Behind the Scenes of Issue 56

Keyboard Builders' Digest / Editorial

Behind the Scenes of Issue 56

Stats updated, leaving BMC and new support options, mailbox report, Reddit recap.

KBD.news
Published December 13, 2021

Creators! Feel free to tip me off about your keyboard related projects to bring them to 140K readers.

Actually, I was going to put KBD.news into power saving mode for the rest of the year: that would mean no cover image and probably skipping the promotion part too (posting to relevant forums and subs) – I would continue to post on the blog but skipping these steps could probably spare me a few hours of work each week.

But there was simply too much cool stuff published this week to pull the breaks right now. :D

Stats - About page updated

I've updated my About page with the monthly visitor statistics (November).

In addition to CloudSource and Google Analytics, Google Search Console sent their monthly summaries too which I've never really looked into:

kbd.news: 1.4M impressions and 5.5K clicks.
golem.hu: 107K impressions and 3.1K clicks.

I've built a few websites before so I have access to the visitor data of various companies – the average of those is about 3-5% clickthrough. (There's only one project with about 10% but that one is a tiny and specialized niche manufacturer.)

That means, the 0.4% clickthrough of kbd.news is quite poor compared to the average. It's probably impossible to compare 1.4M impressions with a few thousands but I'll have to look into this anyway.

Reddit recap

Ugh. I knew this will hurt even before clicking: 370 hours on r/mk alone… One hour per day. At least some part of that was not wasted time. Hopefully, I could help a lot of people by answering their questions and the result of the endless hours of scrolling and browsing is actually this blog and newsletter itself. :D

In addition, I have some proof of kbd.news being worth another part-time job. At least considering the time put into this project.

BMC & donations

Buymeacoffee.com is in the process of parting ways with PayPal. The result thus far is total chaos.

Membership fees are not processed, subscribers disappear from the creators' list without a trace, they are asked by BMC to resubscribe in controversial emails, etc.

I exchanged some mails with the founder and a co-founder of BMC, they both answered very kindly, but they doesn't seem to get the level of embarrassment they caused with practically cancelling every membership and asking supporters to resubscribe.

As a result, I decided to look for an alternative. Checked Donorbox, Opencollective, Ko-fi, and finally ended up with a good old PayPal form.

You can support my work and KBD.news directly via PayPal now: https://kbd.news/donate

(Thanks in advance! Every little donation counts!)

Mailbox

Arrived: Arduino UNO mini, Don's sticker and magnet pack.

On the way: Keebio Jawn FE, MT3 BoW & Susuwatari (ortho kits), spring-loaded pin headers from Talpkeyboard.

I wrote about the anniversary UNO mini earlier: it's super cute and in theory, based on the dimensions, is OK for building a keyboard – however, this is rather a collector item. I hesitated for a day so my serial is not that impressive: B616.

It's really small and blends quite well into my small collection of common controllers.

On the photo: some common controllers and an ~~elephant~~ original UNO in the china shop

Don's sticker and magnet pack: I won these stickers a month ago as the second (?) prize of the October contest at TheBoard podcast. Thanks Don! (And folks, don't forget to check out the podcast to win a kit of your choice from keeb.io.)

E.g. the Keebio Jawn FE, a kit I chose as my November prize. It was due to arrive today but the date has been changed on the tracking page. Anyway, a nice lady from UPS's local customs staff called me early in the morning that everything is fine, I won't have to pay VAT and customs but she is curious what's this thing inside the box. :D

I've never tried MT3 because I know it's too tall for my taste but I couldn't resist this "buy two - pay one" sell by Drop. I'm curious about the VAT and customs fee I'll have to pay on arrival though.

I wanted to try these spring-loaded header pins but couldn't find them in Europe (later I realized it's listed on Keycapsss). Contacted Talpkeyboard and Yousuke was kind enough to send me some for free. Thanks!

Finally, the first snow of this winter on this part of the globe, shot by Mrs. Dovenyi herself right from our window:

Well, that's it for today I think. Thanks for reading this far.

As always: keep learning!

Cheers,
Tamás

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Published on Mon 13th Dec 2021. Featured in KBD #56.

Keyboard Builders' Digest / Editorial