Project Pepperoni Case Study: Update #2

It’s been another great month for this little case study, and I’m excited to share how things are going with it.

In fact, I’m so excited about this one that I’m neglecting updating you on the other case studies for now to jump right into this one!

If you missed how this one got started, then go here first.

Ready? Let’s go!

**And as always, I’m an affiliate marketer and this post contains affiliate links, meaning I will be compensated if you make a purchase after clicking on my links

Quick Recap

The tl;dr is that this is aged domain from Odys Global that I bought not really certain what I would do with it, but it was cheap and I wanted to test things.

I added just 15 posts to the site in November 2021 using keywords I found with the LowFruits keyword tool and then I just left the site to sit while I worked on other sites in my portfolio.

Fast forward to January 2022 and the site was ranking and bringing in a surprising amount of traffic for so few posts.

Now, let’s jump into how things went for the site this past month.

What Happened In May 2022 For This Site

For May, the focus for me was adding more content to the site and getting it all setup on Ezoic so that I could see a boost in them display ad monies.

But alas, those plans did not quite come to fruition.

Content

I’ve been so damn excited about this case study that I had every intention of slamming it with content.

The reality was that I committed to too many other things during the month and only ended up publishing five new posts.

This whole case study has accidentally turned into a case study on the lazy person’s guide to growing a content site.

But hey, that’s just how it goes sometimes.

Each post came in at around 1,000 words and I wrote them all myself because this topic is a pretty easy one for me to crank out content on.

Right now it doesn’t make good financial sense to pay for content on this site since I can write it so quickly.

Monetization

So, my plans to get on Ezoic didn’t quite go like I thought they would.

This site is approved for AdSense and running AdSense ads….but it keeps getting denied by Google Ad Manager for “low value content” on Ezoic.

Ain’t that a slap in the face?

I really don’t understand how the site is fine for Google AdSense, but not Google Ad Manager.

So, that means the site still is just running Google AdSense ads with a few random affiliate links here and there.

Once I get more posts up on the site, I’ll re-try for approval with Google Ad Manager via Ezoic.

Here’s the May income:

• Amazon: $3.00
• AdSense: $60.75

Not bad for a small and new site, eh? The AdSense RPM was, again, just over $7.00 per 1,000 pageviews.

Shame that I couldn’t be earning a bit more via Ezoic though.

Traffic

Whenever I have a new site that is taking off, I like to do projections to see if the site continues growing at the same pace monthly, then when I can expect it to reach 50,000 monthly sessions (aka qualify for Mediavine).

Based on that growth, here’s the forecasting that I did for this site the first week of May –

As you can see, my forecasting predicted the traffic for May to be around 7,359 sessions.

Well…..it beat the forecast!

And it beat it by a pretty good amount, which I am happy about.

Of course, we had that big Google algo update start rolling out – unofficially starting around May 16th, but officially starting on May 25th.

You can see at the end of that traffic shot from GA that things were a bit down on this site.

As I’m writing this, the update is STILL rolling out and traffic is down a wee bit on this site, but nothing to really worry about.

What’s Next?

For June, my only real focus for this site is to get more content up…hopefully more than five posts this time!

I still have that epic keyword list from using the LowFruits keyword tool, so all I have to do is find the time to crank out some content.

I hope you continue to find this case study interesting, and in the interim I highly recommend signing up for LowFruits to find some easy keywords for your own sites.

Related –> How I Use LowFruits To Find Crazy Low Competition Keywords

And if you want to get an email when the next update comes out, get your booty on my email list.

Shawna Newman

Hey, I’m Shawna. I make a living working from my laptop in places like London, Sydney, Dubai, Rome, Oslo, Bangkok, Las Vegas, Barcelona, and Amsterdam. I share how I do some of that on this website.