In this article, I share my story of how I ended up joining Ezoic and how it completely changed the game for me and my blog. I also share with you how joining Ezoic enabled me to have more time to write actual content instead of messing around with website performance and ultimately contributed to quitting my job as a CTO of a startup to become a full-time content creator.
About Me
My name is Stefan Rosanitsch and I run a blog called Ceos3c where I teach people about Cyber Security, Linux, Programming, and other tech-related topics.
I started this blog in 2016 when I just started a new position as a CTO of a startup and needed a platform where I could document certain processes for later use. I figured out creating a WordPress blog would be a good way to do that since I found it really easy to use.
I did not create this blog with the intention of monetizing it initially, but I already had the dream of becoming my own boss for the past couple of years. Having worked as a freelance photographer, translator and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu instructor while living in Thailand a couple of years back, I already got a taste of how that life would be like.
At this moment, I had no clue about things like SEO and I just wrote things down I needed to document. After writing a bunch of articles, I recognized more and more traffic coming in. Since I wrote very detailed step-by-step instructions, people seemed to like it and it turned out that other people were having the same problems like me and were searching for solutions.
When I hit around 10.000 pageviews per month for the first time, I decided it’s time to look into ways of monetizing my blog and see if I can get closer to my goal to becoming a full-time digital publisher.
Monetizing with Google AdSense
I eventually started doing some research on how to monetize a website and found a lot of resources, but at the time, the common answer was: Google AdSense. So I applied for Google AdSense, and about 3 months later I got my invitation letter from Google.
I had no idea how to even implement ads on my website, so I had to learn everything from scratch. Having a good amount of traffic at this point, I was very worried that displaying ads would turn off a lot of people and my traffic would drop quite significantly – fortunately, that wasn’t the case.
I just placed some ads in more or less random positions throughout my website and sure enough, my blog started to generate some revenue.
Google AdSense Earnings
I started making my first revenue from Google in around April 2017. In the first few months, I just made a couple of dollars (<$20/month). Which boiled down to $178 in 2017 using Google AdSense.
I kept learning more and more about ad placements, how many ads to place, and what size of ads is best. Unfortunately, learning all these things cost me a tremendous amount of time (and nerves), time I could have spent writing content.
The Year 2018
I focused on creating new content and optimizing ads, I even tried using AdSense AutoAds (which was a terrible experience resulting in a huge drop in revenue, so I went back to manual ad placements). While my revenue kept rising gradually, progress was very slow.
In the entire year 2018, I made $1819. That was good, but not good enough. By now, I was convinced that I could transform this blog into a full-time gig, but I needed to grow faster, especially since I wasn’t satisfied in my current position as a CTO and I needed a way to get out.
Right around that time, I got an email from the Managing Director of Ezoic, Mike McGuire.
Learning about Ezoic
I and Mike exchanged a couple of emails, he even did his research and knew that I was a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu practitioner, pointing out that their CMO, Tyler Bishop, was also practicing, which I appreciated. I did some research on joining Ezoic but based on my initial findings, I decided not to join them just yet (which turned out to be a mistake).
The Year 2019
My revenue kept rising slowly but steadily in 2019, making me $333 in May. Around this time, I was contacted by Ezoic again. This time, I was contacted by a sales representative from Ezoic, Danijel Dadovic. We exchanged a lot of emails back and forth and Danijel didn’t hesitate to answer all of my questions in great detail.
Danijel ultimately convinced me to give Ezoic a try. After all, you can disable Ezoic by the click of a button and go back to your old setup, which makes it very low risk.
I finally joined Ezoic in June 2019 and me and Danijel went through the process of integrating my website into Ezoic’s system, which was a great experience since I got help with it from start to finish. The process was very smooth and low-friction. I was impressed at how good their customer service was.
The revenue naturally plummeted in the first few days (which was to be expected), since Ezoic’s AI needed to learn the structure of my website to optimize ads. After just a few days, I already earned 24$ USD in a single day – the highest revenue on a single day I ever had. This was starting to look very promising!
