Some 15 years ago I started blogging on WordPress.com, free, with a custom domain upgrade. I wrote close to 200 posts. I got accepted into Wordads program. Then, sadly, my chronic disease got so severe that I was unable to continue. Without new posts and no social media presence I resigned myself to a drop in my SEO page positions and traffic.
And that did happen. But not nearly as much as I thought. My daily visitors and pageviews dropped but then have been stable for years, with majority coming organically from the US. Even with more people using adblock the trickle of money from Wordads was very welcome as I live solely from disability payment (my health continues to decline).
I was reluctant to change anything on my site as I knew if it went wrong I wouldn’t have the energy to fix it. But my theme got so outdated that it was hurting usability of my site and a month ago I took the plunge and change the theme to one of the newest ones. I also hoped my SEO rank would improve since it got rid of the outdated technology.
My stats remained the same but my Wordads impressions and earnings dropped around 70%-80%. I contacted WordPress.com support and they said new themes don’t have as many positions for ads. Which I find weird. Compared to other blogs where there are ads stuffed everywhere, often even covering content, WordPress.com always kept ads pretty subtle. Mostly only at the end of my posts.
I tried some other themese and adding a WordAds block into my most viewed post and on the homepage but it didn’t have any effect. I am guessing (but don’t know) that they’re not displaying any ads there for visitors.
**tl;dr Why have the new themes removed Wordads positions? Why are they not displaying anything in the Wordads blocks? Why are there [no more themes optimized for Wordads] Why has a simple change of theme cut my impressions and earning in less than 24h? Why would they make this decision when they get 50% of my ad revenue?**
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