Starting with DV Hardware you can expect a lot of reviews and I’m in the process of creating a Dutch version of DV Hardware, this new site will mainly be used for Dutch versions of DV Hardware’s reviews and occassionally some news that focusses on the Dutch and Flemish market.

I’m using the Dutch version to experiment a bit with new layouts as DV Hardware is in desperate need of a more modern look. Additionally I also need a couple of reviewers so I can scale up the number of reviews posted at DV Hardware, but I’m putting this off a bit as it’s not easy to find honest people who meet my expectations, especially because I can’t offer a monetary form of compensation. New reviewers should be able to properly test products, take decent photographs and be capable of turning their thoughts into a decent article that highlights all the good and bad parts of the product.

Getting some new private sponsors for DV Hardware is another major goal and I’m also going to try to get some completely new revenue streams to get my business back on track. I’ve got my eye on a couple of affiliate marketing opportunities that could become a major pillar of my company, it’s still early but I’m optimistic about the potential.

I checked Google Analytics to compare the number of pageviews I received in January 2009 with the AdSense Page Impressions. I’m not 100% sure but I believe most of the impressions that are missing from the AdSense data are coming from users that block ads, it can’t be because they’ve disabled JavaScript or something like that because in that case they wouldn’t be included in the Analytics figures.

I calculated the difference between both numbers and discovered it’s around 12.9%.  This is pretty high I think, but it might be normal because most of my visitors are tech oriented.

Unfortunately, it’s not possible to compare the number of AdSense page impressions per browser. I’d like to know the difference between Internet Explorer and Firefox, in the general browser market Internet Explorer is still king but last month almost half of my visitors used Firefox while IE scored just 39%. I guess the number of Firefox users blocking ads will be a lot higher because of tools like Adblock.

The second half of 2008 was very bad, each month I recorded a revenue that was lower than the year before. I haven’t calculated the exact figure but I estimate revenue dropped about 25 percent in 2H 2008, compared to 2H 2007.

January wasn’t too good either, the same trend continued and revenue was about 28 percent down year-over-year, and 32 percent lower than the previous month. Hopefully better times will arrive soon, but it’s kinda hard to remain optimistic when your revenue is dropping month after month.

Economic mess = lower income
When I compare my income figures from 2008 with those from 2007 I notice my income has dropped significantly. Advertisers are spending less this year due to the economic crisis, the summer months were pretty bad and last month my revenue was about 30 percent less than a year ago.

The next big thing..
Fortunately, I don’t have too many costs but I’m not satisfied with my current income level and will try hard to improve it this year so I can get it up again to a more comfortable level. My dream is to set new income records again but I’m afraid this will remain a dream for a while as I haven’t found my next big thing yet. I had a couple of fantastic months in 2006, but unfortunately those income streams dried up quickly and the average income I pulled in during 2007 and 2008 has been a lot lower than during those big months. Once in a while I try out a couple of new ideas but I haven’t found anything that sticks yet.

Stock market.. Ouch
I was also a bit too naïve this year, I ignored most of the doomsayers and didn’t expect the economy would get as bad as it did. I entered the stock market too early and unfortunately I lost quite a bit of money. It was a costly lesson.

Books and stuff
I also started reading again during the last couple of months of 2008. Last month I finished reading Dune and Darkly Dreaming Dexter, and currently I’m reading Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. I’m about halfway in the first book of the trilogy and will read the other two books afterwards. I like the LOTR movie trilogy a lot and the book is even better, it’s well written and even if you’ve seen the movies several times the book won’t bore because they have a lot more content. The runtime of the LOTR movie trilogy is pretty long, more than 11 hours for the extended edition, but it still leaves out a lot of the events that happen in the book.

Currently I’m finishing a couple of reviews and next week should be pretty busy with lots of exciting news coming from CES 2009 in Las Vegas.