Ezoic Review 2023 – Increase Ad Revenue with AI

This Ezoic Review shall serve as a source of information for everyone looking into monetizing their blog but doesn’t know where to start. In this review, I share my real-world experience after using Ezoic on this very blog for more than four years now.

With this review, I put something together that I wish I had when I did my initial research on Ezoic and content monetization back in 2019. This Ezoic Review is completely transparent. I share the entire revenue of my blog since I started monetizing it back in 2017 until this very day, showing you the complete transition from Google Adsense to Ezoic and how it changed the game for me.

I can make a living as a Full-Time Content Creator thanks to the decision to join Ezoic in 2019, and since then, they have enabled me to do what I love to do full-time. If you have been a long-time reader of my blog, you know that I only endorse things I use and believe in – this is no different.

The moment you realize that Ezoic wants you to succeed (the more money you earn, the more money they earn🤯), things become much clearer. I dive deeper into those details further down in the article. I also encourage you to read the whole article, so you fully understand the development of their service over the past few years. But of course, feel free to use the Table of Contents to find the parts that interest you the most.

Note: If you need help with integrating your site to Ezoic, or you have any additional questions, reach out to me anytime!

Story Time

In 2023, everyone wants to be a YouTuber, overlooking the never-ending rise in popularity when it comes to blogging. A lot of people (myself included) actually prefer reading a good article over watching a lengthy YouTube video. Blogging has never been as popular as it is now, but a lot of people are overlooking the revenue that their blog could generate for them.

When I started this blog back in August 2016, I started it solely because I wanted to keep things I might need again stored somewhere for myself. At this time, I didn’t even think of monetizing my blog, nor did I know that it would be possible. It wasn’t until a full year later that I realized that I had almost hit the 10.000 views-a-month mark. This was when I started looking for ways to monetize the blog.

I am a full-time content creator here on my blog as well as on my YouTube channel, where I create content on the topic of Cyber Security, Open Source Technology, Programming, Productivity, and many more things. Writing about business and revenue isn’t my niche. Still, I thought I could give you a more real-world perspective of how someone like me uses Ezoic’s service compared to most other reviews that exist mostly on SEO or review websites.

In this Ezoic Review, I will also give you insights into my revenue and how it developed over the years, which should give you an idea of how consistent effort can translate into a valuable asset.

Get some coffee, sit comfortably, and let’s dive in.

Ezoic Review 2023 - Increase your B...
Ezoic Review 2023 - Increase your Blog Revenue with AI 🤖

A Word on Blogging

Since this is a question I get asked a lot, I want to cover it briefly. This is a technology blog. Many people ask me on Twitter how they can drive more traffic to their blogs.

While there is no easy answer to that question, I usually default to the following:

  • Be consistent
  • Know your SEO
  • Write original content

While being consistent and original is important, SEO is a major factor in blogging. I spent a ton of time understanding SEO and how to work with it. Investing in a good SEO all-in-one solution like the Mangools SEO suite helped me grow my traffic and understand my data.

Once you learn that it simply does not make sense to attempt to outperform a keyword like “how to get a Sixpack” against a page that has 98 Domain Authority, it puts things into perspective, yet a lot of people make this mistake.

It is also very rare that people bookmark your blog and visit it regularly unless you run some kind of article series that got people hooked or a newsletter. Most people will simply arrive via Google or social media.

So, if you are a beginner blogger, keep those things in mind. It took me several years to fully grasp all of those things, but basically, it translates to HWPO (Hard Work Pays Off).

The Year 2017

Picking up where we left off above, let’s dig a bit deeper into my history with Ad Revenue. I started monetizing my blog when I had around 10.000 views per month. Naturally, as probably most of us, I started out with Google Adsense.

I run a WordPress blog, so implementing Adsense was easy. The hardest part was waiting to get approval from Adsense, which took a couple of months.  After implementing Adsense, I went through the ordeal of setting up Ads in different locations, testing their potential, and reading countless blog articles on optimizing ad revenue. I wanted to write tutorials, not deal with optimizing ad placements.

Google Adsense earnings in 2017

In the entire year of 2017, I made 178,48$. Did I mention that I was already blogging for 1 1/2 years at that point? This is actually where most people give up. You have to just keep going if you want to have any kind of success creating online content. This revenue didn’t even cover the server cost I had at the time, so I actually was in minus in 2017. I also didn’t earn a single cent in the first year.

Adsense Results
2017 Google Adsense Revenue

At this time, I did not spend any time on ad optimization or even look up better ways of optimizing my earnings. I just kept writing content and hoped for the best.

As you can see at the end of this graph, there is a huge increase in revenue. This is the awesomeness that is called Christmas or holiday revenue. Every year around December, ad revenue increases like crazy for a month before hitting rock bottom in January – a toast on capitalism.

At the end of 2017, when I learned that I made almost 80$ in a single month, it dawned on me. I had to take Ad optimization more seriously – and I did.

The Year 2018

Throughout 2018, I started reading countless articles on ad optimization, but I never even considered changing from Google Adsense to another advertiser. All the research I did, didn’t lead anywhere noteworthy. Everybody’s conses was, stick with Google, it’s the best. And so I did.

Google Adsense earnings in 2018

In the year 2018, things changed for me. I churned out more content, and I started to take my business more seriously and treat it as an actual business. I had a lot to learn.

In December 2017, I had 25.000 visits a month. One year later, in December 2018, I reached 50.000 views a month. This was a huge milestone, and It showed in my revenue. I made 1998.47$ in the year 2018. That was a great achievement for me and another big milestone to hit on the way to becoming a full-time content creator and blogger.

Google Adsense Revenue
2018 Google Adsense Revenue

In 2018, I also gave Google Auto Ads a try, which basically is an automated ad placement system from Google. This would take the hassle of experimenting with ad placement out of the equation. At least in theory.

