Niche Site Project #2 (Month 11 Update)

September 2022 Niche Site Summary

What a busy past few months for Google developers.

Despite a seemingly endless onslaught of updates coming from every direction, I am pleased to report that the net impact on my site to date appears to be negligible.

Pageviews landed just shy of 60,000, representing a modest 3% month-over-month decline.

On the bright side, I now have my first full month of Ezoic data under my belt and ad revenue continues to ramp up! The site pulled a total of $2,316.18 in September, with an average ePMV of just over $40.

Notably, desktop average ePMV’s continue to dominate at around $58, vs just $26 on mobile.

As a result, in an effort to skew my audience towards desktop clicks as much as possible, I plan to selectively target more desktop friendly content moving forward (more on this later).

As noted in my previous update, an area I have been closely monitoring following monetization is mobile page speed.

Oddly enough, my mobile Core Web Vitals sat comfortably in the “good” categorization for the majority of the month, and then like clock work, started to drop incrementally for the past 10 days.

Cumulative Layoff Shift appears to be the main driver leading to the current “poor” designation.

This is definitely outside my area of expertise and I am currently working with the Ezoic Team to get this sorted.

On the publishing front, I was able to get back on track with 11 total posts published.

When I started out, I said that my goal was for the profits from this site to single handedly cover our son’s expenses.

Incredibly, a goal that seemed so far out of reach just under a year ago, now feels genuinely attainable. The internet is truly something else.

Now bring on that sweet, sweet Q4 ad spend I hear so much about…

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 August (61,726) to September (59,871) the site had a 3.01% decrease in pageviews.

Google Analytics – September 2022

  • Users: 46,632
  • Sessions: 54,233
  • Avg. Session Duration: 00:56
  • Pageviews: 59,871
  • Avg. Time on Page: 8:55

Google Search Console – September 2022

  • Total Clicks: 49,300
  • Total Impressions: 700,000
  • Avg. CTR: 7.0%
  • Average Position: 11.4

Earnings

Ezoic Display Ad Earnings – September 2022

  • Total Ad Earnings: $2,316.18
  • ePMV: $40.30
Keith September 2022 Ezoic Earnings

Historical Data


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Discipline = Freedom
Always Be Publishing #ABP!

7 thoughts on “Niche Site Project #2 (Month 11 Update)”

  1. Hi Keith, very inspiring to read your updates!
    Quick question, do you earn from ads only? Or do you have affiliate marketing too?

    Thanks!

    Reply
  2. Congrats Keith,

    It’s a big boost to see niche sites that surf over the updates and ride them mostly unaffected. It pushes me to keep up with the publishing to my blog. I did a big content push in March-April earlier this year, then stopped due to no growth. Now, the updates have actually pushed the site to 50-70+ visits per day from 20-40. If only I kept publishing 🙁
    I’m going to steal that #ABP
    Rob

    Reply

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