So you finally have some traffic to your website after putting in a ton of work, but how do you monetize it? The simple answer is using a display ads platform. We love using Ezoic since they are a premium ads provider that now allows people to join them no matter what level of traffic they have, that means if you have a website, you can effectively start making money with ezoic NOW.
You might have heard of Ezoic on a thread or forum that could kick-start your earnings without you doing much? In this Ezoic review, I’ll show you how to make money with your blog and prove that it’s worth using Ezoic.
Well, I’ve been using Ezoic for years, and I’ll spill the beans on everything you could possibly want to know about Ezoic, their platform, their new Video monetization ads, and all the other good and bad tidbits you don’t otherwise hear in their advertising.
And yes, there are some shortcomings with this platform, as there are with any. So keep reading to determine if Ezoic (ee-zo-ic) is the right fit for you.
What is Ezoic?
Ezoic is a webmaster’s complete tool kit for everything from running display ads on their website to improving UX and speed optimization all on one platform.
Once you start using Ezoic, their artificial intelligence (AI) will begin split test hundreds of variables of your site from the ads displaying to the actual layout of the site itself.
Ezoic is more than just ads. Ezoic is essentially a self-serve platform. However, Where Ezoic really shines is in all of its tools and algorithms.
Ezoic is more of a total display ad platform made for webmasters who don’t have much technical knowledge or the time to constantly be split-testing ads, layouts, and so on.
Ezoic’s artificial intelligence (AI) programs do more testing than any single person could probably do in a year.
Is Ezoic Free?
Yes, Ezoic is free, and you can start monetizing your website by following the steps below.
Why Use Ezoic?
There was a time when Google AdSense didn’t have automatic display ads, which meant you needed to optimize everything yourself. This included where the ads were positioned, sizes, colors, borders, etc. This is where ad networks really started to help the end users by doing all the optimizations without the webmaster ever really needing to touch anything.
This made everything simple for professional bloggers with little time to do their own ad optimizations to the newbie blogger just looking to make a few bucks with their writing. It was a win-win for the webmaster and the publisher, who gets a cut of the ad revenue.
Ezoic and AI
Ezoic took this to the next step by using artificial intelligence to improve monetization with ads by looking at a page, deciding where the ad should be placed, the best ad for that page according to the pages topic or “niche” and then serving the ad from its large database of advertisers.
Over time as the AI learns more about your site and how users interact with your site, your ads perform better and you make more money. So the idea is the longer you use Ezoic, the more money you’ll make, even with the same amount of traffic. And this is all supposed to be “hands off” which is great for most of us.
And that’s not even mentioning all of the helpful free tools and software you will learn about later in this article that the company provides making Ezoic a webmaster’s complete package.
How Does Ezoic Work?
Ezoic relies heavily on artificial intelligence (AI) programs to optimize not just display advertising revenue but to optimize your entire site as well.
Everything from where the ads are located on a site and which ads are being displayed on a per-page basis to the layout of the actual website and user experience is all tracked and analyzed simultaneously to find the absolute best combination of hundreds of factors to make you the most revenue and keep your visitors as happy as possible.
And this testing and optimizing happen every second of every day. So the longer you have your site with Ezoic, the more data their AI programs have to work with to find the perfect setup and display for your specific website. And all this without you doing a thing, after the initial set up of course!
What are the Requirements to monetize your blog on Ezoic?
The current requirements are more about your website than the traffic it’s getting. Currently there are no restrictions on who can apply as long as you fall within their “conduct policies”. They include…
- Must not be banned by Google AdSense – the site, not you
- Must be following the same policies laid down by AdSense (no inappropriate content etc.)
- Unique and Original content
- Some sort of organic traffic
One stipulation though, if your website does fall below 10,000 visitors a month, you will be required to sign up for Ezoic’s “Access Now” course.
Ezoic Course
Ezoic’s course walks you through its platform as well as teaches you a lot of terms you’ll be exposed to while using Ezoic. They do this to try to educate people coming into the program on all Ezoic has to offer while at the same time minimizing support tickets. It takes around five hours, so be prepared to sit, watch and maybe even take notes.
Then there is a test, yup, just like in grade school. That’s why you might want to take notes!
You must pass the test to begin using Ezoic. But once you take the test and pass, you can immediately start using the platform, and there is no difference in the number of tools you have available to you whether your site is big or small. It’s all about passing the test.
If your site has more than 10,000 views, there are no barriers at all other than the quality guidelines, and you can often be approved within a day or two.
How to Sign Up to Ezoic?
