Income Report January 2023

This is my Ezoic Income report for the month of Jan 2023.

It covers all the income and outgoings for my new website case study on YouTube.

As this is the first detailed income report on this website, let me start by sharing some of the initial costs and then I’ll show you the monthly figures.

Site History

The site is now 2 years and 10 months old. I purchased it at the back end of 2022, and it had approx. 50 posts on the site when I acquired it.

You’ll see the significant growth later in this post.

This is mainly down to finding one keyword that was new to Google and no one had written about it. Plus, the number of posts added to the site in such a short period.

The site cost me £3500.

What we did to the site at the start

The first thing we did was swap out the theme and install PopcornTheme V2: Our latest theme, which includes lots of features that we needed for this website to really make the posts pop out and format well.

Traffic in January

I’m writing this just before the end of January so we can add about 1500 more visits to these numbers. But you can see the growth already starting to rank up.

Here’s a screenshot from Big Data Analytics from my Ezoic dashboard

The site in the last few days has started to reach over 700 visits per day.

My expectations are that we should reach 1000 per day by the end of Feb 2023.

You can also see the Serp rankings improving in the screenshot below. I use SerpRobot to track the rankings for this website along with the tools and features like NicheIQ inside Ezoic.

EPMV from Ezoic

The revenue is up, and I will explain more about that in a short while, but the EPMV is down. This is due to the time of year and the global economy.

When companies have less money to spend, they don’t buy ads. Therefore, the amount we are paid for every 1000 visitors is lower.

This website is holding strong, and I’m super impressed with the EPMV from Ezoic. I have seen a travel site with an EPMV of less than $5. So, I’m grateful for the EPMV shown below.

$16-18 is amazing for this niche and it actually reached $21 before Christmas and through the QTR 4 peak months.

In this niche, however, the peak months can be at different times to many niches as holidays are often booked just after Christmas, so people have time to save and pay for their dream vacations.

Here is a screenshot of the poor EPMV my backup travel site has.

How we optimized ads to get $21 EPMV

1. Optimize ad placement: Placed ads in high-traffic areas on the site where they are most likely to be seen.
2. Target relevant ads: Use Ezoic’s AI to target relevant ads to users based on their interests, location, and search history.
3. Use different ad formats: Experiment with different ad formats such as display ads, sponsored content, and native advertising to see what resonates best with your audience.
4. Use Humix for video ads.
5. Switched on Side rail ads inside Ezoic.
6. Leverage user-generated content: Encourage users to share their travel experiences and pictures on your site and use this content to run targeted ads.
7. Monitor and adjust regularly: Regularly monitor ad performance and adjust your strategy based on what’s working and what’s not.
8. Split bullet points up and some paragraphs/blocks to allow ads to display in key areas.

These are just some of the things we have done to increase the EPMV. It’s not all about how many ads you can show; It’s about balancing the ads and user experience.

Revenue and income

First let’s start by showing the display ad revenue from Ezoic.

You can see below how steady the growth has been and the smooth increase in revenue. I’m happy to see that the revenue has followed the graph in traffic numbers.

That’s a good sign to see. It means the strategy for growth we have for the site is working.

This is the last 30 days. As I said at the start, I’m writing this a few days before the end of the month as it’s the only time I’ll have free to write this income report for you.

So, I thought the 30-day figures would make more sense.

The actual numbers from 1st Jan – today 30th Jan is below

Affiliate income

I have also been using Booking dot com and Get Your Guide dot com affiliate programs.

So, far Booking dot com seems to be working well and the number of visitors keeps growing.

It’s a very simple affiliate program to set up and run. However, not all the tools and services you can promote through them are available to smaller websites.

They offer affiliate programs in Taxis, Flights, and Insurance.

However, I was only able to sign up for their Hotel’s program which I’m happy with at the moment.

This is how it looks for the month of Jan

As for GetYourGuide, I still haven’t made a sale yet. This really surprises me as the clicks are strong and targeted at the right audience.

Expenses

Okay, now this figure shocked me!

I found a keyword that no one has written about. So, I threw all my time and resources into it, and it’s paid off in regard to traffic.

But I didn’t realize how much I had spent on content to produce all the articles.

Cost Breakdown

• Hosting $10
• VA $288
• YouTube shorts and TikToks $250
• Content $2838.02

Total cost in Jan $3386.02

This is way too much for one month on one website. So, next month I’ll try to keep it under $3000

Month	Ezoic	Affiliate	Expenses	Profit/Loss
Jan	$164.06	$98.85	$3386.02	-$3123.11
Feb
March
April
May
June
July
Aug
Sep
Oct
Nov
Dec

Conclusion

So far, this month has been very positive.

Lots of traffic growth, strong EPMV from Ezoic and a new keyword no one else has found yet.

We are ranking number one in the USA and UK, and it also has multiple smaller keywords which we are now targeting.

The negative this month is the fact that we had no sales from GetYourGuide and I spent too much.

Get used to that…. I often reinvest in my projects.

I’m still on track for selling another one of my websites and from the looks of my spend this month, I may need the cash!

Thanks for reading.

Carl