I tried Adsense Auto Ads for a month and had a huge drop in revenue compared to my carefully placed manual ads. I ditched it and never looked back.

Right around that time, I hit 50.000 views a month. This was when I got a Linked.in message from Mike McGuire, the Managing Director of Ezoic.

Before that, I had never heard of Ezoic, and I didn’t seriously look for any alternatives to Google Adsense. I did notice some of their ads here and there at the time but didn’t pay attention to them.

First Contact with Ezoic

Mike contacted me and tried to pitch me with:

Can I book 15 minutes of your time to outline how sites like yours can leverage native data from their readers to improve user experience and revenue?“.

To be honest, I wouldn’t even reply if there wasn’t the P.S. he included at the end of the email:

“I notice you practice BJJ (our CMO’s wife is a world champion – Tyler himself won Bronze Medal at the 2017 European Championship)”.

Being a long-time Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu practitioner, I certainly appreciated his effort in doing his research.

We exchanged a couple of emails back and forth. I did some research on my end and, based on it, decided not to go for their service for the time being. I have read a couple of Ezoic reviews, and none of them convinced me to go for it at this time.

Don’t get me wrong; their product already sparked some interest in me. Nothing I would have liked more than completely automating the serving of my ads, which consumes a lot of time manually with A/B testing, et cetera.

The Year 2019

My monthly visits kept rising, and so did my ad revenue from Google. In the last few months of 2018, I consecutively made more than 250$ in ad revenue. I didn’t think of changing anything yet as my revenue kept rising. In March 2019, I got more than 75.000 visits monthly to my blog. Another huge increase in visits and in ad revenue.

Second Contact with Ezoic

The revenue dropped a bit, as expected, at the beginning of 2019 until it eventually leveled out again in June 2019, when I made 333$ USD with Google Adsense. This was nice, but not nice enough.

Around that time, I was contacted by another sales representative of Ezoic. He sent me a long email, and we got talking. I immediately liked the guy. He was straightforward and honest in what he tried to pitch to me. We had a lot of casual conversations in the process, which I enjoyed. We are still in contact, checking in on each other occasionally. Ultimately, he convinced me to go with the free version of their service and give it a trial run.

I did a little bit more research, and what triggered my decision, in the end, was that Ezoic is an actual Certified Publishing Partner of Google. So their legitimacy was confirmed for me, which was an important part of my decision-making for giving Ezoic a try.

I didn’t think so much about increasing my revenue rather than completely automating the whole ad ecosystem on my website, which should ultimately free me up some much-needed time to do what I want to do – create content. Ezoic uses artificial intelligence to improve ad placements constantly, so it takes care of itself 100% once set up.

Their service, in its basic form, is completely free. The only thing they do after 30 days is to place a tiny Ezoic banner in the footer of your website, which didn’t bother me at all.

It was the beginning of July when I decided to switch over to Ezoic. You can see that transition reflected in my 2019 Google AdSense revenue, which dropped to almost 0 on the Google AdSense dashboard.

Adsense Results
2019 Google Adsense Revenue

Making the Switch to Ezoic

I have to honestly say part of why I decided to write this rather long Ezoic Review and talk about them in the first place was how satisfied I was with the integration process. My representative, Dan, literally took care of everything.

I already was using the Ad Inserter plugin to serve my Google AdSense Ads, so all I needed to do was wrap them in some Ezoic code, so they could use them as placeholders for their AI to inject their own ads. I also needed to adjust some nameserver settings with my hoster, which was easy because Dan took me through step-by-step and answered every single question I had with patience and competence.

The setup was finished rather quickly, and I was amazed at how easy it was. I thought it would be much more of a hassle. By now, you can probably tell that I am really satisfied with their integration process.

The First Month with Ezoic – June 2019

Alright, this is probably the part why you choose to read an Ezoic Review in the first place. Let’s talk about revenue.

Note: Since originally publishing this article, I have created a dedicated article covering my Ezoic Revenue, which is always up-to-date and probably easier to read when you just want to look at numbers without all of the contexts.

It took a couple of days for the AI to learn, but I’ve been made aware of this beforehand. Also, the summer months over June – September usually see another drop in ad revenue, with August being the lowest of the Summer months.

Remember the 333$ USD I made in June?

I started to see the first revenue on July 4th. About three days later, on a Sunday (Usually the lowest revenue day of the week by far), I had earned 24$, the highest revenue on a single day I ever had. On a Sunday. It sure looked to be good to be true, but the revenue kept rising.

As you can see in the graph below, thanks to their ads, I even cracked the 40$/day mark somewhere in mid-July.

Ezoic Earnings
July 2019 Ezoic Revenue

In the end, I made 811$ USD in July. That’s more than double compared to what I have ever made before with Google Adsense. I was impressed and very happy, to say the least. Maybe this makes it a bit clearer why I decided to write an Ezoic review and share my experience with you.

The Second Month with Ezoic – August 2019

As mentioned above, ad revenue usually drops a bit again in August, which it also did in my case. I contacted Dan, and he sent me an interesting graph that represents ad rates by day over the course of a year. It’s called the Online Ad Revenue Index.

Ezoic Review
The Online Ad Revenue Index

You can see ad rates are the highest in December, followed by a massive drop in January, then they slowly start to rise again towards summer, and they drop again in Mid-July / August. This was an accurate representation of what happened to my revenue.

Ezoic Earnings August 2019
August 2019 Ezoic Revenue

Admittedly a small drop, but a drop nevertheless. I didn’t care tho, though. This revenue was still way more than what I had earned with Google Adsense. In August 2019, I made 753$ USD.

The Third Month with Ezoic – September 2019

My visits per month were pretty similar throughout those months, so you can see that the AI is working on increasing revenue, even when the traffic stays approximately the same. The rise in traffic you see in October was around 10k ghost traffic I got out of some reason, so it’s 86k in October.

