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Ezoic Review: Can You Increase Your Ad Revenue By 300% Like I Did?

Would you like to get passive income that comes in every month no matter what?

you can definitely achieve that if you monetize your site with display ads.

All you need is to sign up with one of the ad platforms and set up the ads on your site. Ezoic is one of such platforms šŸ‘

In my Ezoic review, I will talk about what Ezoic is, how much money you can make with it (and how much money I make), how to use it, and my way of increasing the Ezoic revenue.

Letā€™s dive in!

What is Ezoic?

Ezoic (an affiliate link) is a publishing ad platform that uses artificial intelligence to increase ad earnings by automatically testing different ad types across your site. 

Ezoic logo

Ezoic is a Google Certified Publishing Partner and also a certified partner of Cloudflare, JW Player, and the Flippa website exchange. In addition to that, Ezoic is a member of the Coalition for Better Ads.

According to the Ezoic About page:

Ezoic has developed an industry reputation as being a ā€œfriend to publishersā€.

Why switching to Ezoic?

Are you still with Adsense? Then you definitely need to switch to Ezoic! The reason is simple: To make more money šŸ¤‘

Ezoic revenue: How much can I make?

You can make 40-50% or more with Ezoic compared to Adsense. While it all depends on the niche your website in, it seems that a 50% increase is an average everybody gets after switching šŸ“ˆ

As proof, you can see my Ezoic income report in my latest income posts where I lay out all my revenue sources.

Once switch you, the platform will be learning more and more about your website and your EPMV will be growing and you will earn more money.

Wondering whatā€™s EPMV? According to Ezoic:

EPMV, or ā€œsession earningsā€ stands for ā€œEarnings Per Thousand Visitorsā€ā€”in other words, this is how much money you earn for every 1,000 visits to your website. This is the only reliable way to measure revenue while taking into effect outside factors such as seasonality and UX changes.

Hereā€™s the formula used to calculate it:

EPMV = Total Earnings / (Visitors / 1,000)

In my case, Ezoic firstly doubled my EPMV compared to the RPM from Adsence šŸ¤ÆšŸ¤Æ 

And then, in a couple of months, it tripled it šŸ¤ÆšŸ¤ÆšŸ¤Æ (compared to Adsense.)

After about 1.5 months after the switch, my ad revenue became a 4-digit number šŸ‘

Hereā€™s how my total ads revenue grew the last year:

Revenue Jun 2019 to Jan 2020

Hereā€™s how the EPVM has grown (for all websites):

ePMV Jun 2019 to Jan 2020

Adsense vs Ezoic

Before switching to Ezoic, I was using Adsense.

During the high season for my sites, my ad revenue was about $600 and that made was quite happy šŸ™„šŸ¤¦ā€ā™€ļøšŸ¤£

I thought I was making good money with one of my sites where the page RPM being about $23-27.

On Ezoic, the same website started producing ePMV of $80-100 šŸ¤Æ Turned out, Ezoic was indeed more efficient in generating revenue.

How to use Ezoic?

Join the platform

First of all, in order to start using Ezoic, you need to join the platform. For that, your website needs to meet certain conditions:

  1. receive a minimum of 10,000 visits per monthšŸ‘©ā€šŸ‘©ā€šŸ‘¦ā€šŸ‘¦šŸ‘©ā€šŸ‘©ā€šŸ‘§ā€šŸ‘§šŸ‘©ā€šŸ‘©ā€šŸ‘¦šŸ‘Øā€šŸ‘Øā€šŸ‘§ā€šŸ‘§
  2. be in compliance with Googleā€™s policies (no invalid clicks or content, reliable traffic sources, etc)
  3. have original content
  4. be approved by Adsense
  5. Is written in an AdSense-supported languagešŸˆÆ

Take a look at their official page for more details.

Once your website meets their requirements, apply on their website via my affiliate link (I will get a cut if you do so).

The Ezoic customer support will contact you and ask to give them read-only access to the Google Analytics of your website.

Once you do that, they will re-contact you with the info about the approval of your website.

Once you are approved, you will be assigned an account manager.

This person will be working with you to set up your ads.

Integrate Ezoic

So you got approved by Ezoic! Congrats!šŸŽ‰

Now, letā€™s add it to your website so that you can start making money šŸ¤‘

First of all, you need to integrate Ezoic on your website.

There are three options to use:

  1. Cloudflare
  2. WP plugin
  3. Nameservers

šŸ‘‰ If you are using Cloudflare (a popular content delivery network), itā€™s the easiest way. You just activate the Cloudflare app in your Ezoic dashboard and follow the steps.

