Alternative Ad networks - Rejected from most

Agree with @Philip J. Fry, but if you're 50/50 I'd definitely lean toward fully replacing the images and doing whatever it takes to just get "in".

Afterwards you can experiment with dual images or slowly placing the more graphic ones back in (or even just have a link that says "Click here to see the image (warning - graphic)".

Once you're in the ad network should also give you some kind of report about what pages may not be 'brand safe', then you can sort those individually.

I don't imagine you'd lose a lot of traffic by removing images, but even if you did, what use is there in traffic that earns you a $3 RPM vs $35-$50 RPM for a medical niche.

Do whatever it takes to get into MV or AT. Then worry about optimising. Good luck!
 
@Philip J. Fry @MinstrelJunkie
Thanks for the tip.

I actually went ahead and deleted ALL of the photos which may have elicited questionability and then applied to Adthrive.

They actually sent me a rejection since my site was on WIX haha.

Anyway, I just went ahead and started FRESH on a brand new domain... that I created on 10/1/22. Went with Wordpress this time and that first week was a mega learning curve.

WIX's drag and drop was definitely much more beginner friendly but I think I've mostly sorted it out now.

Couldn't actually get a decent domain name at all so I just went with a random word generator.

Post count as of 11/4: 58 posts
Traffic = basically none, mostly bot traffic
KW rankings = Ahref is showing 174 ranking keywords but nothing on first page to drive meaningful traffic

Hopefully it doesn't take that long to build authority on a 1 month old domain... but yeah, new site will be a lot less clinically heavy, not going to rely on those types of photos. Target everyday consumers I suppose.

Wondering if I should make a Laboratory case out of this. Goal is about ~50 articles/month. But, yeah going to just let the original site cruz and see what happens to it with all of those photos gone. It's still doing about 2k/month in revenue so it wasn't a complete waste of time for 6 months of work.
 
@Philip J. Fry @MinstrelJunkie
Thanks for the tip.

I actually went ahead and deleted ALL of the photos which may have elicited questionability and then applied to Adthrive.

They actually sent me a rejection since my site was on WIX haha.

Anyway, I just went ahead and started FRESH on a brand new domain... that I created on 10/1/22. Went with Wordpress this time and that first week was a mega learning curve.

WIX's drag and drop was definitely much more beginner friendly but I think I've mostly sorted it out now.

Couldn't actually get a decent domain name at all so I just went with a random word generator.

Post count as of 11/4: 58 posts
Traffic = basically none, mostly bot traffic
KW rankings = Ahref is showing 174 ranking keywords but nothing on first page to drive meaningful traffic

Hopefully it doesn't take that long to build authority on a 1 month old domain... but yeah, new site will be a lot less clinically heavy, not going to rely on those types of photos. Target everyday consumers I suppose.

Wondering if I should make a Laboratory case out of this. Goal is about ~50 articles/month. But, yeah going to just let the original site cruz and see what happens to it with all of those photos gone. It's still doing about 2k/month in revenue so it wasn't a complete waste of time for 6 months of work.
Sucks about AdThrive. I'd definitely re-apply to Mediavine, I have a friend who's built his own CMS from scratch and Mediavine took the time to work him and get their ads set up properly.

IMO it's not that Mediavine rejected you personally, their system just threw up a red flag. Asking them to rerun things (make sure you've cleared all caches etc) will have a good chance of getting you a green light. You just need one good person on their support team to take a look and actually help you out, and you'll get there.

All the best on the new site - if it's totally fresh I wouldn't expect much life until 6-12months from now. With that in mind, don't wait around on the original site! You'll kick yourself once you eventually get in that you hadn't done it sooner. Keep pushing them until they work with you to fix whatever issue is causing the denial - you're sitting on a gold mine (and they'll benefit from it too).
 
Sucks about AdThrive. I'd definitely re-apply to Mediavine, I have a friend who's built his own CMS from scratch and Mediavine took the time to work him and get their ads set up properly.

IMO it's not that Mediavine rejected you personally, their system just threw up a red flag. Asking them to rerun things (make sure you've cleared all caches etc) will have a good chance of getting you a green light. You just need one good person on their support team to take a look and actually help you out, and you'll get there.

All the best on the new site - if it's totally fresh I wouldn't expect much life until 6-12months from now. With that in mind, don't wait around on the original site! You'll kick yourself once you eventually get in that you hadn't done it sooner. Keep pushing them until they work with you to fix whatever issue is causing the denial - you're sitting on a gold mine (and they'll benefit from it too).

Going to give it another month or two and see where the traffic settles in without all the photos. Guess I'll give Mediavine another whirl at that time.

