Working with the algorithms.
I keep track of my stats and my "payments versus views", on a regular basis. There's some things that I've noticed as my blog traffic has changed over the years. When I started out, about ten years ago, I posted sporadically. Worked the reader sporadically. It was just me getting used to what I wanted to write about and whether or not I was confident in my message. Originally, I only wrote about beginner gardening. I'm really experienced in starting over.
Before you get too excited, this is spread out over about 7 or 8 years. I do not make this kind of money yearly or monthly. This is everything Word Ads has ever paid me. And I have had word ads running for almost a decade. You can see I just crossed $100 and that is the lowest amount they will cut a check for. I will get paid the $100 in a few weeks. If you get approved for Word Ads make sure your theme is optimized for it. My original theme did not work with Word Ads and I didn't realize it for about a year. There aren't a lot of free themes that are optimized, but don't spend money to make money. Go with a free theme.
So, I'll catch you up with my life back story and my blogging story:
I grew up a military brat and then my dad joined a financial planning company that moved us all the time. Then I aged a little, met my future husband (when I was in my early 30s), and I married into the military. My whole life I've constantly moved. Constantly started over. Constantly readjusted to new environments.
In 34 years my parents moved 25 times. My childhood was pure chaos. But, the constant moving did a lot for my parents financially. We didn't go without.
My mom was a gardener and her gardens are what sold every house we had. However, she was all about foliage and flowers because my dad's job always had summer meetings, out of state, right when fruit or vegetables needed harvesting. Or: we'd be gone out of state and couldn't water effectively at home in the Texas heat.
That's not my married life. We've been on vacation (outside of visiting family) exactly once in 18 years of marriage and it was with my husband's office. We went to Hawaii. (It was my second time out there, in my life, and I love that state!) So, normally I don't have issues with vacations interrupting my harvest. And usually it's an "either/or" thing like that with gardening. Either you are home all the time and can run a huge garden or you take vacations all the time and have to find another hobby. Since I love this hobby so much, it's fine by me to be around when the rewards of gardening appear at harvest time.
Anyway, I found my voice on this blog fairly quickly. I'm also a "do it yourself" kind of person. We almost never hired work out, as I was growing up, and my uncles are contractors so we always had advice. As someone who runs a consistent mental process for finding solutions, I come up with unique ideas.
I also love being a mom. My family on my husband's side reignited an interest in Halloween. So, that's what actually started moving my blog forward. I came up with cool Halloween decorations, that I made myself, and I posted about them. (Again, sporadically, but all in September and October.)
You can see the usual pattern I had for monthly views.
As my writing experience came along, I started posting more regularly. I worked on the reader more and I got more views. This is also when I got huge numbers in September and October for the Halloween tutorials. I was able to qualify for Word Ads (although I turned it off originally. I didn't use it until I found a theme, that worked with it, but also didn't throw pop-ups all over the place.) I have seen some people online say you need 30,000 views a month to qualify for word ads. I don't think that's right. Maybe I qualified for running those types of numbers for a single month of the year, but I don't consistently pull that much viewership
I got picked up by a large aggregate site and then I had one of my tutorials published in a print magazine. My numbers for views always cratered in November and stayed that way for most of the year.
I find it interesting that September 2020 and September 2021 has almost exactly the same views but there's $13 dollar difference. This is the answer when you ask: "how much does Word Ads pay?" Even with the same number of views and the same part of the year: the amount of pay you make is based on some sort of mysterious information WordPress doesn't share
The payout amount, per ad view, is wildly different.
If you look at the list of ad views and pay outs above you can do the numbers. That's why I only included three examples per year. At the end, I added the eleven months back from what is current. If you notice I am now getting paid monthly about the same as my high number months last year. If you look at the "ads served" you can also see what kind of traffic that you need to hit to make any money.
Not only has my September-October views dropped off, but last year I noticed almost no one in our city (including our subdivision) decorated for Halloween. I'm not sure what was going on, but I don't think it was just because of the age of the aggregate site post I was attached to. It was a mood we were all in. I didn't even want to decorate last year, but my kids really wanted to. So, we did.
Also, oddly: our subdivision usually runs a contest for Halloween. Even our subdivision HOA board, randomly decided not to have the contest last year. It was kind of weird. Everyone was in a somber mood, but nothing new was going on. Maybe we're all still burned out from the last few years? I'm wondering what this year will be like.
As far as other revenue streams:
I recently opened a fun little store that I share quips from my blog, and put those on products. You can find that here: https://crazygreenthumbs.printify.me/products
I have a 5 star reviewed, DIY outdoor Halloween decoration book for sale on Kindle, too. You can find that here: Frighteningly Easy, Homemade Halloween: The Grand Book Of Halloween Tutorials https://a.co/d/iaMShE9
I also have a referral account with Amazon (although that's definitely not something I really focus on.) I usually only use that on tutorials, and those randomly pop up when I successfully craft something.
I post daily: I have my scheduled posts, waiting to go live, several days in advance. I've found things I enjoy sharing. As I've increased the amount I post, my ad revenue, per ad view, has gone up.
You can see my total numbers for the year have not changed much in four years. (Obviously, 2024 isn't over, so: my stats are lower.) In fact: even though my yearly spike was about half the views of previous years, last year, I did slightly better overall than the year before. This is from the rest of the year's views catching up with the Halloween traffic.
