August 2022 Niche Site Summary
The May Core update recovery appears to be complete, resulting in over 60,000 pageviews in August – a record traffic month for the site.
In even bigger news, I finally made the decision to monetize. My site is officially live with Ezoic as of August 9th!
In my mind, the decision of when to monetize a site is entirely specific to the site owner. In the early days, I view display ad earnings purely as a motivational lever that only you know when you need to pull. Seeing my traffic grow was enough motivation to push on for the first 9 months – until it wasn’t.
That’s why I decided to pull the lever, and I am beyond happy that I did. With Ezoic live for just 22 days out of the month and still ramping up, the site managed to earn $1,155. It’s an exciting result and early positive signal.
One area I am continuing to monitor is mobile page speeds. Prior to placing ads, my mobile PageSpeed Insights scores were in the low to mid 80s range. With ads now live, a dip was expected and I am currently in the 60 to 70s range.
Ultimately I am less interested in exact page speed scores and instead my target is to get my mobile Core Web Vitals back into the “good” categorization.
Currently I am right on the cusp of “good” and “needs improvement”, so I am hopeful a few minor tweaks this month will get me back in the green.
In other news, the ‘Always Be Publishing’ train came of the tracks a bit this month, with just 3 total posts published.
GROSS.
Having said that, it was a hell of a month. My wife and I went on vacation in Nantucket to celebrate our 1 year anniversary, we bought our first home together, and we had a great baby shower (just 32 days to go!) with family and friends.
The reality is balancing a content site with a full time job is always challenging. For whatever reason, this month I just struggled to find the motivation. Google’s announcement of the Helpful Content Update didn’t help in that department…
Looking forward, I am excited to analyze September earnings data so I can better understand which content verticals I should be doubling down on.
Below are the details of my current arrangement with Ezoic. Others have similar, if not identical arrangements. Do your own due diligence.
1. Ezoic whitelisted premium ad demand (this allows my site to get connected with a few ad partners that are normally for sites at higher Ezoic levels).
2. Support with ad placement and Leap configuration.
3. Additional financial incentive, paid monthly so long as my traffic continues to grow month-over-month.
4. Additional financial incentive, paid monthly to continue to share my earning results and experiences (the good, the bad, the ugly).
5. Agreement to continue with Ezoic for a minimum of 6 months so long as ePMV shows month over month improvement in correspondence with the Ad Revenue Index.
Traffic
From July (20,106) to August (61,726) the site had a 207.00% increase in pageviews.
Google Analytics – August 2022
- Users: 49,571
- Sessions: 56,058
- Avg. Session Duration: 00:55
- Pageviews: 61,726
- Avg. Time on Page: 8:52
Google Search Console – August 2022
- Total Clicks: 49,800
- Total Impressions: 898,000
- Avg. CTR: 5.5%
- Average Position: 11.2
Earnings
Ezoic Display Ad Earnings – August 2022
- Total Ad Earnings: $1,155.61*
- ePMV: $27.11
*Ads went live the evening of August 9th
Historical Data
Discipline = Freedom
Always Be Publishing #ABP!
Hey Keith,
Been following along for a while now and really enjoy reading these reports!
Congrats on monetizing. Pretty amazing results for 10 months. Goes to show the power of consistently publishing and only targeting keywords that are worthwhile for your site.
Objectively looking at your content, is there anything in the guidance Google gave for the Helpful Content Update that you’re not doing (or doing wrong)? Seems like most niche site owners run afoul of at least one bullet point, yet seem unaffected so far… Curious what your experience has been.
Wishing you continued success 🙂
Great outline Keith.
On Feb you had 59 posts & on March 100 posts which means you published 41 posts in March. So did you outsource some articles or you just wrote themselves.
I really appreciate the time you take to update us about your niche growth. Thanks a lot.
Thanks Peter! I write all the content myself – early on I was writing like a maniac.
Hi
Are you do linkbuilding?
I’ve done some light link-building – almost exclusively via link swaps on Twitter.