I've had a single advert on my blog for quite a few years now, and while it tends to average out to make the blog sustainable—as in it covers the hosting costs—but it's still an advert, and adverts (in my opinion) are ugly.
For some transparency, over the last 12 months, the single advert on my blog has brought in $179.89 which works out just below $15 a month on average. The running costs of this blog are $14.40 a month ($12 plus VAT). I also have an automatic backup that adds on a few extra dollars, but that's more for my peace of mind than being absolutely necessary.
Here's a detailed breakdown of the last 12 (full) months:
| Month | Impressions | Clicks | Earnings |
|---|---|---|---|
| February 2023 | 5,549 | 8 | $5.97 |
| January 2023 | 7,342 | 9 | $9.8 |
| December 2022 | 8,508 | 11 | $13.95 |
| November 2022 | 11,433 | 21 | $22.86 |
| October 2022 | 6,718 | 19 | $9.34 |
| September 2022 | 7,938 | 12 | $13.52 |
| August 2022 | 6,000 | 7 | $9.95 |
| July 2022 | 10,074 | 17 | $16.84 |
| June 2022 | 9,409 | 23 | $17.57 |
| May 2022 | 11,930 | 35 | $17.13 |
| April 2022 | 10,657 | 24 | $19.08 |
| March 2022 | 11,980 | 18 | $23.88 |
I don't know how much a typical blog brings in via advertising, so I don't know if this is coming from a priviledged position or not. But the whole time I've had an advert on my website, I've wanted to remove it.
As you may have noticed, the design of my blog changes quite regularly. But I tend to always come back to very minimal styling, with an emphasis on the actual words. So the advert, while small, still sticks out.
When I view blogs like Manual Moreale, Craig Mod, Brent Simmons, or Riccardo Mori, it makes me want to slim down the design of mine.
It's not just the advert at the bottom of the page either, I go through these thoughts with all types of parts of my blogs design. Something else I've toyed with removing is the date below the post title. That may seem silly, but it's not typically essential when reading a post on my blog, so should it be there?
I could go on to say the same about the navigation links in the footer, the copyright text, the weird request to "buy me a coffee" if you enjoyed a post, etc.
Ironically, I could go and really minimalise my blog right now, removing everything apart from the title, navigation, title, and post content. But in a few months time, I'd slowly start to add it back.
Note: I have now slightly "minimalised" the design of my blog since writing this. Although as mentioned on Mastodon, there's still further I can go.