Ezoic Publishers: Their Most Common Mistakes

Ezoic is probably the third most popular service to add display ads to your WordPress site.

They have their gates open to everyone who wants to make money from display ads.

They don’t really care if your site is visited by high RPM countries or not as long as your site provides value.

Ezoic can be a complex network so let’s talk about the most common mistakes Ezoic publishers make.

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Migrating to Ezoic Hosting: Part #1

Ezoic offers free hosting to everyone who is using their display ads service.

It is AWS hosting so it is among the best options to host your WordPress site

Despite AWS being a reliable hosting provider, most users don’t take their offer because Ezoic hosting doesn’t have a panel like Cloudways, RunCloud, Server Avatar, Gridpane or Kinsta does.

Cloud Hosting isn’t expensive at all so most users won’t complicate their lives migrating several sites to Ezoic to save ten bucks a month.

I host all my sites on Digital Ocean via Cloudways.

Ezoic Free Hosting is for those who:

1. Are using crappy hosting providers
2. Can’t afford ten bucks a month for hosting.
3. Can manage their own sites

If you don’t fall into one of those categories, you will have better days hosting your site elsewhere.

It is free hosting, don’t use it unless you can’t take care of yourself.

Migrating to Ezoic Hosting: Part #2

Ads will slow down your site and that’s a fact, some users think that hosting their sites at Ezoic will solve speed issues caused by ads.

Ezoic hosting will solve your speed problems if your site speed problems are being caused by your current hosting provider.

Migrating from some of the major cloud hosting providers to Ezoic free hosting won’t make a difference in terms of speed.

Removing the Anchor Ads

Some users don’t like Anchor ads because they think these affect the user experience.

What they don’t know is that the anchor ads are the first or second-best ad units that your site will ever have.

If you remove your anchor ads, you are gonna lose money and then you are gonna go to the Ezoic Facebook group to complain about not making money like you used to.

I would remove in-content ads that don’t make you that much money instead of removing anchor ads.

Expecting Fast Support

Ezoic accepts small publishers, even publishers who are not making any money yet.

I understand that they don’t want to assign a whole team to answer every question you have and fix every tiny little problem your site has, especially if your site only makes a few bucks a month.

They are not going to solve your problems in five minutes or less so sometimes you have to be patient.

I recently contacted Ezoic support because I wanted to add some old and new sites and part of the response I got was this.

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“The Sites should be reviewed within a few weeks. Thanks for your Patience”

— Ezoic Support

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What does “a few weeks” mean? Three or four weeks? Who knows?

Shooting in the Dark

People go to groups and forums and ask all sorts of questions as if all sites were using the same theme, the same number of images, and the same hosting provider.

Some requests for help follow this pattern:

Publisher	My site is slow
Another publisher	Install WP Rocket
Another publisher	Delete WP Rocket
A different publisher	Optimize images
Group Expert	Set up Leap
Group Admin	Leap is all you ever need
Another Group Admin	I am closing the comments.

Another one:

Publisher	My EPMV is low. Only $12
Another publisher	What niche?
Another publisher	Crypto
A different publisher	My EPMV is $32. I also blog about crypto
Group Expert	Lots of factors come into play
Group Admin	Talk to your Ezoic account manager
Another Group Admin	Same old stuff, I am closing the comments

Deleting your Optimization Plugins

There are slow sites and fast sites.

There are also slow sites and fast sites with ads

Ads slow down sites but the problems get even worse when your site was already slow.

I know Ezoic has Leap but let me give you this advice before you delete your optimization plugin.

Test, test, and test again.

For example:

If you are removing unused CSS with PerfMatters, FlyingPress, WP Rocket, or any other plugin, make sure Ezoic Leap does that for your site.

Not only that, but make sure Ezoic Leap does it better.

The data never lies.

Setting up LEAP the Wrong Way

I don’t know why Ezoic wants to dedicate their team or resources to deal with speed problems they haven’t caused.

Speed problems caused by plugins, themes, or shared hosting providers should be solved by the publishers themselves.

Try to learn what every option in LEAP is all about, apply an optimization, clear the cache, and see if nothing breaks.

If nothing breaks, run some speed tests and see if the optimization did something for your site or not.

Changing your Theme: Part #1

There should be a warning on your Ezoic dashboard that reads “don’t change your f*cking theme”

If you use the chrome extension to add placeholders to your site, you will lose most of your placeholders when you change your theme.

And you will be left with three options:

• Adding the placeholders again in the best way possible.
• Adding Ezoic ads using an Ad Inserter plugin
• Wait for an Ezoic representative to do that for you.

I recommend using Ad Inserter right from the start so you have more control over the ad placement.

Changing your Theme: Part #2

The Ezoic team won’t dedicate a day to optimizing your site, so they try to do two things:

• Turn on LEAP features hoping your site is fast
• Recommend another theme.

They would be happy if you remove GeneratePress, Blocksy, Kadence, or Astra and start using the default WordPress theme.

You can do as you are told if that’s what you want.

If you have invested time designing a nice-looking site and you don’t feel like the recommendations are that great, don’t change it.

