ShaneBaxtor.com

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On closer inspection, the numbers that were provided to us by our source were outdated and at least one chap took offence to our earlier post and contacted us about it. He wasn’t happy, so we thought we would do some more fact checking and go over the numbers again for you.

While we are unsure if the following numbers are audited or not – they come right from the publishers media kits that they use to help sell ads. We thought we should do an update post and maybe clear things up a little.

What they didn’t know though is that the numbers we quoted were higher than they actually are according to their own media kits and information on their websites. What’s the issue then? I don’t know, but here we go.

PC User Australia 42,177 (ABC July 09 – Dec 09)
APC 32,191 (ABC July 09 – Dec 09)
PC Authority 26,349 (2010 media kit)
PC Power play 19,000 (ROY MORGAN DEC ’07 & YAS ’07)
Atomic 18,000 (2010 media kit)
ARN 10,315 (IDG website)

If you compare these numbers to the numbers in the other post, they are different, but not far off. We are sorry for the number errors. Having said that though, these numbers only go a way to show that TweakTown is now probably able to delivery almost four times as many readers as all of the top Australian magazines combined.

All of these numbers are publically available and we have taken screenshots of websites and documents for safe keeping.

On that note I do apologize for companies wanting to advertise with these magazines for making them look slightly better than they are. It’s nice to know that’s all been cleared up.

So the other day I posted my first SB.com review online; I didn’t announce it on Facebook or anything like that as I would normally do because it was more about me just dipping my toes into the back end to figure out how I want to attack what I want to do.

The first thing you need to know is that I haven’t left TweakTown.com, Cameron and I are as good a mates as we have ever been and to be honest I’m doing more work for the site than ever. For the past few years my focus has been Video Cards and Memory, over the past few months though as TweakTown has grown I’m now doing Displays (Monitors, Projectors and TVs) and recently I’ve received my first GPS samples. The latest subjects are all to do with helping offer another level of information to our readers, and I use the word our readers because while I have no financial stake in the site, working at TweakTown for 7 years means that the people that read and appreciate my reviews are like my extended family.

Like most young 25 year olds though I have goals and ambitions, I’ve seen a hole in Australia when it comes to getting information out there and I intend to help plug it.

When I started my blog I had no intension on doing reviews, let me give you the tip, in 5 months and 14 days I’ve done 80 yes eight zero reviews for TweakTown. I’m one of very few global full time writers for a tech website and one of even fewer when it comes to Australia. Since I went full time for TweakTown in 2008 I’ve done 339 reviews. It’s not hard to do the maths, I’m a reviewing machine lol.

In 7 years though I’ve talked to everyone from Marketing Executives, Wholesale and Retail Store Owners to End Users. I’ve learnt a lot about the Australian market and figure that I’ve got a good enough understanding off it to really offer something better then what the current magazines in Australia do.

I’m at a level in my work life that my productivity is through the roof, multiple test beds, stream lined procedures and templates that have taken me years to perfect mean that I can just power through reviews these days. Its these reasons why I can offer the companies I deal with such fast turnaround times on TweakTown reviews.

Over the past few years I’ve been writing for some local magazines, here I’ve been doing Video Card reviews and RAM along with a few other things. What I was able to offer companies was better exposure for their samples, I was able to offer them the review on TweakTown they would always get and then some Video Cards and memory would also get reviewed in some of Australia’s biggest magazines.

So the question is what do I want to review? Well anything and everything. I’d review a fridge if you want to send it to me, my drinks do need to be cold you know. In all seriousness though the aim is to focus on the normal computer goodies for now. By covering things like motherboards, hard drives and CPUs items that are covered by other writers at TweakTown I’m able to expand my knowledge on the areas that interest me with firsthand experience. I really pride myself on my knowledge of Video Cards and Memory because of firsthand experience.

So there’s a few things that people who want to send samples too me need to know, if you send me Video Cards and Memory a review will always go on TweakTown before anything else, much the same way a product was dealt with when I was writing for the magazines, instead of being limited to only 2 video card reviews a month though there is no limit for SB.com; one of the biggest factors I’m pushing when compared to Australian magazines.