Traffic
Traffic July 2019 – November 2019

Anticipating that my earnings would rise again in September, I wasn’t disappointed. The AI kept working its magic, creating more revenue and, at the same time, marking another almost milestone. In September 2019, I made 989$, almost cracking the 1000$ mark for the first time!

September 2019 Ezoic Earnings
September 2019 Ezoic Revenue

I was finally able to do a long-overdue upgrade of my studio equipment. The dream of becoming a Full-Time Content Creator just came a bit closer.

Ezoic Premium in 2019

At the end of September, I got a popup message in my dashboard saying that I was invited to the Ezoic Premium Program. I thought, alright, here we go – that’s the part where they will ask me to sign up for a subscription. At this point, I was still using the completely free version.

I contacted Dan once more about Ezoic Premium. At this point, he had probably answered a hundred Emails from me already. I asked him if he thought it would be worth it for me. He replied that all of the customers who went for premium were very satisfied with the results.

Once again, I listened to Dan’s advice, who proved himself trustworthy in every decision I made and went for it. I got two weeks of a free premium trial at first.

They had different tiers, starting with 70$ per month, depending on how much revenue your site creates. If you earn more than a certain limit, you have to choose the higher-tier plan. I had three options: 4-Star Basic, Preferred, or Elite.

Side note: In 2022, the tiers changed slightly, but more on that in a second.

Each level of the tiers has more benefits, the 4-Star-Elite-Tier weighing in at 288$ per month. That sounded a lot at first, but I had two weeks of free Premium, so I went for the 4-Star-Elite plan.

They give you an estimate of what your earnings will be. For the Elite plan, it was an estimate of 330$ USD – 420$ USD per month. That was more than the tier itself would cost. Now, the great thing with this is even if you do not hit 288$ in Premium Ad Revenue for some reason; they automatically set you to a lower tier, so you don’t lose any money.

Premium also gives you a higher priority on all premium advertiser campaigns and some other goodies, generating more non-premium revenue for you.

Premium Features
Ezoic Premium Plans in 2019

The Fourth Month with Ezoic – October 2019

And more revenue it did create. After opting in for Premium, I was in for a surprise. As I said before, this Ezoic Review is a real-world example of how I implemented Ezoic in my own business, so I’m being completely transparent with my data.

Here are my October 2019 earnings with Ezoic premium:

October 2019 Ezoic Earnings
October 2019 Ezoic Revenue

In October 2019, my Ezoic revenue was 1800$ – doubling my September earnings after opting in for Ezoic Premium. Of course, we need to subtract the 288$ premium fee from this, which still leaves us with 1512$. For me, the move to premium was well worth it.

Now, I don’t know about your location, but this is almost a middle-class salary over here in Germany. This made me incredibly happy.

The Rest of 2019

In this Ezoic Review, as mentioned previously, I’m being completely transparent. Things cooled off a bit towards the end of the year, partly because traffic on my website got lower, and I didn’t put out as much content anymore due to working on other projects, but I still made 1300$ in November and 1250$ in December.

Ezoic Revenue 2019
Ezoic Revenue October – December 2019

The Year 2020

As you can see, everything was going really well in 2019, and then the Corona Virus hit. That has changed everything, basically overnight. Not only did I see a major drop in website visits due to people not going to the office (I have a lot of people visiting my website during their working hours), as well as advertisers cutting their budgets for ads – and this has shown in my Ezoic Revenue as well.

My website traffic dropped from an average of 3000 visits per day down to around 1500 or less basically overnight. Of course, the revenue took a hit too.

Ezoic Ad Review
Ezoic Revenue 2020

You can see a significant drop around the time Covid really hit, and everyone went into lockdown. My traffic graph shows a similar curve. But truth be told – I also was not very active during 2020 and didn’t release a whole bunch of articles during this time, so this also contributes to that a bit.

Nevertheless, Ezoic’s system still did its job and kept my ads optimized, making me the most profit possible. I would certainly have got a lot less had I still used Google Adsense.

The Year 2021

As mentioned above, I haven’t been very active on this blog throughout 2020, which means my Ezoic revenue basically stayed the same in 2021 as they were in 2020. I started paying more attention again when I got informed that Google was pushing their new, game-changing Core Web Vitals update in May.

Ezoic basically went out of its way and made sure its publishers know everything there is to know about this new, huge update. Another reason why I put so much effort into creating this Ezoic Review.

This is what I consider another big plus when joining Ezoic – you are always up-to-date on the latest SEO and web trends. Not only did they provide a webinar and several emails explaining in detail what the new Google Update does and how to comply with it, but they also dedicated a whole website to the topic, helping their publishers hit their Google CWV scores.

Considering all of the new CWV changes, I decided to re-template my blog around June 2021. This is a huge step because the AI has to learn everything from scratch once again.

Before doing the template switch, I reached out to their support and asked what I needed to keep in mind going for the switch. As always, they went out of their way and provided me with a step-by-step guide on how to make the transition as smooth as possible.

Now, don’t get me wrong. This is nothing they do for welfare reasons – if it isn’t obvious until now, the more money you earn, the more money they earn. This is what makes this relationship beautiful. You share the same interest.

Ezoic Revenue First Half of 2021

Here is my Ezoic revenue in 2021 so far. You can see it stayed pretty stable above ~400$ a month.

Ezoic Ad Revenue
Ezoic Revenue First Half of 2021

Since I recently switched my template, as mentioned above, to comply with the new Google CWV, I have already seen a rise in revenue during the past few days – great!

Ezoic Revenue Second Half of 2021

Ezoic Revenue Second Half of 2021
Ezoic Revenue Second Half of 2021

Since I spent more time with Ezoic and optimized my website again in the second half of 2021, I could see direct results in my revenue. Especially since I hit those Google CWV scores, I’ve seen a huge bump in traffic as well as in site revenue.

