Finally… At long last, there’s some hope that we’ve broken out of the descending cycle of ever-decreasing ad revenues. Following a Google Core search engine algorithm update back in September 2022, our case study domain has been severely impacted. That led to ad revenues gradually declining month-on-month ever since. However, February 2023’s ad earnings have seen an upwards tick, netting us $12,055.
If you click on that handy Revenue Reports tab up top, you can keep pace with how our case study domain’s monthly ad revenues kept dropping over the past few months. From our high of over $18,000 in August 2022, it faceplanted to sub-$12,000 by January 2023. So, to finally have our monthly ad revenues, after concluding an optimistic February 2023, go back up for once, is a huge relief. And, that’s not all.
As a consequence of netting (slightly, but with a hint of better things to come) higher ad revenues for the month of February 2023, we also saw increased site traffic. Plus, that’s occurring across the board. We’re noticing roughly 4.30%, 8.63%, and 2.33% growth for page visits, pageviews, and ‘engaged’ pageviews, respectively, from January 2023. This is what’s contributed to our 11% rise in monthly ad revenues.
Specifically, February 2023 brought us over 301,000 page visits, more than 382,000 pageviews, as well as nearly 213,000 ‘engaged’ pageviews. On top of that, another helpful contributor is the higher EPMVs (aka ‘earnings per thousand visitors’) throughout February 2023. $40.03, which is another 6.53% improvement over January 2023. All in all, these combined have aided in us earning a total of around $12,055.24.
| February 2023 Ad Revenue From Ezoic | ||
|---|---|---|
| Revenue (Total) | $12,055 | |
| Traffic | Visits | 301,159 |
| Pageviews | 382,007 | |
| Engaged Pageviews | 212,841 | |
| ePMV (Earnings Per Thousand Visitors) | $40.003 | |
Key Figures
Now, one important thing to note is that not all of the $12,055 in ad earnings came from our ad network provider of choice, Ezoic. The actual earnings are split between three groups… The bulk of which, which is around $7,295, came from Ezoic’s ad partners. Aside from that, there’s another tranche of $3,640, earned from Ezoic’s premium ad partners. This is due to the fact that we’re a part of Ezoic’s premium program.
The major downside here is the fee… Which we’re paying $2,200 per month. And, upfront, meaning that we have to pay Ezoic before any ad revenues for that month can be counted. On the upside, at least they guarantee that their premium program will always earn you more than what you’re paying them. In this case, we’re earning $3,640 over a $2,200 fee. Also, we then have Ezoic’s mediation feature turned on.
This is how you’re able to monetize your site with Ezoic, alongside another ad network provider. With our case study domain, we’re entrusting that to Google’s AdSense. With ‘mediation’ turned on, Ezoic will thus automatically swap out its ad placeholders with Google’s, if it feels that you (the publisher) will earn more that way. Throughout February 2023, we’ve earned an additional $1,126 for our monthly ad revenues.
It’s made better with that aforementioned $40 EPMV. The latter is a pretty good figure, as we’ve spent a fair amount of time optimizing the ad configuration on our case study domain. On the Ezoic side, most of the options have been set so that we can maximize ad revenues as much as possible. That’s coupled with an ad-heavy page and site layout, featuring a variety of different ad types and formats made available.
Looking At The Data
If we look at the daily ad revenues throughout all of February 2023, it showcases a positive outlook when compared to January. To be fair, there were a few days throughout February when daily earnings were in the mid-$300s. Nonetheless, most other days were solidly in the mid-to-high-$400s. On top of that, there were a few days when our daily ad revenues were in the $500s range. That’s a first in many months.
There are a couple of key factors to note. Firstly, back in January (2023), I was testing the effectiveness of turning off ads that appear below the fold. That experiment ran for a week, and it did cost our case study domain an approximate 20% decline in weekly ad revenues. On the flip side, it didn’t really do much for improving site-wide performance, Core Web Vitals, or the UI. So, we promptly turned them back on.
The other variable to discuss is the improvements that we’ve done to help buck up our ad revenues. You’d be able to see that in the chart above, showcasing our year-on-year ad revenue. You could see that we’ve been notching ever-higher ad revenues and site traffic, from the beginning of 2022 to the end of Q3. But, with that Google Core algorithm update right around September, traffic sharply saw a steep decline.
That’s until we get to sometime around mid-February 2023, when a pretty significant uptick in site traffic was noted. This is mostly thanks to the work that we’ve been doing behind the scenes. Mainly, we’ve had our case study domain’s older articles (specifically, anything older than 6 months) refreshed. This process required re-writing the title tags, updating the featured images, as well as adding a bit more text.
Our Future Plans
Additionally, and crucially, the content refresh process then requires that we re-publish that article at the latest date. Thus, when Google sees that we’ve changed or updated crucial elements of the article, not to mention adding more content on top of the existing one, and was published much later, it’ll re-index that article and hopefully improve how it ranks. We’ve learned so far that content freshness matters a lot to how well a page will rank in Google.
Furthermore, we’ve freshened up our case study domain, as well. After over 2,000 articles published and are live on Google, we’ve re-categorized and re-organized them. Overall, the goal is to have Google rank our content and the domain as a whole more competitively. It’s assumed that after months have passed, those pages have not only become “stale” but were surpassed in their freshness by our rival publishers.
Though, we should point out that all of those changes were done when another Google Core update was issued. So for the time being, it’s hard to tell which one contributed more to the uptick in traffic, but it’s a piece of good news, regardless. Besides those, we’ve also been hosting videos on Humix – which is Ezoic’s version of YouTube. We could then embed and show those videos on a page, alongside written content.
We’ll then get paid based on ads shown in that video. For the entirety of the month, Ezoic’s Humix added another $326 to our February 2023 ad revenues. It’ll be interesting to see how these ad revenues will pan out in March 2023. Only then can we see whether it’s that content refresh or the Google Core update (or, maybe even a bit of both) that gave us a boost halfway through February. We’ll have to wait and see…
Video Overview
For a recap of our February 2023 ad revenues breakdown, check out that video down below. Once you’re done, there are plenty of other handy resources here that might prove insightful. I’ve prepared a detailed starter guide on how to make money by creating content online. For fellow publishers, there’s our guide on how to get started with setting up Ezoic, as well as how to optimize Ezoic for maximum ad revenue.
Otherwise, we’ve discussed other aspects of content creation… Including how to do keyword research, or looking at the best free keyword research tools. Alternatively, you may want to refer to our on-page SEO checklist. Between that, we have write-ups on troubleshooting problems, or understanding how to grow traffic. Elsewhere, if you still have any questions, feel free to hit me up in our Ask Me Anything section.
