Housekeeping Notes: Blog Address

It has been nearly a year since I last updated the blog with a post and it has been quiet on the site generally for the past two years.  Partly this has been a choice as I have become more involved with my current role and due to other personal reasons.  One of the main reasons though was the feeling of disenchantment I felt with the outcome of a blog change that I had made – if you would pardon me an indulgent housekeeping blog, I’ll explain below. 

A Note on the Blog Address

Back in March 2019 I decided to update the blog’s address by upgrading my WordPress website package and moving the site to a .com address and to also allow advertising that could be monetised.  I’d been blogging for 8 years by that point (since March 2011 in fact) and I was confident that the daily number of views/hits and subscribers could lead to some minor earning potential.  As noted previously, writing a blog can take a significant chunk of time out of your week when having to research potential topics, produce posts, edit posts, and contacting guest bloggers to develop ideas and future posts together.  Editing and blog organisation are also ongoing background tasks undertaken to ensure that certain style (grammar/layout) or standards (bibliographic, etc.) are met, and previous entries cleaned up and re-edited as necessary.  So I thought using the automated ads feature provided in the upgrade package could be a good way to recuperate that cost, as represented by my time investment and labour.

I was quite prepared for it to be a meager sum having researched online for what to expect as there was little information on the WordPress/Ad company site as to how much exactly the company pay and how the algorithm decided how much they pay (whether by ad impressions/views/interactivity, etc.).  What I was not quite prepared for though was the dramatic daily drop in the number of daily blog visitors/views, despite carrying out every precaution to ensure a smooth transition between the WordPress.com address to a .com one as advised.

The weekly figures for weekly views clearly shows the impact of upgrading the site from March 2019 and how suppressed the views have been since then. The latest full month is for December 2020, with a total of 2,816 views and 1,969 visitors. By comparison the highest blue bar on the left represents October 2018 with 25,057 views (and a lower number of visitors in darker blue). The pattern continues today since changing it back, but should change with regular blogging. Click to enlarge the image.

I took a few looks over the initial months following the change in blog address and saw no obvious reason as to why the sustained drop in views/visitors should be happening and I contacted the company.  Despite going on to contact WordPress a number of times regarding the sustained drop, and being reassured it would recover within a few weeks each time I contacted them (and that gap lengthening each time I asked), I never quite received a clear answer as to why my site was receiving substantially less views.  This frustrated me and after the eighth attempt at explaining the drop and trying to elicit a clear answer I stopped as it was clear no answer would be forthcoming.

Of course the income from the ads monetisation was non-existent and I never met the bar set to have any money ever transferred (you have to ‘earn’ $100 before any money is transferred – I am/was currently at less than 10% of that).  After a number of months I turned off the ads from the site in minor disgust at both the adverts themselves and the pitiful sum raised (and which I couldn’t access anyway).  I hate to admit it but over the past year and a half I have become less enamoured of logging onto the site as I became demotivated from seeing that the views had dropped by up to 80% of previous years.  Ultimately I largely stopped producing posts as other issues became more important in my life.  And the world fundamentally changed with the advent of Covid-19.

An evergreen favourite cartoon – the perils of a blog as a time sink and the clash of real life. On a side note I highly recommend helping to crowdfund Mr Lovenstein’s new book. Image source: Mr Lovenstein.

However, there is a plus side to this – I think it reinforced in my own mind the reasons for starting the blog in the first place.  It wasn’t as a place to earn money (though frankly that would be quite nice, it isn’t essential thankfully), and really I get out of it what I put into the site itself.  Thinking long term, I would rather this site remained accessible and readable rather than it disappear following a missed payment for a .com address.  As such I recently changed my blog address back to thesebonesofmine.wordpress.com and hopefully it should stay that way as I am not renewing the upgraded package.

Granted, this has been a bit of a boring entry but I thought it was best to let readers know that I am still active and that I still will be producing posts for this site at some point in the very near future.  I’m still passionate about human osteology and the intricate details kept within our skeletal system, and the value of archaeology as humanity’s combined story.  In fact there are over 12 draft blogging entries in varying states of readiness, but as an old joke goes I could never quite match how productive one Robert M Chapple is, despite his protestations to the opposite!  So if you need an archaeology fix before These Bones of Mine’s next update, why not head over to Robert’s site and discover a great archaeological blogger? 

Housekeeping Notes: A Change in Address & Ads

Regular readers of this blog may notice that the site has recently undergone a few changes regarding the URL and advertising on the blog.  I originally started this blog as a bit of an experiment back in 2011 (!) to document my growing interest in human osteology and bioarchaeology using the free WordPress.com blogging platform and as my site grew and became more uniform with the introduction of the Skeletal Series, guest posts and interviews, it also became much more time-consuming to produce and edit content.  Still I was quite happy to do this and thoroughly believed that academic, or at least academic-leaning, blogs should try to avoid being commercialised if possible and I resisted the siren call of monetising the site.