So other things, motherboards, SSD and more. If you send me a motherboard you’re sending Shane of sb.com a motherboard not Shane of TweakTown.com. Chris at TweakTown offers 12 page reviews covering loads off information about hard drives, Sean offers the same sized reviews for TweakTown on motherboards. I want to offer reviews here at about 4x the size of a magazine which equates to around 1000 – 1200 words. They’ll be a single page and are aimed to offer significantly more information than a 300 word magazine review; at the same time in a much quicker lead time.

The information in my reviews will be more generalised, in much the same way I can be at my local game store and check IGN on my iPhone to see if a game looks good you’ll be able to quickly fire up SB.com, fire through a review on a product and hopefully be able to make a decision.

This brings me to my advertising plan; my main focus is about offering Wholesalers and Retailers in Australia a chance for someone to go straight from the review to a retailers website and buy the product. Its designed so if someone wants to buy from their local computer store and they don’t sell the product they can say it can be bought at X Wholesaler. What I hope is that retailers will be able to expand their line up with new products and Wholesalers will hopefully be able to pick up some new customers.

” Where to Buy (Wholesalers): Do you sell the HD 5970 TOXIC in Australia? Email us for Ad opportunities.
Where to Buy (Retailers): Do you sell the HD 5970 TOXIC in Australia? Email us for Ad opportunities”

Then the retailers who advertise will be able to hopefully pick up some new customers. The aim is to cap retailers to around 10, the idea is that if I reviewed a Gigabyte Motherboard which is something most computer stores in Australia offer , when it comes to showing where the product can be bought I’m not showing 100 retailers making the whole process very counterproductive, instead I’m aiming for 1 WA, 1 SA, 3 VIC, 3 NSW, 1 or 2 QLD and 1 TAS. Wholesalers are a different story though since few wholesalers cross sell the same brands there’s no cap, worst case a Gigabyte product is reviewed only two or three wholesalers are listed.

I hope that helps cover some of the plans and helps clear some confusion. Not only am I not leaving TweakTown, I’m not aiming to compete with it (it does 3x the traffic of all Australian Tech Magazines combined, it would be near impossible for anyone to start a website today and compete with those numbers) I’m not planning to compete with any tech site really, instead my aim is to offer something between a magazine and a typical tech website. It might not be anything new on a global scale but it should be something new for the Australian market and something the Australian market is missing because while it’s a small market it’s an important one.

Edit: With a bit of research and time I’ve manage to get the advertised circulation numbers from all the below magazines from Media kits after someone wasn’t too happy with the original numbers we posted. Unfortunately the numbers are worse than the ones below; oh well you can read it here. No other information in the below post has been adjusted.

I consider myself lucky that I write for TweakTown; there’s very few websites that people would’ve been able to write for over 7 years, go through a finical crisis and still be working full time for that said site.

I have been speaking to Cameron about the circulation numbers of the Australian magazines and thought it would be worth asking him about TTs unique visitors. I already know that hits are in the millions but I wasn’t going to get into a flame war with people saying that a magazine’s circulation number is a unique reader verse a hit on a website.

Cameron confirmed what I thought…and in a much bigger way then I expected. In a month Australia is seeing 156,000 sales without Atomic. Now let’s be serious with Atomic it’s probably around 185,000. Let’s just say in a magical world where pigs flies and I ride a unicorn down to the shops Atomic is doing 100,000.

Google Analytics puts TweakTowns UNIQUE, yes UNIQUE not hits but unique visitors at over three times that 256k figure. Now I can understand certain companies who want to target Australia only when it comes to advertising and you feel that as big as TT is the fact they’re global doesn’t benefit you a whole lot. TT does and have done for a long time offered Geo Targeted ads though which isn’t just great for Australia but other countries who want to target a certain country.

Geo Targeting is useful to a certain level off customer, when it comes to manufacturers global advertising is the best option but if you’re a retail store based in Australia, America, Europe or any other country then you can still advertise via Geo Targeting.