šŸ‘‰ If you do not use Cloudflare and your website is on WordPress, you can use the Ezoic WP plugin. You need to install it, activate, and set up the settings. The downside of this method is that it is not compatible with WP-Rocket, a popular caching plugin.

šŸ‘‰ If none of the above methods suit you, you can integrate your website via Nameservers. You can read the instructions about how to do it on the Site Integration page of your Ezoic dashboard.

My websites are integrated via Cloudflare since it was the most convenient way for me to do it. 

Add Ezoic ads

Then, you need to add Ezoic placeholders to your website.

To so, you can use any ad inserting plugin.

I use the Ad Inserter plugin. It has a free version and it is enough.

You can use any other ad insert plugin, for example, Quick Adsense.

I did not wrap existing Adsense ads because it was auto ads that placed themselves. I simply kept one Adsense ad block in the sidebar.

Pros and cons of Ezoic

If youā€™ve already read my experience with Ezoic (below), you already know it is not all roses and peachesšŸš«šŸŒ¹ šŸš«

While I think that my experience was an outlier case, the Ezoic platform does have its downsides šŸ˜’

But first, letā€™s look at its upsides! šŸ˜‰

Pros šŸ‘

  1. The RPM is at least 40%-50% higher than Adsense (RPM is revenue per thousand impressions); itā€™s basically money you might be leaving on the table.
  2. The traffic requirements are low (10,000 visitors a month). It is arguably the most accessible ad platform that gives great revenue. For comparison, Mediavine requires at least 2 times bigger traffic.
  3. Itā€™s a very inclusive platform. They are more accepting than, letā€™s say, Mediavine. I did try to apply for Mediavine but I got rejected. Meanwhile, Ezoic is very happy to have my websites.
  4. Customer support for publishers is very good (once you get approved); your account manager wants you to succeed and will help you with ad setup and tests
  5. Comprehensive analytics that helps to understand what kinds of posts make the most revenue; it can be a good replacement of Google Analytics in terms of data visualizing.

Cons šŸ‘Ž

  1. The ad setup can be cumbersomešŸ˜« Depending on how many ad placeholders your website needs (your account manager should know it), you may end up with 15-30 ad slots to set up manually šŸ˜© But on the plus side, you wonā€™t be alone in it ā€“ your account manager will be helping with creating the ad placeholders šŸ‘Øā€šŸ’¼šŸ‘
  2. Ezoic slows down your website. Itā€™s infamous in this regard šŸŒ Display ads always have this downside; some ad networks are better and some are worse. And Ezoic developers are very well aware of it. To fight it, Ezoic has rolled out Site Acceleration. I am still not sure about the results šŸ¤” But overall, I do think it helps with the website speedā€¦

Ezoic review FAQ

When I was thinking of joining Ezoic, I had a lot of questions. I bet you also have questions so thatā€™s why I created this section.

If you have any questions not answered below, go ahead and ask me in the comments šŸ˜‰

Cloudflare vs Nameservers integration

Which way of integration is more preferred: Cloudflare or nameservers?šŸ¤”

I personally prefer the Cloudflare integration. In this case, you can benefit from the Cloudflare features that seem to me to be more advanced than the ones from Ezoic.

What I donā€™t recommend is the plugin integration. It is not as fast as the other two ways and can also interfere with your caching plugin.

How to replace my old Google Adsense ad with the new Ezoic code given?

Here are the steps to follow:

  1. Create a new placeholder on the Monetization page of your Ezoic dashboard
  2. Copy its code
  3. On your website, open the plugin you use for ad inserting
  4. Find the old ad you would like to wrap
  5. Place the code of the old ad in between the div-s of the Ezoic ad placeholder
  6. Save the settings

Thatā€™s it! šŸ¤˜

Hereā€™s a video explaining how to do that:

How to add multiple sites to Ezoic?

You can do it from your existing account:

  • Click on the website name next to the Ezoic logo in the menu
  • In the popup sidebar on the right, click on ā€œAdd a siteā€
  • Type in your new website information

So, clicking on your website name:

How to add a website in ezoic

ā€¦opens a sidebar where you can add a new website:

How to add a website in ezoic 2

When does Ezoic make payments?

If you are eligible for a payment, Ezoic pays you monthly on the last day of the month. To receive a payment, you will need to:

  • earn at least $20 in the previous earning period
  • fill out your tax information beforehand
  • have set up your payment preferences

My experience with Ezoic

Recently, Ezoic asked their publishers to record a short testimonial video about their experience with Ezoic.

