Podcast Version
How much can a single article earn?
Short answer: LOTS
In fact, my highest earning article earns a pittance compared to what some high-earning pages earn on the Web.
My niche sites have 2 strikes against them when it comes to high revenue per article. They are:
1. Display ads: The lion’s share of my revenue is from display ads, which are at the bottom of the website monetization food chain. The plus side is I can pubish on any topic I want within my niche, target low competition keywords and rank for plenty without a bunch of off-site SEO shenanigans.
2. Low search keywords: I intentionally target lower search volume keywords so I can rank them without link building. This will naturally result in a fairly low revenue per article overall.
Despite those two strikes, my top-earning 50 articles do well. Here’s the data from AdThrive.
PLEASE NOTE that this analysis does NOT involve fatstacksblog.com.
Total site revenue for the last 30 days (Jan. 28 to Feb. 26, 2020): $33,655
What’s more interesting than the absolute revenue amount of my top 50 articles is the percentage of total revenue that the top 50 earning articles earn.
Top 50 articles ad revenue over the last 30 days: $8,048 (24% of total ad revenue / $160 per article).
Top 10 articles ad revenue over the last 30 days: $3,361 (10% of total ad revenue / $336 per article)
Top earning article ad revenue over the last 30 days: $485 (1.4% of total ad revenue)
Ad revenue for the 50th highest earning article for the last 30 days: $32.45 (talk about a quick decline within the top 50 articles).
Page view volume range (last 30 days): 3,435 to 27,849
Please note that the above analysis does not take into account about $4K worth of affiliate revenue.
What’s interesting is no single article accounts for all that big of a percentage of revenue. My best-earning article accounts for only 1.4% of total ad revenue. In other words, my Crank n’ Bank content strategy ends up with a highly dispersed revenue distribution across my entire site. I like this because if I stop ranking for any single keyword, it won’t have a big impact on revenue. That’s not to say that I’m not vulnerable. I am. If my entire site was denigrated in search, revenue distribution is meaningless.
Why do I publish this stuff?
Because many Fat Stacks readers ask me these questions regularly.
Inquiring minds want to know.
Jon Dykstra is a six figure niche site creator with 10+ years of experience. His willingness to openly share his wins and losses in the email newsletter he publishes has made him a go-to source of guidance and motivation for many. His popular “Niche site profits” course has helped thousands follow his footsteps in creating simple niche sites that earn big.
What tool are you using to display “ad earnings”?
It’s AdThrive’s dashboard that reports the data.
Thanks for sharing Jon!
Could you clarify if these are only your Ezoic results or is it the total of all ad networks (including Ezoic)?
Could you also clarify if this is the combine results of all your sites?
The CPM seems fantastic
Hey James, this is revenue from one site and it’s monetized with AdThrive.
Quick question – how many total articles do you have on this specific site and how many years did it take to build that level of pageviews? I assume at least 2 years. Very nice analysis!