By the end of July, I got my first monthly revenue: $811 in a single month. I was in.
The revenue dropped a bit due to lower ad rates in the summertime to $753 in July. In September I made $989 and in October I made a whopping $1,800 in a single month. This was almost as much as I made in the past year using Google AdSense, resulting in a revenue increase of more than 450% after joining Ezoic.
Ezoic Leap and WordPress Site Speed Optimization
After my site was fully integrated with Ezoic and my revenue stabilized, I dove deeper into all of the other features that Ezoic was offering at the time. At this point, I still spent countless fruitless hours trying to optimize my website for site speed and performance. While I was able to optimize it to a degree, I never got it anywhere close to where it needed to be.
Conveniently, right around that time Ezoic released Leap (formerly Site Speed Accelerator and since rebranded to Leap). Leap promised to take all the guesswork out of WordPress site speed optimization. While I was skeptical, especially considering how much time and money I spent on site speed optimization WordPress plugins, I decided to give it a go.
Lo’ and behold, just shortly after integrating Leap to my blog, I not only passed the critical Google Core Web Vital scores, but my site also started delivering site speed scores in the high 90s on desktop and above 80 on mobile.
This may not sound like much, but coming from scores like these…
…it all makes a lot more sense.
Ezoic Leap completely changed the game for me when it comes to WordPress site speed optimization. Not only did I now have much more time to write actual content, but I also did not need to study the topic of WordPress site speed optimization any longer( which if you couldn’t tell by now, is not one of my favorite topics).
Now, if I have a problem with my site speed, I open a ticket to the Ezoic Leap team and they take care of it for me. This is a privilege Ezoic publishers can get access to.
I have written an extensive review of Ezoic Leap on my blog that covers a lot more in-depth details of this powerful tool.
My Long-Term Experience with Ezoic
Making the switch to Ezoic was the best decision I have ever made for my business, hard stop. I kind of regret not joining them already when they first contacted me, since I’ve missed out on a good amount of revenue, but in the end, things worked out.
Ezoic enabled me to ultimately quit my job as a CTO of a startup and fulfill my dream of becoming a full-time digital publisher. I have to honestly say, this wouldn’t have been possible without Ezoic. I would have never been able to get where I am today if I would have continued to use Google AdSense.
Since joining Ezoic, I have seen their platform improve and evolve constantly. They keep releasing new (free) features for their publishers to use and you can feel that they care about their publishers. Since I realized that their top priority is seeing their publishers succeed, it all made much more sense to me. You can think about it like this: “The more money you earn, the more money they earn”. Since you share a common interest, it’s a win-win situation.
Ezoic recently released Ezoic Video, a feature that I started using just recently and since migrating my YouTube videos to Ezoic Video, I already made more money from my videos within the first month than I made on YouTube. They are also in the process of creating their very own video platform called Humix, which is the topic of another article.
My Favorite Ezoic Feature
Hands down, my favorite part of being an Ezoic publisher is their A-Level Customer Support. I have never experienced customer service like with Ezoic. They don’t pretend to care about your issues, they do care about your issues and they do everything in their capabilities to help you solve them.
Since every publisher has its very own Publisher Success Manager, you can be sure that the person you are contacting is familiar with your business and knows how to help you in the best possible way.
Apart from that, Ezoic frees up time for me to create content. This is what I do. The more time I have to create content and not worry about technical stuff, the more success I have and the more I enjoy my craft.
Summary
Since joining Ezoic back in 2019, I have never regretted my decision and I am thoroughly happy with their service and their platform. This is also the reason why I decided to create my very own Ezoic Reviews and Feature Deep Dives.
If you are at a point where you ask yourself if you should Join Ezoic or not, maybe my In-Depth Review can help you with that decision. In this review, I cover my whole journey in great detail, including the revenue of each month since and before joining them.
There is also a great article from a 6-Figure Ezoic Publisher who shares his 5 most surprising lessons about running a website if you want to get another perspective.
