My Ezoic Review-The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

When I first started blogging, like just about everyone else, I installed Google Adsense on my website. It’s been over 3 years now and I’ve switched ad agencies 4 times. Ya, I’m crazy like that. I’m with Ezoic now (again) and I’d like to share my Ezoic review with you.

I belong to a couple of really awesome blogging groups (yup only 2 that I follow faithfully) and so many times Ezoic gets bashed, time and time again and it hurts my heart (true story). I want to set the record straight with my honest review of Ezoic.

But first…

What is Ezoic?

Ezoic is an amazing platform for publishers to monetize their site without risking the integrity of it. In their own words:

Ezoic provides web publishers with automated website intelligence for their ads, content, layouts, and more.

Ezoic leverages machine learning to better understand website visitor behavior. This includes the ability to collect important data and automate decisions that improve visitor experiences, SEO, and website earnings

I heard about Ezoic through a blogging friend of mine. His website gets tons of traffic and he was making decent money with Ezoic. I had to check it out of course. At that time, I was Google Adsense. You need 10,000 visits per month to apply to Ezoic and I was well over that so I went ahead and applied.

I was instantly approved and within a month had more than tripled my earnings. Yay!

via GIPHY

(this post contains affiliate links so if you make a purchase I make a small commission-affiliate disclosure)

Let’s do a quick review of Ezoic vs Adsense

Ezoic vs Adsense

Honestly, it’s like comparing apples to oranges. You just can’t. While I certainly won’t bash Google Adsense, they really do pay peanuts compared to not only Ezoic but many other Ad platforms, except Medianet. I tried the latter out for a two months and was sorely disappointed. They paid even less than Adsense. Oy! Not to mention their customer service is horrible.

I think Adsense is a great way to start with ads to get your audience used to them. I think I only had 3 or 4 ads from Adsense on my site and was making upwards around $200-300 a month. Not bad for starters, I’d say.

Now let’s compare Ezoic to two more ad platforms I tested out these past 2 years.

Ezoic vs MediaVine

Last year I applied to MediaVine 5 times (yes you read that right) and got declined all 5 times. I gave it one last shot (persistent bugger that I am) and they finally approved me. Most of my other blogging friends use MediaVine and were making killer money.

Well I had to try it out right?

They ceased to outperform or exceed the earnings I was making with Ezoic. After 3 months and after losing about $1500 in earnings I was ready to tap out. They asked for one month to keep trying. I did and lost another $500. My RPM’s never went over $9.

I discovered that MediaVine doesn’t perform so well for all sites.

I double checked with Ezoic before testing MediaVine that they would take me back and they gladly did. When I switched over my earnings were back up to where they were before I left them. Another happy dance!!

Yes MediaVine is great, their service is excellent but they aren’t for everyone apparently. Not to mention, they recently just increased the amount of page views you need to apply from 25K to 50K. Ouch.

I think because of this, people are scrambling now to see where else they can apply to get better earnings than Google Adsense. Some are applying to Monumetrics. I applied to them twice last year and never once heard back from them. I see a lot of negative comments in blogging groups about Monumetrics (kinda like Ezoic) but I have no experience with them so I can’t give you my two cents.

And then the last platform I tried was…

Ezoic vs AdThrive

When I hit over 100,000 visitors last year I applied to AdThrive but they declined. This year they emailed me and informed me I qualified and would I like to make the switch. My traffic had grown considerably using these two awesome tools (invest in yourself and your blog and grab these!!):

Stupid Simple SEO

Easy ON-Page SEO

You can also check out some other affordable blogging tools I use here.

Now apparently AdThrive is la creme de la creme and I figured I’d be a fool not to try them out. My earnings with Ezoic were decent but I couldn’t help to think if they would be even better with AdThrive.

Once again I double checked with Ezoic if they would take me back if AdThrive didn’t work out for me and once again they said yes so I really had nothing to lose. Kinda sorta.

Now to be fair to AdThrive, I did switch just as COVID-19 took over the world and everything came crashing down, even ad earnings. So like everyone else in the blogging world, my earnings took a nose dive.

Then in June, while everyone’s earnings and RPM’s started picking back up again, mine just didn’t. They seemed to flatline at between $7-8. Ugh.

Tail between my legs, I emailed Ezoic again and asked to come back. Again, they were more than happy to have me back. While I’m not sorry I lost all this money switching I did learn that it’s important to try other things. You never know unless you try.

So let’s get to my honest Ezoic review.

EPMV vs RPM’s

Now you should know that Ezoic bases your earnings on EPMV which simply means ‘earnings per thousand visitors’. To better understand EPMV vs RPM let me share this article with you.

Understanding EPMV

Now before COVID my EPMV was between $17-22. After switching back to Ezoic just this month after AdThrive (July 2020) it’s sitting around $12-15. Still pretty decent and my traffic continues to grow.

I’m a huge fan of Tailwind and if you aren’t using them yet you should. You can check them out here. I love Tailwind and Pinterest and not sure where I’d be without them but I have to add, I work hard every day to increase my organic traffic through the two SEO tools I mentioned above.

Do yourself a favour and check them out.

Stupid Simple SEO

Easy On-Page SEO

My Ezoic review in layman’s terms

One big complaint most people had with Ezoic (many even without experience using them) was that they slowed down your site. Wrong. Well, not entirely wrong.

All ad platforms slow down your site to some degree. Mine wasn’t any slower with Ezoic or Adsense/MediaVine/AdThrive. And one super amazing thing Ezoic now has is a site speed accelerator. It works and it’s amazing.

A few other people insisted Ezoic placed hard to remove code on your site that messed things up. I don’t even know what they’re talking about. My site is not messed up at all and I have no bad code on my site so I’m clueless as to where this claim even comes from.

So many bloggers insist Ezoic is awful but it absolutely is not. After having gone through 4 different ad platforms I’m here to tell you that Ezoic is not (remember this is my opinion and my experience) awful.

I also like that they have an affiliate program. Not many other platforms have that. Win!

The ugly part of my Ezoic review

If I had to say anything bad about them, and I honestly struggle to find something, it’s that their customer service could definitely improve. There are times when I wait a couple of days for my account manager to reply to emails but that could be me just being too impatient. She is super good though at answering all my questions and helping me to understand things better.

I’m not the most patient person in the world and she puts up with all my crap all the time so kudos to her for having to deal with the likes of me.

Now I know the title says “The Good The Bad and The Ugly” but honestly, there is no bad and ugly. Yes they may slow down your site but so do other ad platforms.

If you don’t want a million ads on your site just tell them! But you can control the amount of ads your site has with any platform.

They have an amazing dashboard to check how things are going and they also have an Analytics Tool to help you see what’s going on, what’s working, what’s not. It really is amaze-balls! This is a new feature on Ezoic and it’s full of useful information!

Summary of my Ezoic review

All in all, if you’re on the fence about Ezoic I hope this review helped put some things in perspective and gave you some clarity on how Ezoic works and how good they really are!

I don’t promote things I’m not passionate about and I’m more than passionate about Ezoic. They have outperformed all other ad platforms for me and continue to do so.

If you’re on the fence about which ad platform to apply to (in case you’re sitting under 50K and are waiting to apply to MediaVine) I’d recommend giving Ezoic a try. You won’t be sorry.

I hope my honest Ezoic review answered some of your questions. You can email me at [email protected] if you have any other questions. I’m happy to help if I can.

mad love

xo iva xo