I can definitely say that the second half of 2021 has treated me well. I put out content more consistently again, and this has been reflected directly in my revenue. I love how the effort you put in directly reflects in your earnings.

They also have released a ton of new features during the last year, which contributed to the decision to completely update this Ezoic Review once again.

The Year 2022

The year 2022 has been pretty solid for me so far. I’ve been publishing more content again, and this has been reflected in my revenue. I highly recommend checking out my in-depth article, where I break down my monthly revenue for both my website earnings as well as my Ezoic affiliate earnings.

This year I published a lot more content than in 2021 and will continue to do so. Usually, these articles take a while to generate some traffic, so I am anticipating the revenue to increase again further by the end of the year.

So far, I have pretty consistently earned more than 600$ per month from my one website only:

Ezoic Earnings 2022
Ezoic Earnings 2022

And as you can see, traffic starts picking up as well:

Website Traffic 2022
Website Traffic 2022

Ezoic Premium in 2023

I have been a Premium customer ever since I first signed up for it, simply because I get additional revenue and some worthwhile premium features on top.

As I had said before when we were talking about Ezoic premium in 2019, their pricing model has since changed a bit, making it more accessible for smaller publishers, which is great.

Ezoic Premium Price
Ezoic Premium Plans 2023

As you can see, they have a bunch of different tiers available to choose from. Some will only become available once you reach a certain revenue, and some of them will become inaccessible once you hit a certain revenue level – but the great thing is, should your revenue drop, they automatically downgrade you back to the lower plan, reducing monthly cost for you automatically – I found this to be a great feature.

They also inform you once you are eligible for a higher tier again – until now, this had to be done manually, but since August 2021, they added a new feature that also allows you to automatically upgrade to the next tier, which helps you to always stay on top of your best possible earnings.

Ezoic Premium Price
Automated Upgrade Options

The reason why I always kept my premium subscription is that you always earn more than you pay. If you look at the image with the prices above, you see that the “estimated premium revenue” is always higher than the actual cost of the plan.

So, for example, would you choose the Basic Plan that costs 14$ per month, the estimated revenue would be 17$ – 19$, which means at the worst outcome, you’d earn 3$ more than if you wouldn’t have a Premium Subscription.

These profit margins go up substantially on the higher tiers. If you look at the 3-Star Premium Plan Elite Level that comes at 110$ per month – the estimated revenue here is 165$210$ per month, which boils down to around 55$ extra per month in the WORST case.

Of course, if you read their small print, nothing is guaranteed. Speaking from personal experience – I have always earned more than I have paid for, in some months, a lot more.

Ezoic Premium Extra Features

You also get access to many extra features as a premium customer, most of which are listed in the pricing diagram above.

The ones that I like most are access to the Quarterly Site Review, where you can schedule a meeting with your publisher success manager, who looks over all your settings, analyzes your website and gives you tips on optimizing your business in a One-to-One Zoom call. I have always found those reviews extremely beneficial, and I am always looking forward to them.

This is especially valuable since you have your publisher success manager assigned to you who will accompany you through the growth process. Having a single point of contact has been proven to be extremely valuable for me.

Ezoic Premium Benefits
Ezoic Site Review

A little tip on that note: Write down what you want to ask during the meeting and keep it short and precise, as time is limited. The more organized you go into those meetings, the more you get out of them.

Another feature I personally really like is access to the Analytics API. As a programmer, this little REST API allows me to access all of my analytics data using any programming language I like. I use it to send regular updates and interesting pieces of data to my phone.

But let’s be realistic. Most of us are probably most interested in the part where it says “increased revenue“. Speaking about analytics, this brings us to the next major point of this Ezoic Review.

Ezoic Big Data Analytics

This is a major topic that doesn’t fit into this Ezoic Review, but I will cover it in a separate, dedicated article soon. I will just give you a short overview of how Big Data Analytics look like below.

Ezoic comes with a bunch of awesome analytics tools that allow you to monitor viewer behavior and better understand the most popular content on your website, but it also shows you detailed analytics on how each ad performs and which of your articles drive the most revenue.

There are many different metrics that you can pull, and it takes some time to understand the whole thing, but once you do, you start to see the benefits because all of these metrics allow you to be a step ahead of your competitors.

Big Data Analytics
Ezoic Big Data Analytics Dashboard

But as I have said, going down into the details would be out of the scope of this Ezoic Review – so stay tuned for the extra piece.

The Struggle with Website Performance

I was already talking about the new Google Web Vitals update above, and that goes hand in hand with the topic of WordPress Site Speed. I think it’s important to talk about this in this Ezoic Review since website performance is a huge and important metric for all of us.

Before switching to Ezoic, I spent countless hours trying different settings and plugins on my website to improve its performance – mostly ending in very frustrating results, as you can see below in a second.

The most popular “Site Speed Plugins” out there are WP-Rocket, WP SuperCache, and all the others whose names I successfully deleted from my memory.

Whatever I did, I never came even close to a satisfying result. Right around that time, I got an email from them telling me about their new feature called “Site Speed Accelerator”, now rebranded as Ezoic Leap and completely free of charge, back then, a paid service that comes at 12,99$ a month.

Their promise: Make your website lightning-fast without the need to do anything. Now, this only works if you use Ezoic’s name servers. That sounded too good to be true, but since I already was a long-term customer, I got a free beta invite.

I gave it a shot back in 2019, and I was blown away by the results. I wanted to include this development in this Ezoic Review.

Google Pagespeed Results with WP-Rocket (DESKTOP)

Speed up wordpress with Ezoic
Google Pagespeed Results with WP-Rocket (DESKTOP)

Google Pagespeed Results with WP-Rocket (MOBILE)

Ezoic Ad Review
Google Pagespeed Results with WP-Rocket (MOBILE)

GTmetrix Score with WP-Rocket

Speed up wordpress with Ezoic
GTmetrix Score with WP-Rocket

As you can see, I was getting nowhere. My page speed was terrible.