Publishers tell me that Kadence is a bad theme for Ezoic, that’s something I completely disagree with.

Look who is taking the #1 spot on the leaderboard

What theme is the site using? Is it Kadence?

We have given or we have been given sh*tty sometimes, but it is time to stop doing that once you are proven wrong by the same tools you own.

Not Using Ezoic Caching

Ezoic doesn’t work well with CloudFlare APO or Full Page Caching despite being partners

So use Ezoic caching instead, it does the job.

Optimize your site at the application level and let the Ezoic CDN show content to your visitors.

Don’t activate Leap if you don’t want to use it or if you don’t need it but use Ezoic caching and your server will thank you for that.

Not Understanding Ezoic Caching

If I understand Ezoic caching correctly, once your site’s pages are cached, your content will be served from Ezoic servers.

Having a 90% cache hit ratio means 9 out of ten requests made to your site are handled by Ezoic and 10% are handled by your server.

If your site is having speed issues, upgrading your server won’t solve those issues.

Your server is rarely the problem when your site content is fully cached by Ezoic or any other service.

Paying Attention to Speed Test Scores

I don’t give a crap about speed scores, you shouldn’t give a crap about scores either.

All ads load all kinds of sh*t, so sometimes you get 70, the next time you test you get an 80 and then you get a 54.

You can’t control what those ads will load and how those resources will affect speed tests scores

Use speed tests to determine how you can optimize your site scripts and styles and stop chasing scores.

GTMetrix waterfall can reveal if there is room for improvement or not.

Make sure you pass the Core Web Vitals and focus on content and SEO.

Challenging the Ezoic Cult

I understand that Ezoic representatives defend their products, I don’t agree with all of their opinions but I wouldn’t expect less from them.

I understand WordPress influencers defending Ezoic since they get 3% of everything you make if you use their affiliate link.

I don’t understand the rest of the world jumping into the fight like they were the Diaz brothers every time somebody says something negative about Ezoic.

So if you say something negative about Ezoic in the Ezoic Facebook group, be ready to get some harsh comments

That won’t probably happen if you ask your questions in other WordPress or affiliate marketing groups

A user from the Affiliate SEO Mastermind recently asked if he should stay with Adsense or use Ezoic

It was a back-and-forth fight between Ezoic CMO and some publishers who have strong opinions about Ezoic.

Joining the Ezoic Facebook Group

I don’t remember the Ezoic Facebook group being managed by the Ezoic team when it started.

I got the impression that it was Ben Adler’s group that he could use to make some affiliate money.

Now the group is run by Ezoic team members and we don’t know how heavy the moderation is.

You probably won’t get much out of it.

Comparing Adsense and Ezoic Earnings

I don’t want to use Ezoic if I don’t need to so that’s why I keep comparing both services.

Ezoic definitely has the upper hand because Ezoic can refresh ads and has more advertisers competing for a spot on your site.

When you sent a bit of traffic to the Adsense version of your site, Ezoic is forcing Adsense advertisers to pay more for those spots.

So you say to yourself, Adsense is making more money or similar amounts to what Ezoic is making me.

When you leave Ezoic, Ezoic is not part of the equation anymore so the advertisers will pay you less because there are fewer advertisers competing for those spots.

Ezoic beats Adsense 9 out of 10 times because they have mediation.

Interaction from the Other Day

Having said that, some Ezoic publishers have bought into the idea that Adsense is 100% garbage and that Ezoic is a gold mine.

I am not trying to talk anybody out of Ezoic, remember that Adsense doesn’t have an affiliate program.

I recently had this interaction with an Ezoic publisher, he claimed that Adsense only pays by click and not by impression.

I corrected him about the Adsense Bidding Types misinformation he got wrong and he replied this way:

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“You get around 10 cent per 1000 impressions. That means my 40,000 volume earns me $4 if I go that way. With Ezoic Mediation I earn over $250 a month from Adsense alone..”

— John

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I knew this was BS, especially if you have a US audience.

So I went to my Google Adsense account >> reports >> countries and checked the page RPM and Impression RPM for the United States and this is what I got.

Page RPM	$13.31
Impression RPM	$1.14

I understand that Ezoic can make you more money but trashing Adsense without facts is nonsense.

If you target a US audience and you are making ten cents per thousand impressions, you prove to yourself that you must join Ezoic and that you should stay there for the rest of your blogging life

Not Reading the Official Documentation

I think everyone should read the Ezoic official documentation before contacting support or asking questions in their forums or groups.

Having said that I think Ezoic could do better gathering all information about a particular topic in one place

You get three articles that talk about the same thing:

And Google offers you a longer and better article with all tips.

Final Thoughts

Ezoic can be quite complicated, especially for people who are here to make money online and not necessarily interested in learning what CSS and scripts are

Ezoic doesn’t have a minimalistic idea about what they want to become. They want to be everything for every publisher.

If Ezoic wants to stand out for being different, Ezoic is probably the most misunderstood company in the ad industry.

I hope these tips help you avoid mistakes several publishers have made including myself.