Traditionally, I summarize the results of the year. For me, 2023 has become one of the best periods of my life, despite all the darkness that is happening in the world. Got married, made a lot of money, traveled, grew up a lot professionally, met a bunch of cool people…
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- Main events of 2023
- Finstrip for 2023
- Blog statistics for 2023
- Traffic from search engines
- Traffic from readers
- Telegram
- How I accidentally increased my YAN revenue 43 times
Main events of 2023
Winter 2023:
- We saw the city of Artik (105 km northwest of Yerevan) and the church of St. Gevorg, VII century. In general, there are three ancient churches in the city center at once.
- We visited Arichavank, an Armenian medieval monastery complex of the XIII century. We walked a decent route from the city to the complex and back.
Spring 2023:
- Atsik and Karmrakar (villages in the Shirak region of Armenia) were explored: khachkars, ruins of ancient temples, “Leaky Stone”, canyon.
- We walked several times in the vicinity of Tirashen: mountains, a lake, ancient ruins (III century BC and VI century AD), to which we have already gone several times by different routes.
- On April 11, the marriage with Sanka was officially registered at the Gyumri MFC. And on April 12, we celebrated with friends in nature (a friend flew to visit from Japan and unexpectedly became a witness at our wedding).
- In May, we went to the Gyumri Drama Theater to see the drama of one of the most significant literary talents of modern France, Florian Zeller, “Mama”.
- And just since May, I additionally started working for a new company, which, unfortunately, I can’t tell you much about, because I immediately signed the NDA.
Summer 2023:
- A friend from Ufa flew in and presented Sanka with a professional photo shoot in Marmashen (a monastery of the X century near Gyumri). And a few days later we returned there for a mass clean-up organized by the Center for Clean Nature.
- Snow is expected in Gyumri on June 19. I saw snow for the first time in summer.
- While armed mercenaries in Russia were seizing cities and destroying the military (the Wagner PMCs mutiny), my friends and I continued our journey through the Shirak region of Armenia.
- We had a separate trip to Garni (an ancient temple built in the 1st century AD by the Armenian king Trdat I) and Geghard (the “cave monastery” of Hayrivank, listed by UNESCO as a World Cultural Heritage Site).
- In July, we tasted cheese at the Mikaelian family farm. We had a rest in Dilijan. We climbed by cable car almost 2,500 meters in Tsakhkadzor (one of the most popular ski resorts in Armenia). Once again we traveled around Sevan.
- On the weekend we went on a trip to the Trchkan waterfall. We crossed the mountain river twice (we didn’t risk it by car). We had lunch at a specially organized camping place, not far from the waterfall. And the locals also treated us there with delicious watermelons and melons.
- This year, unlike the previous one, we participated in Vardavar (the Armenian national holiday in honor of the Transfiguration of the Lord). We spent 6 or 8 hours on the street, watering passers-by with water and dodging other waterers.
- In August, I finally updated the working equipment. Instead of a camping laptop, I bought a full-fledged desktop computer.
- And then we had a big two—day trip with friends: wine tasting at the Areni winery, Noravank (an Armenian monastery complex built in the XIII-XIV centuries on the ledge of a narrow winding gorge), the Shaki waterfall, the Swinging Bridge and the cave city in Khndzoresk. On the second day, we stopped at Tatev (the world’s longest passenger cable car of the pendulum type – 6 km, listed in the Guinness Book of Records) and “Devil’s Bridge” or “Devil’s Bridge” (one of the wonders of nature in Armenia: warm healing springs surrounded by stalactites).
Autumn 2023:
- In autumn, we tasted strong alcohol at Arpi. We listened to beautiful male singing in the Sanahin Monastery (together with the Haghpat Monastery, it is listed as a UNESCO World Cultural Heritage Site). In the cave-fortress complex “Zarni-Guys” drank water filtered by the mountain, dripping from the ceiling (and had lunch there, with a magnificent view of the surroundings of the city of Alaverdi).
- The Aramyants Castle in Akhtala, built in the spirit of the European Middle Ages, deserves special mention (there is an interesting abandoned fountain with an unusual acoustic illusion).
- At the end of September, we went to a pool party in Yerevan. At the same time, we watched “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” on the big screen (I recommend both films).
- In November, we flew on vacation to Abu Dhabi (UAE) for a week.
- After returning from vacation, we immediately went to see the XI century fortress “Bjni” (it will soon also be protected by UNESCO) and a mineral spring.
- Well, on November 19, we rolled down to the extinct three-headed volcano “Gutanasar” (Gegham Highlands). The streams of frozen lava are impressive!