Signing up for Ezoic is easy. You’ll need a valid email address will also be used for your account login later, so make sure it’s one you won’t lose or is so long you don’t want to type it in every time.
Next, Ezoic will ask you for the domain of the website you want to add to their platform. Ezoic will do a quick scan of the site to make sure it’s a live valid website.
The next step will ask what you want to do with Ezoic, ad revenue, site speed or analytics. I personally found this to be a confusing question as I’d like all three. But instead, just click on the Ad Revenue radio button provided and move on.
And that’s it! Your account is complete, and you’re ready to continue setting up the basics to get started displaying ads.
Steps To Sign Up for Ezoic:
- Enter e-mail address
- Connect website domain
- Ezoic scans the domain to validate it
- Choose Desired Ezoic Service
- Complete Account
Connecting Your Site with Ezoic
Integrating your website with Ezoic is pretty easy, and they give you three options;
Cloudflare Integration:
If you already have a Cloudflare account, Ezoic is a Certified Cloudflare partner, and Ezoic will automatically detect if you have it set up on your site. If you do, then you’ll be prompted to enter your Cloudflare credentials. Once that’s done, you’re finished with this step. Super easy! And this is the way Ezoic would like you to integrate.
Name Server Integration:
This is the way I personally choose to integrate with Ezoic. I thought that if I ever needed to move away from them, all I needed to do was change the names server back to my hosting company’s name servers, and I’d be done.
To use this option, you’ll need to find the ‘Integrate Your Site’ within your Ezoic dashboard. Choose the “Cloud Integration option” menu, and you’ll see your current DNS information as well as the ones Ezoic needs you to change at your domain registrar. Once changed, it may take a few hours for the domain to propagate. That’s it.
WordPress Plugin:
This is the least recommended way of integrating with Ezoic because it is a plugin that will cause more load on your site, and it is slower than the two above. Even if you don’t choose this option for integration, you will still need to use this plugin at some time if you have a WordPress site as it gives you control over the CDN management settings as well as their LEAP settings.
To set this up, go here and install the plugin. Then you need to choose this option from the “Cloud Integration option” menu and follow the instructions for set up. This is all straightforward. To set up the LEAP functions, you’ll need an API Key which can be found under ‘Leap’ > ‘Caching’ > ‘API Gateway’. Just copy and paste and you’re set.
Ezoic’s CDN
In order to use Ezoic to its fullest capabilities, you will need to place your site on its own custom-created CDN network. This is a good thing for most webmasters, especially those of you just starting out.
By placing your site on their CDN, you will get faster website speeds than just hosting your site with the average web hosting company. And all for free. This includes any CMS, not just WordPress.
Then there is Ezoic’s image optimization that’s included with their CDN. This has personally saved me some money as I was using ShortPixel for image optimization, which charges per image as well as per view if you’re on their network.
None of this is needed on Ezoic’s network. And all you need to do is point your nameserver to their DNS and you get full access to all of their caching capabilities.
If you are already a Cloudflare user, then you don’t even need to change your name servers, you can just install the Cloudflare app within your Ezoic dashboard and that’s it.
Adding Placeholders to Ezoic
This is where the magic of Ezoic starts to happen. You’ll be adding placeholders, places where you want advertisements to show on your site, which can be done manually or through Ezoic’s Chrome Extension which can be found here.
You also have the option of just “turning on” Placeholders in your dashboard and everything will be done automatically. You can throttle how many ads you want to show per page or specify where you don’t want ads to show at any time within the dashboard. Ezoic recommends using the Chrome extension and so do I. And if you do use Chrome, make sure you are logged out of your WordPress website in order to use it properly.
Ezoic will use these placeholders in their “Ad Tester” to test where on your site users click the most, what sizes are performing the best and even which advertisers are paying the most for those slots so that in the end you make the most money possible. Ezoic’s Ad Tester tests thousands of options all simultaneously without you needing to do anything. Over time the system will optimize your ads for both the user experience and the highest revenue.
How to add placeholders on Ezoic:
To ad placeholders manually for total control, follow their steps.
To ad placeholders using their Chrome extension.
Integrating with Google AdSense
Integrating Google AdSense if you have an account with Ezoic can help speed up how well the Ezoic Ad tester performs as the Ad ester will use Google’s previous data and ad positions and other information to optimize your new ads better and quicker. You do not need to do this step, but it is definitely worth it if at all possible. And linking the two platforms is easy.
