Category Archives: General Posts

WordAds Revenue Q2, 2026

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Last Updated July 7th, 2026.

Recorded early in May 2026

Updated Second Quarter Guidance

I was getting ready to post a Q3 report when i realized that i had posted the Q1 and Q2 reports too early, before all of the quarterly data became available.

So, instead of making a Q3 at this time, I will be updating this Q2 report. The next report for Q3 should be posted in October and will include July, August, and September ad revenues.

Ad Revenue by Month

April

The site received 9,669 views from 5,412 visitors averaging 1.79 views per visitor.

I wrote 31 posts in April.

Average CPMEarningsAds Served
$0.26$5.3820,435

In April, I update a whole bunch of posts and even hit the republish button on them. That would account for the high number of posts listed for April. I don’t normally write that much unless I am inspired.

I did play some mobile games, but didn’t see much traction on the guides I wrote for them. I did some housekeeping in the wikis and cleaned up the Dragon Traveler and Cheerleaders GO collections.

Dragon Traveler has a big audience, so adding details to the wiki really improved my site traffic.

Unfortunately, there is now an English language mirror wiki from the official Dragon Soul Traveler (龍魂旅人) wiki that has received official recognition. I can’t really compete with a dedicated site with editors and authors.

If you do a Google Search for “Dragon Traveler wiki,” this site in in position 4, while the new dtwiki site is number 1.

May

The site received 10,058 views from 4,714 visitors averaging 2.13 views per visitor.

I wrote 15 posts in May.

Average CPMEarningsAds Served
$0.22$6.0927,779

In May, I tried to ramp up my posting but didn’t find much success. I have several posts, from this period, with 0 page views. I continue to add new content to my running work, the “eBay Style Code Catalog.”

It’s only got 2 views, and I suspect they were from me, when I checked to see if the post was visible on Google Search.

June

The site received 7,040 views from 3,826 visitors averaging 1.84 views per visitor.

I wrote 6 posts in June.

Average CPMEarningsAds Served
$0.30$5.0617,151

June was a slim month mostly because I was busy with my eBay stores and my travel blog Kasanje Travel’s. I enjoy street photography and local trips by car.

So, I didn’t do any game offers during this month. That meant I had no new content for this site.

Other Income Streams

Affiliates

I signed up for a couple of Affiliate programs however I have not had any earning from those platforms yet.

I have ads for the affiliates on most site pages in the sidebar.

eBay

I also include links to my four eBay channels: lafemme1st, fatwalletrefugee (FWR), golfforless, and kingcastlehomeimprovement. Sales are sporadic in the golf and hardware stores, this is primarily limited by my ability to acquire and stock quality goods in these area.

The majority of my eBay earnings come from the FWR and La Femme 1st stores. I sell men and women’s apparel primarily, although FWR does stock various knickknacks I’ve hopefully picked up.

eBooks

I briefly got into Amazon eBooks back in 2023 with the arrival of generative AI. I have since lost interest in that area and not been proactive in creating content.

The few items I have published do occasionally get viewed on Kindle Unlimited and I receive a few pennies now and then. It’s surprising since the AI tech back then was fairly rudimentary compared to the perfect images contemporary engines can create.

Pheditor

I created Pheditor after several bad experiences with “free” apps that were little more than money printing machines ladden with ads, pay walls, and premium subscriptions.

I am not a developer by trade, so the app is not very polished. I tried to limit functions to keep things simple.

  1. Functions
    1. Development History
      1. Privacy Policy for PhEditor
        1. 1. No Personal Data Collection
        2. 2. Device Permissions and Usage
        3. 3. Google Data Safety Compliance
        4. 4. Children’s Privacy
        5. 5. Changes to This Privacy Policy
          1. 6. Contact Us

Functions

This simple photo editor app allows you to free form crop your images, apply filters like sepia and grayscale, and to adjust brightness and contrasting.

The app supports saving edited images as Jpeg, PNG, and Webp file types.

Although the app was originally intended as a secure offline tool, I have added support for importing images from cloud services and for exporting to other detected apps on the device.

Development History

Most of my app development experience comes from apps created using MIT App Inventor.

Over the course of a year, I previously published four apps compatible with Amazon Fire devices. Two were phone wallpaper apps and the other two were AI look books which included hundreds of art images.

app icon for PhEditor, the photograph editing app.

Privacy Policy for PhEditor

Effective Date: June 28, 2026

At PhEditor, we are committed to protecting your privacy. This Privacy Policy describes how your information is handled when you use our mobile application.