Website Performance after switching to Site Speed Accelerator

I disabled all caching plugins on my end and waited a few days for Ezoic’s tool to kick in. I was completely impressed by the results.

Google Pagespeed Results with Site Speed Accelerator (DESKTOP)

Speed Up WordPress with Ezoic Site Speed Accelerator
Google Pagespeed Results with Site Speed Accelerator (DESKTOP)

Google Pagespeed Results with Site Speed Accelerator (Mobile)

Speed Up WordPress with Ezoic Site Speed Accelerator
Google Pagespeed Results with Site Speed Accelerator (Mobile)

GTmetrix Results with Site Speed Accelerator

My GT Metrix Scores before switching to Ezoic Site Speed Accelerator
GTmetrix Results with Site Speed Accelerator

Was I wasting all those hours trying to optimize this myself? It sure seems like it. In the beginning, I couldn’t believe my eyes, but even Google Lighthouse audits had the same result. The site was loading lightning-fast on every device. I guess I was sold. Mind you. Those results were the initial results without any further optimization.

I have been a user of the former Site Speed Accelerator ever since and have migrated over to Leap once they released it. Since then, I have always got results in the high 90% on all audits.

Ezoic Leap Overview

Update: I have since released an entire article dedicated to Ezoic Leap, where we go in-depth into this feature. Read it here if you are interested in learning more.

I continue to use Ezoic Leap because it performs even better than the old Site Speed Accelerator and because I don’t need to think about what I have to improve on my website – Leap tells me exactly what I need to do to get higher scores.

As of now, the Ezoic Leap team pushes hard so that their publishers can pass Google’s SEO-critical CWV scores – they want you to outperform the competition, and they gave you the best tool to do it.

The Leap Dashboard

I don’t want to go into all of the nitty-gritty little details of Leap in this Ezoic Review since there is a separate article covering Ezoic Leap in greater detail, so I just want to give you a quick sneak-peak of the Leap dashboard.

Leap Dashboard
Leap Dashboard

As I have mentioned above, I haven’t optimized my new template yet, so those are the raw scores I got by just activating Leap without doing any extra work. As you can see, Leap reserves its very own category on its website, where you can tweak a ton of things to fine-tune your setup, or you can even go ahead and copy the settings that the top-ranking pages use (Leaderboard on the right side).

Leap Recommendations

The best part is the recommendations. This is where Leap thrives – It tells you what to do to achieve better scores – mostly accompanied by detailed instructions on the Ezoic WordPress Blog. This feature has saved me a ton of time doing research on my own.

Leap Recommendations
Leap Recommendations

Because Ezoic has so much data from their other publishers, they can even give you percentage estimates of how many sites are running slower because they are using a certain technology or plugin. Being a web developer myself, I fully understand how valuable this information is.

All that being said, I would recommend Ezoic Leap to anyone who doesn’t want to deal with website optimization. It is the best tool I have encountered to date.

Updated Scores Post Optimization November 2021

As I had promised, this Ezoic Review stays up-to-date.

I am writing this about two months after I wrote the initial Leap section, and I have done a bunch of optimizations that were recommended to me through Leap. My scores have increased significantly, and I am now passing Google Web Vitals Scores both on Mobile and on Desktop. I am amazed at how accurately this tool works.

I sometimes Google my articles on tech-related stuff since I write them partly for myself, and I was astonished by how fast this website loads now, even considering the ads (which Leap takes care of optimizing too).

These are my current Leap scores as of November 2021. I am still working on the mobile score, but we’re getting there:

Ezoic Review
Ezoic Leap Scores November 2021

Ezoic Leap Summary

Leap has freed up so much time for me that I needed to include it in this Ezoic Review, not needing to deal with site speed optimization anymore. I can just recommend it to anyone. I have no desire to go back to a WordPress Site Speed Plugin anytime soon.

In my opinion, the Site Speed Accelerator was already great, but Leap is a game-changer when it comes to WordPress Site Speed, especially because they also take the ads they deliver into consideration, as well as CWV scores.

If that has piqued your interest, why don’t you give Leap a try? It’s free.

Ezoic Requirements

I got many questions about which requirements Ezoic has regarding joining their platform. I decided to write a separate article on the topic you can read here.

In short, it boils down to how much traffic you have on your website. Back when I started, the minimum requirements were 50.000 visitors a month. Gladly, they have adjusted their requirements, and you can join Ezoic now already with 10.000 visitors a month thanks to their new Access Now Program.

Also, if you join through one of the links in this article, Ezoic knows that you are coming from my website, which also increases your chances of getting accepted early.

The Ezoic Affiliate Program

Since I have been one of the early adopters of Ezoic’s platform, I have had the privilege to join their affiliate program early on. I have been helping people to get started with Ezoic, and in return, I am earning commissions from Ezoic. This has been a rewarding experience for me since both parties benefit from the outcome.

I am very picky when it comes to working with affiliate programs since my main goal is to provide value to my readers. With Ezoic, I have no doubt since it’s a win-win situation.

If you want to learn how much I have earned with the Ezoic Affiliate Program, you should give my detailed article on that topic a read.

Ezoic Review Verdict after 4 Years

Now, if we look back at what I earned with Google Adsense before switching over to Ezoic in 2019, their services more than quadrupled my earnings, which translated to a 454% increase in Revenue within just four months when I initially switched over to Ezoic from Google AdSense. These were extraordinary results.

Since COVID hit exactly at the height of my blog’s success, the blog took a big hit in revenue due to companies trying to save money and fewer people going to the office, hence fewer people consuming my content. Otherwise, who knows, maybe the revenue would have kept rising even higher.