6-12 months is a long time, hopefully it doesn't take that long...
- Content on new site is much much higher quality.
- Articles are a lot more focused around each topic... trying for about 20-25 articles on each topic before moving onto next one. Previously I was just bouncing around to whatever low KD I could find.

Although what I am experimenting on right now is actually not really building any links. To be quite honest, due to vertical that I'm in, its like near impossible to find *relevant* links. Would be amazing to find healthcare clinics or practices to link back. Everything else isn't really quite relevant IMO...
- Probably going to get back into HARO at the end of this month, should have decent amount of content to make the site look somewhat presentable. But other than that, not going for any other links.

Problem is, its difficult to get into contact with whoever manages legit healthcare offices' websites. If I do find the seo agency that is in charge, they don't even respond haha. Honestly, not sure why they wouldn't exchange links with my original site. Site authority was getting to the point where articles would just rank at or near page 1 within a week of publishing. It was strange but I would just 'know' if what I write would rank or not.

Seriously missing that privilege on the new site.

Anyway at the end of the day I think its still better to have the local business separated out from the digital media side. It doesn't really make a lot of sense having them combined onto one site since they sort of served different purposes...

Forced to take quite a few steps back but I think 2-3 years from now, I believe it would've been the right decision.
 
Think I understand why you want to seperate them but imo if the original sure gives you authority in a YMYL niche it's like having a super power. It'll be really difficult to rank and a ton of work to build the same level of authority on a brand new domain.

If you can make the blog side work with your main site I absolutely would. You can always have the main home page super focused on the local business but then still have the blog in the background (though you do want at least some links going to the blog categories from your home page and site navigation)

Each to their own but think you could be looking at >$35-45 RPM and basically ranking articles without thinking twice by sticking to the main site. Vs years of playing catch-up trying to juggle two blogs

Just wanted to share my $0.02! Best of luck whatever you choose. Might be worth paying a pro SEO to take a look and advise you
 
@MinstrelJunkie I looked into SEO services and the conclusion I came to was that there wasn't anyone doing what I was doing. There isn't another local medical practice that has a monetized side blog.

It is uncharted territory.

The vast majority of doctors are too busy practicing to even think about this. Their clinical income already permits them to live a decently comfortable life. The blog portions are all run by SEO agencies but the purpose isn't to monetize it. Its simply to drive new patients and clients.

Although that's not to say that there aren't healthcare blogs out there with legitimate healthcare providers, there are. They're just far and few in between where the competition is fairly sparse IMO.

Currently the vertical is mostly dominated by a few titans in the industry with the little guys being basically non-existent.
- WebMD
- Healthline and their clone sites
- Health
- Mayoclinic
- Cleveland clinic

It's been months since I've started this thread and my opinion has not changed. Their content is weak.


Anyway, I'm definitely sticking with the new site because ultimately I want to retire from clinical practice by the end of my office's lease (~5 more years). Either shut it down or sell it. The selling part is a lot easier if the monetized website is separate.
 
@MinstrelJunkie I looked into SEO services and the conclusion I came to was that there wasn't anyone doing what I was doing. There isn't another local medical practice that has a monetized side blog.

It is uncharted territory.

The vast majority of doctors are too busy practicing to even think about this. Their clinical income already permits them to live a decently comfortable life. The blog portions are all run by SEO agencies but the purpose isn't to monetize it. Its simply to drive new patients and clients.

Although that's not to say that there aren't healthcare blogs out there with legitimate healthcare providers, there are. They're just far and few in between where the competition is fairly sparse IMO.

Currently the vertical is mostly dominated by a few titans in the industry with the little guys being basically non-existent.
- WebMD
- Healthline and their clone sites
- Health
- Mayoclinic
- Cleveland clinic

It's been months since I've started this thread and my opinion has not changed. Their content is weak.


Anyway, I'm definitely sticking with the new site because ultimately I want to retire from clinical practice by the end of my office's lease (~5 more years). Either shut it down or sell it. The selling part is a lot easier if the monetized website is separate.
I had a job interview this summer with a BetterHelp affiliate. They got like $1,000,000 in seed funding for a psychology portal. They hire psychologists and MDs (... or Masters of Social Work who are licensed for therapy...) to write articles to compete with those big guys and they're doing well.

So, basically, you only have a hand full of competitors. Are they big? Yes. But you can compete against them with quality and also relevancy. Plus, if you enter the niche, it'll be easy for you to get backlinks too, since there's only like 10 other competitors. If you're credible and produce good content, it is possible.

Their content is ranking for terms like "What is depression" or "signs of depression" and their site's only 1 year old.
 
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