Ch. 18: My Checklist Before Switching to Display Ads

Ch. 18: My Checklist Before Switching to Display Ads

Month 16, my gardening site made $700/mo on Amazon at a brutal 3% commission. I wanted display income but jumping too early kills both. Here's the gate I set.

— Confirmed 50k+ sessions/mo for 3 straight months — Mediavine's threshold, no point applying under it
— Mapped which pages were info (ad-friendly) vs money (affiliate-friendly) — 60/40 split
— Ran the math: at $25 RPM, my info traffic alone was worth ~$750/mo on top of affiliate
— Tested page speed first — added ad slots tanks Core Web Vitals if you're already slow
— Kept affiliate links on money pages, added ads only on info pages

First full month: $1,490 total, up from $700. Affiliate didn't drop because I segmented.

Lesson banked: display isn't a replacement for affiliate — it's a second tax on traffic you're already wasting.