Tag Archives: revenue

Quick Update: Jumping Back On the (Free)wagon

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After trying out the WordPress Personal plan earlier this year, I was curious as to whether upgrading to a paid plan would result in improved earnings when using the WordAds revenue program.

It doesn’t. If you’re making money on the Free plan, stick to it.

Considering it’s 4:10 AM at the time of this blog post, I should be already in bed but I was up doing some repair work. I got an email saying my subscription for my blog was expiring and I instinctively paid for it, but realized it was for the WordPress Personal plan I was planning to ditch once it lapsed. Immediately after paying I cancelled the subscription, thus ending the plan earlier than I intended. At least the refund process was quick and easy.

WordPress Personal Plan Cancelled

Ever complete a purchase and immediately think “Wait, this isn’t what I intended to buy”? That was me just now.

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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…

 

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! 😀