While it might seem a bit counterproductive promoting advertising on a site other then my own the bottom line is that TweakTown offers a global audience to people. A review on TweakTown is seen by millions of peoples in almost every country. My goal here is to offer news on a global scale and reviews that can be seen on a global scale but is targeted for the smaller but equally important Australian Audience.

Honestly though if you’re a manufacturer advertising in Australian magazines, add what it would cost to advertise in every one. Then go to TweakTown.com and contact Cameron Wilmot; I can almost guarantee you that it will be cheaper to advertise on TweakTown while seeing 3x the audience and opening your product to the world.

Again though; three times the combined figures of Australian Magazines. I’m asking for a pay rise!

Edit: With a bit of research and time I’ve manage to get the advertised circulation numbers from all the below magazines from Media kits after someone wasn’t too happy with the original numbers we posted. Unfortunately the numbers are worse than the ones below; oh well you can read it here. No other information in the below post has been adjusted.

Today I saw the latest audited circulation numbers for Australia’s top tech magazines. For the most part there’s no real surprises, PC User for a long time has sat in no.1 spot followed by APC, after that we see a couple of other magazines battle it out.

What made me laugh though was Atomic, oh and how it made me laugh. Clearly not wanting to be audited they did the honest thing and just gave there Circulation numbers out.

PC User Australia 55,000 circulation
APC 36,000
PC Authority 30,000
PC Power play 25,000
ARN 10,000
Atomic (unaudited) 100,000

If Atomic was Pinocchio I wouldn’t want to be looking at their nose right now. It’s been common knowledge for a long time that PC User and APC have held top two spots; the fact that Atomic have come in and said there Circulation is 2x better then the no.1 magazine and 3x better then the no.2 one is just unbelievable. The least they could have done is made it look half believable by saying they had like 38,000.

Magazine advertising is the only thing keeping these magazines alive, here you’ve got audited circulation numbers. If you want to advertise make sure you go off these numbers and not unaudited ones that a sales guy is pitching at you.

Long gone are the days where you should be paying $1,000s for a full page colour ad, most of these guys are desperate for your ad so squeeze them for everything there worth and don’t lock yourself into hugely long contracts.

I understands it’s going to take time for the Australian wholesale and retail channel to acknowledge that the magazine is no longer the way to deliver tech information, for now though I can at least give you an idea of what’s going on.

Tonight I found myself taking some photos of the new Gigabyte HD 5770 Super Overclock and it made me think of a few other companies out there and what there stand out series are. While companies like Sapphire have some stand out models unlike MSI and Gigabyte they don’t have the luxury of being able to offer users NVIDIA and ATI.

The HD 5770 SOC though seemed to really cement in my mind why it’s one of the best series. For me there’s two stand out series at the moment, the SOC from Gigabyte and the Lightning from MSI. While I like both series the SOC is the better one on the marketing side of things for the simple reason being that Gigabyte have chosen to take it outside of just the highest end models.

MSI have offered the Lightning in the HD 5870 from ATI, on the NV front we saw them last year give it to some of the higher end GTX 200 series. The next model we should see from them is the GTX 480.

Gigabyte on the other hand have attacked the HD 5770 recently and coming soon is the GTX 470. While we understand that MSI have chosen to reserve the Lightning series to only the best single GPU cards I get this feeling that they’re throwing opportunity away, much in the same way I feel Sapphire have done by not making full use of the ATOMIC series in the HD 5000 line up.

The HD 5870 Lightning was a very technical card and a lot went into it, the HD 5870 SOC on the other hand wasn’t as technical but the end result for many people was a card that was cheaper and faster thanks to the 950MHz core vs the 900MHz core.

Companies need to take advantage of the series that they create, Gigabyte started the SOC series a bit back and have really ran with it. At the same time they’re not just slapping the name onto any model, the HD 5770 is overclocked too 900MHz on the core which clearly warrants it.

Hopefully as time goes on we’ll see companies take more advantage of the series they have and give us even more choices to play with, because while overclocking isn’t hard there’s still a large amount of people out there who don’t want to do it or are just worried about doing it.

