When I started this blog in 2012 one of my motivations was to make a bit of money. In those days if you had a successful blog that generated traffic, you could work out an ad deal and bring in some recurring cash for your effort.
And it worked—at least a little. By 2016 or so my blog was generating $40–$50 a month, which wasn’t life altering, but it was a nice bit of recurring revenue for keeping this site up and running.
In the last few years I’ve focused on publishing elsewhere, but I’ve kept this blog up, kept it fast, and ensured all links continued to work. From a revenue perspective my earnings started slowly dropping after I stopped regularly publishing—which I expected and makes sense.
What’s more interesting is what’s happened in the last two years.
The chart above shows my earnings per month since March 2018 (which is as far back as I have data). What starts as a slow-and-steady earnings decline, quickly accelerates around the end of 2022. And while I have no hard evidence as for why this decline starts, I have one strong theory.
I don’t post this data for you to feel sorry for me. This blog has always been a side project for me, and my primary goal with it has always been to write for writing’s sake (like I’m doing now!).
I’m posting this because I think it’s interesting to see hard data on the effect AI has had on a random tech blog. I do most of my development searches with ChatGPT or GitHub Copilot nowadays, and it seems like the rest of you do too.
And while I’m excited about the AI future, this experience also has me feeling a bit nostalgic for the glory days of the tech blog. There are way fewer individual-run high-quality tech blogs today, and I feel like this is one reason why.
Here’s my full data in case you’re curious.
| Month | Ad Impressions | Ad Clicks | Revenue |
|---|---|---|---|
| May 2018 | 31,537 | 33 | $32.24 |
| June 2018 | 29,503 | 54 | $35.42 |
| July 2018 | 27,646 | 41 | $34.71 |
| August 2018 | 25,469 | 32 | $31.90 |
| September 2018 | 24,736 | 31 | $27.45 |
| October 2018 | 24,393 | 29 | $29.11 |
| November 2018 | 24,683 | 29 | $29.37 |
| December 2018 | 18,852 | 15 | $21.91 |
| January 2019 | 22,701 | 27 | $22.99 |
| February 2019 | 21,784 | 19 | $24.79 |
| March 2019 | 21,820 | 26 | $23.68 |
| April 2019 | 19,309 | 18 | $19.49 |
| May 2019 | 19,234 | 35 | $22.77 |
| June 2019 | 17,006 | 23 | $25.12 |
| July 2019 | 17,798 | 25 | $21.32 |
| August 2019 | 16,410 | 34 | $23.12 |
| September 2019 | 17,334 | 31 | $25.51 |
| October 2019 | 17,992 | 36 | $19.19 |
| November 2019 | 16,631 | 30 | $23.82 |
| December 2019 | 13,985 | 24 | $20.58 |
| January 2020 | 15,318 | 17 | $20.33 |
| February 2020 | 15,716 | 7 | $20.95 |
| March 2020 | 16,810 | 11 | $19.65 |
| April 2020 | 17,200 | 20 | $17.54 |
| May 2020 | 15,928 | 36 | $14.88 |
| June 2020 | 14,405 | 7 | $12.15 |
| July 2020 | 13,477 | 13 | $13.33 |
| August 2020 | 13,243 | 7 | $13.65 |
| September 2020 | 13,200 | 10 | $13.19 |
| October 2020 | 13,255 | 6 | $15.35 |
| November 2020 | 12,847 | 15 | $14.69 |
| December 2020 | 12,368 | 11 | $15.33 |
| January 2021 | 13,172 | 7 | $13.58 |
| February 2021 | 14,641 | 16 | $18.65 |
| March 2021 | 16,979 | 15 | $19.89 |
| April 2021 | 13,423 | 16 | $18.81 |
| May 2021 | 16,112 | 14 | $23.89 |
| June 2021 | 16,082 | 54 | $23.78 |
| July 2021 | 11,424 | 3 | $19.80 |
| August 2021 | 10,636 | 7 | $19.15 |
| September 2021 | 13,256 | 9 | $21.78 |
| October 2021 | 13,369 | 13 | $19.87 |
| November 2021 | 12,643 | 7 | $20.38 |
| December 2021 | 9,722 | 14 | $14.68 |
| January 2022 | 9,584 | 8 | $14.05 |
| February 2022 | 9,923 | 5 | $14.69 |
| March 2022 | 10,895 | 9 | $17.91 |
| April 2022 | 9,561 | 3 | $13.16 |
| May 2022 | 10,782 | 5 | $13.39 |
| June 2022 | 9,922 | 2 | $15.64 |
| July 2022 | 8,955 | 7 | $12.91 |
| August 2022 | 8,910 | 3 | $10.44 |
| September 2022 | 9,381 | 5 | $12.20 |
| October 2022 | 9,533 | 5 | $10.60 |
| November 2022 | 9,361 | 3 | $11.44 |
| December 2022 | 8,039 | 4 | $10.65 |
| January 2023 | 7,429 | 1 | $7.34 |
| February 2023 | 6,442 | 7 | $5.10 |
| March 2023 | 6,406 | 5 | $4.70 |
| April 2023 | 5,363 | 6 | $5.20 |
| May 2023 | 5,735 | 6 | $4.69 |
| June 2023 | 5,194 | 7 | $4.35 |
| July 2023 | 4,613 | 9 | $3.96 |
| August 2023 | 4,121 | 17 | $3.11 |
| September 2023 | 3,333 | 4 | $2.66 |
| October 2023 | 3,830 | 6 | $2.19 |
| November 2023 | 3,952 | 14 | $2.58 |
| December 2023 | 3,141 | 5 | $1.83 |
| January 2024 | 3,112 | 4 | $2.22 |
| February 2024 | 2,955 | 5 | $1.44 |
| March 2024 | 2,816 | 7 | $2.11 |
| April 2024 | 2,250 | 4 | $1.62 |
| May 2024 | 1,738 | 2 | $1.24 |
| June 2024 | 1,541 | 9 | $1.46 |
| July 2024 | 1,560 | 2 | $1.13 |
| August 2024 | 1,404 | 0 | $0.87 |
| September 2024 | 1,368 | 1 | $0.67 |
| October 2024 | 1,433 | 5 | $0.55 |
| November 2024 | 1,172 | 0 | $0.71 |
| December 2024 (22 days) | 812 | 0 | $0.42 |