LowFruits Case Study Site, Month 10: First Month of Earnings
Dim
Welcome to month 10 of the Low Fruits case study!
If you’re new here, last October, I started a BBQ affiliate website called Barbehow.
My strategy is simple:
- Publish high-quality content on low-competition keywords
- Have more informational content than commercial content on the site
- Do keyword research exclusively in LowFruits
Each month, I report here on the progress.
And this month, I’m happy to report that July was the first full month of monetization!
First Full Month of Earnings
July was the first full month of monetization for the case study website.
The site took in $370.28 this month:
- $362.03 from Ezoic (I am an Ezoic Premium publisher)
- $8.25 from Amazon Associates
Considering we’re in month 10, this is a good amount.
An interesting finding: The 4th of July (Independence Day in the US) is a really strong day for websites in the BBQ niche.
On that day alone, the site had 1,829 page views and brought in $29.81 in ad revenue:
The ePMV—Earnings per Thousand Visitors (a metric Ezoic uses to calculate how much you earn per every 1,000 visits) —was $18.93.
Considering that Ezoic’s AI typically takes 12 weeks to optimize your ad earnings, this is a good figure!
There are still only 3 commercial “best X for Y” articles on the site.
How to Increase Website Revenue
Since I want more affiliate income, I’ll double down before Black Friday and Cyber Monday in the fourth quarter by:
- Publishing more commercial articles (“Top” lists, “Best X for Y” articles)
- Covering more higher-value items
By the time these big-spending events come around, I’ll have articles prepared & ranking.
Talking Numbers: Steady Traffic Growth
The site also got a steady bump in traffic this month!
There were 21,000 page views in July (up from 11,000 in June). I attribute some of that to the unveiling of the website.
The 4th of July also provided quite a boost. Still, growth is growth—and you can see this clearly from the Google Search Console data:
- July clicks: 12.9K (up from 6.68K in June)
- Impressions: 504K (up from 291K)
- Average CTR: 2.6% (up from 2.3%)
- Average position: 17.1 (up from 17.4)
LowFruits Tip of the Month: More Keyword Ideas with Double Wildcards
You really need to check out one of my new favorite LowFruits features: the double wildcard.
Previously, you could only use one wildcard for your LowFruits searches.
For example: “can you drive a car without *.”
Now you can do searches with two wildcards:
- Can you drive * without *
- How to prepare * on BBQ with *
This takes your keyword research to a new level!
If you’re a LowFruits subscriber, you’ll get a boosted version of the double wildcard search with more keyword ideas. Discover more low-hanging fruits every time you do a search!
What’s Next?
I plan to continue posting at least 6 articles per month.
Summer is not over yet, and I expect a strong August in terms of traffic and revenue.
I’m curious to see if August will be stronger than July. And then how the metrics will change in the fall and winter.
There’s only one way to find out, so thanks for following along, and stay tuned for next month’s update!
Metrics Over Time
Traffic
| Time Period | July 1, 2022 – July 31, 2022 |
| Monthly Pageviews | 21,000 |
| Avg. Engagement Time | 1m 03s |
| Engaged Sessions / User | 0.57 |
| Pageviews / Published Post (PPP) | 185.84 |
Source: Google Analytics
Content
Rankings
| Date Checked | August 6, 2022 |
| Avg. Position (Google, USA) | 18.96 |
| Top 3 | 59 / 113 |
| Top 10 | 90 / 113 |
| Top 30 | 102 / 113 |
| Top 100 | 106 / 113 |
As a reminder, I switched the ranking tracking from Ubersuggest to SERProbot, so the numbers between months 1-9 and months 10+ won’t match perfectly.
Source: SERProbot
Earnings
| Time Period | July 1, 2022 – July 31, 2022 |
| Total Revenue Since Start of Site | $484.98 |
| Total Revenue YTD (2021) | $484.98 |
| Monthly Revenue | $370.28 Of which $362.03 from display ads Of which $8.25 from affiliate programs |
| Monthly Revenue / Published Post (MRPP) | $3.27 |
Source: Ezoic, Amazon Associates
Who I Am
Hey!
My name’s Dim.
Thanks for reading (or skimming) this far.
I started my first site in 2007 after I stumbled upon a blog about making money online. I’ve been buying, growing, and selling sites ever since.
