As I make a real effort this year to grow some of my smaller sites on Ezoic, I’ve started testing Humix as a way to add a bit more revenue.
If you’ve heard of Humix before, that’s because it actually became available for Ezoic publishers last fall.
However, I didn’t actually start testing it on my sites until last month – partly because I had more important things to focus on, and partly because I wanted to let other people be the guinea pigs.
All that to say, you may already know all about this but it is something totally new for me.
So, I’ll be sharing how to get started with it, as well as my experience (including the hiccups) of setting it up on a couple of my sites.
And then, I’ll have a follow-up post to show you the 30-day earnings and we can determine if it’s been worth the effort or not.
**I’m an affiliate marketer who was paid for this post and it contains affiliate links, meaning I will be compensated if you make a purchase after clicking on my link.
What Exactly Is Humix?
If you wanna start making more money from Ezoic by using videos, then Humix is the answer. (Don’t have your sites on Ezoic? Sign up here)
It is essentially a way for you to upload your own videos, which you can earn ad money from, as well as a way for you to earn from other people’s videos without even needing to upload your own.
Here’s what the official page says about it:
Humix gives publishers access to a growing video-sharing service, while also providing custom machine learning technology to improve the outcomes for streaming video on your website. With direct control for how you share videos, display videos, and use configuration tools you’ll help your video content perform better in search engine optimization (SEO), increase video playback numbers, optimize video placement, and maximize ad revenue. Track performance with Ezoic’s custom video analytics for your own videos and network videos. Incorporate Humix to your site and watch as your site continues to grow!
But the important thing that I want to point out is that you don’t even need to upload any videos to start earning – you can simply use Humix to show other people’s videos so that you can earn some monies.
Oh, and this is a completely free feature for Ezoic publishers, so you don’t have to pay or even be in Ezoic premium to use it.
Setting It Up
If you wanna give Humix a try on your own, then you basically have to opt-in and actually turn it on.
You can find Humix on your Ezoic dashboard just in that top navigation area.
I’ve put that pink box around it in the image above, so that’s where you can always find it.
When you click on that for the first time, you’re not actually going to end up seeing much (unless you’ve turned on Humix in the past and forgotten about it).
Here’s what you will see that very first time –
So, it’s literally just that one click of the “Turn On” button to get Humix ready to go on your site.
And yes, you have to turn it on for each site in your Ezoic account separately as there appears to be no way to turn it on for all sites at once.
Once you enable Humix, you get a whole new Humix dashboard on the screen – this is also what you’ll now see whenever you click the “Humix” button from the top nav bar.
You can see that it’s pretty easy to get started now, though not quite as intuitive as YouTube’s Creator Studio.
This screen is where you can upload your videos or even import them from a YouTube channel.
And yes, you do need to find a way to actually create the videos that you upload.
I tested Ezoic’s Flickify for this, but didn’t immediately love it – so I ended up using Powtoon (which I already pay for).
Cheap options for you include: Pictory and Renderforest.
Anyways, I’ve chosen to not import from YouTube because all the videos will have call to actions such as “like and subscribe” which are irrelevant for Humix.
So, this screen also displays your Humix earnings for your site and the graph below shows you if the earnings are coming from your own videos or those from other Ezoic publishers where you’re getting a revenue share.
One quick note about this screen – I find that when I move from one Ezoic site to another on my account that this screen doesn’t always update for me, so I have to manually refresh the page to see the correct data after changing which site I’m looking at.
Once you enable Humix, you’ll also get a new sidebar on the left of your screen.
This is basically where you find all the settings for Humix – and yes, any changes you make only apply to the current site that you’re looking at and you’ll have to change to each of your other sites to implement the same changes.
Kind of annoying, but that’s the way that it works.
And remember to manually refresh the screen when changing sites!
Anyways, the Monetization tab is likely where you want to visit first thing so make sure that all your monetization settings are all good.
Here’s a snapshot of mine –
Now I do have to mention that when I was setting this all up for one of my Ezoic sites that there were some hiccups.
In fact, I was trying to upload my first videos and get the money train chugging along when this happened to me.
It was a “Cannot enable sharing unless approved for monetization.” error after uploading a video and trying to turn on ads on the Monetization page.
No matter what I did, I just could not get those monetization options to actually turn on for me.
I eventually had to reach out to my Ezoic rep to get this little issue fixed.
That likely cost me a few days since I attempted to fix it myself before reaching out for help.
So, if you notice this happening to you I recommend immediately requesting assistance from your Ezoic rep.
Once you know that the money is turned on and ready to flow, you can get those videos uploaded and optimized.
While you can upload a video direct from the Humix main screen, you can also go directly to Studio from the sidebar to do it.
After uploading a video to Humix, you gotta fill out all the details (kinda like YouTube).
I feel like you get more options within YouTube, but it is essentially the same core stuff here.
So, the Site option from the sidebar is something else that you’ll want to visit, and I’m slightly embarrassed about how long it took me to figure out that I needed to do this.
You see, this is where you can assign where on the page the AI displays your Humix videos.
It’s also the only place where you can assign a video that you’ve uploaded to the specific page of your website.
I wish you could do this from the Studio page, or that it at least pointed you to the Site page to do this…because it took me a couple of weeks to discover this on my own.
Okay, so from this main page after clicking on Site from the sidebar, you gotta click on that “Assign Video To Page” button there.
And it opens up this screen –
Once you pop the relevant URL into that cleverly named URL field, then the Video Selection part of the screen starts working.
And you then just select the proper video from the drop down and you’re able to save that selection.
It’s really that simple….though it would be an improvement if you could set a video location upon video upload, eh?
Now What?
So, yeah, I think that’s really all you need to know in order to get started with Humix.
I’ll be sharing revenue numbers once I’ve had it in enabled for 30 days (which is just a matter of days from now).
For one of these sites, I’m also putting the videos up on YouTube to run sort of year-long test (or at least the rest of the year).
I think it will be interesting to see a Humix vs YouTube case study, which is why I’m doing that.
And if you’re not yet using Ezoic on your site, then why not sign up and make some sweet internet monies?
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.