Steps to integrate Google AdSense and Ezoic
Just go to your Ezoic dashboard and go to ‘Ezoic Ads’ > ‘Link Your AdSense Account’. There just enter your AdSense email and click the ‘Email Link’. Google will send you a confirmation email. Click on the enclosed link giving Ezoic permission to grab data from you account and you’re finished. And you can remove this permission at any time using your AdSense account.
Turn Traffic On!
Now that you are all set up, all that is left is to turn on Ezoic and let them start doing their thing. To do this just go into your dashboard and go to the “EzoicAds” tab, from there >>> to “Split testing” which will ask you how much of your site’s traffic you want to send to Ezoic or your original site configuration on each of the three platforms, desktop, mobile, and tablet traffic. Just choose 100% for all three, click “save” and you’re done. Ezoic is turned on and you are on your way to making money with your WordPress blog on Ezoic.
What Tools Does Ezoic Provide?
Ezoic has really grown over the years and has become not just an ad display network, but a true webmaster tool suite as well.
Ezoic provides all webmasters regardless of size or how they signed up with four powerful tools to help generate more income from their websites. These include the Ezoic Ad Tester which you should have turned on now, Leap which is a “website performance tool-set“, Flickify, one of the newer tools that lets you turn your articles into videos using speech-to-text AI, Humix, a video platform for hosting your videos and NicheIQ which is a suite of tools designed to help webmasters with their content creation.
The best part of all of the tools is that they are all completely free as an Ezoic publisher.
Ezoic Ad Tester
The Ezoic Ad Tester is actually an app that gives you full control over your ads. It also lets you effortlessly set rules, control experiments, manage preferences, monitor optimizations, and split-test to compare results.
The AI used for this app performs multivariate testing which combines thousands of data sets learned from your website and its visitors to display the best-performing and highest-paying ads making you more money.
But you still have full control over everything that’s being tested. You can even create your own tests using the app, even adding ads that aren’t part of Ezoic and “competing” with the Ezoic ad system. You can even use your AdSense account to do this to see if Ezoic truly outperforms AdSense or any other ad system.
LEAP (previously Site Speed Accelerator)
LEAP is a tool suite to speed up your website and helps you achieve higher Core Web Vitals by mapping out any problems your site is experiencing as well as giving recommendations as to their fixes. Ezoic’s LEAP is one of it’s newer tech options for webmasters and replaces their “Site Speed Accelerator”. And it does work, especially for WordPress sites.
What does LEAP Do?
LEAP takes care of everything from caching to stripping out unused CSS, something you normally need to pay a script or plugin to do. Again, Ezoic saves you some money here since you don’t need a caching plugin or other “optimization” plugins and tools when using their system. And the crazy part, you can just sign up and use these tools for free without even needing to incorporate their ads on your site!
And Ezoic is so confident that LEAP can speed up any website, they actually guarantee it. This is what they say on their website, “The Site Speed Accelerator (now LEAP) can take any digital publisher’s site and increase the speed with just a few simple clicks. A site’s mobile Google PageSpeed score will be 80+, guaranteed. No broken pages, no coding, and no troubleshooting.” Petty impressive.
One of the more important fixes for me was that LEAP eliminates render-blocking CSS and Javascript, a problem I have always had with my WordPress sites. This program fixed all of these issues with just a click of a button from off to on. And it also cleaned up all of my unused CSS which I’m sure also helped my page scores on Google.
Another impressive benefit to using LEAP is that the system compares your site with other similar sites on Ezoic’s platform and shows you where you rank in relation to site speed and a host of other metrics. Then it explains why your site isn’t as good as the other sites and shows you how to fix any problems.
It goes as far as showing you what CMS, website hosting and a host of other information and technologies the faster sites are using so you able to implement the same strategies on your own sites. Something you just don’t get on any other ad platforms!
And just like their AI for ads, the longer you use LEAP, the more it will adjust your site for even faster results.
Flickify
Ezoic’s Flickify is another new tool developed by the company that uses AI to create videos from your website’s articles in seconds. Again, this is usually something a webmaster needs to pay for, but as an Ezoic user you get access to their video maker for free.
Flickify software even has its own website, so maybe the company is planning on charging people that aren’t on its platform to use the tool as well.
Either way, it seems like something Ezoic is pretty passionate about providing for the long term which means it will most likely become an even more powerful tool over time.
And I must say, the tool is impressive even now. Not only does it do text-to-speech conversions in seconds sometimes, but it also allows you to make really professional looking videos that go far and above just a simple text to speech one.
Flickify Features
You are able to choose all sorts of options from the layout, and colors, adding photos or other video clips, to doing your own voiceovers and completely changing the entire feel of your videos. And all within minutes. Spend a day doing all of your videos and you now have a library of videos for your reader to watch and share.
