Can you believe it? Another year has gone by in what seems like an instant – and boy has it been quite the year for the blog.
Smash Hits
This year has seen quite a few popular posts, with my blog post about building my own memory card seeing a whopping 11,450 views in March alone, totaling 18,195 views this year; in fact, March represented the second-largest view count of all time on my blog with 23,955 views, a tad under July 2015’s 25,100 views. My blog post about running Doom on an oscilloscope netted 5,670 views, and another post where I fixed an Intel Atom-based tablet well beyond economic repair received 2,700 views. Interestingly enough, my blog posts about the Kentli PH5 Li-ion AA battery (both its teardown and review) received 5,280 and 3,250 views, respectively – both without seeing any significant external referrals except through search engines; this also applies to the 2,900 views on my Kitchenaid induction cooktop blog post, which seems to imply that plenty of these cooktops are encountering problems in the field.
Views, Views, Views!
This year’s view count is the second best on record, scoring 126,250 views, compared to 2016’s 140,000 views. This is a good comeback after 2017’s significantly reduced viewership which only saw 99,390 views, and is a decent step ahead of 2015’s 120,140 views.
However, it appears the number of views from each visitor has decreased over the years (that is, it appears that readers aren’t staying as long on my blog as they used to). The drop began in mid-2016 after I changed my blog over to my current ripitapart.com domain instead of the .wordpress.com subdomain that it used to be. Perhaps this is a direct consequence of my domain change, or maybe it’s just a coincidence and readers just don’t stick around as long anymore.
This (Ad) Space For Rent
This marks the first full year that I’ve taken advantage of the WordAds program, allowing me to monetize the advertisements that appear on my blog as a natural consequence of running on WordPress’ Free hosting tier.
This year brought in $194 USD in ad revenue, which has helped pay for my domains and G Suite registration through WordPress in full (totaling $125 USD per year for three domains and G Suite). This means that simply keeping the blog alive no longer is a strain on my wallet, which is a tremendous help for me.
Looking Forward
As we say goodbye to 2018 and welcome 2019 with open arms, there’s always room to grow the blog further. I’ve been considering avenues like running a vlog on YouTube, and maybe even viewer contribution programs like Patreon (although recent issues with the aforementioned platforms have given me pause).
I still have a bunch of blog posts simmering on the back burner, so to speak. Some of these include data recovery from physically damaged eMMC modules (yes, I’m still doing stuff with eMMC 🙂 ) and upgrading the RAM in the cheap tablet I mentioned earlier. The upcoming year will be full of changes in my personal life as I finish my post-secondary education and begin my search for full-time work.
All in all…
Rip It Apart - Jason's electronics blog-thingy 