AndroidPIT is insolvent. Are we going to be gone soon?

How it all began

Everything was better in the old days... how many times have we heard that sentence in our lives? And we are actually sitting here in the editorial office, with old smartphone veterans and pondering how great everything was back then. Exciting, wild, thrilling and full of possibilities.

The German language domain was soon joined by the English domain, followed by the French, Spanish, Italian and Portuguese domains. There was even a time when AndroidPIT was available in Russian and Turkish. And so, of course, the company grew.

Lots of readers do not mean lots of money

Not only the number of employees grew, but also the number of readers. At its peak, we had more than 22 million readers. Per month! Even my grandmother knew back then that a lot of eyes doesn't always mean a lot of cash. Costs and revenues did not usually develop in proportion to each other. The business model of "advertising" is and will certainly remain an unloved child in the media. Paywalls that make our content visible only to paying readers may work for old-established media - but for us, that was not an option.

The financial basis for our business was, and is, built instead on other things: app marketing, content marketing, community management, and our own ad format. The actual business operations and the business model are therefore not directly interwoven.

It is time to go back to basics

It is fair to say that we have really tried everything to crack the difficult "Digital Publishing" business model. But the complexity of dealing with an international site in six different languages and different business models had its pitfalls.

Now we have had to file for bankruptcy - a process and term that first frightens people and perhaps raises the question of "what did they did wrong?". Just to be on the safe side: We are not turning off the lights right now, but have the opportunity to reposition ourselves over the next few weeks without too much pressure.

We believe that there is nothing to be ashamed of or hide for, and are proud to be one of the biggest tech websites in the world and to be read by so many people.

Even if many things seem uncertain in the current situation and we certainly have to go through many, even unpleasant changes here, we now see it as an opportunity - an opportunity for a new beginning!

First of all, more advertising for everyone. But no more ads for active community members.

In the past few days, we have received many messages from partners and customers, colleagues and competitors, as well as friends and community members. Almost all of them were encouraging, courageous and very positive.

And this is how you can help us:

In order to strengthen and consolidate our sales side in the short term, we have decided to put more advertising on the site. We realize this won't bring joy everywhere. But at the same time, I want to ask for your understanding and promise you that we will work on better solutions.

At the same time, we want to give a small gift to those to whom we owe a lot and encourage others to become active with us: All AndroidPIT members with a level over 40 will no longer receive ads in the future! Even without an ad blocker. And to everyone else: I'd love you to turn off your ad blocker. That really helps us.

Please support us in this

It hurts us all to see our baby in such a state. That certainly sounds a little dramatic, but many of you have been here for several years and some have even been here from the very beginning. I'm sure all of you can empathize with what I'm saying.

The next few months will certainly be exhausting - and always with an open end. But we remain positive. And we hope you will remain so too.

Thank you for reading, for everything!