All of this allows us publishers to create an entirely new revenue stream at the click of a button. And everyone knows video is a great SEO optimization technique, and even better when you actually own the video. Videos help with engagement times on your site, open your site to the hearing impaired, and allow you to show more ads in different formats, all on the same page.
And the software is simple to use. No more complicated video editing software. And all of your videos and the software are hosted on their own site, so no clutter on your computer. And if you want to share your videos to places like YouTube, not a problem. You can use or share them anywhere you want.
Ezoic has even started a video hosting platform, watch out YouTube!? Keep reading to learn about it…
Humix: Ezoic Video Ads
So now you’ve used Flickify to make a bunch of really cool videos for your site, what do you do with them? And more importantly, how can they make you some extra cash? That’s where Ezoic’s Humix comes in.
Humix is Ezoic’s version of YouTube for its publishers like you and me. In addition, it’s also a video player that you can embed videos on any type of website, including WordPress or even HTML sites. Each video gets it’s own URL, just like YouTube, and your videos can be shared and embedded in other people’s articles to bring even more traffic. You’re even allowed to import YouTube videos you already have.
And this is all connected to your Ezoic dashboard so you can get analytics on every video in your library, including any ads that your displaying on your videos. And you even get paid when someone uses one of your videos on their own website page! Something YT doesn’t do.
The videos on Humix will be indexed with their own URLs so you can take up even more space on the SERPs pages. Plus you should link back to the original article, giving you another quality link to your site.
And if you don’t have any videos yet, it okay. You can optin to sharing other people’s videos on the platform and still get paid! All without a shred of work on your part. Now that’s awesome.
NicheIQ
As if Ezoic wasn’t doing enough to help webmasters, their newest suite of tools is bent on helping webmasters with their SEO and content production. Think of this suite of tools as a baby SEMush or Ahrefs.
Although this tool is still in its infancy, the one thing I personally like about it is that it is specifically designed for content publishers, not businesses or Shopify type sites.
The idea behind the tool is to help content creators find topics and ideas to write about through keyword research, nothing new there. But the difference is the research is meant to give you the topics and keywords that will provide the maximum amount of ROI on the articles you do write through display advertising.
Ezoic is kind of giving you the topics and niches it would otherwise use if they were a webmaster. And with as many sites as they have on their network and amount of data testing they do, I’m sure they really can tell you what article type, topic and information can generate the best ad revenue for any article.
The tool is broken down into three main parts, the broken link checker tool, the Topic Suggestions tool and the Tag Tester tool. Each having its own benefits as a content creator.
The broken link checker is great way to reduce 404 pages on your site and stop wasting crawl budget and frustrating your visitors. So once you sign up with Ezoic and start using NicheIQ, I’d suggest you do this first thing (Ezoic says the same thing!).
Topic Suggestions tool is unique in that it suggest topics specifically related to YOUR website. Not just a tool that is randomly displaying the top 10 URLs it finds in Google with an overview of backlinks, DR or other metrics that really are significant to your personal website.
Rather the suggestions for topics and keywords is based on your own site’s content and how Ezoic sees your site while looking at other similar site on their platform. So when you get a topic or keyword suggestion, it is one that NicheIQ believes will help your site with Authority, it’s something you can rank for, and it is a keyword or topic that will make you the most revenue as compared to other related ones. Something no other keyword tool I’ve ever used does.
Then once you have your content, the last tool to use is the Tag Tester tool. This tool tests different tags and metatags on your site to see which one gives Google the clearest signals as to what your content is really about. Both on a page-per-page basis as well as your entire site overall. Again, something that can have dramatic results if implemented correctly.
Is Ezoic Free?: Pricing Options
Ezoic is free because website managers do not have to pay extra subscriptions to use the Standard plan. Ezoic is self-sustaining and does not put publishers, content creators, and other website owners in a payment plan.
Since Ezoic has grown into a massive website monetization and analytics platform, therefore they come with paid plans, such as Ezoic Premium or the Enterprise Plan.
In the following sections, I will go over the differences between each of these Ezoic pricing options.
Ezoic Standard
Ezoic is a website optimization platform that offers three types of services, and all of them are free to try. Ezoic services include website analytics, monetization, and site speed acceleration. Ezoic offers a free trial for their services, but after the trial period, there are costs associated with using their platform.
