[Journey] Growing a Historical Blog from 100 Clicks to 10k Clicks a Month

FawzTalks said:

im not replying to give advices ' i don't have any '
but i wanna encourage you to continue as your journey " while it seems small and not that much profitable " i believe its one of the greatest journey i've ever read ! kind of your motivation and your perseverence isn't normal at all ! i wish u a big success in the near future
i have got a small idea while writing here ... did you ever thought about a youtube channel ! u can place your videos on the website ! some students would like to watch the story better than reading it ! some people will also read from a video and not only read textes !

Click to expand...

Thank you very much for your beautiful words!
Yes I thought about also starting a youtube channel, and I'd love to do it in the future but at the moment I'm not that interested in actually making those videos, unless I can find a way to "automatize" or outsource it.
I feel like now I should just keep writing new content.

All the outreach for backlinks, ad networks etc has been taking me a lot of effort while I probably should have just kept posting more.

All the best for the journey.

metlivewin said:

yes, definitely! I've now removed all their ads, I'm waiting for something better.
Do you think that donations/affiliates would bring more?

Click to expand...

Im not in the position to give such advices, all sites that I had generated hosting/domain price or less

Hello everyone, since the last update there have been a few changes!
me and my collaborator have posted 8 new articles, that are already bringing new organic traffic. I've also contacted Taboola and Outbrain. I've been exchanging emails with them for a few days and this is what came up:
- taboola: they have a minimum traffic requirement of 200k p/v per month, it's clearly not my case, but we're in good terms in case i reach it
- outbrain (teads): they have no traffic requirements and their representative said that they would be happy to collaborate, i'm now waiting for the integration etc... fingers crossed! I thought that outbrain only had those nasty native ads, but apparently they also offer premium banners, that's what i was looking for!

I've also requested a new review from adsense, i'm skeptical but maybe this is the right one! In case both outbrain and adsense accept me, I'd put both of them on the website to see how it goes (i also already have 45 eur on the adsense balance so it would be pretty easy to reach the payment threshold).

Anyway, these are the stats:



I feel like I'm still in google's sandbox, I hope that in a few months it will start trusting my website!



I've also created a telegram bot that sends me a notification each time a user downloads a pdf, finishes a quiz at the end of the article, and gives me feedback!

Hello everyone! New update!

It's been a great month so far! I'll now start with the data and then talk about ads.

Google Search Console: 778 clicks in 28 days, not bad but still not good, Google doesn't like me as much as Bing does. It's also not up-to-date. My goal for the next month is 1k from Google alone.


Bing: This is what i want to see! 1.2 clicks, the impressions are glitched i think: i got 50k impressions in one day but really don't know why! On bing i rank for a lot of high volume keywords. I'm also not sure whether this also counts clicks from yahoo etc...


Google Analytics: 3.5k users, almost 5k sessions, 12k pageviews and 6.40 min average session time. This is great!


I get most of my traffic from organic sources, then there is direct (not tracked?), social and referral.

Now let's move into ads: google adsense rejected my site again, i have to wait the 27th for a new review. I was approved by Teads but I didn't like the fact that they only had one in article ad, so I was contacted by MGID and decided to use their ads. I'm not quite satisfied with the earnings: consider that i placed them in the evening so the first day is incomplete. The cpc is terribly low. I'll keep them on for a few more weeks and then decide what to do.



Direct ads!

I found the contact of a big, famous history magazine in Italy. I sent a cold email to the CEO. I offered him a "Total Takeover" deal: for 100 Euros a month, I will remove all other ads from my site and put only his banners.

To my surprise, the CEO replied! He said it is an interesting idea and they want to test it. Right now, we are just talking about how to track the sales from my website to their paper magazine. Hopefully he gets back to me with a yes!

Even if it is just a 100 Euro test, it is 100 times better than MGID.

I've also improved the overall design of the website, so now it really looks premium!
Please let me know what you think!

Those ad earnings seem awfully low for that much traffic. Not sure why though. Maybe try Mediavine?

it's a good idea to get a direct offer from the magazine but maybe you shouldn't offer them a "total takeover" you could contact other magazines and do the same thing.

spectrejoe said:

Those ad earnings seem awfully low for that much traffic. Not sure why though. Maybe try Mediavine?

Click to expand...

Yes they are incredibly low! I have tried almost everything but since google won't approve me, there is not much I can do. I tried applying to journey mid january, i kept their tracker for like a month and a half but haven't heard anything back from them. Also ezoic rejected my site.

TheReviewer said:

it's a good idea to get a direct offer from the magazine but maybe you shouldn't offer them a "total takeover" you could contact other magazines and do the same thing.

Click to expand...

You are right! In the long term, selling different ad spots to different magazines would be the best way to scale and make more money.

But right now, since this is my very first direct deal, I wanted to make an offer they could not refuse. A "Total Takeover" for a low price is a great way to get a fast "YES" and test if my traffic actually converts for them.