Nevertheless, there is no reason to complain. I have been very satisfied with everything their service has enabled me to do with my business. Their extraordinary support stands out in a sea of bad customer service nowadays. With this Ezoic review, I wanted to give you the best real-world example I could, being completely transparent with my revenue and numbers.

Ezoic Leap has completely removed a layer of complexity for me regarding website performance optimization. The time I have saved fiddling around with WordPress plugins and code has directly translated into writing more content and generating more revenue. As Leap keeps evolving, I am confident they have a tool that will be the market leader in no time.

Also, with the rise of Ezoic video, another layer has been added to the Ezoic ecosystem. It makes sense to include videos in your articles for better SEO performance, and Ezoic video is just the right tool for the job.

Is Ezoic worth it?

Since writing this Ezoic Review, I got asked this question a lot. The short answer is: Yes, absolutely.

I did not regret switching to Ezoic from Google Adsense any single time. I am incredibly happy with their service and especially with their continuous support. Seriously, their team is superb.

I also have watched the development of their platform over the past year, and they work hard to keep improving their service constantly. There rarely is a week where there isn’t an update to their WordPress plugin, which goes to show that they want to be on top of their game when it comes to Leap.

Also, there are a ton of free webinars and Facebook groups with insider tips. One thing I’d like to mention specifically is the Facebook group that is run by my initial contact Danijel Dadovic.

Danijel is putting out tips & tricks on how to increase your earnings almost daily. This community is also extremely helpful when it comes to solving questions and problems you might have regarding content creation.

If you try Ezoic and do not like it, you can always go back to Google Adsense without any issues or ties. I highly recommend at least trying them for a few months. If you are not convinced by now, you can read some of the comments below where people took the leap and gave Ezoic a try. You will see positive feedback throughout.

ℹ️ This Guide has related Articles!
👉 Ezoic Review – How Ezoic helped me to go Full-Time Blogger
👉 Ezoic Requirements & How to increase website earnings
👉 Ezoic Earnings – My Complete 4-Year Revenue with Ezoic
👉 Ezoic Leap Review – The Best Page Speed Tool Available Today
👉 Disable Ezoic Ad Placeholder by CSS Tag (The Easy Way)

Affiliate Disclaimer: If you use the link in this article to sign up with Ezoic, I will receive a small commission for this referral in exchange for providing in-depth insights into my own revenue and experience. Thank you!

89 thoughts on “Ezoic Review 2023 – Increase Ad Revenue with AI”

  1. naturally like your web site however you need to take a look at the spelling on several of your posts. A number of them are rife with spelling problems and I find it very bothersome to tell the truth on the other hand I will surely come again again.

    Reply
  2. this morning I read your review, very impressive. But when I want to apply a good Ezoic setting, I don’t have a guide, instead I want to apply it myself, but I don’t have much knowledge about Ezoic yet. Can you help me

    Reply
  3. Every time I read a new post, I feel like I’ve learned something valuable or gained a new perspective. Thank you for consistently putting out such great content!

    Reply
  4. Hi Stefan!

    Woaw, I loved reading this review because it felt like reading the EXACT story of my blog. Everything is pretty similar, from your progression in the first two years, to the few cents earned daily with adsense, the use of wordpress and Ad Inserter, the pagespeed metrics, my mindset about not even trying to earn more, since the adsense revenues were so ridiculous, etc… The only difference is I’m only entering year two.
    Today, my website has about 35-40k monthly visitors and I’m just now switching to ezoic. And honestly, your review gave me soooo much hope!

    I recently had my first born, and I chose to go back to work only 4 days a week. I kept the fifth day to stay at home and work on my blog. It’s costing me about 400€, but it’s a choice I made because I really want to grow this online magazine. And now, I’m starting to believe that soon, I will finally manage to earn back what I’m loosing from working part time.

    Don’t worry, I’m not taking it for granted or assuming that your experience is a guarantee that it will work for me. But I’m pretty confident that it’s gonna get me close to my goal, wich is also to be a full-time blogger.

    I’m gonna see riiight now what this “Leap” thing is about, because I’v been struggling just like you to have faster loading times.

    Thanks for the very detailed feedback and your advices. Sorry if my english is weird sometimes, I’m french

    Reply
    • Hi Jessica!

      Thank you so much for sharing your story with me and other readers. Your dedication and hard work to grow your blog despite the challenges are truly inspiring. It’s incredible to hear that you are now getting 35-40k monthly visitors, and it’s wonderful that you have chosen to invest in your blog by working on it on your free day.

      It’s great to hear that my review has given you hope. While there are no guarantees, I believe that your perseverance and the steps you are taking will bring you closer to your goal of becoming a full-time blogger.

      I’m glad that you found my feedback and advice helpful, and I encourage you to keep pushing forward. Remember to celebrate every milestone, no matter how small it may seem, and always keep learning and experimenting. Leap is a great tool, and it helped me tremendously; I am certain it will do the same for you.

      I wish you all the best on your blogging journey!

      And don’t worry about your English; it’s totally fine. You did an excellent job!

      Stefan

      Reply
      • Hi Stefan,

        Unfortunately, Ezoic doesn’t seem to work so well for me. I don’t know if it’s because I’m in France, because of my niche, or a combination of both, but my EPMV is very low (around 1-2$). It’s been 6 weeks, and it’s only decreasing everyday (when it’s supposed to do the opposite).
        On a day with 1500 visits, I earn around 1,5$, so even if I know it’s not that simple of a calculation, it kind of means that a full month with 45k visits (about 80k pageveiws), I would get around 45$…
        It means to me that I would have to get massive traffic (like millions) in order to make a living.
        Plus, being paid per visit is fine, but Ezoic doesn’t seem to reward clicks at all, wich is kind of lame in my opinion.
        I’m reverting back to adsense for now. maybe I’l give Ezoic another try when I get more traffic (or not).
        I also feel like (don’t take it for you), the ezoic affiliate program has brought out many (many) positive Ezoic reviews everywhere (EVERYWHERE) and that they can be misleading or deceiving. Here are some of my lastest revenues:
        2023-03-23 (Jeu.) 534 (visits) $0.82 (earnings) $1.54 (EPMV)
        2023-03-22 (Mer.) 518 (visits) $0.65 (earnings) $1.25 (EPMV)
        2023-03-11 (Sam.) 1,212 (visits) $1.61 (earnings) $1.33 (EPMV)
        2023-03-10 (Ven.) 911 (visits) $1.10 (earnings) $1.21 (EPMV)

        Reply
        • Hi Jessica!