These days, I own an indie media company and run an email newsletter for online publishers called “Publetise.”
Don’t be a stranger: Subscribe to my newsletter at Publetise.com and get my best strategies and tactics delivered to your inbox once a week.
I follow you everywhere and I think most of your articles that I have read already. I think everything is easier to handle for you as you are an experienced person, have a good budget, and have a team of writers.
However, recently I’ve added Ezoic to my site, but during the log-in time I’m facing this error “Error communicating with origin”
I have whitelisted many IPs that provided me ezoic, but nothing helped. I would be so happy if you give me at least one or two tips on how can I solve it? Happy summer!
Hey there, Rahul,
Thanks for following along!
The good news is that anyone can do this, even if you don’t have a team of writers or a big budget.
For example, if you’re just starting out, you can publish one post every day, or at a minimum of two-three posts every week—and your blog is probably going to have a good amount of organic traffic within 9-12 months.
If you only have this much to reinvest in the business and you don’t have the time to look for writers, you can work with BuySellText or HandsOffPublishing, which write very decent content at what I would describe as affordable rates.
On the origin error:
I’ve noticed that some hosts just don’t get along with Ezoic. Contact the support team and ask them if they can recommend a host for you. I don’t know if they will, but it’s worth a shot.
I can tell you for sure that Rocket.net, where I host one of my highest-traffic Ezoic sites, doesn’t have this issue.
Hope this helps!
Dim
Nice work Dim!
It will be interesting to see how regular posting (and best x for y articles) build up in traffic and profit toward the end of the year.
Have you made any projection on how long it will take for the site to pay off writing costs and become 100% profitable?
Thanks, Scott!
Yeah, I think there’s a good potential for affiliate earnings in the BBQ. There’s some serious buyer’s intent in it—from grills and smokers to the accessories one needs to make the most of them.
The site’s still young and has a DR of 4.6, so let’s see how it performs when we get to the more competitive commercial keywords. I’m betting on topical authority for now, but you never know how your plan will work out until you take action on it.
I’ve invested about $6,000 in the site to date, excluding my time spent on the project.
So far, I’ve been putting in a minimum of $450/month. I’ll probably lower that to $300/month now that I know how much it’s earning to get to break even faster.
I’ll feel more confident making projections after I see how the site does in Q4 this year. I think a lot of people will be buying and gifting gear. So I expect both RPMs and affiliate earnings to go up, especially after I add some best-this-for-that content.
What’s cool is that, if I decide to sell the site in Q1 at a multiple of 45x of L3M earnings, it’s still some decent ROI.
Though I’ll probably hold it for a while. Time will tell 🙂
Dim
Did you start to monetise with Ezoic straight away? If not, what month did you add it to the site?
Cheers,
Craig
Hey there, Craig,
Thanks for following along!
Some people add their sites to Ezoic almost immediately after they create them. I prefer to wait till months 8 to 9 when my sites get at least 10,000 page views/month.
That’s what I did with the case study website. Got it into Ezoic mid-month, and this month was the first full month of ad earnings.
Dim
Awesome – thanks for the reply, Dim. Good luck with the site! 🙂
Great Case Study! Thanks for sharing with us! Do you mind sharing what WordPress theme are you using? Do you optimize for PageSpeed as well Dim? Thanks
Welcome, Cspace, and thanks for stopping by!
No problem at all—you can read about the theme and plugins I use in month 9’s update.
I bet you’ll be surprised 🙂
Dim
What’s your strategy for writing great content that ranks?
Hi, Aleksej,
For this site, it’s to hire US and UK writers who grill or smoke meat. That is, they know enough about the subject to give good advice.
I also encourage compact writing in a conversational tone, citing facts and linking out to reputable sources.
Dim
Hello Dim,
thank you for sharing this case study!
About the content, do you optimize it with Surfer SEO or similar tools?
Hi, George,
Not for the case study site.
For some of the other sites in my portfolio, the team and I occasionally use Surfer SEO and Neuronwriter, a more affordable alternative with fewer bells and whistles I recently discovered on AppSumo.
I try to limit the use of NLP optimizers to only when it’s needed—that is, a competitive term requires solid optimization and “natural” writing just won’t cut it.
Dim
Yes, you are right.
For low competition kws, i do not think it is essential to have such costly tools.
Thank you for the answer!