- Website Analytics: FREE
Ezoic’s core platform is free for everyone. Every user gets access to 24/7 Global support and access to features that accelerate your website. Ezoic’s free plan features include:
- Big Data Analytics
- Content Management Platform
- SSL Generator
- Privacy Policy and Script tester
- Adstxt Manager
- Monetization Features:
Option 1: Free
Users get to keep 100% of the site’s earnings until the 30-day free trial ends. After the free trial, Ezoic takes ad revenue from the banner at the bottom of the user’s website. However, all the other ad placements go to the website owner. Therefore, website owners still make 50%-300% more ad revenue than before! Doesn’t it sound like a great deal?
Option 2: Subscription
Ezoic has a fantastic pricing system for content creators! If you are want to use Ezoic to monetize your website and you want to go beyond the free trial and earn more revenue, users sign up for the subscription plan that pays Ezoic 10% of total ad earnings. Thus, the advertisements pay for the subscription itself! Plus, users can access 24/7 customer support, Ad Tester, AMP converter, and Layout tester, so your ads can run smoothly and convert higher!
Option 3: Enterprise Plan
With the Enterprise plan, users can also A/B test ads models, run ad hoc queries, store their variables and platform data, etc. The pricing for the Enterprise model needs separate consultation with Ezoic, but if you are running multiple websites, and want to scale up your earnings, try it here.
Ezoic Premium
The Ezoic Premium plan contains every feature that Ezoic Standard has to offer, plus premium support and wider feature options such as:
- New Advanced Ad reporting, Ezoic Analytics API
- NicheIQ (Unlimited topics and tags)
- Quarterly expert site review
- Multi-user account permissions
- Flickify (100 videos per month)
- Premium ad partners
Not everyone can qualify for Ezoic Premium. If you want to reach Ezoic Premium, you have to reach Level 2 on their platform.
Level 2 on Ezoic means that your website should have at least 20,000 monthly visitors and make an average of $200 monthly ad revenue. For more information on Ezoic Levels, refer to the image below:
How to collect your earnings on Ezoic?
You can view your earnings with Ezoic and the different options available to you. On the Ezoic dashboard, you will find the “Ad Partner Estimated Earnings” section, which provides a summary of your earnings over the past 7 days. Keep in mind that earnings may fluctuate as the reports are finalized each day. To access more detailed information, you can click “view earnings report” and filter the data by device and date. Additionally, we recommend checking out the interactive article for tips on increasing your EPMV.
You can connect your PayPal account or your bank account to Ezoic and receive your payment.
Ezoic vs AdSense
If AdSense has its own “automatic” ads now, why use Ezoic at all?
There are a few reasons why Ezoic can still make more than AdSense. The first reason is that for AdSense, you only get paid when someone clicks on your ads. A “view” does not count when it comes to getting paid.
On the other hand, even if no one clicks on an ad on your site while you’re using Ezoic, as long as those ads are being displayed, you’re still getting paid.
Plus Ezoic is part of Google’s Certified Publisher Partner program, which gives them access to both AdSense and all advertisers in Google’s DoubleClick Ad Exchange network, which for many webmasters, getting accepted to both programs isn’t always easy. Many get rejected repeatedly.
And for those who can’t get accepted to AdSense for one reason or another, you do not need to be accepted to Google AdSense to use the Ezoic platform. But you do need to be in compliance as far as AdSense policy.
Then there are Ezoic’s own ad partners. Ezoic works with ad sellers directly and has a large database to pull ads from that unless you’re using their platform, you wouldn’t have access to. So between their own ads and the entire Google ad network, they pretty much have quality ad supply covered. So it makes sense you “should” make more money with Ezoic over AdSense.
In Google’s own words, they explain how two different companies made more money using Ezoic than just their own ad network.
Here are a few stats from that report…
SimplyPsychology.org increased revenue by more than 400% and saw an 84% rise in time spent on site by optimizing their layout with Ezoic’s testing platform
Askdavetaylor.com boosted page views 49% and increased revenue by 89% in one year.
Those are impressive results, although not everyone will see such dramatic changes, it’s still a big move forward to making more money with Ezoic than AdSense. And again, Google doesn’t offer anything in the way of tools that Ezoic does. One more reason why I choose Ezoic over AdSense.
Our Overall Ezoic Review
As you can see, Ezoic is more than just an Ad Display Network. While we wrote this Ezoic review, we realized how much Ezoic has grown. Ezoic now serves its publishers in a way few other networks do or can by creating numerous tools and applications for content creators and webmasters alike.
With their no-traffic limitation and free use of their tools for all Ezoic members, why wouldn’t you go now and try them out? It may be one of the best decisions you have ever made.
