Well, here we are at the New Year again, which incidentally coincides with my 5-year blogging anniversary!
But let’s be honest, I didn’t do too much blog-wise this year.
2025 was a year in which I was heavily focused on selling my affiliate site (which I did not end up selling due to a lack of demand), traveling more, and hiking as many mountain peaks as I could.
As such, AR generally fell to the wayside, and I essentially have landed at a monthly cadence, which hasn’t done much for blog growth in Year 5.
In fact, the site’s traffic was nearly cut in half. Between my poor writing cadence, the lack of X as a traffic driver (I am still on my social media sabbatical), and the loss of Google traffic, it wasn’t exactly a banner year.
However, I enjoy writing as much as ever, and I am now trying to write at least something (even a personal journal entry) every day. I hope that translates into more published posts and a better 2026 for the site.
In the meantime, let’s look back at the numbers for the last year:
Year 5 of AR – A Look Back
Traffic/Social/Email
- Total Web Traffic: 43.5K users and 66.9K pageviews (way down from 88.5K users and 147K pageviews)
- Twitter Followers: 18,900 (down from 19,585)
- Email Subscribers: 2,553 (up from 2,028)
Top Articles
- What Happened When We Finally Opened Our $100 Bottle of Wine
- Celebrating 5 Years of Early Retirement
- Something Feels Off—But What?
- Can You Trust ChatGPT with Your Financial Planning?
- Are The Joneses Having More Fun?
Top Resources
- Easy-to-Use Net Worth Spreadsheet 2026 (Template for Google Sheets & Excel)
- Profit And Loss Statement Template (FREE For Google Sheets & Excel)
- Jordan Peterson 12 Rules For Life Summary & Review
- Time to FIRE Spreadsheet 2026 (Template for Google Sheets & Excel)
- Pay Off Mortgage vs Invest Calculator
AR Revenue and Expense
Revenue
While making money is not the primary goal of AR, I still want to cover the costs of operations and also provide a little extra income for myself.
Overall, everything was down, down, down.
In total, Journey generated $510.12 in advertising revenue for the year, which is down 56%, though that’s not too bad considering the site’s traffic was down 54% itself.
Affiliate revenue was where there was even more of a dip, as it was down to $845.62 (a total of 68% less). Looking at many of my resource posts that are driving affiliate money, some of them are down between 54-59%, so not quite the 68%, but guessing that a few sales here would have made a big difference (in fact, my math says yes).
Finally, last year the site made $642.70 on X, and I haven’t posted on X since 2024, so this year it made $0.
So after crushing it with $4,448.71 in revenue last year, AR was down to $1,355.74 this year.
Monthly Revenue: $112.98 per month
Expense
Expense-wise, I was able to remove X Premium (not using X), and then correspondingly remove Hypefury, which I was using for scheduling for X (that saved about $30 per month).
Kit still costs the same $44.35 per month, which honestly seems high for the subscriber amount. If I wanted to, I would simply rebuild this tool and send everything via Mailgun, but the one benefit to Kit is the creator referral network, which was the primary driver of the additional 500+ subscribers that signed up this year. Still something to think about since this is equal to more than 50% of the site’s expenses.
Finally, I probably should also get rid of AR’s Cloudflare Pro subscription if I wanted to cut costs even more, as their free plan handles almost everything I need, so I will look into that.
- Hosting (AWS): $5.95 per month
- Google Workspace (email/docs): $9.16 per month
- Cloudflare (DNS, cache): $20 per month
- Kit (email newsletter): $44.35 per month
- Canva Pro (images/graphics): $6.5 per month (split between all businesses)
Monthly Expense: $85.96 per month
Thank You
As always, a big thank you to all of my readers, email subscribers, and X followers!
If you are a new subscriber, I hope to continue to write more new and original content for YOU this year and stop being such a slacker.
Regardless, I hope that you all enjoy what I am doing and continue to come back (and bring friends).
I’d love to hear what you love about this site and would like to see more or less of.
Let me know in the comments below!
More from Accidentally Retired
- Celebrating 5 Years of Early Retirement
- Celebrating 4 Years of Blogging
- Celebrating 4 Years of Early Retirement
- Celebrating 3 Years of Blogging
- Celebrating 3 Years of Early Retirement
- Celebrating 2 Years of Blogging
- Celebrating 2 Years of Early Retirement
- Celebrating 1 year of Blogging
- Celebrating 1 year of Early Retirement
Congrats to making to 5 years. Blogging seems like a forgotten medium nowadays so your numbers are still pretty good.
Many bloggers don’t make it to 5 years so be proud
Agreed. Most of my numbers have really come down due to my lack of time/effort in 2025. Of course there are other factors, but I can point to that over anything else for sure. Either way it’s fun and I get enjoyment out of in. It’s a win-win regardless!