I've been blogging for nearly 15 (!) years now, and I confess I still don't understand a damn thing about stats, traffic, or making money from the whole venture.
I have never had advertising or affiliate links on the website, and I've never really done much to advertise it. I posted some sort of viral advertising joke links on Dave's ESL cafe back in about 2002 - 2005, but since then have done practically nothing, yet traffic rose steadily even after I moved to Saudi in 2009. (Probably mainly thanks to frequent mentions of my work on some popular PUA and Manosphere sites.)
I only very, very occasionally comment on other people's blogs, and I don't think I've done that at all since about 2014, yet in 2016, when my blog postings started to level off to once a month rather than every 5 days, I suddenly got an enormous spike in traffic:
Yet I never saw myself mentioned anywhere, except for a few disdainful mentions of me on Reddit. Even those "manosphere" guys had lost interest at that point and thoroughly disowned me. (Thank God.)
I have self-published English Teacher X books on Amazon since 2011, and those made some money. The biggest years for those was probably 2012 - 2014, when I was making maybe $300 - $400 a month from them, but then sales in the last couple of year have fallen off to maybe $50 a month, if that.
And then the last couple of months, when, as we see, my blog traffic has fallen off tremendously, there has been a sudden mysterious increase in my book sales. I made about $100 off ETX books last month and seem on course for about $200 this month, if not more.
Why?
Fuck knows!
I'm still completely out to sea on all this. Why do people buy them now? And why did people buy them then? The first book is increasingly irrelevant in the world of modern English teaching, and the book about Russia is now EIGHT years past happening, yet it's already sold 10 copies this month. (Up from 6 for the entire month of June, for example.)
I'd been meaning to re-edit them, improve the formatting, and update the covers, but I've been very busy with this job, my dad, and studying for a Master's degree, and never got around to it.
So why?
You tell me!
I still write porn, and I'll update about that soon, and I'm only a little more knowledgeable about that. I always made at least 2 - 3 times more money doing that, of course.
I'm glad people buy the ETX books though, and generally seem to like them, and in honor of International Teacher's Day:
available FREE on Smashwords, until further notice
The collection of my first three books about English teaching, now available for $1.99 on Amazon.
Next week: Crazy Bob's Disgusting Sex Story from Indonesia, probably. He's almost broken down.
11 comments:
Thanks for the free book. I've been working in Kazan for a few years now. On the topic of girls, Tinder and Badoo guarantee finding a girl within about a week, at any time. And if you are into parties and stuff it's equally easy. People still love English, and North America. But if you learn Russian to int. the doors are completely open.
Kazan is home to those wacky Tartarians, they're not so strictly Russian, I always found. They roll their own way.
Nowhere else to put this so I'll put it on your most recent blog update. TBH I lost a lot of respect for you when you went to China. Don't worry I never had much for you anyway :D other than the fact you openly admit to your degenerate years and the degenerate crowds at the time.
You may remember me as the guy who TEFL'd in the UK (sort of) and moved sideways into teaching A-level maths. I now do endless short contracts 1 month long in various schools.
In no real order
The TEFLpocalypse is accelerating because of the widespread internet connectivity. So via skype is possible anywhere now. Years ago I used to travel to Paris every so often to teach a class. I now do it from home. But fuck me I've seen rates go as low as $2 for 20 minute lessons on skype. I'm not talking Filipinos or anything I mean people living in the UK.
Secondly in the western world it used to impress numerous employers that individuals were so brave to go somewhere to live and teach. It's now widely known as a doss with tons of degenerates. As a result from both the prospective ESLers they know it will actually harm their career prospects doing it.
You see a lot less degenerates and chancers because of an ASEAN agreement where deportation from one country means deportation from most SEA countries. Australia for instance now shares data on criminals with most SEA countries. Add in bounties to report them they cease to exist.
Next actual teaching in state schools got worse, much worse with big budget cuts and academies. Academies where the teachers need NO qualifications whatsoever. This means a much bigger supply of qualified teachers running away from their home nations.
So really you're selling less because not as many people want to do it any more as you may well be aware the salaries haven't changed much but the workloads certainly have.
What's not to respect? I make about as much as my first job in Saudi here.
It's not so much the money. It's more the barriers. The barriers define the quality of the individuals working there.
The Middle East puts all sorts of barriers on qualifications and where your passport comes from. I'm reading right now jobs in the UAE and they have a long list of qualifications and passport requirements. So sure you may well be a degenerate fuck, but you are a qualified and experienced degenerate fuck.
IIRC you even wrote about the hiring process for various Middle East jobs how it became tougher and more competitive over time.
China (though this is much less common today but still exists) had/has a terrible reputation of putting your skin colour above that of any qualifications or work experience this is both the state and private sector. I have a separate window open with jobs. No experience needed! No degree needed etc..
This means it attracts a lot of degenerate fucks who have neither the qualifications, experience of the ability to teach.
Way back in 2010 I visited HK and Shenzhen just north of HK for a holiday. I found Russians, French people posing as English teachers. They couldn't string together coherent English sentences. Even adverts saying white only were common.
Around 2011-13 when visa regulations became tougher there were a lot of returnees to the UK. I met many of them working as a lesson observer. I met so many degenerate fucks... quite a few of them had become so used to their degeneracy they continued when back home in the UK.
So really unfortunately it's a case of being tarred with a similar wide ranging brush.
It seems like these days China is nearly as strict as Saudi, although it varies a bit by jurisdiction. Police background check, degree verification, all that. Most of the people here have Master's degrees and state teaching qualifications; I'm actually towards the less qualified end at this place.
And 4000 USD/Mo. clear is nothing to sneeze at- more than what most people working back home can put away!
@Ken. You are totally wrong about English teachers in places like China. As X has written the days of debauchery are long gone. You sound like some kind of frustrated loser. Like Mr T said, "I pity da Foo!"
:D
He lives in Beijing. There are many places that are not Beijing. The fact that numerous people get caught working illegally on tourist visas and deported even now meant the trash types still exist.
The above writer also falls into the trap of outlier bias. Where the outlier is seen as the norm.
There are tons of 5000-7000RMB jobs advertised. A 5 second search will show you many university jobs that pay around that level.
Oh sure there are places like Jiaotong-Liverpool University partnership that pay a fuck load but how many of these are there vs crappy jobs?
@Ken and what does any of that have to do with degeneracy? You're still a frustrated loser.
I think those starter-level jobs are now being taken by people fresh out of grad school while they're working on their state teachers' qualifications.
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