The Rockets lost a heartbreaker to Portland on a 30-foot buzzer beater by Brandon Roy. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to see the game, and I’m glad I didn’t. You can read and weep the game story here at the Chronicle site.

I do have something I need to tell you that’s pretty important, though. I have decided after running YMM for over 6 ½ years, I’m going to have to take a break from the site, and it could be permanent (gulp!).

I could have just disappeared and not said anything, but then all of you would be wondering what happened. I owe more to you guys than that.

I had decided several months ago that heading into this NBA season, I can’t continue to sacrifice my time, money and health without making a reasonable financial return on the site. It has been like a second job to me. Even moreso now since I’m not in Texas as much as usual because of a time-consuming job which makes it very difficult for me to watch Yao’s games. Also, every extra hour I can get back in my life is precious. I have become extremely busy over the past year, and it’s not going to let up.

Many of you know I have accepted donations in the past, but I refuse to take those any longer. I very much appreciate your past contributions, but after seeing what was donated the past few years, it’s far from being enough to make it financially viable.

A few months ago my original plan was to try to “blow out” the site by redesigning it so more ads could run, and get the help of Ren Hsieh and Raymond in China so more interesting content could appear on the site every day. That would help drive more page views, more visitors, and more ad revenue from which I could pay them and make a small return for myself. As a good faith effort to Raymond and to keep the site going through the all-important Beijing Olympics, I even paid money out of my own pocket so he could provide exclusive coverage to YMM over the summer and during the Games. He did a fantastic job as always.

But right before the Olympics started, Yao’s marketing people requested that they were uncomfortable with some of the ads that were appearing on the site, which is not easy to control. I understood their concern, and I agreed to take down the ads, and they vowed to try to work out some kind of way for YMM to get compensated within a couple of weeks. I tell you this because I know many of you would simply recommend, “put up ads.”

Well, to make a long story short, their efforts to find another source of revenue have been unsuccessful. And now that the season has started, running the site takes much more time than it did over the summer. So for now, I have decided to retire from YMM. Hopefully it’s temporary, but it could be permanent.

Meanwhile, if anyone is interested in sponsoring the site, I would entertain offers. Worst case, I am willing to sell the YaoMingMania.com domain, and am open to offers in the 5-figures range.

Who knows, though, maybe some kind of financial deal can get worked out, and I’ll be back to blogging, along with Ren & Raymond’s help and them getting paid a fair amount, too.

If either of these scenarios happens, I’ve been thinking about how you will find out so you can come back to the site.

One way is for you to just come back to the site periodically and check it out. Another way is for you to send an email to alerts@yaomingmania.com saying you want to be notified in case something is worked out, and I’ll email you and let you know.

In the meantime, I will continue keeping the YMM Forum open where everyone can continue to converse about Yao and his games. If you want a username so you can post in the forum, go ahead and register then send an email to john@yaomingfanclub.com telling me the username you requested, and I will approve your username request.

I hate goodbyes, so hopefully this is just “so long for now.” If it truly is goodbye, I know I’ll really miss it. This site has been a big part of my life over the past 6 ½ years, and it has been one of the most rewarding things I’ve ever done.

This entry was posted on Friday, November 7th, 2008 at 1:37 am and is filed under Miscellaneous. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.