- And at the end of the year, Sanka painted the walls of one of the local cafes in Gyumri, so now we have a lifetime discount on food in it.
All the trips are on my Instagram.
Finstrip for 2023
Average annual exchange rates, for ease of calculations: 1 USD = 86 RUB = 1.1 EUR = 438 AMD.
It will be quite difficult to calculate all the money this year, because there are quite a lot of sources of income and there is no single tool where I could aggregate them all. Now my finances are handled by an accountant specially hired for this purpose.
I’ll show you some of the most interesting numbers for me:
- Spent onlinks (crowd and outreach): $31,645
- Earned on SEO consulting for European businesses: $5,735
- Rental housing + communal services: $3,250
- Earned on links (crowd, outreach, guest posts, rental): $1,855
- Semrush expenses: $1,660
- Vacation in Abu Dhabi: $1,600
- Spent on an accountant: $900
- Taxes to the Armenian budget: $745
- Poker income: $350
- Internet and communication fees: $270
- Payment for hosting and domains: $205
Blog statistics for 2023
55 articles were published (last year – 87). 204 comments were received (last year – 473).
The most popular blog articles for 2023 (top 5):
- Reverse video search on the Internet: how and for what it can be used.
- Google Search algorithm update in March 2023: Winners, losers and analysis.
- How to get 100 thousand views on YouTube using only AI.
- 40 questions for an interview for an SEO specialist position: from junior to senior.
- 5 alternatives to the Wayback Machine that an SEO specialist should know about.
If we compare with 2021, when I published several articles a week, in 2023 my productivity decreased by 150%. However, there is one interesting nuance here…
This year I took part in 11 closed meetups for SEO specialists. At two of them he made practical presentations on topics such as:
- Seolemma.ru – SEO service for deep analysis of search results;
- Google August 2023 Core Update – winners, losers, trends.
It is unlikely that these reports will ever be publicly available. Because the information is paid. I used to write something like this on this blog, for free. Now I’m making similar content for a narrow circle of specialists, and for money.
In addition, this year I started training interns and juniors. Also for money. I’ll warn you right away: there won’t be any open courses, marathons and the like. You can’t get into my training.
It is possible that after some time I will get tired, give up all this and return back to classic SEO blogging. I will, as before, post free materials that few people will appreciate. But for now, everything is for the money and only for those who immediately begin to put it into practice.
Search engine traffic
Year-on-year, organic production fell by 11%. Not bad, considering that there are 60% fewer posts written.
But traffic from social networks sank by 140%: from 1,450 sessions to 605.
Traffic from readers
Top 3 sources:
- Loot.click
- Posy.pro
- TopSape
Just like last year and the year before that. Stability.
Other interesting sources from the site report:
- Netology.ru ;
- Follow.it ;
- Vc.ru ;
- Pikabu.ru;
- Wmsn.ru;
- Maultalk.com;
- Wikipedia.org;
- Rookee.ru;
- Partnerkin.com.
Telegram
Of all the social networks, I am currently most active in Telegram. Overall channel statistics for the whole year:
- +351 new subscribers;
- 197 publications;
- 120,200 views;
- 9 channels quoted me;
- 161 mentions and 37 reposts;
- 2,300 shipments and 1,200 reactions.
How I accidentally increased my income from YAN 43 times
If you have read up to this point, I will tell you, as a New Year’s bonus, an interesting observation from November this year. Maybe you can somehow exploit this for your own selfish purposes.
Almost at the end of the year, the WordPress CMS, on which most of my projects operate, released an update that broke one important plugin, the WPtouch Mobile Plugin (responsible for the mobile version of the site).
Readers immediately started sending me screenshots of how this blog started to look on smartphones:
And a couple of days later, the developers sent a temporary “patch” to fix the problems. However, I was in no hurry to put it up. And that’s why:
If you’ve been reading my blog for a long time, you know that YAN is not the main source of my online income. He’s not even in the top 5 sources right now. However, such a “life hack” may well make it almost a top source. For the time being.
For those who do not understand what happened: WP disrupted the plugin that was responsible for the mobile version, as a result, a broken version of the pages for PC began to be shown to all readers of the blog. And at the same time, YAN mobile advertising was spinning on the pages, the revenue from which soared 43 times.
After some time, I still installed the “patch”, because GSC and the Yandex Webmaster began to swear at the lack of mobile optimization (and the income from YAN returned to previous levels).
What to do with this information is up to you.
Happy New year!
P.S. What are your results for 2023? Share comments or links to posts on your blogs!