Today I celebrate this blog’s 7th year! Every time I hit this milestone, I’m surprised that I’ve stuck with it for yet another year. But I also couldn’t imagine not writing for this blog, either!

Not to start out on a bummer note, but last year was not my proudest year when it comes to maintaining this blog. My mind was on other blogs and other communities, and I really let this one slip through the cracks. I didn’t participate in any of the Blaugust events and I honestly am a little shy to try to poke my head back into that group on Discord (I have trouble keeping up with Discord as it is).

Some Stats

First, I’m super stoked that I have over 400 followers on WordPress Reader now! Thank you all! 🙂

I usually don’t talk about stats on my blogiversary, but I think I will this year. I’m surprised that despite having written significantly less this past year (almost 100 less posts from the year before), it didn’t have a huge effect on my traffic. I had less views, but only marginally.

I guess I’ve gotten to a point where the content is basically keeping the blog going even if I take a little break from adding to it. The most popular post of last year is one that I wrote back in 2018 on the FFXIV Bard Music Player! In fact, it was so popular that I even updated that post last year with the newest BMP information.

However, there were some posts I wrote last year that figured in my top viewed, too, such as:

1. FFXIV – Ocean Fishing Guide
2. FFXIV: Patch 5.21 – Diadem for Gatherers
3. FFXIV: A Dragon’s Best Friend
4. FFXIV: Patch 5.3 – Flying is Coming to ARR Zones, ARR MSQ Consolidation
5. FFXIV: YoKai Watch Event Returns!

Yeah, FFXIV content is a staple on my blog. No surprise about that!

WordAds

I’m going to talk about something else I rarely do: monetization.

I don’t blog for profit or really for stats and views. That’s never been my focus for this blog, which has always been an outlet for me to post whatever I’m excited about at the moment – be it in the gaming world, or some hobby that’s fascinating me.

That being said, I have posted before that I do run WordAds on this blog. I’ve been told that folks who run pop-up blockers don’t even know this – and that’s fine. I also run a pop-up blocker on most of the Internet, so I don’t blame you.

Somehow, this blog still generates a small amount of revenue. Not a lot – lately it’s been something between $9-$20 a month. But, again, interestingly, despite having cut back in content last year, I still managed to make a bit more than the year before.

Yes, I do get paid every time the revenue hits $100 – which has only been twice since 2018. So I can confirm that WordAds makes good on its promises to pay.

Earning about $142 is enough to pay this blog’s hosting cost for the year, cover the cost of the domain name, and maybe another domain name or two I that own. So really, all this revenue goes to paying the expenses of hosting the blog that’s making it, and that is completely fine with me.

Into 2021

Now that I’ve made up my mind to put much more attention back on this blog in 2021, I’m looking forward to seeing where it’s all going to go. I’ve been making an effort to play a wider variety of games in January already, and I’m trying to be more active on my Twitter again.

Hopefully I’ll meet you back here in a year to see what this year turned out to look like. Trying to make it a good one!