1. No Personal Data Collection

PhEditor is an offline-first image editing utility. We do not collect, store, transmit, or share any personal data, personal identifiers, or sensitive user information.

2. Device Permissions and Usage

The app requires specific local permissions on your device to function correctly. These permissions are used exclusively to process your image edits locally on your device:

  • Storage / Media Files (READ_MEDIA_IMAGES / READ_EXTERNAL_STORAGE / WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE): Required solely to let you import images from your device’s gallery into the editor, and to save your edited images back to your device’s local storage.
  • Camera Permission (if requested): Used only to let you capture new photos directly within the app for editing. Captured photos are processed in-memory and are never sent anywhere.
3. Google Data Safety Compliance
  • No Data Collection: The app does not collect or harvest any user data.
  • No Data Transmission: Because the app operates without internet access, absolutely no data is transmitted to us or any third-party servers.
  • No Tracking or Advertising ID: We do not use trackers, analytics SDKs, or the Google Advertising ID (AAID).
4. Children’s Privacy

Since we do not collect any personal information, PhEditor is fully safe for use by children. We do not knowingly collect or solicit any personal information from children of any age.

5. Changes to This Privacy Policy

We may update our Privacy Policy from time to time. Any changes will be posted on this page with an updated effective date.

6. Contact Us

If you have any questions or suggestions about this Privacy Policy, please contact us at:

Email: [kasanje@yandex.com]

The Sourcer AI Tool for eBay Sellers

Back in August of 2025, the Youtuber Justin Resells, who I subscribe to, released a video with instructions on how to use Chat-GPT to build an app to aid in deciding whether or not to buy an item to flip.

Using the instructions provided does create a great app, however, it does require a paid plan using that service ($20 per month).

As a smaller seller (fatwalletrefugee), I don’t have the budget to afford this additional cost of business. So, instead I have used Google Gemini to replicate the functions of Justin’s original app.


Here is a structured, reusable prompt based exactly on the workflow Justin built in the video.

Since you are using a standard chat window rather than building a standalone Custom GPT, this prompt is designed as a “System Persona” introduction. You only need to paste this at the very beginning of a new chat session to turn this assistant into your personal sourcing tool.

Copy & Paste this Prompt:

Plaintext

You are now "The Sourcer," a specialized AI assistant for eBay resellers. Whenever I upload an image of an item, your job is to identify it and provide a concise analysis with exactly four distinct sections. Do not show your mathematical work; provide only the direct answers.
Format your response exactly like this:
### 1. Optimized eBay Title
[Provide a search-engine-optimized, keyword-rich title under 80 characters, prioritizing brand, model, material, era, and key descriptive features.]
### 2. Estimated Value
* **New / New Old Stock (NOS):** $[Estimated active/sold open-web price]
* **Used / Pre-owned:** $[Estimated active/sold open-web price]
*(Note: I understand these are rough open-web estimates and not live eBay API data.)*
### 3. Max Purchase Price (Target 2x ROI)
* **If New:** Do not pay more than $[Calculate: (New Value * 0.85) / 2]
* **If Used:** Do not pay more than $[Calculate: (Used Value * 0.85) / 2]
*(This limits my buy cost to half of the expected payout after factoring in a 15% eBay fee. Ignore shipping costs for this estimate.)*
### 4. Market Research Keywords
* **Search Phrase:** [Provide one short, natural 3-5 word keyword phrase optimized for finding this exact item on eBay]
Please confirm you understand by replying with: "The Sourcer is active. Upload your first item photo when ready."

How to use it in the field:

  1. Open a fresh chat on your phone and paste the text above.
  2. Once the AI responds confirming it’s ready, simply use your phone’s camera to upload a photo of an item you find at a thrift store, garage sale, or flea market.
  3. To do the final step of Justin’s workflow (checking the live active and sold listings), just copy the phrase generated in Section 4 and paste it directly into your eBay mobile app search bar.

Top 10 Best Games Completed

I have been using Swagbucks since 2020 and FreeCash since 2022, and in that time I have played many games. Though never more than once (for an offer).

I like to check both sites before deciding which platform to use. I also check MyPoints and InboxDollars, although I mostly get referrals from those sites.

Challenges

I have revisited some titles to check if the offer terms have been changed or if the instruction and tips I have offered are still relevant. Sometimes it is necessary to re-install a game to simulate completing an offer, challenging myself to reach most of the goals listed.