I really only participate on one forum and that’s Overclockers Australia. I’ve been a member for years but the problem is a few years ago the forums stopped being about computers and started being about everything else. The forums is ultimately a trade hub for Australians because multiple times the trade sections have been closed due to issues and each time the users have just left.

For a long time I really felt sorry for the advertisers here since while they advertised computer products majority of people where talking in other non related areas, and to be completely honest the advertisers on there don’t have the most aggressive pricing and as soon as someone asks where they should buy X product they just get pointed to the cheapest place, service and loyalty just never come into it. I really have no idea what the advertisers get out of advertising on the site, we need to start moving away from a banner only system which gets blocked or just ignored.

Lately though I’m feeling sorry for another group of people, the people that don’t know heaps about computers but are coming to OCAU to learn. For years the forums been full of people who think they know what they’re talking about but don’t, the good thing was though that regulars posted where able to at least inform people of the truth.

The has changed though, since the launch of the GTX 400 series you’ve got a lot of people who have spent money on the model and just tell lies about what happens to justify there purchase. I have a saying, “They who shout the loudest is most heard.” The problem is the forum is now becoming full of people who have too much time on their hands and can just ramble crap at every second.

Today I got banned again; it’s hardly the first time but here’s the reason.

You have been banned for the following reason:
24 hours for yet another video card fanboi argument.

Me! a fanboi!?!? I make a living off telling people about the latest graphics cards on the market, I’ll tell you right now, if I was a “fanboi” in any shape, way or form I wouldn’t have a job, and I wouldn’t have support from multiple companies because if I was a “fanboi” they know that nothing positive would be said about the product so it wouldn’t get sent to me. I offer an objective opinion on everything I review.

So what was this argument about? Well a forum member gave users the impression you could buy a HD 5770 and use it as a PhysX card. This user came back with excuses, oh it’s not what I meant, started dropping F bombs and what not. The bottom line is though he said he was going to buy a HD 5770 to go with his GTX 480, he didn’t say Could I get a HD 5770 to use as PhysX? This is one of those users who thinks they’re a real expert.

The thing is these users are everywhere but as OCAU has shifted from computing to everything else the smart to idiot ratio in the computing sections have shifted, and for the worse.

Honestly if you’re interested in talking to hardware enthusiasts you’re better off at forums like TweakTown and i4 Memory just going off my personal experience. Friends of mine have highly recommend [H], Guru3D and others as well though. If you want to talk about cars there’s plenty of car forums / clubs, Apple stuff? Well I discovered the MacTalk forums just the other day when I was just doing iPad searching.

OCAU is at a point where it’s Admins are like most the users, most of them don’t have an interest in computers anymore. That’s fine, no one says you have to like computers but when they’re the people deciding who should get banned and what should be deleted in the forums it’s hopeless, useful information gets deleted and lies stay because the Admins seem to base the decision on the tone of a post verse the information.

If you hate idiots and don’t feel like being silenced when you’re just trying to tell the truth check out some other forums. As for the advertisers there’s better deals out there, why be on a site where your banner is seen rarely and everyone just recommends the cheapest place.

People in Australia who are behind tech have been sitting on their asses for too long riding the wave, it’s time to shake it up and give Australian users, retailers and wholesalers a better deal!

One of the staff at TweakTown sent me over a link to the Hardware Secrets blog in regards to how NVIDIA had black listed the site due to a negative review. The first thing I have to say is, it’s not so much that I don’t like NVIDIA but more so what NVIDIA do. Outside of the politics between review websites and manufactures it’s things like not giving ATI users the ability to install a NVIDIA card next to that ATI one to use PhysX.

For me not doing this is just a failure in marketing, hello! has anyone seen the Mafia II video. How shit hot does PhysX look in that game. People won’t ditch the HD 5850, HD 5870 or HD 5970 for a GTX 470 or GTX 480 to get this experience. They would however buy a GTX 465 which is the new mid range card due soon to have the experience on their machine. I haven’t done a marketing course but I’m pretty sure that 1 sale of a lower end / mid range card is better than 0 sale of a high end one.

