11/04/2023
After 13 years I have decided to close down the AusClicks website and move on. I'm posting this on Facebook today and sometime next week I will probably take the page offline just as soon as I can work out how to do that :)
For the last few years I have been way more focused on my Teacher Education studies and a few other projects on the side – and life in general. Initially I thought I would keep AusClicks going as a side thing but it quickly dropped off my radar and I have mostly just been looking after existing customers, nothing new.
I thought the AusClicks City program would be something to keep it going but revenue from Google AdSense just kept dwindling despite good traffic and they stopped paying for themselves. Covid more or less killed tourism revenue from places like Hotels Combined so that was more or less the end of that. I could have chased more web advertising but I don’t really like the internet advertising industry so… Those sites were closed last year as the domains ran out. Bit sad about that but the work just wasn’t worth it.
Every year the AusClicks domain comes up for renewal I am tempted to just let it expire, but then it’s “just one more year”. I think letting go of MilduraInternet.com.au last year was cathartic so it’s time to say goodnight to this one too.
I have moved all relevant content from the main AusClicks website to a wordpress account – AusClicks.wordpress.com – turns out I set that up in 2010, had fun recovering that on an old email… Once I post this I will redirect this domain to that one.
As for exisiting customers I will continue to service their domains and websites as per usual. I’ve been doing it under my own name mostly the last few years anyway. There will be a few changes rolled out this year but I will email them as needed. I am about to tidy and rejig a bunch of my own domains so I will post about that once it’s sorted – but michaelq.au is probably a good place to go soonish.
THANK YOU to all customers from AusClicks, Mildura Internet, and Double Pepperoni. I’ve been doing websites and stuff for others since around 1998 which is a pretty decent run. Most of it was fun. Servers crashing in the middle of family holidays was not fun. Email was not fun. But most the rest of it was awesome.
I have seen businesses come and go, some did so well they got bought out, some just continue to roll along, others didn’t make it and had to close. I’ve had several bitter sweet moments when a business got so big or embraced the internet so much they ended up having to have someone full-time looking after things for them. The internet and what it means for a business has completely changed the world since I started in 1998 (and personally well before that).
It was a fun ride. Time to get off. Thanks.
