2024 was a weird year for the Birchler household. Without getting into the details, two things put a damper on the year right from the jump: a health issue and a radical increase in monthly spending. I won't go into the details here, but over the course of 3 weeks early in the year, we got a new car, our mortgage payment went up about 50% for reasons we didn't anticipate, and one of us (I said no details 😉) had to take a few weeks of unpaid time off due to a health issue (all is well now, don't worry). It fair to say this combo put a damper on a lot of the rest of the year. Vacations were basically not possible anymore and a lot of other fun stuff we would have liked to do became less possible, making 2024 a bit of a year of getting by.

The good news is that one year of massive mortgage payments is done and it's back to normal. Everyone is happy and healthy as well going into 2025.

Beyond that, there wasn't much drama to speak of, but there also wasn't as much excitement either. We're already planning on finding more fun in the new year as we feel back on our feet again.

Birchtree

Birchtree has gotten 288,000 views in 2024, an 11% increase over 2023. Amazingly, for the 7th year in a row, my most popular post was How to set your iPhone or Android Phone to Black and White, accounting for a shocking 7% of all traffic to the site. My most popular new post was about how people think Apple Pay is magic, which brought in about 6% of total traffic.

Now how about some transparency?

I launched More Birchtree this year, which has generated a bit over $4,000 in revenue over about 140 subscribers. There is some churn, which is expected, so not all 140 of those people are still paying, but it's proven to be the best way for me to monetize the blog I've ever had. I wanted to extend a deep thank you to everyone who has subscribed and supported my work here, it means a ton, and I hope you're enjoying the exclusive posts ❤️.

On the traditional advertising front, things were brutal this year, with total ad revenue sitting at $220. Now listen, that's not nothing, but it's way down from what I used to earn on fewer views, so it really feels like it takes a ton more effort to squeeze any real revenue out of display ads in 2024 than it used to.

Overall, I'd say this was a very fulfilling year for me writing Birchtree. I'm proud of quite a few posts I've written and the new subscription model has been a motivating factor in me trying to write more meaty posts than the link posts I'd rested on for much of the previous year.

Birchtree will turn 15 in 2025, and it continues to be something I'm very happy to have in my life.

A Better Computer

2024 was a blowout year for A Better Computer, and I'm so happy with what it's become. I started "season 3" this fall with a 30 minute review of the Vision Pro that went over way better than I ever expected and have simply made some of my best videos this year.

I continue to treat A Better Computer as a place where I focus on things that I think can benefit people and not a place to get into "drama" or bait people with rage takes that try to enrage my audience.

In terms of metrics, views were way up this year, hitting 1.56 million views compared to 1.14 million in 2023, a 37% jump. This amounted to about $5,100 in ad revenue, a 30% increase over 2023. In terms of subscribers, I jumped almost exactly 10,000, starting the year around 21,000 and ending just north of 31,000. I would really love to hit 40,000 in 2025, but there's only so much I can do to control that, so I'm just going to try and keep upping my game and hope it connects with more people.

Comfort Zone

This was my biggest new undertaking this year, and sadly it's also the one I can be least transparent about since it's not just mine. Working with MacStories has been a treat and I still think it's cool that I can go to MacStories' about page and see myself listed as part of the team.

Creatively, building up Comfort Zone this year has been exceptionally rewarding. I've done a few podcasts in the past, but they were always short form solo affairs, so working with co-hosts has been a new experience. Thankfully, I could not have been more lucky than to work with Chris and Niléane who have made it an absolute delight. I think we had good chemistry from the start, and we've managed to hone our craft over the year and I can tell how much more together we are now.

I can't share exact numbers, but I think it's safe for me to say that thousands of people listen to the show and our reviews are very, very positive on all the platforms I've looked at.

In 2025 our goal is to level up the show, so hopefully we can keep this thing getting better next year.

Quick Reviews

Quick Reviews is the closest thing I have to a "product" that I create for people. It's completely free and earns me $0, but it's that classic thing you build for yourself and anyone else who uses it is just a bonus. Here's what I shipped in 2024:

1. Made the site mobile friendly (although it still needs work)
2. Made the site accessible
3. Added keyboard shortcuts for everything I could think of
4. Added a Command+K command palette
5. Let users save review text to the clipboard for easier alt-text entry on socials
6. Implemented iOS's share sheet for saving the image
7. Made the site behave as a proper web app when saved as a web app to your device
8. Added a square artwork layout in beta for music reviews
9. Added an "API" and subsequently removed it when it made everything more complicated and literally no one used it
10. Added animations everywhere

And in terms of usage, the site had 2,200 unique visitors this year. I don't have any analytics from before 2024, so I have no idea how much this has changed, but a couple hundred people visit the site every month, which is more than I ever expected when I made this for myself a few years ago.

Also, just a reminder that everything you put into Quick Reviews stays 100% local on your browser, my server never sees anything you put there. I'm aggressively using localStorage to save all your settings. I don't know what you weirdos are reviewing there 😝

Social media

This one is by far the least important, but I did want to mention that I continue to be happy with my migration to federated social media. I'm closing the year with 3,713 followers on Mastodon, which is 80% more than at the end of 2023 and 3x what I ever had on Twitter before I left (I also deleted my Twitter account this year).

Beyond simple follower counts, I simply feel that I enjoy the engagement I have with people on Mastodon more than anywhere else. "My people" are there and it's a great community. I mentioned this on a Comfort Zone episode recently, but for years I would need to take breaks for social media because it exhausted me, but I have never felt that compulsion in my 2 years back om Mastodon full time. It's a great feeling to find social media filling rather than draining.

I also started using Bluesky in earnest since a different crew was there, and my Threads use has really dropped off as their algorithm really likes to lean into engagement-bait posts that are so dumb. Maybe it's gotten better, but the Mastodon + Bluesky combo (with the ability to follow a bunch of Threads people on Masto via federation) has been quite good for me.

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• 🧵 @mattbirchler

The thing I quit

I do a lot of side projects, so I am kind of on a one-in-one-out situation. Comfort Zone was new and took up precious time, and I got that time from leaving The Sweet Setup, which I'd been writing at as a freelancer for a few years. I left on good terms and I like the people over there (tell 10 years ago me that I'd be working with Shawn Blanc and I wouldn't have believed you), but I simply didn't have the time anymore.

Professionally

I won't share a ton here, but 2024 was a successful year of work, although I think I'm going to make a concerted effort in 2025 to really be blow away at my day job. I always work hard, of course, but as the saying goes, "what got you here won't get you there," and I want to push myself to do more at work. You might have guessed from all the things above that I'm a more "tactical" than "strategic" worker, and I've done really good work on the tactical side at work, but I think I can be great at more strategic stuff and will lean into that this year.

Building world-class payment solutions is a blast, is full of interesting problems to solve, and I'm happy I stumbled into this industry 10 years ago.

2025

As always, I'm excited to roll into the new year, and I hope 2025 is a good one! I've written a members post about how I want to change my fitness in the new year, and with the above items from vacations to leadership at work to advancing all of my side-projects, it's gonna be a busy one.