          That is indeed very weird!

          With 80k pageviews per month you should sit around somewhere of 600-700$ of revenue.

          It seems like your setup has some flaws in it. Did you reach out to Ezoic to get help with optimizing your setup?

          It would be interesting to see your configuration.

          Reply
          • Hi Stefan, I reached out to Ezoic. My setup seems OK. Every optimization option is checked. It seems I’m not the only one with this problem. Lots of people outside the US seem to have very low EPMVs as well.
            The team advised to install the WP plugin, for the placeorders to be automatic wich I did.
            My EPMV is even lower now (less than 1$).
            I’m leaving Ezoic today. I think I’ll focus on speed and traffic. There is no point monetizing (and slowing down my site speed consequently with lots of .js calls), if I’m gonna make 30$ a month.
            I’m just gonna place back some Amazon affiliates links.

  5. Thank you for this review Stefan!
    I used Advanced Ads plugin in my WordPress blog. It helped me a lot with AdSense ads placement since I´m not a developer.
    Now I have signed up for Ezoic last month and installed their plugin. Should I remove Advanced Ads?
    I also had Really Simple SSL (to force all http into https), but I guess Ezoic does it through Cloudflare!
    I see you recommend keeping a clean setup, but I can´t tell easily if some plugins are needed or not, or if there´s some redundance creating conflicts with Ezoic.
    Thank you in advance!

    Reply
  6. Do you know how good they are compared to Freestar, or someone in the comments maybe? They say they will be 30% better, but Freestar is already at the top of the game so I wonder how it’s possible. Thank you!

    Reply
    • While you use Ezoic, AdSense ads will still be displayed using mediation. This is the beauty of Ezoic. Ezoic will only show AdSense ads when they perform better than other ads, so you get the best of both worlds.

      Reply
    • Currently, Ad Rates are generally at a very low level due to the whole economy being in a dip.

      Did you reach out to Ezoic to get help to improve your setup? How much traffic do you get monthly and what does your revenue look like?

      Reply
  7. That was by far the best review I have read so far. Thank you for that ! Would you recommend waiting to have a 10000 visitors a month before applying or do it earlier?

    Thank you again please keep up doing the work!

    S.

    Reply
    • Hello Sergei,

      I’m glad that my review was helpful to you.

      Yes, I would recommend waiting to hit these 10000 visitors at least for 2 months consistently before applying. This will improve your chances of getting excepted tremendously.

      You can also just reach out to me at [email protected] if you have any additional questions or need help with integration.

      Reply
  8. Hello Stefan,

    thank you very much for taking the time to write this awesome Ezoic review and for your help with the integration of my website.

    I have to admit I was a bit overwhelmed at first, but with your clear instructions and recommendations, the transition from AdSense was a breeze.

    I’m just a month in right now and I’m already seeing more than 150% increase in revenue on my blog, I can’t even express how grateful I am for this.

    Also, Leap is a blast. I completely removed all of my pagespeed plugins and went from a ~55 Google score up to 94. 94!

    Thank you once again Stefan, I truly appreciate having found your article and your work.

    Mohammad

    Reply
    • Hello Mohammad!

      Glad to hear from you. I am happy beyond measure that I was able to help you fully integrate with Ezoic and that you are in fact seeing the results I was anticipating! Keep publishing content and only good things will happen to you 🙂

      Good luck!

      Reply
  9. I really like reading through a post that can make men and women think. Also, thank you for allowing me to comment!

    Reply
  10. Very well presented. Every quote was awesome and thanks for sharing the content. Keep sharing and keep motivating others.

    Reply
  11. Hi there to all, for the reason that I am genuinely keen of reading this website’s post to be updated on a regular basis. It carries pleasant stuff.

    Reply
  12. Great information shared.. really enjoyed reading this post thank you author for sharing this post .. appreciated

    Reply
  13. Hey Stefan,

    Thanks for the article! I’ve put a lot of time studying about Ezoic, I read a LOT of content about that, but your article is the best content i’ve found on this matter.

    Do you think Ezoic could increase the revenue of my website with the content focused on education content with more than 70k views a monthly. (My views are 100% from Brazil. I couldn’t find any information for Ezoic performance in Brazil)

    Alex

    Reply
    • Hello Alex,

      absolutely. 70k views a month is a LOT. You should definitely give it a try. Make sure to use my link from the article so Ezoic helps you with the onboarding! Let me know how it went!

      Reply
  14. I have to say my experience is very similar, I made the switch from Adsense to Ezoic. Overnight my ad revenue was up 260%. Then over the following month I made more ad placeholders and the EMPV increased and increased. I am so glad I found reviews on Ezoic recommending the service. I would have left some much cash on the table if I hadn’t of made that switch.

    Reply
  15. Thanks for the great review! This was the final piece I needed to convince myself to give ezoic a try. Thanks for taking the time to put this together.

    Reply
  16. Totally genuine and true review….. Appreciable
    I have a query. I have a 1-year-old website (basicwebguide.com) that has 10k+ monthly views.

    Initially, I put AdSense there and in the recent 2 months, I also approved from Ezoic. So, my site has both ad networks currently. I want to ask if I should continue with both or just move to the ezoic only?