If this first test goes well, I will definitely change the strategy and sell separate banners next month!

Hello everyone! Time for a new update!

It’s been an incredibly busy month, and I have some solid wins to share on the traffic, content, and monetization fronts. Let's start with the data!

Google Search Console: Goal achieved! Last month my goal was to hit 1k clicks from Google, and we did it. 1.3k clicks and 84.4k impressions. It seems like Google is finally starting to wake up and trust the site a bit more.



Bing: Still my best friend. 1.6k clicks and a massive 156k impressions. The traffic here is super consistent and I'm still ranking for very high-volume keywords.



Google Analytics: 4.1k active users, 5.7k sessions, and 13k pageviews. The average session duration slightly settled at 6.27 minutes, which is still absolutely insane for my niche.



Content & SEO Strategy:

I’ve been experimenting with a sort of programmatic SEO approach for a new Quiz section, and it is pulling in a lot of traffic! People love testing their knowledge and it's great for engagement.

First-Party Data (New Strategy!):

I decided to stop relying just on traffic and start building a real asset. I put the PDF downloads of my summaries behind an email wall. It’s only been 2 days since I implemented this, and I’ve already collected 14 emails! The conversion rate is looking great.

Monetization & Ads:

First, a quick update on the direct deal with the magazine CEO I mentioned last month: he completely ghosted me after our initial talks. It happens, we move on!

I also completely removed MGID. The CPC was basically pennies and it just wasn't worth the screen space.

Right now, the AdSense bot keeps hitting me with the "low-value content" rejection because I write historical summaries. I submitted a review request to Ezoic as a backup, but here is the real big news:

I landed a video call with a top-tier premium ad network in my country (I won't name drop, but they are huge). Three of their guys showed up on the call for my "little" 13k pageviews site!

Since they are a premium Google Partner, they are contacting their dedicated Google rep to do a "manual" review and whitelist my domain, bypassing the stupid AdSense bot rejection for the MCM invite. Something Ezoic's automated approval process just can't do for me right now. Fingers crossed!

Overall, the site is looking more and more like a premium brand rather than a simple niche blog.

Hello everyone! Time for a new update!

The traffic is scaling beautifully, but the monetization battle took a very wild turn. Let's dive into the data first!

Google Search Console: We smashed the 2k clicks milestone! Traffic from Google is really picking up momentum now, which means the site is finally earning some serious trust and breaking out of the initial sandbox.

Bing: Still a solid powerhouse. 1.7k clicks this month. It’s incredibly consistent and continues to bring in a highly engaged audience.

Google Analytics: We hit 7.1k sessions and over 15k pageviews! The engagement is still top-notch. The programmatic quiz section and the email wall I implemented last month are doing their job perfectly. The traffic asset is definitely growing and stabilizing. (In about 10 days i managed to collect 85 emails)

Monetization & Ads (The Bad News): Remember that top-tier premium ad network I had a call with? They actually kept their word. They contacted their dedicated Google rep to manually review my site, hoping to bypass the bot and whitelist the domain for an MCM invite. The verdict? A hard "No". Google manually reviewed the site and explicitly stated that they cannot monetize it. The "historical summaries" angle is fundamentally flagged as replicated/low-value content by their human reviewers. So, no bot to blame this time, it's a definitive dead end for this specific domain on Google's ad networks.

The New Strategy: I am absolutely not letting 15k monthly pageviews go to waste. If Google won't approve this domain, we play a different game.

I just registered a brand new domain and built a fresh blog in a very closely related niche. But this time, it's packed with 100% original, high-E-E-A-T content (historical and strategic analysis). I am writing these articles specifically to please the AdSense reviewers and bypass their strict criteria.

I have already submitted this new, "clean" domain for AdSense review. Once AdSense approves the new domain, I will migrate my main site and all its traffic over to it.

Even Ezoic rejected my website.

Wish me luck with the AdSense gods! I'll keep you posted on the approval process.

Any update on this journey?

notNewB said:

Any update on this journey?

Click to expand...

Hey! Thank you for your interest in my journey.

Quite some time has passed since the last update, and yes, there has been a growth in the last month.
I'm still fighting with Google to get approved somehow, and this is what has been keeping me busy for all this time, I'll talk first on how this adsense thing is going/has gone and then show you all the growth and stuff.

Since I've been rejected by adsense over 15 times for low-value content on my main site (i'll call it ".it" since it's the tld i'm using), I've bought more domains: .com and .org, all with the same domain name. I've then created original blogs, wrote many articles and submitted them for a review. I've done this because I thought that there was no way to get the .it (history articles and resumes for students, quizzes, tools etc all about history) approved. So my plan was to get at least one domain approved and then migrate the money site (.it) on it.

