Let’s Talk About Revenue

 Today let’s talk about revenue. By the way, as an aside revenue and profit are not the same thing. This can be confusing sometimes.

In this conversation, we are going to discuss what a few phrases mean. I find this a bit confusing but let’s dive in together.

I am a big fan of not overcomplicating things. There are certain things in life that I just don’t get but accept as a reality. How does TV work? Dude, I don’t get it. It just works and thank God, especially right now.

So here we go.

The ad company that I am using is Ezoic and they use EPMV instead of RPM, which is what Google uses.

What is EPMV

EPMV stands for “Earnings Per Thousand Visitors”.This is how much money you earn, for every 1,000 visits to your website. It is calculated as follows: EPMV = Total Earnings divided by (Visitors / 1,000).

~Source https://support.ezoic.com/support/solutions/articles/48000454034-what-is-epmv-

What is RPM

Page revenue per thousand impressions (RPM) is calculated by dividing your estimated earnings by the number of page views you received, then multiplying by 1000.

Page RPM = (Estimated earnings / Number of page views) * 1000

For example, if you earned an estimated $0.15 from 25 page views, then your page RPM would equal ($0.15 / 25) * 1000, or $6.00.

~Source https://support.google.com/adsense/answer/112030?hl=en

Ok to me this is all very confusing and doesn’t in itself mean a lot. One thing that I understand about EPMV is that the higher that EPMV number is, the more money a website owner makes.

So for example, Dec 1, 2019, my EPMV was $30.63 and April 8th, 2020, it was $5.47.

On Dec 1, 2019, I made $44.41 and on April 8, 2020, I made $12.05.

Now that isn’t much money of course, so let’s ignore that sad fact and discuss traffic for a moment.

Yesterday I had 2,771 page views. On December 1, I had 2,313 page views.

So in December I made about 31% more money with less traffic.

Those numbers are how I try to think about EPMV. If my EPMV had been as high yesterday was it was in December, I would have made $84.88 yesterday instead of $12.05.

So this is a dramatic difference. It is painful. Imagine if you are like some bloggers that I know that get over 100,000 visits a day to their website. These drops are significant and depressing.

Now this is important to note here. That Dec 1 day was my highest EPMV date in December. Those are not normal numbers.

I haven’t been at this with Ezoic long enough to know what a good baseline for me is yet. However, if I were going to guess based upon research and other conversations I should some day expect an average EPMV of around $15 to $20 a day.

This will not happen for quite some time because of our current world crisis. Ad revenue is way way way down.

There is this thing called the Ad Index that Ezoic puts out. Think of it like a stock market graph but for tracking the value of an ad. https://adrevenueindex.ezoic.com/

April 8, 2019, it was at 56. April 8, 2020, it was at 39. That is a significant drop year over year.

Interesting note, April 2019 was a bit down in general. March 24, 2019, it was at 79. So it is normal for it to fluctuate in general but it is on a swift downwards trend for 2020.

So let’s digest this and think about what all of this means. Blogging is and always has been a long game.

Think of it like having a 401k. If you pull your money every single time that the market drops you will wind up in bad shape.

Those of us who keep blogging right now are the ones who will win in the end. I am working harder than ever at increasing traffic. I am working harder than ever on SEO. We are publishing content every single day and working hard to build a backlog.

If you are someone who is dependent on blog income, I am sad for you. My heart goes out to you and I pray that you have some reserves. I also hope and pray that you don’t give up.

Right now is a fantastic time to start a blog. It is fantastic to not stop blogging. Think ahead about seasons in the future. Whatever you do, don’t stop blogging.