If you’ve come here by clicking on some Google search results and was wondering why we’re DigitalDestiny instead of TechGarage, you’re not in the wrong place. We’ve actually changed names from TechGarage.my to DigitalDestiny.co. There’s still a lot of things to do in our migration, but you can be sure we’re working on it.
But why did we change domains? Read on after the break for more.
From TechGarage to DigitalDestiny : An Introduction
TechGarage was born out of my camera accessories distribution business. Though the business started off online, we gradually shifted towards physical distribution and lost our online edge. Plus, times got bad for cameras and we were left with a lot of unsold stocks.
I would say, it was a combination of dealers preferring to sell imitation, low quality China products with higher margins, and the complexity of some products. Plus, we didn’t want to get into price wars nor do “entertainment” that some Malaysian distributors were doing in their bid to canvas for sales. Thus, the way forward was to move towards a having our own platform to educate consumers about our products.
Over the past three years, TechGarage has grown in reputation and site visits. We received many advertising enquiries and media invites to functions and launches. There were also paid articles by large corporations and free review products by some of the top brands in the world. Though we’ve exited the camera accessories distribution business since the end of 2013, TechGarage continued growing in terms of daily page views.
However, I found that after hitting about two thousand page views per day (and a thousand odd unique visitors), we were hitting a plateau. That brings us to the first point
1) From TechGarage to DigitalDestiny : The Limitations Of A Dot My Domain
There were limitations with a dot-my domain. And dot-com-dot-my as well. When I found we were being limited, I could continue keeping us on TechGarage.my, sign a contract with a media agency (there were two that offered us interesting contracts) and be happy writing articles while earning from ads.
But I found that being limited to Malaysia has its range of weaknesses, which we’ll address below.
2) From TechGarage to DigitalDestiny : Pursuing A New Destiny
Having spoken to media agencies, I found most Malaysian tech sites with a Malaysian domain remained stuck on a few thousand visitors per day. But having been the computer magazine editor of my school back then, I wanted the chance to grow.
When I started TechGarage, one of the things I wish to do was to have regular iOS app reviews. After all, I’ve many friends who own an iPhone or an iPad or both, and most of them don’t have much apps other than social media, Tinder and WhatsApp. And perhaps an inkling of productivity apps and some really bad games (Clash of Clans anyone?).
However, reviewing apps on TechGarage.my didn’t make sense as we were limited to Malaysian readers. And unfortunately, piracy is the norm over here. This makes it hard for us to write iOS app reviews regularly as monetizing it via commissions just didn’t happen. In comparison, there are major tech sites that just focuses on reviewing iOS apps and iPhone/iPad accessories.
With the new domain, we’ll be able to achieve that.
3) From TechGarage to DigitalDestiny : More Than Just Cameras
Cameras was our main subject for awhile. But with camera sales shrinking year-on-year, it makes more sense to focus our writing on perhaps the digital lifestyle and gadgets. Just to let you know, we’ve some interesting gadgets to be reviewed.
4) From TechGarage to DigitalDestiny : Not Limited By Geography
Another reason we switched over to a top-level domain (TLD), instead of staying with a dot my, which is a country code top-level domain (CCTLD), was that we won’t be limited by geography.
Ever since I was young, my dream was to backpack around the world. As a tech site which isn’t limited to Malaysia only, I could be in Buenos Aires one week and Beijing the next. However, with a Malaysian domain, I would need to be in the country to cover our local tech news.
5) From TechGarage to DigitalDestiny : Not Just Boring Product Launches
The biggest problem with our local tech sites are that, they tend to cover launches. Like the latest ASUS notebook launch, or perhaps Nvidia’s latest mobile gaming set. To be frank, launches are easy to cover but brings little long-term value to the reader. After all, how many mobile devices can a reader buy and use regularly?
Rather, to compensate for a lack of local launch news, DigitalDestiny will produce two quality articles per week. Be it a feature article, review or just a simple tip, I hope our articles bring long-term value to you.
Having said that, our goal is to be popular enough to gain official entry to Apple’s WWDC as an official media partner. That’s a long way to go, but every dream starts with a single step.
6) From TechGarage to DigitalDestiny : Not Limited By Politics
There’s a danger if our site only focuses on Malaysia. The biggest would be our unstable Malaysian political climate. As we want to do this long-term, the best way forward is to be an international tech site. This would enable us to easily switch countries if needed, while still producing relevant articles for our Malaysian readers.
Conclusion
Switching domains is a painful process. Namely, DigitalDestiny.co is a new domain and will need time to gain traction on Google. Having said that, our traffic is down by 70% after the switch, but is steadily improving. Nonetheless, between enjoying short-term benefits of staying with TechGarage.my and long-term benefits of DigitalDestiny.co, we choose the latter.
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p/s: We’re in the midst of changing our logo and other stuff. If you know of any great graphic designer with an eye for marketing, who can help us design one, just drop us a message.