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Love this. After 19 years I imagine your blog gets some traffic. Would you mind sharing how it's worked out? I think its pretty rare outside of newspapers to se

by verelo 3y ago

Love this. After 19 years I imagine your blog gets some traffic. Would you mind sharing how it's worked out? I think its pretty rare outside of newspapers to see someone publishing content for this long.

bookofjoe 3y ago
My traffic history: started in August 2004, up to 15,000 pageviews/10,000 visits/day at the 2013 peak, when blogs were at their zenith. I'd get 10 or 20 comments/post, often. Then a slow decline until January 2015 when I became clinically depressed and barely functional such that it took everything I had to post one sentence/day just to show proof of life. I recovered completely in October 2016 and resumed multiple posts daily as is the case today. Traffic when I started back in in late 2016 on a regular multiple posts/day basis was around 100 pageviews/day. Current traffic is about 600 pageviews/day, with 5-10 comments/week. Still, a couple times a year some popular blog/website picks up something I've posted and links to my post which results in a sudden spike to 3,000-8,000 pageviews that day, with a regression to the norm over the next week or two. One thing I find interesting is that things I post today I would've posted back in 2004, and vice versa. It's amusing to discover a couple times/year that something I'm about to feature or just featured appeared 10-15 years ago. Occasionally a reader from back in the day will point this out, to my delight. As best I can tell, the only popular one-person blogs that still update regularly and go back as far as I do are https://www.swiss-miss.com/ https://www.swiss-miss.com/ [March 2005] and https://kottke.org/ https://kottke.org/ [1998]. I take pride in publishing daily including weekends and holidays, unlike pretty much every other blog/website. Always something new at boj if you can just make it through the night till the next morning.... As to making money from the site: when I started I thought perhaps I could do that, so the guy who set up my blog (I have 0 technical skills or knowledge of coding etc.) made it so I had Google AdSense on my homepage along with an Amazon Associate banner/link. At the blog's peak I was generating about $300/month from each of those two sources, with a couple anomalous checks from Amazon in late 2014 for $2,000-$3,000. Just when that happened is when I got depressed, and income collapsed to the point that I removed all ads from my homepage and left AdSense up on individual posts. Currently Google deposits around $120 into my bank account every 6-12 months, though I may have failed to update my AdSense agreement such that my Google payments are kaput.
jprd 3y ago
Love this too! Super interested in this story, I'm seeking inspiration for this kind of activity and you seem to be hitting the "sweet spot".
- bookofjoe 3y ago
  Indeed, somehow or other I found a perfect combination/distillation/outlet for: I really like to write about things that catch my interest Being an enthusiast Being extremely interested in people/things that are surprising/clever/beautiful/original/funny (not all at once necessarily)

by verelo 3y ago

bookofjoe 3y ago

My traffic history: started in August 2004, up to 15,000 pageviews/10,000 visits/day at the 2013 peak, when blogs were at their zenith. I'd get 10 or 20 comments/post, often. Then a slow decline until January 2015 when I became clinically depressed and barely functional such that it took everything I had to post one sentence/day just to show proof of life. I recovered completely in October 2016 and resumed multiple posts daily as is the case today. Traffic when I started back in in late 2016 on a regular multiple posts/day basis was around 100 pageviews/day. Current traffic is about 600 pageviews/day, with 5-10 comments/week. Still, a couple times a year some popular blog/website picks up something I've posted and links to my post which results in a sudden spike to 3,000-8,000 pageviews that day, with a regression to the norm over the next week or two. One thing I find interesting is that things I post today I would've posted back in 2004, and vice versa. It's amusing to discover a couple times/year that something I'm about to feature or just featured appeared 10-15 years ago. Occasionally a reader from back in the day will point this out, to my delight. As best I can tell, the only popular one-person blogs that still update regularly and go back as far as I do are https://www.swiss-miss.com/ https://www.swiss-miss.com/ [March 2005] and https://kottke.org/ https://kottke.org/ [1998]. I take pride in publishing daily including weekends and holidays, unlike pretty much every other blog/website. Always something new at boj if you can just make it through the night till the next morning.... As to making money from the site: when I started I thought perhaps I could do that, so the guy who set up my blog (I have 0 technical skills or knowledge of coding etc.) made it so I had Google AdSense on my homepage along with an Amazon Associate banner/link. At the blog's peak I was generating about $300/month from each of those two sources, with a couple anomalous checks from Amazon in late 2014 for $2,000-$3,000. Just when that happened is when I got depressed, and income collapsed to the point that I removed all ads from my homepage and left AdSense up on individual posts. Currently Google deposits around $120 into my bank account every 6-12 months, though I may have failed to update my AdSense agreement such that my Google payments are kaput.

jprd 3y ago

Love this too! Super interested in this story, I'm seeking inspiration for this kind of activity and you seem to be hitting the "sweet spot".

bookofjoe 3y ago
Indeed, somehow or other I found a perfect combination/distillation/outlet for: I really like to write about things that catch my interest Being an enthusiast Being extremely interested in people/things that are surprising/clever/beautiful/original/funny (not all at once necessarily)