Issue 3

First...

Black Friday and Cyber Monday Deals

I'm keeping my eye on deals right now that will give us affiliate marketers some key tools to enhance our niche sites. I'll curate and send a Special Edition of the Newsletter probably Thursday when the majority of deals have been announced.

Be on the lookout for it!

Higher Ad Revenue in November/December

2 weeks ago, I hit a new daily record in Ezoic ad revenue at $66.37. This past week, I had another new daily record at $66.99. Two nice spikes on those days and I'm expecting at least another record daily high in the next 1.5 months. Why is that?

It's that time of the year - Q4!

My traffic has gone up as people are searching more. You can see that in the beginning of November, my ad revenue received a nice spike. That's a result of more traffic from a combination of keywords ranking better and the beginnings of the holiday season when people spend more.

I did half-expect traffic and revenues to calm down after Amazon Prime Day and until Black Friday, but that just hasn't happened. The traffic has been steady at this new daily level of around 1000-1200 daily visitors. Sales keep occurring and increasing.

I received an Ezoic email that we're in the midst of seasonal increases in ad revenues, and they gave 3 tips to publishers to take full advantage of the opportunity:

Maximize Ezoic ad traffic. If you previously set restrictions, consider lifting them at least temporarily. You may want to switch your optimization goals to Revenue Focused as well.
Avoid sudden changes to your website theme. When you modify your site design, your previous ad placeholders may no longer fit. The loss of placeholders almost always results in reduced revenue.
Add your new sites now. Adding more eligible sites to your Ezoic account is quick and easy. Just log in to your Ezoic dashboard and click on 'Add a Site' to get started.

Click the link to sign up for Ezoic if you have over 10k visitors a month and aren't monetizing yet! Feel free to also reply to this email with any Ezoic questions and I'll help where I can.

Income Reports

Adrian Diaz Oct. 2020 Income - $356.12

Adrian Diaz is one of the better YouTubers out there who's always hustling and laying it all out for you to see video-by-video at his Hasta La Vista Boss YouTube channel. He gets creative in his videos, leading to more fun and energy than other YouTube channels.

His income report videos are incredibly detailed, going into all his personal income and expenses. He also shows all his revenue sources, including his investment properties. This income report is a live stream, so he's interacting with people who were watching live.

He's also the first to invite anyone watching to hop onto the livestream with him. It's a good time and you never know who might hop on to drop knowledge bombs.

He generated $356.12 from his online marketing side hustles, but he had more money going out in Oct., resulting in a loss of $76.95.

SEO

Core Web Vitals: LCP, FID, CLS

May 2021 "sometime" will have a big impact on search rankings. That's when Google will add these 3 pagespeed metrics as search signals when deciding your webpage's page experience score.

Web.dev is an educational site by Google that has loads of information on improving page load times and how to build websites better in general.

It can get technical, so be ready to dig in if you're not as tech-savvy. Even if you're not tech-savvy, it's still easy to read and give you a good idea of what areas to focus on. If you're unable to do certain things yourself, you can always outsource it.

You can also find freelancers on Fiverr.com to help with WordPress speed. Just be sure to look at the reviews and the seller's reputation.

Google Algorithm Update on November 17th and 18th?

Did you see any jumps or drops in your rankings on Tuesday or Wednesday? Barry Schwartz saw that there was some low level chatter in forums and social media, as well as some tools used to signal potential Google updates.

It doesn't seem like it was anything major like May the 4th, but check your rank tracker and Google Search Console, see if there might've been any large spikes for keywords. I didn't notice any significant changes in my search rankings for any of my niche sites.

You'll want to go to the article because it has links to 10 of the top tracking tools with charts on Google volatility to show potential Google updates - Mozcast, Accuranker, RankRanger, etc.

Google Passage Ranking Explained - Martin Splitt

Ever ramble on and on in a blog post? Well, you're in luck because Google's come out with Passages Ranking.

Passage Ranking looks for potential nuggets in your post and will rank those passages. It'll ignore everything else because their assertion is not everyone knows how to write organized posts. So they'll help the writers out by looking for and indexing/ranking the good parts of their articles.

I'll be interested to see how Passage Ranking works on pages that aren't ranking or just ranking very low. Passage Ranking will go live sometime in Dec. 2020 or in early 2021.

Google Updates Remove Outdated Content Tool

The Remove Outdated Content Tool is used to request deindexing of pages on other websites.

Google's updated the UI design of the tool, but the functionality is the same. If you haven't used the tool before, it's for those old pages from your website that are still showing in search results due to Google cache.

Google also has a Remove Content Tool, but that's only to remove pages from your own sites in Google's search results.

Both are handy tools, so do check them out if you need to remove your old content from Google's Search Results.

Tools and Resources

FREE Digital Marketing Templates from Brian Dean, Backlinko

Brian Dean is one of the most knowledgeable SEO experts who are constantly pushing content on YouTube and his Backlink.com blog.

He just released 23 templates that you can use for your content, SEO, linking, email, social media, and public relations strategies.

All his content is long form, so it takes awhile to get through them, but they're detailed.

I do have to say that I don't read through all his articles, nor do I watch all his videos from start to finish. That's because he presents content that's geared for beginners. But I do use his content as a resource if I need refreshers.

Content

Gift Guide SEO & Monetization Techniques With Examples!

Have a niche site covering various products? You've probably written a Gift Guide or two.

This SEO and Monetization Guide to Gift Guides gives many kinds of gift lists that you can create for your visitors. He provides marketing tips and strategies, along with SEO and keyword tips on how to best optimize your page. It's a good read and gives good examples to jumpstart your gift guide for the holidays.

How to Be a Better SEO Writer - Ahrefs

Ahrefs came out with a great article on how to write blog posts with SEO ingrained from idea conception to final article.

For beginners, this is a great 5-step process. If you've been around niche sites for some time, it's a great refresher to see if you're following all the steps. Obviously, they focus on their own tools, but you can apply these steps with your own keyword/SEO tools.

Find good keywords
Determine search intent
Determine the subtopics
Create an outline
Write!

Education

What's the #1 Metric For Display Ad Performance? - Passive Income Geek

Morten Storgaard over at Passive Income Geek says his Number 1 display ad metric is Revenue per URL.

I disagree - slightly. If we're only looking at 1 metric, I'd look at the ePMV per URL. ePMV will be more useful as it's a combination of 2 other metrics - Revenue per URL + Visits per URL.

I understand Morten's point-of-view that there are multiple metrics similar to ePMV, which is exclusive to Ezoic. There's RPM and RPS. They're all looking at average Revenue, but they use different traffic data:

RPM - Revenue per 1,000 Pageviews
ePMV - Revenue per 1,000 Visitors
RPS - Revenue per 1,000 Sessions

My point is I'd rather have the data point that takes into account 2 other data points for more relevancy: Total Revenue + Traffic.

ePMV helps me extrapolate the information that will steer my focus for future posts, as well as trying to increase traffic to good ePMV posts that're already posted.. I'll look at the types of pages that result in higher ePMV over the course of a few weeks. You'll always want to get enough time to have more data points because numbers can swing significantly on a per day basis.

He also just launched his first course on creating niche sites. The course is more targeted for beginners, but I'm sure there are still some great tips if you're already running niche sites. You can find out about them at his website - Passive Income Geek.