This post isn’t about that though; to be honest I understand why NVIDIA have done what they’ve done if it’s true they’ve been cut off for the reason Gabriel at HS is giving:

This time we have NVIDIA blacklisting us. After we published a review – without any support from them, N.B. – they complained that we didn’t talk about CUDA or PhysX. I replied saying that we weren’t going to talk about these subjects because we thought they were not relevant to the average user, and we usually don’t re-write reviews.

Video cards are my business; I took over as the dedicated writer to TweakTown on this subject a few years ago. Since the launch of PhysX and CUDA we’ve implemented the testing of these programs into our review, CUDA via Badaboom and PhysX via a couple of games.

It’s not my job to tell you what is relevant too you, it’s my job to lay everything on the table. Sure I add the score at the end of each review to give you a general idea of how the product lines up against others and that but really I offer you all the information possible so that you can make an informed decision.

I didn’t score the GTX 470 at launch because I didn’t have a GTX 480, this is a whole new issue but again not the place now. Really though it was hard to place the GTX 470 properly without having the GTX 480. Since launch we’ve reviewed the GTX 480, scored it and reviewed other GTX 470s and scored them.

I don’t hate the world and try to find good in everything and most the time it’s not hard, not if you really want to give an honest opinion. Sometimes reviewers have to look outside the elitist attitude that they sometimes have (This is not related to HS, I don’t know anyone there and to be honest I read very few Tech Sites outside of TweakTown) and realize that every product has a different market.

The fact that we don’t pay for our samples means that we don’t have to try and justify why we spent our hard earned dollars on it. The GTX 400 series has flaws, they’re being worked out but people who have bought the model are so defensive because they spent money on the product that they just choose to ignore clear flaws. The thing is these flaws only effect some people, the GTX 400 series run very warm, are very loud and draw large amounts of power. None of those issues might bother you, it doesn’t mean they don’t exist though.

Does the fact that HS chose to ignore CUDA and PhysX testing mean they deserve to be black listed? You know what I don’t really know and I don’t really care, it’s NVIDIAs decision and I’m sure they don’t just make it with haste since talking to all their partners about it takes time.

ATI ignored us for a long time as NVIDIA has at points, Galaxy cut us off at one point and threatened to sue TweakTown because we broke an NDA which we hadn’t signed or been given and PowerColor chucked a hissy fit and cut us off when I gave one of their graphics cards that used the disaster that was the old ThermalTake water cooling unit on a model a bad score.

No company is perfect. Some are just a bigger pain in the ass then others though.

No one’s talking about it and while I haven’t had the chance to test it myself a number of people have confirmed that in CrossFireX setups Eyefinity performance has really skyrocketed. In most situations you’re talking about going from not playable to playable.

One person reported that Metro 2033 went form a slide show to an average of 130 FPS.

Metro 2033 has copped a pretty bad rap since launch since most enthusiasts are using ATI cards and the game has struggled with the setups, that could all about to change now.

If you’re running Eyefinity and a CrossFireX setup feel free to drop a line down the bottom and let us know you’re experience with it. I’ll be sure to check it out myself sooner rather than later.

Make sure you go grab the latest 10.5 Drivers from the game.amd.com website here.

I can’t speak for the rest of the world but in Australia we’re seeing IT Magazines slowly die off; over the recent years we’ve seen some of the most popular mags come down to just a few full time staff compared to an office full. For the last few years I worked for APC which is one of Australia’s Largest Tech Magazines. Looking through the magazine you can see why it’s one of the most popular; even as someone who spends a huge amount of time on the internet I love reading APC because it keeps me up to date on things that I like but forget about; for example peripherals like Printers. I’m not about to spend a day on a printer review site but I can open up the APC and see some of the latest printers, based on their words I can then at least give someone a bit of a recommendation.