Anyway, I continued adding content. Word Ads paid out for me about once a year. The lowest pay out they do is $100 and that was pretty much all I got for several years. Then I started posting on a weekly basis about a year and a half ago. My ads and payments went up.
2020 high viewership month. My weekly views hold pretty steady throughout the Halloween season. Originally, there were weekly spikes within monthly spikes. But now my numbers in October are pretty consistent.
Recently, I started posting daily. I don't think I could have done this any earlier. Not only because I am raising kids, (and my husband was not home for two years) but also: I didn't really know what I'd want to share, until now. My numbers are way up after almost six months of posting daily. My ad pay out has also increased. I believe part of the amount that Word Ads pays out for has to do with how much they are currently selling their ad space for. I also believe there is a secret tier system for rates. You cross a certain boundary and the rates go up. So again, it varies. If the economy is sluggish: my Word Ads payments reflect that. Although: it may be inversed. If no one is buying: maybe ad space is more expensive for companies trying to get your attention to keep selling, even with their losses. The point is: its tied together somehow in their algorithm.
I was approaching 4,800 visitors a week during my spikes. This picture is about the columns to the left. (The highlighted column wasn't done for the week.) You can see, if I'm going to do well in October or if I'm going to be slower for the year, it's consistent on a daily/weekly basis.
At the moment my weekly traffic is a little less than half of my weekly traffic during last October. So: for about six weeks, I made all of the money my blog pulled in for the year: two years to four years ago. Now that I'm posting more often, my income per month has changed. (I'm sorry some of these examples are highlighting unfinished time periods. But these stat tables, from years ago, are gone. I'm relying on saved screen grabs. Please refer to columns to the left.)
This is my theory about how Word Ads pays for advertising: I don't have any hard proof other than observation of my own blog. However, I have been watching them for a long time.
There's a reason you can't Google how much Word Ads pays out. It changes. I think most people start blogs, find it unappealing and underfunded, and after a year or so, give up. Then there's people like me who enjoy writing, have a unique skill set and love to teach (I also am not good at knowing when to quit, so: this blog keeps going forward.) I was writing for years before I joined WordPress and nobody saw any of that. (Kind of hard to go lower, with that as your back story!) I have always loved writing and I've even had professors, (when I was in college) hand me their manuscripts and ask about my thoughts on them. That was when I had some outside confirmation that writing was really important to me, and I realized how much I valued the written word as a medium.
I am also mostly an "in my own head" type of person, so writing has always been a way to reach out to others.
I did burn out for a bit and got busy with other things the second and third year, and I kind of ignored this blog. In the fourth year my interest was reignited, (for whatever reason) and I really started working on my content.
I am also a systems person. As I worked on WordPress: I noticed things as I went and used them to my advantage. Posting regularly really is the key to getting top rates for advertising. But in the beginning: use the WordPress reader to discover and get discovered.
You can see my daily views are a lot higher with consistent posting.
My weekly viewership is steadily increasing. These are the highest numbers I've had outside of Halloween and it seems to be on the upswing. (Again the highlighted column isn't finished. I'm referring to the columns to the left.)
I think this table is from last Halloween season. This is a weekly stat table.
I had about 6,600 views last month. For me, at this time of year: that's really good. Even though I made that in a week in October. My views in October are also lower than they used to be when I had the free advertising from the big aggregate site, however, my views are going up throughout the rest of the year. So: I am getting more consistent viewership. That new rate of views makes up for the small advertising loss I had last year, in October.
When I was only spiking in October (last October I had about 20k views) my advertising rate per view was lower. As I have started posting daily, (on a regular basis) my payments per advertising view are starting to go up (incrementally.) My best year I had about 75k views, but it was almost totally in two months. The rate I got, per ad, was lower then too.
I think what WordPress is looking for is: daily views and increasing views. They want to advertise across the entire year and they want you to draw consistent views so that they can easily and accurately place ads in your blog.
The key to this is: 1. Find your voice (and subject matter) and share that content. 2. Try and post regularly. If you are new, I think you'll burn out posting daily. But go for it if you think you can handle that type of content creation. 3. I would diversify your content until you can find what you write about that other people want to read.
Work your way up time-wise, try to share original ideas and be consistent. Not the most exciting instructions ever, but it will work.
I think blogging is mainly about not giving up, being ultra patient and putting in the time. I am at a place where I expected to be a year in, in the beginning. (Boy were my expectations off!) I've been doing this for ten years now. I probably could have grown faster, had I dedicated more time to this. However, back when my kids were little: I didn't have more time to spend on this blog. I didn't have my voice and message fleshed out. And: I didn't yet know what I wanted from this blog.
Outside of being a parent, this has been one of my favorite experiences and time draws. I still have dreams, and interests in expanding this blog. But, I didn't get here overnight and I really did have to have patience with this process.
(BTW I have tried boosting viewership with the new blaze advertising. I will never use that again. I get much better numbers from organically generated views.)
If I had the ability to go back, I'd tell myself: be consistent, post daily and be patient. The money will come, if you don't give up and you find an audience.
I hope you have gleaned some helpful information from my experience. Let me know if you have a different idea on how making money from Word Ads works for your blog.
See you out in the garden!
Crazy Green Thumbs
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