'Original' Content by the numbers

So it's been just over a year where iOS 4.3 came out and I came across a hidden feature that wasn't included as part of the release notes where you can now tether an iPad running iOS 4.3+ to an iPhone (even pre-iPhone 4's without the wireless hotspot feature) via bluetooth (assuming you have the Personal Hotspot feature enabled on the iPhone by your carrier).

I thought this can't be new so decided to Google it and came up with nothing, so decided to dust off my personal blog and post my experiences just as an experiment to see how 'original' content on the web would fair with Google rank etc. Hence I did this post -> Bluetooth tether iPad to iPhone in iOS 4.3 without jailbreak.

So as a test I did a quick google for 'bluetooth tether iPad to iPhone' and it showed up in the first page of results... neat.

Then after a few days of getting 300+ views a day, I thought "Maybe I can make a squillion dollars from ad revenue like all those other bloggers that do this for a living... So why can't I?" Moments later, I added some Google Adsense to my blog (and Google owned Blogger platform that I created this blog with has an easy 'Monetize' tab to make it super simple).

It is safe to assume that I'm not posting this from the Caribbean, sipping cocktails, retiring off my ad revenue for a single fortuitous post made from my accidental discovery, but it is interesting, a year on, to look at the numbers.

Here is the spike of page views of the blog when I first made the post, from my otherwise un-interesting (other than for family and friends that put up with my g33ky tomfoolery) posts:



(Yes, from the flat line prior, it wasn't that interesting... :P)

Then some numbers (as at 13/03/2012) - Original post was on 10/03/2011:



103,327 page views [approx 280 page views per day]*
181 clicks (for Adsense ads on the site) [approx 0.5 clicks per day]]*
$116.39 (ad revenue, and the kicker is that Google doesn't pay out until I hit AUD$150... *heh*) [approx $0.32 per day]*

(*Note: These numbers are aggregate for the entire blog since I made that post, but assumption is that there really isn't much other interesting content, so the majority of views were for the post mentioned. Also these numbers are not just from Google searches, after the first few months in an experience to see how I can get more traffic to the post, I did a search for similar terms. The search results mostly had posts/articles mentioning jailbreak solutions like iTether etc. so decided to get some cross linking action by posting comments on these posts with an alternative non-jailbreak method and linked to my post.)

And the traffic sources below gives an idea about some of these, as well as others posting the link to the post to help out others with a similar question etc.



Anyhoo, so bottom line is that it is hard work making a living writing blog posts, but it was an interesting experiment. (Not that I was actively posting that much)

One thing I have to say, the best thing I did was to suggest as part of the post is that people who got it working to post back in the comments with their experiences and also hardware/iOS versions that they got it working with. This meant that basically people who read the post can continue to read the comments, and know that someone with similar hardware/iOS versions got it working. It definitely helped with helping out others with a similar configuration, and troubleshooting problems that people were having.

All in all, in spite of the measly monetary value that is not worth doing for that reason alone, the value of the goodwill to others far outweigh that. So if you do have some original content (technical or otherwise) and can't really find anything similar online, do yourself a favour and take the little time it'll take to post it somewhere, and have the satisfaction that other people will benefit from it... and as an added bonus if someone asks you if you know how to do something, it's much easier to post them a link, rather than explain it again for the umpteenth time... :)

P.S. For all you people expecting a delivery in the next few days/weeks from the postal delivery man, give this a go and see if it works with the new 'New iPad' and post your experiences on the comments of the original post. Doubt it wouldn't work, but I won't know for sure until someone tries as I can't justify getting one just yet...