The other day though I received a list from an advertising company that ranked the Australian magazines (Based on circulation); to be honest the rankings didn’t surprise me. What did surprise though was a few years ago you would’ve had circulation numbers, instead these days you just have a rank. The reason for this is that circulation numbers have dropped, subscription numbers have dropped and honestly TweakTown delivers more content to more users in a span of days then every Tech Magazine in Australia does in a month at no cost to you, the same goes for other major tech sites.

Magazines find themself in a hard position, they’re in a position where they have a website but can’t push content on to it before the release or soon after the release of the issue as people wouldn’t buy it. Recently one company linked me to a review of a reference mid range video card review on a tech magazines website; it was a direct copy of the magazine review, just months afterwards. The problem was on the site it gave the impression it just came out although it was four months old and new models had been released around it.

Australian magazines will have to implement a system like the New York Times in where you’ll be able to subscribe to the magazines via your iPad and receive content that way. This is a very expensive process though and it’s safe to say that only a few magazines will be able to offer this. The question is will they offer it before it’s too late?

Resellers and Wholesalers need to understand that in Australia the magazine is a dieing breed for them; one manufacturer told me the other day they just advertise in these magazines because it’s not worth arguing with the wholesalers who sell their product that there’s no real value in it anymore.

TweakTown is launching a new review style soon for certain categories; I just finished the first review today that will fall under this new category. The idea is that TT will be offering Magazine style reviews on certain products. What that means is a single page with a word count up to about 1,000. In the Magazine world that would equate to 1 1/2 to 2 pages which is a number reserved for only big launches. Every word that is written in a review at TweakTown or a post here isn’t constrained to word counts for the simple reason that it doesn’t cost us to print a single page; yes it costs money to produce with wages and hosting but if TweakTown had to print what was done on the site in a monthly magazine it would be 100s of pages in length and $100s of dollars for you to buy.

What we’ll be able to do is offer companies more reviews, more in depth reviews and readers just more content in general. That’s good for you! It doesn’t matter what site you visit the idea is to make sure you’re happy.

At the moment I’m experimenting in the back end of sb.com to setup a magazine style review system; the idea isn’t to take on TweakTown or any other tech site. It’s to take on the magazines in Australia. I don’t want to be compared to other tech sites; my whole aim is to be compared to magazines specifically in Australia. The pricing will be Australian and the places you can purchase from will be in Australia.

What’s so fantastic though is that the words around a few names of wholesalers, resellers and prices are still relevant to everyone in the world. In much the way Australians read tech sites based in the US; US people can read a review based on a site from Australia.

This post is essentially a shout out to Manufactures, Wholesalers and Retailers. These companies are so blinded by the “Magazine” label that ShaneBaxtor.com isn’t a website, it’s a paperless Magazine. What we’ll be able to offer is something that paper magazines at the moment in Australia can’t!

1) Content delivered to you when an NDA is lifted.
2) More room then you’ve ever had in a paper magazine so people can really know your product.
3) The ability to link to wholesalers and retailers of items.
4) More reviews then you’ve ever had; I can fit more than one of your products in my paperless magazine each month.
5) The fastest turnaround times you’ve seen; we don’t need to send our reviews off to any printer, wait for them to be packaged up and shipped out to local news stores.

While at the same time saving the environment by not using paper.

Currently we’re completely iPhone compatible; if you go to this site on any iPhone, iPod Touch, Google Android Smartphone, Palm Pre and many other smart phones you’ll see the site in a easy to read format. Love or hate the iPad it’s setting the benchmark for the future of content delivery thanks to its large screen. Slate devices are going to be a big thing in the coming years and making sure we’re 100% compatible with those devices is going to be a priority. You should be able to read a review or news; anywhere, anytime on any device.

I’ll be making sure that I attack every layer in my own layered marketing plan. Manufacturers, Wholesalers, Retailers and End Users. I know what all four layers want and I intend to offer it.

The future of Australian Tech is here; and if you’re obsessed with the word “Magazine” then you’re visiting not a website but a Paperless “Magazine”; and why wouldn’t you want to do that, unless you hate the environment! Do you hate the environment?