Ramble: 2019 in review

UPDATE (May 20, 2020): Nah, 2020 is busted.

As the year of 2019 (and the decade we like to call the 2010s) draws to a close, it’s amazing how fast time has gone by. I first started this blog in September of 2012, mainly as a “brain dump” of whatever electronics stuff I wanted to talk about – and at its heart, it still is… and I have no intent to change that.

Pretty Popular Posts

Fresh off the (Word)Press

Some of this year’s posts have gotten a good handful of views. The top 5 of my posts each managed to snag at least a couple thousand views:

Post Views
Resurrecting a dead MacBook Pro 5,416
Adding external PCI Express to the Atomic Pi 3,081
Running Doom on a Magellan GPS receiver 2,819
Damaged eMMC data recovery 2,374
SIM card PIN recovery with a logic analyzer 2,229

The fifth in the list is different in that none of its views came from Hackaday (they haven’t responded to the e-mail tip I sent to them on December 21st); rather, the views came from Twitter when a security researcher found my blog post after I put it on Reddit. Hopefully Hackaday gets around to featuring that post in the near future.

Old Classics

Some of my previous posts just can’t be put down by readers, with some posts proving to be unexpectedly popular:

Post Views
Building my own eMMC-based SD card 5,474
Running Doom on a Keysight oscilloscope 6,399
KitchenAid induction cooktop service manual 3,541
Kentli PH5 Li-ion AA battery teardown 2,716
Kentli PH5 Li-ion AA battery review 2,566

What’s interesting is how many of these older posts managed to outclass this year’s big hits – one that I found to be surprising was the Kitchenaid service manual! Looks like their induction cooktops (still) have widespread design problems that cause their power transistors to blow up. Additionally, the Kentli PH5 Li-ion AA batteries still manage to pique people’s curiosities, even five years after I first published that post!

Views? Views.

This year wasn’t as popular as previous years, with this one ranking 4th out of the 7 years I’ve run this blog. This year garnered over 116,000 views by over 56,450 visitors, with the most views coming from the United States (32,600), the United Kingdom (6,500), Canada (6,200), Germany (5,850), and Russia (3,390). However, if I discount last year’s 15,000 views that came from Hacker News (I wasn’t able to get any significant attention on that site this year), then this puts me a fair bit ahead of last year, which would have otherwise had only 110,000 views.

Regardless, this satisfies my (personal) goal of at least 100,000 views per year, and I’m still glad that my blog still gets people’s attention.

WordAd¢ (I can’t call it WordAd$ this year)

This year’s ad revenue has been pretty paltry compared to last year. My previous update that tallied revenue from January to September 2019 revealed that my ad rates have fallen by almost two-thirds compared to last year. This year served up approximately 552,000 ads and yielded $130 USD, with an average of 24 cents per 1,000 ad views (aka CPM). If I used last year’s average CPM figure of 57 cents, I would have received almost $315 USD! Hopefully 2020 turns out better, but I’m not feeling too optimistic about it.

Looking Forward

This year represents some significant changes to my personal and professional life. I’ve finished my time in post-secondary, and have graduated from a network-specialized information technology (IT) program at my local college; I then took some time off to meet with new and old friends at smaller get-togethers and larger conventions. This leads me to the next phase in my life – get some stable full-time work in the real world (and hopefully still have time to do fun electronics projects that I can share with you on this blog).

Buckle up – it’s going to be one heck of a ride into the new decade! With all that said…

Happy New Year! Thanks to everyone who views and shares my work – you make all of this worthwhile! –Jason

 

WordAds Adventures, Episode 5: 2019 in review (January to September)

Time sure flies by – it’s already been almost two years since I first joined the WordAds program, and over a year since my last WordAds update. Let’s see how we’ve done…

Results from July 2018 to September 2019

Earnings Data

Payout Period Revenue Ads Views Visitors CPM Ads/View Ads/Visitor
1 Jul 2018  $     8.19     18,581       6,861       3,191  $   0.441 2.708 5.823
Aug 2018  $   11.64     21,633       8,103       3,931  $   0.538 2.670 5.503
Sep 2018  $   10.66     21,082       8,251       3,721  $   0.506 2.555 5.666
Oct 2018  $   16.66     34,896     11,976       6,044  $   0.477 2.914 5.774
Nov 2018  $   26.20     40,856     15,520       6,709  $   0.641 2.632 6.090
Dec 2018  $   23.31     38,538     11,786       6,119  $   0.605 3.270 6.298
2 Jan 2019  $   12.71     40,856     13,028       5,791  $   0.311 3.136 7.055
Feb 2019  $     9.91     42,626     11,334       5,773  $   0.232 3.761 7.384
Mar 2019  $     7.45     32,798       9,230       4,427  $   0.227 3.553 7.409
Apr 2019  $     4.20     20,456       6,320       2,870  $   0.205 3.237 7.128
May 2019  $     5.79     26,557       6,414       2,910  $   0.218 4.140 9.126
Jun 2019  $   14.36     48,428       9,821       3,977  $   0.297 4.931 12.177
Jul 2019  $   21.19     87,689     16,222       8,819  $   0.242 5.406 9.943
Aug 2019  $   10.17     44,227       8,376       4,083  $   0.230 5.280 10.832
Sep 2019  $   11.78     54,143     10,155       5,264  $   0.218 5.332 10.286

July 2018 to December 2018

Since the last update, things were actually doing pretty nicely until the end of 2018. My CPM rose from the 40-cent mark up to 64 cents on November 2018. My last payout came to me after the end of the year, netting $194.42 for 2018 overall, and $96.66 for this specific time period. The CPM (earnings per 1000 ad views) was an average 55 cents for the entire year, and 53.5 cents for this specific time period.

January 2019 to September 2019

After ending 2018 on a high note, I had good feelings about how well 2019 was going to pay out. I was wrong – it’s worse than it’s ever been before. My CPM has fallen to less than 30 cents, even despite a few popular posts like adding PCIe to the Atomic Pi, or fixing a liquid-damaged MacBook Pro.

This year to date I’ve earned $97.56, with a total ad view count of 397,780. If I multiplied this by last year’s average CPM, I should have earned $218.78 – talk about a massive cutback! This is coupled with the fact that the majority of the ads that do get served are the low-quality chumbox kind, like the infamous “gut doctor” ad that would repeat itself over a dozen times within a few pages’ worth of blog posts.

At the same time, I guess I shouldn’t complain too much about my earnings. Another WordPress blogger earned 18 cents in March 2019. Even if I’m not breaking even on my hosting fees, it still helps.

Conclusion

Simply put, 2019 has not been a particularly prosperous year for WordAds revenue – or at least in my case it isn’t. Hopefully the rest of 2019 turns out better, and likewise for 2020…