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