Rather than leave you waiting for me to catch up on my month-end data collections, I’ll be attempting to publish these new income reports on the last day of each month.
I think this will give you the freshest data on what I’m doing with these sites, as well as help keep me accountable to you…because we all know that I will procrastinate on getting these written up.
Also, I want to remind you that these Ezoic sites of mine are smaller sites, which means these monthly updates should be easier for new site builders to follow along with (as well as those of you who are building sites with limited time).
Note: The sites in this report are only a portion of my portfolio and not the only sites that bring in revenue.
**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 link.
Site 1: Food/Drink Niche
As I mentioned previously, this site had some trouble with the algo updates in 2022 and removing an entire topic cluster helped me to recover it.
But I still had this nagging feeling at something wasn’t right with this site…and I thought it might be the domain name.
You see, I thought I was being clever when I picked it…but then a company in Australia picked something very similar (and unrelated to my niche) and they got pretty popular.
And I think this is causing some confusion with Google thinking sometimes I’m about that topic and sometimes I’m about the actual topic of the site.
Anyways, earlier this month I hopped on a call with my Ezoic rep to talk some about this site because I was thinking of changing the domain name.
Spoiler alert: I did that and am still waiting on the new domain to be approved by Google Ad Manager.
That means I’ve had over a week (so far) with zero ad revenue coming in on this site.
This also means that changing the domain is like starting over from scratch and it will take a bit for the EPMV to normalize.
But as you can see, for the days that the site was still on the old domain the EPMV for January was $3.42 in the screenshot above.
While I didn’t add any new content to the site this month, I did spend some time in Big Data Analytics to see which content on the has the highest EPMV.
First, I looked at the last 30 days that I had data for in Ezoic (ending on Jan 18th).
From that, I discovered was that two appliance brands that I have hardly any posts about are my highest EPMV posts for that period.
Then, I looked at the last 90 days so that I could cover the highest EPMV period for the site.
From that, I saw those same two posts as my second and third highest EPMV – but a completely different post was at the top by almost $6.00 higher EPMV.
However, I think it was just a holiday fluke as it was something that trends high during that period.
But it is worth noting that it was a buying guide post while the other two are informational posts.
Now I have a content plan to focus on those two higher paying brands, as well as test out a few more brands.
I also spent some time this month updating old posts on this site, including changing out products in my charts.
Here’s what the income for the last 30 days looks like for this site:
- Ezoic: $12.94
- Amazon: $79.80
Do note that we have on additional day left in the month, so these numbers are almost complete.
Plus, Ezoic balances are not finalized for ending month until the 4th of the following month. Just an FYI.
Site 2: Religion/Spirituality Niche
I mentioned in my previous update that I was considering changing the domain name of this site.
Well, I have not done that yet, but I did buy a shiny new domain to change it at some point.
What I did do on this site was spend some time looking in Big Data Analytics to see how my content experiments have been going.
I’ve been doing AI-assisted content where I get a little from chatGPT, a little from Jasper and then I run it through Quillbot’s Creative setting before editing it myself.
All in, this is only taking me around 15 minutes to get an article that I can publish – not including popping to Canva to make my featured image.
So, I published a total of 10 of these articles in December (a few early in the month and the rest at the end).
I’ve been watching them rise in the SERPs, and over the last 7 days three of these articles are in my top 10 in Google Analytics.
Not amazing results, but considering it only took 15 minutes per article and they’re bringing in more traffic than lots of articles by that expensive subject matter expert…
Unfortunately, the new content isn’t getting enough traffic yet for me to come to any conclusions about its revenue potential.
So, I’ll just keep doing what I’m doing here and keep an eye on my EPMV for these new articles.
In fact, I already have 8 of these articles ready to publish!
Here’s what the income for the last 30 days looks like for this site:
- Ezoic: $9.15
- Amazon: $0.00
Do note that we have on additional day left in the month, so these numbers are almost complete.
Plus, Ezoic balances are not finalized for ending month until the 4th of the following month. Just an FYI.
Site 3: Food/Drink Niche #2
For this site, January was all about digging into my Ezoic data to determine why this site isn’t performing as well as I’d like for it to be.