Two titles in particular, Raid: Shadow Legends and The Grand Mafia. With these two, I challenged myself to a simulated playthrough several times as the offer terms continued to change.

I have my favorite titles that I have played, there are some that I continued to play well after completing the offer. Some games just had the right hook to keep me playing.

But the top 10 best games I have completed would have to be those that I had the easiest run through and earned me the greatest payouts.

Top 10 Best Games

10. Fable Town

Type: Merging

I made a really nice guide for this one, but I spent too much money on it. I only earned $13.19 after spending $38.90. In hindsight, I think it could be done with little to no spending.

9. Puzzles and Conquest

Type: 4X Game and Match3

I earned $14.48 after spending on this title. One of the early games I attempted, I enjoyed the Match3 mechanics.

Publisher: 37Games Global

8. RAID: Shadow Legends

Type: Grid Battle and MMORPG

I did this one a long time ago and earned $20 after clearing spending goals of $25 to buy Shards.

Later the terms changed to reaching levels without spending being necessary.

7. Battle Night

Type: Grid Battle and Idle RPG

I did this one when it was first released for $20 with no spending needed.

Years later, I did a playtest and found that $100 was likely achievable.

6. Idle Bank Tycoon

Type: Tycoon

This was a challenge. Tycoon games are all about micromanagement.

There was a 10 day time limit and I finished on day 7 to earn $36.83. I only spent $1 on this game.

5. Panthia

Type: Merge

I spent $14.91 on this game and earned $39.86. It was an easy game to play.

4. Sea of Conquest

Type: 4X Game and Naval.

I did a really robust guide on this game when I was playing it.

I earned $54 from the offer, sadly, I missed the final objectives before time ran out.

I continued playing a few weeks after finishing the offer because I liked it so much.

3. State of Survival

Type: 4X Game and Apocalypse

I earned $56 playing this Zombie Apocalypse game through Adgem.

The publisher frequently runs cross-over events with other franchises in the genre.

I only spent $5.33 on the starter pack with Lucky.

2. West Game

Type: 4X Game

This county western game was one of the early big wins I had.

I played it on FreeCash about 4 years ago and earned $62.64 after reaching the final goal.

I only spent $1 on a beginner pack.

1. Call of Dragons

Type: 4X Game and Historical

My best game completion yet. I managed to earn $142 after spending $54.36 on packs.

Tier 4 Troops takes some time but is worth attempting.

Slimming down the beast

Last Updated Feb 28th, 2026

The export and import of site pages and posts was a disaster. None of the links were updated to the new site and the new site ran out of storage from the images.

For some reason all the reduced file size webp files were copied as jpg files instead, and they clogged everything up. So now half of the pictures are linked to fatwalletrefugee while the others are on kasanje travels. I am scrapping the entire plan.


I have more broadly decided to restructure this site around gaming alone. Kasanje Travels will become the new home of my travelog and food/cooking posts.

I have decided to archive my personal posts from Errant Literary as well as the Daily Prompt response posts. I am also throwing in the towel on the revival of the FatWallet Forums. The archive can still be downloaded from Payhip if you want it (https://payhip.com/b/Q7aAv).

I am also archiving and removing content in the following Categories: Investing, Sidehustles, Deals, News, Shopping, General, and Gold + Silver.

General posts directly related to gaming or site updates will remain in place.


A couple nights ago, I paid for a year of hosting through Host Koala for $24. I used a spare domain for the new site Kasanje Travel’s

HostKoala Web hosting

The service is inexpensive compared to my WordPress.com hosted site which I paid around $70 per year for 3 years on a sale.

Considerations

I was considering the new plug-in supported “.com” sites that went on sale last Christmas, but after looking at the monetization policies, I decided to go with an independent service.

If I want to use a 3rd party advertising service, I would need to upgrade to the Creator plan, which is much more expensive.

There are no such limitations on a “.org” installation of WordPress.

I will be copying and pasting the older posts over and then eventually posting new content to the other site.

Hopefully, with a focused niche, the travel site will get traffic and the slimmer main site will rank better in Google’s eyes.


Site History

Over the years I have continued to add new stuff to the site, often far afield of my primary niche.

This site originally was a travel blog. After my travels ended, I struggled to find something new to write about. I eventually settled on game guides.

That was a hard pivot, though at the time I didn’t have any understanding of SEO or how the search engines worked.

I later moved to game galleries which ate up all my storage space. I made a new site, then lost interest. It was fine, the galleries were perennial and drove high traffic with little input on my part.

But all that traffic was no longer going to my main site and I returned to the struggle.

