I started running those Google AdSense blocks on the right of my site back in early 2007, well after my posting had tapered off, but thanks to you all it’s provided me with a little late holiday present. Arriving in the mail on this last day of 2011: a check from Google for just over $100, covering almost four years of AdSense displays.
Sadly, my best-ever earnings came in May 2007—way back at the beginning—and even that didn’t break $10. It was just before I was laid off from the Last Director Job Ever.
I’m not sure what made that month’s traffic high. Was it my correction of Jim Lehrer that ended up on the journalism site Romanesko? Was it the analysis of how Democratic Senators who voted against the Iraq AUMF had a better re-election track record than those who cheered the war on? Or was it the photo of me corrupting the youth of Springfield, Oregon with the evils of pencil-and-paper role-playing games?
There were seven months that followed where the average take was above $4.60, but only three months since January 2008 have made more than $2.50 (and never more than $3); nearly half the past four years has been under $1 per month.
Maybe I should write something people (at least briefly) think they want to read, again. $9 a month, man….