Egyptian Publisher Success Story: Movie Fansite, $200+ Daily Profits
Hope you’re ready for yet another inspiring case study.
This time, we are bringing you the story of a guy who started earning $10 and ended up with thousands of dollars in profit each month.
Sounds unbelievable, but yet again, it’s true.
Stay tuned, and don’t miss finding out what were the steps he took to get this far. And, of course, why Monetag is the platform you should trust your business with.
Contents
About the publisher: Childhood dream and how he entered the world of movie fansites
Our client is from Egypt, and his professional journey started when he was 16 years old (at that time he was not our client). That’s when he decided to start working so he could afford a gym membership and access to the Internet (aaaaw, right?).
One of his friends who owned a movie fansite offered him a job, and that was the beginning of it.
“He gave me 300 Egyptian pounds per month, which was like $10 back in that time.”
After he graduated high school, he had to face the fact that he wouldn’t be able to carry forward with higher education.
“My grades weren’t good enough for me to join a good university”.
So, he made a promise to himself that he would succeed despite these circumstances.
“I asked my friend if he could make a movie fansite for me, and he agreed to do it. I didn’t have enough money to pay him. I had to borrow from my mother so I could afford it. The cost was around $350.”
A couple of months later the website had its debut.
“Here came my turn to make this website generate traffic and convert it into real money!”
Learning process: SEO as the first stop
In order to understand how to rank his new website high on Google SERP (Search Engine Result Page), the publisher had to learn everything about SEO.
So he spent hours searching and exploring this topic. He read all the info he could find about optimizing a website for search engines. And these are the conclusions he made (you will be surprised):
“Articles like “Content is the KING”, “Buy Backlinks”, “Spam Backlinks”, “High DA (Domain Authority) PA (Page Authority) Backlinks”, all that is just trash.”
According to him, this knowledge is relevant only if you want to be on the first page of a search engine for a month or two. But it won’t keep you there longer than that. At least that’s the case with movie niche websites.
Note: The publisher only uses Google Search Engine Console to keep his SEO in place.
Revelation: UX is all that matters
The publisher claims that within this niche, UX (User Experience) is what makes or breaks your business. He says there are three things you need to focus on with a movie fansite:
- Grant access to high-quality video content
- Fast loading website
- Easy-to-use interface
What he means by UX in terms of movie fansites, is that the user can browse your website and access the content on it without coming across many, or even any, useless pages. It’s the clear and simple flow that matters.
And it’s important to bear in mind just how UI (User Interface) is significant, again specifically within this niche. Your users should find it easy to explore genres, categories, movies by date, actors, etc.
According to him, an easy-to-use interface is what will place you on the first page of Google.
Early Success: 80k daily users
Only a couple of months after he launched his website, and after applying all the knowledge he could accumulate in that time, the publisher managed to reach 80.000 daily users. And that’s only from Google search.
Also, at that time, he relied on pop-up ads and had between $70 and $100 daily profits.
Just imagine being an 18-year-old living in Egypt and making $2500-3000 each month, while the average income in this country was less than $200 due to inflation.
“Earning money in a strong currency and spending it in a weaker currency is a life hack!”
But he didn’t stop there. Year after year he was becoming more experienced and more confident in his skills. He launched several more websites in the same niche, and as he claims, his success rate is around 70%.
There was only one website, out of five, that didn’t survive Google algorithm updates. He calls these updates Google storms, as they come with such a force that can ruin all of your months-long hard work in only one day.
“If you’re only depending on traffic from Google, like me, be aware that this could happen.” And there’s not much you can do about it.
Long way to Monetag: Networks reviews
Having the right partner by your side is of crucial importance. Especially if you want to make sure you have returning visitors and returning traffic on your website. In a publisher’s world, that’s what’s called a true success.
Before he started monetizing his traffic through Monetag, our publisher collaborated with several other, well-known monetization platforms.
“I have tried a lot of advertising networks in the last six years. Whichever you can guess, I probably have already worked with.”
And given you all might wonder what the best ad network/monetization platform for movie niche websites is, here are some of the comments he was willing to share:
*Surely, we can not mention our competitors by name.
“Network 1 was a waste of time. They had low CPMs and no real impressions count.
Network 2 was a funny one. It only makes good money on the first day, and then R.I.P. I bet a lot of you noticed that if you tried this network. I don’t know why they’re working this way. Like saying – Nah, nah, it’s too much money for him. Cut it!
Network 3 is a decent one. But with them, you can get fixed CPMs only if you’re a big guy and have tons of traffic.
Network 4 is a good network. I worked with them in the beginning, in 2018, 2019. They were very good at that time, but now not all of their formats are making good money.”
Buying a house with Monetag profits: $6000+ a Month
After he teamed up with Monetag, our publisher felt like he finally found his perfect match. With Popunder and Vignette Banner as the most powerful weaponry, he’s now generating around $200 on a daily basis.
Popunder is proven to be a perfect monetization format for movie-based websites, mostly thanks to the high average CPM rates. The size of the format, as well as the fact it does not interrupt users while they are engaging with the website content, are the very reasons why Popunder works like a charm.
Vignette Banner, on the other hand, is proven to have high click-through rates, and it works perfectly on all platforms and operating systems. The native experience this format offers seems to be appealing to the movie fansite audience.
As to how much he earned in a six-month period, these are the numbers:
- Popunder brought him the biggest profit – around $28.000, with 0.82 being the average CPM rate
- Vignette Banner contributed with a couple of hundred dollars, but it was a steady profit
- The majority of traffic came from Egypt (with 36.000+ impressions, he earned around $7500)
- Other countries that generated traffic were Iraq, Germany, Algeria, USA, Israel, Morocco, and AE (the number of impressions was significantly lower compared to Egypt, but traffic from each of these countries brought between $1.100 and $1.900)
“Thanks to Mahair and Kristina for inviting me to Monetag. They did their best so I could reach more than $6000 monthly. With Monetag, I could save enough money to buy my first house. Thanks, Monetag!”
Final thoughts
In the end, our publisher wanted to share a piece of advice with all the young enthusiasts who are thinking of launching a website within this niche →
It can be harder and harder to succeed with each passing day, but “despite all of the struggles, you can still make it if you want it bad enough”.
We hope you found this case study inspiring and moving like we all did, but above all, we hope it presents useful guidance you will be able to rely on in your own journey.
