Tag Archives: blog

10 years of Rip It Apart!

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Time sure flies, doesn’t it? Back in September 2012, I made my first post on this blog, and it’s been growing ever since. At the time of writing, my blog had amassed over 900 thousand views and has been featured on websites like Hackaday on numerous occasions.

Admittedly, my posting schedule has slowed down a lot ever since I graduated in 2019, and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has, counterintuitively, dramatically reduced my drive for writing on my blog. That doesn’t mean I’ve been doing fewer projects – quite the contrary in fact! However, blog posts don’t write themselves… and worsening ADHD symptoms coupled with what I suspect is post-COVID “brain fog” have been making the task of gathering enough mental and physical space to create content increasingly difficult.

Regardless, I’m super thankful for everyone who reads, shares, and comments on my posts – and I especially love it when I receive comments and emails from readers whose problems have been solved, thanks to the blog posts I’ve written over the years.

Even if I’m not actively writing content, I’m still here to answer any questions you have, whether it’s by email or even leaving a comment under my blog posts (yes, I do read every single one – even if I don’t necessarily reply to them).

Thanks to all of my readers for your ongoing support by reading my blog, and here’s to another decade of Rip It Apart!
— Jason

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Ramble: 2020 in review

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It goes without saying that 2020 has turned out to be… less than optimal for most of us. The COVID-19 pandemic has wreaked havoc on virtually every facet of our lives, with innumerable losses around the world. Even with all the (involuntary) free time added due to local lockdown(s) and other social restrictions, I’ll admit that I haven’t made nearly as many blog posts this year as I would have liked. However, that doesn’t mean that people haven’t stopped reading my content – let’s see how this year has fared in that regard.

Top 5 Posts

Post Views
(New!) Reverse-engineering SanDisk’s High Endurance SD card 7,717
KitchenAid induction cooktop service manual 4,185
Building my own SD card with an eMMC chip 4,082
Resurrecting a dead MacBook Pro 3,649
SIM card PIN recovery with a logic analyzer 2,952

The one post that did make it out of the Drafts folder this year was my adventure in reverse-engineering a SanDisk high-endurance memory card in order to see what specific kind of NAND Flash was being used, earning over 7,500 views this year; these views primarily came from Hackaday, Twitter and Reddit.

The other posts are classics that people still love to read about. Once again, the KitchenAid service manual’s popularity indicates that KitchenAid/Whirlpool still hasn’t done anything to fix their faulty designs – and the comments suggest that the (ongoing as of the writing of this post) pandemic has made it even more difficult to get damaged cooktops serviced!

Views

This year ranks 5th out of 8 years of running my blog, amassing 102,420 views this year. Given the relative lack of featured posts on sites like Hackaday, this drop in views is largely expected – but I’m still happy to have surpassed the 100,000 view mark this year.

WordAds Performance

This year’s WordAds performance is the worst I’ve seen since I joined back in late 2017. Despite serving 933,470 ads this year, this only netted $98 USD, yielding a CPM (cost per 1,000 ad impressions) of merely $0.10! This is in stark contrast with even last year’s CPM of $0.24 – and that was already on a huge downslope! The lowest point was in June, with a CPM of merely $0.04, and a revenue of $5.21 respectively. However, the CPM rates have begun to improve to late 2019 levels since October.

Of course, this isn’t unexpected as the COVID-19 pandemic has decimated the world’s economy, and online advertisements are no exception. Consequently, this year’s revenue isn’t even enough to cover my hosting costs, but it still helps make running the blog less painful for my wallet.

Looking Forward

After this year’s tumultuous chain of events (and not being quite out of the woods in terms of COVID-19 vaccination and elimination), hopefully 2021 will be a reprieve after 2020’s parade of constant interruptions and unforeseen consequences. Hopefully the upcoming year will be a lot better for all of us. I want to get a lot of posts out of the Drafts folder, as I’ve been working on a lot of projects – but blog posts (sadly) don’t write themselves! Stay tuned…

Happy New Year! Here’s to hoping 2021 won’t be nearly as disastrous as 2020; once again, many thanks to everyone who reads and shares my blog posts – it means a lot to me! –Jason

Ramble: 2019 in review

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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)

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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…

 

Quick Update: Jumping Off the (Free)wagon

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wordpress personal plan

Purchased a 1-year subscription to WordPress Personal on January 4, 2019

After staying on WordPress’ Free plan for almost 7 years, I’ve finally purchased a WordPress Personal subscription plan. Although it’s a bit more expensive than a free plan (duh), but we’ll see if the ad revenue that WordAds generates will be enough to cover the costs.

I wonder whether using the Free plan is a factor in how WordAds determines its payout rate. Let’s find out when I release my next update on WordAds revenue…

Update (May 11, 2019): Spoiler alert, it doesn’t. If you’re earning ad money on a Free plan, there’s no point upgrading to a higher tier. If anything, I’m now LOSING money as 2019’s ad revenue rates have plummeted to very low levels.

