My Small Website Just Hit a Profit Milestone — Here’s What Happened

My biggest lessons learned on my journey to six figures

I got two emails today that made me do a little happy dance in my bedroom/writing workspace.

Email #1: The first email was from the Passive Income Geek program notifying me that I had made a $74 dollar commission.

Email #2: The second email was from the Ezoic ad platform notifying me that I had made $47.66 in the last 30 days from display ads.

In total, my writing website has made over $100 for the first time ever. I’m super excited to share with you what I’ve learned and how it happened.

Note: None of the links in this article are affiliate links. The links either go to other related articles or to my personal website where you can find more information about the resources I mention.

How It Happened

If you’ve been following my journey, you know that I just started my bold plan to make six figures from content creation in the next three years.

My 12-month goal is to earn $200 per month from my portfolio of websites for display ads, and another $100 per month for affiliate commissions. From today’s two emails, I’m nearly there for my first website.

And it’s been less than a month.

How did it happen? While there are many factors at play, I credit two main sources: The Passive Income Geek program and the Ezoic platform. These tools allowed me to produce and monetize original, quality content based on good keywords.

Finding keywords with the Passive Income Geek program

I followed Morten Storgaard, the creator of the program, for almost a year on YouTube. I had already used lots of his tips to write better articles, improve my website, and build my content writing business.

Therefore, getting his program was a no-brainer for me.

One of the best lessons I learned from his course is how to find underserved topics that don’t have good answers on Google. I immediately found a bunch of these topics and started writing articles to answer them.

Within weeks, sometimes days, my articles ranked on the first page of Google.

I watched my Google analytics improve as my monthly traffic soared. These articles bring more people to my website, which earns me more money in display ads and affiliate commissions.

As of this morning, my website hit a new high of 11 thousand monthly page views.

Optimizing ads and website speed with Ezoic

I switched from Google Adsense to Ezoic only a week ago. This time last month, I was barely making $15.00 per month with display ads. Now I’m making almost $50 per month.

I’d heard Ezoic easily triples your display ad earnings, and so far that’s been my personal experience, too.

Setting up with Ezoic involves multiple steps, a mandatory video tutorial, and passing quiz score requirements. I spent a few days figuring it all out — even with help.

I won’t say it’s easy, but I will say it’s worth it.

Ezoic offers a few benefits that I think helped me get to $100 this month. Not only do they constantly experiment to optimize ads, but they also throw in tools to speed up your website.

The optimization plus speed help with Google rankings.

What I Learned

I learned a few important lessons that helped me make $100. None of these lessons came easily or cheaply — even if the tools themselves were sometimes free.

Here is a rundown of what I learned:

• Invest in yourself and your content creation. I know money is a touchy subject. I get it. I’m far from rich. But nearly every field requires some level of investment. Remember that, ultimately, you are investing in yourself.
• Copy the strategies of people who are already succeeding at what you want to do. That’s what I did, and I think it will work for you, too.
• Get a coach, mentor, or support group (I have all three).
• Start right now. Tomorrow truly never comes (as soon as I started, I saw an uptick in traffic and earnings).
• The right tools can make all the difference.
• Trust the process.

That last lesson — trust the process — is perhaps the most important.

When I first started using the keyword research techniques in my content marketing program, I felt scared they wouldn’t really work. That is was too good to be true. That I would fail again as I had failed before many times.

Yet, I trusted the process. I followed the steps. I studied, applied, and followed through with every last detail.

The same thing happened with the Ezoic platform. At first, I felt overwhelmed. There was just so much to learn. But I pushed through until I got it.

Then my website went berserk and my analytics dropped to staggering lows. I thought I had destroyed my site, and hoped that I could fix it. A few days later, everything bounced back to normal and even better than normal.

My traffic continues to trend upward right along with my display ad earnings.

Trust the process.

How You Can Apply These Lessons

It’s great that I’ve moved my plan forward by $100, but how can you do it? That’s what really matters here.

First, I didn’t achieve this small milestone in a month. I’ve been working on my website for a long time, but only recently started applying the ideas in the blogging program.

I don’t want you to think that you can expect results quickly. Most of the time, it takes up to 8 months for blog posts to rank on Google. Sometimes, you can see results in 4 months. More rarely, you can see results sooner.

The techniques work, but they are not magic.

Second, investing in the right tools really does matter. There are lots of good tools out there. Find the one that works best for you. Invest in a program of some kind to accelerate your growth as a content creator.

Do your research. Not every program, course, or coach is worth it. Get the tools you need to succeed.

Third, develop your skills at finding untapped keywords. That’s really what moved the needle with my traffic. There are free and paid tools for this process, as well.

I use a combination of free Google search methods and a paid tool called ahrefs.

One of my favorite methods is to start typing words into the Google search bar to see what Google suggests. Several of those suggestions have become my most popular articles.

Fourth, sign up with Ezoic ads as soon as you are eligible. Ezoic recommends that you have 10,000 sessions per month before signing up. I do have that many sessions on my website, but I got early access to Ezoic anyway with the Passive Income Geek program.

I’m very excited about the Ezoic platform and plan to add my two other sites as soon as they are eligible.

Fifth, as I said before, trust the process. Pick a strategy, apply the strategy, and don’t give up. That’s the best advice, really. Experiment, watch the data, but choose a strategy and commit.

Parting Thoughts

I launched my second website in June in a separate broad niche. So far, I’ve set up the site and started adding content. The goal is to add 50 + articles by the end of July before moving on to my third website.

Somewhere in there, I’ll create a smaller, niche website, that I’ll let grow for a year or more before selling it (flipping it) for a decent price.

I’ll be using the same process to grow these sites as I did to grow my first website to $100. With any luck, I’ll reach that much and more for all my websites by the end of my 12-month timeline.

I hope you do, too.

Follow my journey: Christopher Kokoski