Long-term readers will note that the blog post output rate has slowed somewhat dramatically in the past few years due to time constraints (such as employment, volunteer work, or other such activities).  I still maintain this site as an active one as I continue producing posts, helping to advertise opportunities for students and for MSc/MA courses in human osteology in  the United Kingdom  (1), and by answering emails and comments, etc.  Everyone now and again I also edit old entries.  However, my thoughts on upgrading the blog also changed as I thought a bit more about the future of the blog, of how I want it to be accessed and what would be good for its long-term future.

The perils of a blog as a time sink. Reproduced with permission from Mr. Lovenstein. Image source: Mr Lovenstein.

I’ve been quite loathe to change the appearance of the blog since settling on a style that I found workable and that highlighted the various aims and topics discussed within the blog (as seen by the triptych of images that forms the blog banner).  It isn’t aging too well and I think a change is probably due in that direction, perhaps with a neater, more simplistic and easier-to-read design.  The blog itself is highly searchable with numerous categories and tags produced for each post, however there are some features that could do with an upgrade or a change-around at least.  The RSS sub-page could do with deleting as it hasn’t worked for years and the WordPress blog menu has so far baffled me as to how to remove it (2).  Apologies for all of those readers who have clicked on it to only find scrambled code instead!

As well as the change in the domain name, readers may also notice a number of advertisements on the blog itself.  WordPress.com had initially inserted ads into the blog as per their funding model to generate income, like most media and social media companies on the web.  Since the plan upgrade I have decided to try to monetise the blog in order to raise pocket-money revenue from the operating of this site.  This is partly in recompense for the amount of time maintaining the site – time spent either researching, writing, or editing the blog entries, or for the administration side of the blog replying to emails and building relationships with other bloggers.  (Don’t laugh at the editing part!).

For a long time I was against the idea of monetisation in principle on a generally academic and educational blog, since most of my peers (such as Jess Beck’s Bone Broke, Kristina Killgrove’s Powered By Osteons and Alexandra Ion’s Bodies and Academia) do not advertise on their sites, as far as I am aware.  In fact that trio of sites look remarkably clean, easy to navigate and remain a pleasure to read.  Do I feel bad about putting a trio of adverts on my blog, which may affect the reader’s attention?  Yes I do.  Do I also need to pay rent, need to eat and drink, and have to pay for fuel so enable me to get to my current job?  Yes I do.  Could I also be working the time I spend updating, editing and working on this blog?  Again, yes I could be.

Hidden from the world: the secret panel on the above comic. Reproduced with permission from Mr. Lovenstein. Image source: Mr Lovenstein.

So am I now rolling in the money since I started to monetise the site?  No I am not.  In fact it is bringing in less than I had hoped it would and due to WordPress not paying out until you reach $100, I may not receive a single cent for a good while yet.  If any readers have any questions regarding the changes in the blog, I’d be happy to answer them either below in the comments box or via email (see the About the Author tab for the address).

Fundamentally I am hoping that this series of blog changes for These Bones of Mine invigorates me to write more.

Looking for Guest Posts and Interviewees

Whilst I’m quickly updating the blog and taking a look through previous posts and blog statistics, I notice I have not had a guest post or an interview entry on the blog in quite some time.  I’m hoping to rectify this within the next few months by reaching out to friends and colleagues, and likely also on the British Archaeological Jobs and Resources  Facebook page.  I do have a guest post set of guidelines for prospective guest post bloggers to read in order to match the ‘house style’ of this blog and I am selective of what I consider suitable for this site, though there is a wide range of topics I’d consider and that I am actively looking for.  I am always interested in hearing from commercial field archaeologists and osteoarchaeologists, as well as early career researchers and specialists in palaeopathology, funerary archaeology, osteoarchaeology and bioarchaeology.  I’m particularly keen on another set of interviews as I find that interviews allow for a deeper and personal reflection on what it is actually like working within this sector and how individuals have gotten into this area in the first place and what continues drives them or drive them out of it.

So if you have an ongoing project, a unique perspective, or a new bioarchaeological methodology or theory that needs a helping hand please do get in touch and let me know!  To all of my previous interviewees and guest bloggers, you are very much welcome back as updates on projects, careers, and perspectives are always welcome.

We are living through an interesting period in which our understanding of the Western world post-Second World War is fundamentally changing and the great game of diplomatic and trade agreements, alongside our economic ties, are being reshaped for the 21st century.  Is this filtering through to the sector?  Are the commercial conditions changing and are our perceptions of how we interpret the past changing?  This is an area I am keen to delve into and to hear your views, from the ground up.

Notes

(1).  The latest entry in the available postgraduate MSc/MA courses in human osteology in the United Kingdom dates from March 2018 and could do with a 2019 update.  Expect to see that within the next month or so.  The expansion of such courses in the UK continue, with a professional accreditation/commercial experience module now added in.  This is a step in the right direction, but the glut of human osteology postgraduates often find meager commercial opportunities for employment in current market conditions in the country.

(2).  Update 10/03/2019 – It took me 5 seconds of looking at a menu to find the click button.  It has now been removed.