Sadly, I've been rejected so far twice with the .com and once with the .org, still with the same reason (low value content).
Then, on the 23th of May, I've submitted the .it through a google certified publishing partner, with google mcm (idk if it's called like this), anyway, i'm still waiting for a response, hopefully this time they'll rate it manually and approve it.

All this adsense thing has been taking me so much time, focus and will, and I'm quite demoralized. I feel like with an approval I'd be way happier and I'd focus more on growing the website.

In these last few months I've also been busy travelling (I've been to Wien and Budapest with my gf) and studying for my exams (I study history at uni), but I still managed to get an interview for my project with a local online newspaper which made me kind of "famous" in my hometown haha. I've also written many new posts and made a overall restyle of the whole site, making it look more professional and trustworthy.

Now let's dive into the stats:

Google Search Console (1st may - 1st june): almost 3.9k clicks, 209k impressions. I'm really satisfied with how the organic traffic is doing! My main sources of clicks are history quizzes.


Bing: 2,7k clicks, 83k impressions.


google analytics: 8,5k active users, 11k sessions, 21k views, 5.37m average session duration.


I'm really happy about how all of this is going, but I'd be happier if i were able to monetize this traffic somehow. I don't really need money since I also work weekends and don't have important spending, but it would motivate me to continue doing this and it would also mean that it could become self-sustainable in the future.

Let me know if you have any questions or anything! Thank you very much for following this journey!

Do you think you did everything to find the cause of the rejection and took all the measures possible? Or have you tried having the main .it domain audited by someone experienced?

There are plenty of threads/comments here on BHW to do research, here is a good comment to start - https://www.blackhatworld.com/seo/low-value-content-not-approved-in-adsense.1820325/#post-20819759

Not sure if there are sellers here on BHW, but "Adsense approval" is a big niche on Fiverr, maybe you could talk to a couple sellers there and collect ideas? You know more brains = more ideas.

If you're not doing anything radically black hat, I think the solution is much simpler than having another domain approved first and then migrating the site onto it.

notNewB said:

Do you think you did everything to find the cause of the rejection and took all the measures possible? Or have you tried having the main .it domain audited by someone experienced?

There are plenty of threads/comments here on BHW to do research, here is a good comment to start - https://www.blackhatworld.com/seo/low-value-content-not-approved-in-adsense.1820325/#post-20819759

Not sure if there are sellers here on BHW, but "Adsense approval" is a big niche on Fiverr, maybe you could talk to a couple sellers there and collect ideas? You know more brains = more ideas.

If you're not doing anything radically black hat, I think the solution is much simpler than having another domain approved first and then migrating the site onto it.

Click to expand...

I'm pretty sure the reason behind the rejections is the non-uniqueness of the articles, since they CANNOT be unique, as they are about history. I cannot make up new dates, you know. What I talk about has already been written million times on wikipedia and every history site basically. A few months ago I talked with some guys from an important advertising agency, and they found no problems in the website. So I don't really know what to do.

I'm quite skeptical about fiverr sellers, I feel like it would be a waste of money/time. What are those indian guys going to tell me? Radically change my site just to get rejected once again?

With these problems I just talked about, I believe having another domain approved would actually be easier. In fact, I already have a domain approved which I don't use anymore, the only thing keeping me back from migrating onto it is that the domain name is completely different and not associated with history whatsoever.

Probably I should just wait for an update from google's side.

Interesting journey, i have just one question: Why are you so obssesed with adsense? With your traffic, you can apply to Monumetric.

Good luck, will follow your journey.

nSnoopy said:

Interesting journey, i have just one question: Why are you so obssesed with adsense? With your traffic, you can apply to Monumetric.

Good luck, will follow your journey.

Click to expand...

Thank you! Great question, i'm obsessed with adsense because with every ad network you'll still need google's approval, since they basically have the monopoly of the ads industry. i can't really apply to monumetric since my content is in italian, and they require 50% US/CANADA/UK traffic.

Even with mediavine, if they were to accept me, but without google's supply, I'd be only able to monetize with ssp like criteo etc... resulting in low fillrate and low cpms

metlivewin said:

Thank you! Great question, i'm obsessed with adsense because with every ad network you'll still need google's approval, since they basically have the monopoly of the ads industry. i can't really apply to monumetric since my content is in italian, and they require 50% US/CANADA/UK traffic.

Even with mediavine, if they were to accept me, but without google's supply, I'd be only able to monetize with ssp like criteo etc... resulting in low fillrate and low cpms

Click to expand...

I see, regarding monumetric why not email them and ask, i read lots of positive reviews about them online.

nSnoopy said:

I see, regarding monumetric why not email them and ask, i read lots of positive reviews about them online.

Click to expand...

I could, and probably will, but I'd still need google's approval: Site must be approved by major ad providers.

nice journey, so youre not monetizing the traffic at all?

alwaysgrinding said:

nice journey, so youre not monetizing the traffic at all?

Click to expand...

Exactly! I've not made a single euro so far, haha.