Things have suddenly improved since my last report in July.

This morning, I received an email saying that my PayPal account had received a payment from Automattic for $106.31. I checked my Ads panel and found that it is the exact amount in my balance.

I had assumed the payouts were manual and needed to be requested. But this assumption was based on posts I have seen in the WordPress Forums. It seems the payments are automatic after reaching the necessary threshold of $100.

My previous post would have covered the periods of April, May, and June. In those months, I received, $10.88, $11.01, and $6.07, respectively. My ads served in April and May averaged 150k, but in June, the numbers dropped, and I only had 70k ads served.

At the time of the drop, my site traffic had not decreased, which left me confused. What noticeably changed was that the CPM had dropped 75%. This may have resulted from increased site traffic from non-US sources, which don’t accrue the same degree of ad revenues.

In July and August, ads served dropped to 23k and 38k. However, my CPM increased from $0.09 in June to $0.27 in July and $0.36 in August.

This increase resulted in revenue of $6.54 in July and an improved $14.18 in August. This last amount was what pushed me over the $100 mark and triggered the payout I received.

My annual goal for the site is $74, which would cover the cost of the upgraded plan and custom domain name for 3 years. The domain was free for the first year.

That’s it for the third quarter report. I wrote more below, but I started reminiscing about sort of unrelated stuff.

In the past, when I would try to research hosting with other providers, I would ask for advice from people who had experience with other services.

I recall previously trying out Hostinger for a different website. I was on the free trial and had selected a basic plan.

Despite all the ads saying how low hosting was, they tried to pre-charge me $660 for a year of hosting before the trial had ended. I had to fight them on the charge before finally getting it removed and closing my account.

I tried a couple of others that were spoken highly of on Reddit, but I had similar experiences. All of this led me to decide that self-hosted sites with .org WordPress are actually more expensive than what WordPress.com offers.

I think the main difference between the platforms is the availability of Plugins on self-hosted sites. With a .com-hosted site, we don’t get plugin access without an upgraded plan, but .org sites get plugin access right out of the gate.

This revelation probably has soured some folks on the platform. I wonder, though, if self-hosted sites are too dependent on plugins? Would they be able to succeed without a crutch?

I see a similar trend with the introduction of AI to web design and other facets of online life.

People may start using it as a helpful aid, but soon enough, they become dependent on it for all of their activities. If the AI is offline or there is a bug, it cripples their ability to function.

It’s the same with plugins; when a bug appears or an exploit, the entire ecosystem is affected because everyone is dependent on these plugins.

The information in this post is provided for informational purposes only and is not intended to be legal advice. While I have tried to ensure that the content is accurate and current, I make no guarantees. You should seek legal or other professional advice before acting or relying on any of the information.