Winding Down Tech Nova

All good things come to an end?

Some years back, during the last months of September, I got frustrated with the state of technology news coverage in Ghana. I got frustrated by the lack of detailed reads about the tech news space. I was hoping that someone would eventually pick up the slack and do something about it.

But afterwards, I decided: “Ok, I’ll do it”.

In April 2017, I launched Tech Nova GH, a website to cover all things technology happening in Ghana

When I launched the website, I was working on a startup, finishing up my research paper to complete my Masters degree and also looking for freelance gigs.

Tech Nova was my passion project. I had been blogging about technology since college but I wanted Tech Nova to be more than a “blog”. I wanted it to be central place to people in Ghana and outside as well to know what was happening.

Behind The Scenes: Blood, Sweat And Sometimes Tears

Everyone sees the glory moments, but they don’t see what happens behind the scenes — Allyson Felix

Let’s talk about what actually goes on with Tech Nova. On the front end, all most people see are the write-ups with the images, the Twitter posts, the Instagram posts and the bi-weekly newsletter.

Behind the scenes, there is no team. It’s mostly a co-ordinated and automated process done by me.

Over the three years, I’ve had some guest contributors add to the mix to which I’m very grateful for their contribution.

Ok, now let’s talk about expenses: When you’re running a website, you have to consider domain and hosting. I’ve had to make upgrades to hosting service to deal with increased traffic. Currently, I pay $131 for domain and hosting services every year.

If you convert that to Ghana Cedis, I have paid about 2170 GHC.

Quick thing to note: Tech Nova doesn’t make a lot of money. Heck, we don’t make money at all. We run on Google ads but the website is niche so we don’t generate enough impressions to make a lot of ad revenue.

We’ve had sponsored posts before it doesn’t really cover much.

If I could show a chart, Tech Nova would be in the red, with expenses eclipsing what the site takes in.

Recognition

During the journey, I dropped the ball a bit to be honest. I wasn’t working on a website just for it to make money. I wanted to create a platform that was contributing to the tech space. But I didn’t think about what would happen if it ever got big enough that it would take up more of my time.

I never factored financials into it. Don’t get me wrong. I took advantage of some financial incentives. If a company wanted a banner ad featured, they would pay for it.

Did we win any awards? No.

Do I feel like Tech Nova was recognised as contributing? No.

But you know what? That doesn’t really matter. Because of this website, I’ve been able to network with lots of people in the industry, got invited to Google and IMF events. All that just for writing on a website.

Awards don’t matter to be honest. I appreciate people who once in a while say “Nice work” for what gets produced on the website.

Where Do We Go From Here….

Before the pandemic hit, I was going to work on a subscription based model for Tech Nova. That idea is still there but now I have to work out how I want to execute it.

So what’s really happening with Tech Nova now?

Right now, lesser and lesser articles are going to be featured till the end of the year.

Is the site shutting down? Not necessarily. But finding time to research and pump out new articles is not really where my head is at the moment.

For now, Tech Nova is still running and articles will still be published.

All good things come to end? Maybe. We’ll see.