Ramble: 2018 in review

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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…

Happy New Year! Thanks to all my viewers – I couldn’t have come this far without you! –Jason

WordAds Adventures, Episode 4

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Oh my, it has been a while since the last update, hasn’t it?

Results for February to June 2018

Since my last report, I managed to earn $45 in one month after getting my blog post featured on the r/hardware subreddit, which then made its way to Hacker News (a news aggregation site), bringing the most traffic to my site in many years; March 2018’s view count was the second highest on record, bested only by June 2014’s 25,051 views which were not monetized. I even received my first payout on May 29th.

However, the rest of the months have been less fruitful, especially as of late. Since May, my monthly ad revenue has dropped below $10 USD/month. I thought that the boost in traffic from March would result in more views after the fact – I could not have been more wrong.

Let’s look at the data (note that am now also tracking statistics for ads per viewer and visitor):

Payout Period Earnings Ads Served Views Visitors $ Per
Impression		 Ads Per
View		 Ads Per
Visitor
0 Nov 2017  $     5.03           4,648     8,533      3,833  $  0.00108219 0.545 1.213
Dec 2017  $   15.18         17,369     9,734      4,344  $  0.00087397 1.784 3.998
Jan 2018  $   11.96         17,887     9,428      4,359  $  0.00066864 1.897 4.103
Feb 2018  $   11.20         18,532     7,980      3,595  $  0.00060436 2.322 5.155
Mar 2018  $   45.89         74,754   23,933    14,537  $  0.00061388 3.123 5.142
Apr 2018  $   10.99         20,100     8,017      3,595  $  0.00054677 2.507 5.591
1 May 2018  $     9.88         20,046     7,700      3,522  $  0.00049287 2.603 5.692
Jun 2018  $     7.78         16,699     6,704      2,967  $  0.00046590 2.491 5.628

WordAds Earnings Nov 2017 to Jun 2018

WordAds monthly earnings (November 2017 to June 2018)

WordAds Rate Nov 2017 to Jun 2018

WordAds monthly pay-per-impression rate (November 2017 to June 2018)

Since my last update, I noticed that my pay-per-impression rate was steadily decreasing, and that has not changed since; although it has leveled off mostly, it is still decreasing.

Conclusion

The data sends a clear message: in order to continue receiving an appreciable amount of ad revenue, I need to keep posting and getting my blog posts published on various outlets; additionally, returns from existing content is not steady but instead continuously declines even if viewership does not appreciably fluctuate from month to month. (Granted, that’s probably common sense and I just need to get back in gear and make more posts – many of which are still in draft form.)

WordAds Adventures, Episode 3

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Another month has passed and that means another round of ad revenue trickling in.

Results for January 2018

This is rather interesting – despite getting more views than December 2017, the pay rate was lower than before!

Curious to see what the dollar-per-impression rate was for each month, I tabulated the results and graphed them:

Period Earnings Visitors Views Ads Served $/Impression
Nov 2017  $     5.03 3833 8538 4648  $ 0.00108219
Dec 2017  $   15.18 4344 9732 17369  $ 0.00087397
Jan 2018  $   11.96 4359 9458 17887  $ 0.00066864

WordAds Rate Nov 2017 to Jan 2018

That is a pretty linear drop in dollar-per-impression rate. Perhaps this is due to ad market fluctuations, or maybe WordPress is “incentivizing” increased viewership to maintain ad revenue. Who knows? Either way, it will be interesting to track this trend as time goes on.

Mini-Ramble: WordAds – I think it’s working!

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Over a month has passed since my first post about seeing where the WordAds train will take me and my blog, and the first (meaningful) payout numbers have rolled out.

Current Earnings

ss (2018-01-05 at 12.42.57)

WordAds earnings for 1/3 of November 2017, and all of December 2017.

Not too bad – in 1 1/3 months, I’ve earned $20.20 USD in ad revenue. In December alone I earned $15.18 from 17,369 attempted ad impressions; with 9,732 views in December this equates to an impression-to-view ratio of 1.785.

Assuming that I receive the same number of views per month, $15/month * 12 months = $180 USD/year. With this amount of revenue, my blog can finally run itself!

Blog Budget Breakdown (yay, alliteration!)

Item  Value 
Yearly Ad Revenue ($15 USD * 12 months)  $ 180.00
Domain Name Registration (1 year for 3 domains, assuming CAD-to-USD conversion rate of 0.8x)  $  (76.80)
G Suite (1 year, assuming CAD-to-USD conversion rate of 0.8x)  $  (48.00)
Final Balance (USD)  $   55.20

If I assume that my current view count doesn’t change, this would leave me with a little over $50 USD in pocket change by the end of the year. Perhaps this money could be put to use to buy some more things to make blog posts with – maybe some iPhone batteries or an eMMC module or two…

Once again, thanks to all of my readers – I couldn’t have done any of this without you! 😀

Domain Get! – New domain, same great content! RipItApart.com is now live.

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It’s about time – I’ve finally registered a proper domain name for my blog. Thanks to everyone’s input, I’ve decided to go with http://ripitapart.com.

Existing links from https://ripitapart.wordpress.com should automatically redirect to the new domain.