As expected, the recession is taking a bite out of my website ad revenues. January’s revenues were 12 percent lower than December’s and nearly 30 percent lower than my revenues for January 2008. It’s also a whopping 42 percent lower than my best month in 2008, July. Traffic does not seem to be much different, though I haven’t looked into that very closely. Revenues from Amazon’s affiliate program don’t seem to be off as much, either. While the online ad market appears to be taking a hammering, people are still buying books and stuff.

Were it not for the fact that the Canadian dollar has lost a fifth of its value in the past year (the above percentages were calculated in U.S. dollars before conversion), things would have been much worse for me. Fortunately, I have money in the bank and no debt, so if I watch my pennies for the next little while, I should be all right. Or at least less worse than I could have been.