Hereā€™s mine šŸ˜Š

How it started

Are you convinced that display ad revenue is not for you? Not sure you can make money with ads? Well, I thought exactly like you! šŸ˜

I switched to Ezoic in June 2019. 

Before that, I was with Adsense. Looking at the ad income I was having back then, I see now it was low. But at the time, I thought it was not that bad. During the high season, I was getting about $600 and was quite happy šŸ™„šŸ¤¦ā€ā™€ļø

I was quite sure that display ads had no future and my ad revenue was all I could get šŸ˜”

Then, I read about Ezoic in one of the FB groups about niche websites. Somebody boasted about the income from Ezoic he was getting from a young 1-year old website. 

My websites were way older than 1 year but the ad revenue numbers were comparablešŸ˜¾ 

It shocked me quite a lot šŸ˜²

ā€œHow come!ā€ I thought upsettingly, ā€œWhy everybody makes more money than me!šŸ˜­ā€

So, I decided to make Ezoic happen on my websites! šŸ§™ā€ā™€ļø

Ezoic requires 10,000 visits a month.

It turned out I already had like 11,000 visits a month! All thanks to Tailwind and Pinterest traffic ā€“ and also the Authority Hacker course that taught me the Pinterest strategy (read my review of Authority Hacker here!)

Right enough to get approved!

So, I applied.

Approval process

I made a mistake at the beginning that put my website offline and it broke the approval process.

Because of that, the approval lasted for the long two months. Two months!!! šŸ¤ÆšŸ˜ šŸ˜”

Emails bounced between me and the customer support without bearing any fruits.

Eventually, I was told that the account manager who was supposed to get me approved had left on paternity leave. I was very happy for him but nobody really picked up his accounts and I was left high and dry šŸ˜£

Then, one day, it all got magically solved somehowšŸ§™ā€ā™‚ļøšŸ§™ā€ā™€ļø

I got an email from an Ezoic employer who said he was my new account manager.

ā€œOh, sir please can you finally approve me???!?!?!?!?!ā€

ā€œSureā€¦ you are approved!ā€

šŸ¤Æ

šŸŽ‰šŸ’ƒšŸŽ¶šŸŽ‰

Setting up ads

Once I got approved, I had to set up the Ezoic ads šŸ˜’šŸ˜…

It was again a long process but luckily, my account manager helped me with it. He created pretty much all the ad placeholders and I only had to add them to the website.

He also kept an eye on how the ads were performing and spotted a few problems before the revenue got affected too much šŸ‘

All the troubles are behind now

Basically, once I got approved and set up the ads, everything started going super smooth šŸ¤—

About 2 weeks after getting approved, I added Baby šŸ˜ Website to my account despite the fact it did not have the required traffic numbers.

It was an excellent move. It blew the mind of mine and my manager with its EPMV casually reaching and exciding $100! My account manager said itā€™s quite rare to have such a high EPMV.

With time, the Ezoic AI was learning more and more about my websites. This resulted in the EPMV going higher and this was pushing up the revenue šŸ†™

How I make more money with Ezoic

What worked very well with Ezoic was Pinterest trafficšŸ“ŒšŸ¤

In December 2018, I started using Tailwind (itā€™s my affiliate link that will give you $15 credit if you register trough it), an app for scheduling Pinterest posts. I used it to schedule posts designed to be viral on Pinterest. These posts created a big influx of traffic and the Ezoic advertisers just loved it! ā¤

A few posts did go viral and brought me $100-200 each šŸ˜ Several others brought in $50-100šŸ¤‘

The Tailwind account has paid for itself and brought in a nice profit on top of it.

The Pinterest traffic is still coming meaning the revenue keeps flowing in šŸ¤—

If you are interested in my Pinterest strategy, check out this post where I talk about it in the details šŸ¤“

Ezoic review: Final words

I hope that my Ezoic review helped you to dispel any doubts you may have had about this ad platform and answered some of your questions.

I am happy with Ezoic and I wish I thought of switching to it earlier!

I hope you wonā€™t repeat my mistake and wonā€™t postpone increasing your revenue. Maybe you will also have an EPMV of $100šŸ’„

You can register via my affiliate link (I will get a cut if you do so).

To read more details about the Ezoic platform and how it works, check out their website.

If you have any questions, feel free to do so in the comments below!

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Disclaimer: Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. I will receive a small fee if you choose to buy after clicking on any of these links. Thank you if you do! šŸ¤—

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