You see, it started getting hit by small updates in 2022 AFTER I’d started doing real reviews with real photos!
Madness, eh?
Anyways, the articles that I did with real photos and hands-on experience are just not ranking.
So, I’m done with that since Google clearly wants cookie cutter affiliate site stuff from this domain.
I am happy to see that the EPMV didn’t fall in January by as much as I was expecting for this site.
What’s interesting is that after I spent time looking at the last 30 days and last 90 days in Big Data Analytics, I ended up with similar findings to Site #1 above.
Two brands were in the top three for EPMV, but a buying guide brought in almost double the EPMV.
This site doesn’t have very many buying guides as it’s 85% informational content, so now I’ll be focused on more affiliate posts for this site.
All that’s left is to do the keyword research to pick the products for the first few posts.
I also want to see if there are any other affiliate programs for these brands.
Here’s what the income for the last 30 days looks like for this site:
- Ezoic: $18.05
- Amazon: $18.80
Do note that we have on additional day left in the month, so these numbers are almost complete.
Plus, Ezoic balances are not finalized for ending month until the 4th of the following month. Just an FYI.
Site 4: Tech/Gaming Niche
Zero new content was added to this site in January because, like the other sites, I spent all my time looking at data to make a content plan for 2023.
I’m excited that the data shows higher EPMVs are possible if I just start creating more tech-focused content.
What I don’t know is how liberal I can be with that before Google smacks me, so for now I will stay very close to gaming while not actually being gaming.
What’s interesting about this site and the new content that I’ve been testing is that traffic YoY is down 3.46% but both the EPMV and the earnings are higher than January 2022!
That’s some mighty big growth considering how terrible ads rates are across the board right now.
To give you an idea of the EPMV range for this site, the top post brings in a lot of traffic from countries that aren’t considered tier one (USA, Canada, UK). So, that EPMV for that post this month is $0.53.
But, the EPMV for the new tech-focused content cluster is around $6.00 so far.
And you’ll note that it’s responsible for the bulk of that ad income this month.
Needless to say, the data tells me to focus on tech content for this site and that’s what I’ll do.
Here’s what the income for the last 30 days looks like for this site:
- Ezoic: $35.72
- Amazon: $4.45
Do note that we have on additional day left in the month, so these numbers are almost complete.
Plus, Ezoic balances are not finalized for ending month until the 4th of the following month. Just an FYI.
Site 5: Outdoors Niche
After dumping a bunch of content onto this site and leaving it to do it’s thing, I came back to Big Data Analytics to determine what’s working and what’s not working.
Traffic is up just a tiny bit compared to December, so that’s a sign in the right direction.
Looking over the top pages for the month showed me some interesting data, such as hunting knives are literally the worst EPMVs of my top pages – even worse than the top article on Site #4 above!
With so little traffic though, I expanded my data period to the last 90 days to get a better idea of what content clusters to focus on for this site.
Looking that the last 90 days showed me that despite this site having a good amount of buying guides, the product vs. product affiliate posts are consistently bringing in the highest EPMVs.
That’s a surprise and it makes me want to test that type of post on the rest of these sites.
Here’s what the income for the last 30 days looks like for this site:
- Ezoic: $7.35
- Amazon: $8.65
- Other affiliate: $14.00
Do note that we have on additional day left in the month, so these numbers are almost complete.
Plus, Ezoic balances are not finalized for ending month until the 4th of the following month. Just an FYI.
Looking Ahead
As you can, my plan for February is the same for each site – create content based on the topics/clusters that give me the highest EPMV to boost revenues.
Try product vs. product style affiliate posts on ALL of these sites.
I also plan on looking into Humix for at least one of these sites to test its effect on overall site revenue.
And I may even run a Humix vs YouTube channel on one site to see which ends up a better overall performer.
If you want more details on how I use Ezoic’s Big Data Analytics to form my content strategies, check out this three-part case study.
And if you’re not yet using Ezoic on your site, then why not sign up and make some sweet internet monies?
Questions? Let me know in the comments!
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.
thanks for the motivation