My next decision was to monetize this site and then merge the galleries back into FatwalletRefugee.

That worked, until I encountered a crisis of conscience and purged the site, bringing it back to a family friendly place.

Now, I am once again struggling to drive traffic to the site, and while I have added several new wiki’s, it’s not yet made up for prior losses.

The main problem is that my content is too spread out. The site’s niche remains gaming related, but all the other content is mucking up my page rankings.

I get little to no traffic to the Travel and Food pages or to the FatWallet Forums Archive project. Google won’t organically index those pages because they fall outside of my niche.

So, my new strategy will be to slim down this beastly site and make new home for the food and travel aspects.


Hard Choices: Removing Site Content

What’s the hardest decision you’ve ever had to make? Why?

A couple weeks ago I made the difficult decision to cease providing wiki pages and game art galleries for several mobile titles.

I was under a certain amount of duress after receiving multiple complaints and strong suggestions to make a change.

You may know, earlier this year my YouTube channel GameGirlsGallery was shutdown, most unfortunately. Complaints about the amount of sexually suggestive content present in mobile games, ranging from game art to dialog and plot lines, had built up over the years and ultimately killed the channel.

The reasons for the recent site content removal are the same as those that caused GameGirlsGallery to be removed.

former banner image for the game girls gallery you tube channel and website.

The Top Girl / Apex Girl wiki hosted on fatwalletrefugee accounted for nearly 84% of all site traffic. The remainder of site traffic went to the mobile game art and character galleries.

Top Girl had been initially rated mature, but after being removed from the Apple Store and worries over possible removal from the Google Play Store they released several updates that brought the rating down to Teen.

Despite the artistic changes there was still a good amount of sexual suggestion and lewd imagery present. In fact, I think most regular people, if looking at most titles in the Google Play Store rated Teen, might think the games were for Mature audiences, and not be suitable for the age ranges the ratings board has decided on.

Even playing merge and puzzle games rated E for everyone, I still see ads for games rated Mature, AI dating chat bots, hookup apps, romantic story apps, and Harem anime games.

All this plus the mounting complaints and suggestions of actions taken led me to the hard decision to purge the site of all offending content. I deleted all of the posts, pages, wikis, and site media including images and videos that were likely to receive further complaint.

I was contacted by multiple subscribers afterwards asking where everything went and had to explain the difficulties I went through deciding to stop providing that type of content.

I had in fact been expecting to hit the 1 million page views mark by December this year, a new milestone stone for this site. Prior to the content removal, my average daily site traffic in early November was around 6k views. Sadly, now my average is closer to 450 views per day.

A bar graph displaying total weekly site traffic for my website.
Total Weekly Site Traffic

As you might imagine, my ad revenue has fallen off a cliff. While I had recently received my first payout from WordAds since signing up in March of 2024, I am likely not going to receive another payment for some considerable amount of time hereafter.

a bar chart indicating the ad revenues for the month of November. 

A steep decline in daily revenues is notable on the day after the site was purged of content.

The question as to how to recover from this loss also comes up. I still provide guides for family-friendly mobile games. I am in the process of detailing a guide for Fable Town at the moment. I am also expanding the written content for buildings and units in the Puzzles and Chaos wiki.

I used to get good traffic from Google and Reddit for my game guides, but once I began focusing on Apex Girl and Road to Rich, that traffic dropped and the algorithm sent those folks to other resources.

A splash page screen from the mobile game "Fable Town." 
Pictured are a pair of capybara sitting down in a hot spring while pink butterflies flit about them. The title of the game hangs just above their heads.
Fable Town: Merge

There is also the Travel and Food section of the site which hasn’t seen much writings since my last trip in 2019. That was originally what started my blog. A trip to New York City to see family prompted me to make kasanje.home.blog and years later I bought the fatwalletrefugee.com domain.

There are also side projects I started but never finished like the FatWallet Forums archives and the Lost Media directory.

Recently, I began redesigning the Travel page and restructuring the page hierarchy for that section. This also involves adding pagess for each US state I have visited and a separate section for my international trips.

My vacation to Washington last month inspired me to travel more locally here in North Carolina. I also was gifted a new camera. It’s an Olympus E-M10 II. There are two swappable lenses, one telephoto and a precision close up, and three batteries.

In the past month I have visited and photographed 6 towns and a state park. I am planning a trip to visit the Outer Banks next year.

Hopefully this move back to this site’s roots will boost site traffic and begin to shift the algorithm back home.