at 01:39 (3,411 days old) by g3bill ( San Fernando Valley, So. Cali.)
Checkrate/Likes U posted here so what site? Link? I'm on dial-up with an old brouser and usually get on sites but its getting harder with the security upgrades. I need to wait for the page to fully load or things start locking up and get blank pages.:(

Post# 801027 , Reply# 2 12/27/2014 at 01:41 (3,411 days old) by g3bill ( San Fernando Valley, So. Cali.)
Checkrate/Likes U posted here so what site? Link? I'm on dial-up with an old brouser and usually get on sites but its getting harder with the security upgrades. I need to wait for the page to fully load or things start locking up and get blank pages.:(

Post# 801028 , Reply# 3 12/27/2014 at 01:59 (3,411 days old) by Frigilux (The Minnesota Prairie)
Checkrate/Likes It's the site, not you. I'm getting a blank white page. Hope it hasn't disappeared for good!

Post# 801029 , Reply# 4 12/27/2014 at 02:22 (3,411 days old) by dustin92 (Jackson, MI)
Checkrate/Likes Just checked and I'm getting a blank white page as well. I am getting the site's logo in the toolbar so maybe there is hope?

Post# 801042 , Reply# 5 12/27/2014 at 07:59 (3,410 days old) by Unimatic1140 (Minneapolis)
Checkrate/Likes 2 I was wondering how long it would take for anyone to mention the fact that Productstat was down. I actually took Productstat down last Saturday (a week ago now). It took 6 days before anyone actually mentioned it, which says a lot in itself unfortunately. Doing Productstat was fun at first, but after a several of months it seemed I had absolutely no time to do anything else but work on PS and I was starting to dread it. The problem with my design for that site is all the steps involved just to do one blog post. For PS I had to: #1 Find and schedule articles, #2 Scan them, #3 OCR the text, #4 Format the text into a blog format, #5 Proofread, which I'm terrible at, #6 Cut out each picture, clean and format the picture, #7 Find a spot for the picture in the article and insert it properly, #8 Send the post up to the site, #9 Advertise the post so I could get more than just a few readers of the post. It was highly time consuming, so much more work and time than doing an Ephemera Library document. Then to top it off the readership was very sparse, the smallest by far of any site I run. I asked readers multiple times that if they liked a post please on occasion share it on Facebook or other social media to help get the site more active. That hardly ever happened and I felt that it just wasn't worth the effort. Now if I didn't have a full time job on top of everything else I would consider continuing it, but at this stage of my life I was definitely biting off more than I could chew so to speak. So I decided to take the site down and not maintain it in any way. I may resurrect it at some point, but unless it happens after retirement, I'll need to find a way to re-design the whole thing to make it way less time consuming for the sake of my sanity. Thanks guys for understanding!

Post# 801074 , Reply# 6 12/27/2014 at 12:38 (3,410 days old) by Frigilux (The Minnesota Prairie)
Checkrate/Likes 3 It was an interesting site, but given the time/work involved I can certainly understand your decision to pull the plug. Thanks for sharing all the great articles!

Post# 801079 , Reply# 7 12/27/2014 at 13:49 (3,410 days old) by mattl (Flushing, MI)
Checkrate/Likes I enjoyed it and checked in often, but after the last post indicating updates would be less frequent I did not stop by as often. Did check in last week, but thought my browser had an issue. The site is valuable as much of that info can and will be lost forever and it needs to be archived. However it should not be a full time job. Find a way to simplify or put it on hold till you want to work on it.

Post# 801189 , Reply# 8 12/28/2014 at 04:35 (3,409 days old) by arbilab (Ft Worth TX (Ridglea))
Checkrate/Likes 1 Aww, I LOVED P-S. Said so here. Unfort, not on faceplant/twitbook. Only quit looking after you said you were putting it on hold for the holidays AND I looked one last time to be sure you meant what I read. There's just not enough of 'me' to make it worth killing yourself for. Had no idea it was so resource intensive. Back to faceplant/twitbook, think for a second about the demographics there. Outside THIS site, I don't know anyone of any age with the ability to comprehend, much less appreciate, that kind of content. CERTAINLY not on 'social media' as I understand it. We're talking about people who can't stop texting to eat fer chrissake. [40-pt rolleyes]

Post# 801951 , Reply# 10 1/2/2015 at 01:31 (3,405 days old) by PhilR (Quebec Canada)
Checkrate/Likes Robert, is there a way to access the articles that were on Product Stat? The links I saved are also down (I wish they were archived and still accessible!). If I didn't warn you about PS being down, that doesn't mean I haven't checked quite a few times after it was down! It really interested me a lot! But I understand how time-consuming it must have been for you to that and I can't blame you for stopping it!

Post# 801221 , Reply# 9 12/28/2014 at 08:11 (3,409 days old) by Unimatic1140 (Minneapolis)
Checkrate/Likes 2 Not to worry guys, there has to be an easier way for me to get this information out there. I'll figure it out in due time and as technology advances. Over the course of the next year, with some of the better articles, I'm planning on getting the full issues of those publications (not just the selected articles) into the Ephemera Library. That something that takes less than half the time to do and is relaxing/stress free work that I can do while watching TV. And there is something to be said about seeing it in its original form, the way it was created.