    And what should I expect from ezoic if I currently have only 10k views per month?

    Thank You if you could answer me both.

    Reply
    • Hey Pankaj,

      since I already answered this question to you on Twitter, I answer it again here for everyone to see:

      1) I would highly recommend running Ezoic only. Ezoic also delivers Google Ads anyway, so the only thing you achieve by running both is you slow down your site. Keeping a clean setup is important.
      2) I can’t tell. You can never predict this, but you will definitely see an increase from what you get from Google AdSense now, so much is for sure.

      Good luck!

      Reply
  17. Hey Stefan,

    Thanks for the great information & detailed data about Ezoic. Can you please explain something about the objectionable/profanity words pointed out by AI in the dashboard. Ezoic says it won’t dispaly ads on pages/posts with objectionable content/words as per adsense policy. My niche is on songs & profanity words are somehow used in the songs. However I have tapped many words using profanity filter plugin. Lets hope the number of pages pointed out by AI goes down next month. However I am happy to switch over to Ezoic. I have integrated through cloudflare & seeing positive results day by day.

    Was afraid in the beginning & now confident with ezoic.

    Reply
  18. This was Really Great reading experience…. Actually this post really motivated me and I will surely continue on my blog. I was about to give up on blogging because of Ranking. Thanks for this post AF

    Reply
  19. I got the invite a few weeks ago, and am currently in the process of switching with Ezoic. in fact, this article really helped me to understand Ezoic. I really appreciate that you provided such an amazing insight in the last 4/5 years. keep it up!

    Reply
    • Hey Claire,

      love to hear this feedback! I’m glad I was part of convincing you to switch over to them – you will not regret it. Keep me posted on how your journey goes. Gladly send me a DM on Twitter I’m there at twitter.com/ceos3c.

      Reply
  20. That was a great review. I think I give it a shot. Is now a good time to jump on board? I am a bit hesitant because it’s the end of the year and I don’t want to miss out on the ad revenue.

    Thank you!

    Reply
    • Thanks! I can’t tell. I would probably wait until after Christmas to make the switch. You could earn more if you get everything set up on time, or you could earn less if there is a problem. It’s up to you.

      Reply
  21. How is the situation looking now in regards to covid? are the ad rates getting better again? and is it worth to join ezoic over adsense as of late 2021?

    Thanks

    Reply
    • Hey Naomi,

      Ad rates are indeed getting better. It seems like people are starting to spend money on advertisements again.

      In my opinion, it is well worth it, yes!

      Reply
  22. Thanks for the review! This was the final piece I needed to convince myself to give ezoic a try….

    AdSense earnings really did tank since corona, so I hope this will make things better…. Do you still use leap? And if so, did you optimize it further and what are your current page scores?

    Thanks, J.

    Reply
    • Hello Jay!

      Glad that my review was able to convince you to give Ezoic a try. And yes indeed, Covid did deliver a hard hit on all kinds of ad revenue…

      I still use Leap and I love it. I did do further optimization and I’m currently at 99 for Desktop and at around 85 for Mobile. Optimizing Mobile is much harder than Desktop, but I’m working on it and I actually started working together with Ezoic to create a very detailed guide on Leap, so stay tuned for that!

      Good luck 🙂

      Reply
  23. Great review! I just went through it and I think you convinced me trying Ezoic. I have a website with around 1000 visits a day and I am currently using Google adsense, revenue is not so great yet but from what I read, it’s well worth a try!

    Thanks for taking the time to put this together.

    -Robert

    Reply
    • Hey Robert,

      thanks! Great to hear that you have liked my review. 1000 visits a day is already a solid number! That is definitely something you can work with using Ezoic, you should see a big increase in revenue for sure.

      Good luck, let me know how it went!

      Reply
  24. Hello sir,
    I’ve been through every single word if your blog and its inspiring me. I got approval for ezoic a day before. It is really motivating me. Thanks for such a great article. Thank you!

    Reply
    • Hello Pratik,

      that is very nice to hear! I am glad that you liked my post and I thank you for taking the time to leave a review 🙂

      Wishing you all the best on your journey, keep me posted!

      Reply
  25. Great write-up, Stefan.

    Your Ezoic journey mirrors mine a lot, more than a year on AdSense, getting an e-mail and follow-ups from Ezoic, and eventually switching.

    My only regret is not switching sooner!

    All the best with your blog ?.

    Reply
  26. Hey there,

    I just wanted to say thank you for putting this together! I run a rather successful blog (150k views a month at the moment) and I was playing with the thought of switching to Ezoic from Google Adsense for a while now.

    Your Ezoic review actually helped me to take the leap (no pun intended lol) and make the transition to Ezoic. I’ve been with them for around 5 months now and my revenue already increased substantially.

    So thank you once more, this was by far the most detailed review I have found on the internet!

    Peter

    Reply
    • Hey Peter,

      I’m very glad to hear that. I put this whole review together because I really believe it’s a great technology, so I am happy to see it working out for someone else as well! Keep me posted on how your experience develops over the next couple of months!

      Also, thanks for leaving a comment and letting me know!

      Reply
    • Good my friend, can you tell me your blog and how much it takes with you to earn your first 1k$ because I have started a blog for 2 months ago, and I didn’t get any views I know the blog is new. Thank you, my friend.

      Reply
      • That depends on a lot of factors. It took me years to earn my first 1k$.

        You need to make sure to nail your SEO, and keyword research, and most importantly: Don’t give up.

        I sometimes write articles that don’t rank at all. All of a sudden, one year later, without touching them, they start ranking and driving in traffic. It’s all a waiting game.

        I like to compare blogging to fishing. You need to bring a lot of patience. Most people give up way too early. Just keep a consistent writing routine and one day you will reap the fruits of your work.

        Good luck!

        Reply

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