Thanks for another good year at USWildflowers.com in 2015.
Fire Pink – Silene virginica
Statistically, USWildflowers.com grew from 512 species at the end of 2014 to 533 at the end of 2015. There are over now 1783 photographs of those 533 species. Each species on this site represents several hours (in some cases MANY hours) of work photographing, researching, writing descriptions, and publishing the photographs and updates to the database.
USWildflowers.com continued its visitor growth in 2015, returning to a higher rate of increase than in 2014. Page views were up more than 20% over 2014, exceeding 1.8 million views (1.5 million in 2014.) Advertising revenue was about 5% higher than 2014, so while it’s not paying a living wage (or even “minimum wage”,) it is a self-sustaining hobby, a requirement on my retirement income.
The number of visits increased nearly 35% increase over 2014. The transition from desktop computers to mobile devices continues. Even though I made changes during the year to make USWildflowers.com more mobile-friendly, rummaging through a website is probably not as likely to occur on a phone or tablet as it is when you have a large screen and pointing device like that on a desktop computer, so the page views per visit has continued to decrease, and almost all of the increase in visits was from mobile devices. Bandwidth limits are also usually lower on mobile devices than from home, so digging deeper into a site is probably less attractive via mobile. Bandwidth constraints might also become a consideration from home as Internet providers such as Comcast start implementing bandwidth caps on home Internet services. Even though the vast majority of users do not come close to the current at-home bandwidth caps, that will likely change over the next couple of years as more and more streaming video replaces cable programming.
The small financial increase (about 5%) vs the noteworthy traffic increase of 20%+ might be attributable at least partially to mobile devices as well, since the location of ads may usually be outside the smaller initial viewing area of a mobile device. However, I also noticed a decline in revenue started in the latter part of 2013 soon after the Internet Explorer release of Adblock Plus. While this product claims to block only “annoying” ads, what is “annoying” is a matter of opinion, and I think they go too far. The default configuration puts small websites such as USWildflowers.com at risk. If you use Adblock Plus or another ad-suppressing product, please consider putting USWildflowers.com in your exception list, and perhaps even to petition the product developer to including it in a default exception list. (I really try to avoid “obnoxious” ad content and placement.)
The current level of revenue continues to be adequate to cover “web hosting costs” as well as to provide for some gas money to help offset costs of regional trips. However, the current level of revenue will not cover traveling further afield to more “exotic” wildflower sites.
In 2014 I took a slightly different direction with my spare time, and took up rock climbing – mostly in the gym, but some outdoors (which means I do have some hope of combining both of my hobbies.) I have so thoroughly enjoyed rock climbing that I am now probably spending more time climbing than photographing wildflowers. I still find it amazing that this website got over 3,700 visits a day on an average during the peak month of May, and wildflower photography, research, and publication on this website has been a tremendously rewarding activity for the past 6+ years, so I will continue to pursue the wildflower hobby going forward, albeit for the time being at a slower pace than in the past.
The author on a 5.10 at High Point Climbing and Fitness
I hope that you and yours will have a happy and rewarding 2016. Thanks for your ongoing use of USWildflowers.com as a resource in your effort to enjoy and identify wildflowers of the United States.
Proverbs 16:9 (NKJV) – “A man’s heart plans his way, But the Lord directs his steps.”