Time To Move On, Time to Get Going

I’m stepping down as the Publisher of ReveNews.

I’ve been commanding the helm of this ship since last April (April Fool’s Day actually) when Wayne, Vinny and I first announced the merger of ReveNews and CostPerNews along with the new owners of ReveNews. It was no joke despite the date.

Over that year, we made serious advances in taking this site to the next level.

1 ) We cleaned up the back end (which was no small job, believe me),
2 ) Created a new theme that is reflective of the heritage of the site but also looks to the future.
3 ) Moved to a new host (LivingDot)
4 ) Reengaged our audience. Look to the comments here in the last few weeks if you need proof.
5 ) Reactivated bloggers who hadn’t posted in years
6 ) Brought in 9 new bloggers
7 ) Moved from MovableType to WordPress.
8 ) Oh, and we’ve tripled RSS subscribers and are closing in on a million page views a month.

Not too shabby in one year’s time.

I saw “we” because it has been a joint effort with you (our supportive readers), our bloggers, our designer David Lawson, the persistently patient ear of former publisher Jim Kukral, the unfailing gadfly-like help of Carsten Cumbrowski, and our incredible WordPress development team, ContentRobot (seriously, if you need any sort of help with WordPress, contact them).

So, why leave now?

Good question. Jim did a much better job at explaining this sort of thing than I could ever do.

In a nutshell, it feels like the right time for me to move on. This past year has been an exhausting and emotional year for me personally. My wife and I welcomed our first child into the world in October. Just two weeks later, my cousin (being an only child myself, I considered him my brother) was killed while serving on active duty in Afghanistan (leaving behind a new bride and a one month old infant) … plus I’m turning 30 soon. Those events were definitely “wake up” calls for me.

In other words, there are miles to go before I sleep (God willing) and I must start taking my own business and affiliate/social marketing consulting career seriously. I am at the point in my life (which I use interchangeably with career) where I must focus on my family and build for their future. While being Publisher here has been a blast and I would love to stay in this position forever, the lack of a regular paycheck and the incredible amount of time involved in keeping all of the machines greased and working are not in my cards at this point in my life.

Although I’m going to be focusing on my business, I will certainly continue to blog at CostPerNews and my personal blog as well as continue my daily podcast at Affiliate Fortune Cookies. Of course there’s also GeekCast. My phone number stays the same (803-413-6834) and you can reach me via email at me@samharrelson.com and my Twitter account if you’d like to stay in touch (which I hope you do).

Without going too “Tom Petty” on you, I’ll just say thank you for helping to make this past year so challenging and so rewarding. Your expectations, praise and readership have meant so much to me. You are what keeps this machine humming. We’ll all find out what happens next from Vinny and Wayne. In the meantime, keep on reading, learning, educating and sharing…

Sam

About Sam Harrelson

Former ReveNews and CostPerNews Publisher, Former Affiliate Marketer, Current Middle School Science Teacher, Current Publisher of AffiliateHack

Website: http://www.affiliatehack.com

Twitter: sbharrelson22