For the past couple of years I've published articles in two places: here on Publish0x, and on my self-hosted WordPress website Technically Product. Neither has made me rich, but they each generate a modest amount of income (or as I like to call it, 'beer money'). As my background is in online advertising, I thought it would be interesting to compare the two from a revenue generating perspective.

This is in no way scientific - not least because the content on the two sites is quite different. My Publish0x articles mainly focus on cryptocurrency, while my WordPress articles mainly focus on digital marketing (with some crossover between the two when I forget what I'm supposed to be doing). So they reach different audiences, and those audiences attract different advertisers.

With that in mind, here are the headline figures for my articles (money values are in pound sterling because I'm a Brit):

Average views per article
Publish0x: 1,656
WordPress: 1,855

Average earnings per article
Publish0x: £7.46
WordPress: £1.71

RPM (revenue per thousand views)
Publish0x: £4.51
WordPress: £0.92

(I've published a lot more articles on WordPress (106) than Publish0x (17), so I'm focusing on views and earnings per article rather than overall totals.)

Revenue models

Despite both sites being funded by advertising, they have rather different models. On Publish0x, as you probably know, advertising revenue goes into a rewards pool. This pool is then used to fund the 'free' tips that users can leave on articles.

On WordPress, I've used Google Ad Manager to add display advertising slots to the site (your usual leaderboards, skyscrapers and so on). This inventory is then sold through Google AdSense. As I understand it, advertisers are generally paying to reach my audience rather than to appear on my website - they may be unaware that they are advertising on Technically Product specifically. More fool them!

Average views

The first thing that surprised me is that the two sites have very similar reach. Mean average views per article is rather close, at 1,656 for Publish0x and 1,855 on WordPress. That's only a 12% difference in favour of WordPress.

But it took me a lot longer to build that audience on WordPress. For the fist six months of writing on my site, I was averaging less than 100 views per post. Compare that to Publish0x, where my very first article has had nearly 1,000 views! Publish0x gives you a ready-made audience straight out of the gate. I do wonder though whether WordPress has the greater potential in the long term... time will tell.

Average earnings

Then we come to average earnings per article. This is massively higher on Publish0x, at £7.46 compared to WordPress and AdSense's £1.71. But again there are a couple of caveats - both relating to Publish0x.

On Publish0x I've had the good fortune to win a few competitions. Most notably, a competition about Presearch netted me over $120 of ETH (at today's prices). Take these competitions out of the equation and my average earnings per article would drop down to something like £2.30 - less impressive than £7.46, but still a good third higher than the WordPress figure.

So should I ignore competition winnings when thinking about Publish0x's earning potential? It's tempting, but I don't think I will. The competitions happen brilliantly often, and I know from experience that even the 'average Joe' writer has a good shot at winning them.

The other thing to bear in mind with Publish0x is that article earnings fluctuate with the price of crypto. Why is that? Well, although the Publish0x dashboard shows a dollar figure for each post's earnings, hover over that and you will see the true breakdown in crypto. Here, for example, it may look like I've earned $3.92 - but I've actually earned 0.0130551 FARM, 1.5241 AMPL and 0.00020489 ETH:

If the values of those currencies change, the dollar amount will automatically adjust. As a radio advert might put it, "the value of your earnings may go down as well as up".

But as I write this article, the market is in something of a slump. Although FARM has so far been unaffected, ETH is down 23% over the past 14 days. This means that any earnings I have made in ETH will also be down 23% over the past 14 days. When the market recovers, my Publish0x earnings will increase - and so will my average earnings per article. So what you're seeing is Publish0x outperforming WordPress even when the market is down.

Publish0x wins on the RPM front too - that is, revenue per thousand views. Although the Publish0x articles have had slightly fewer views, they have generated so much more money that the RPM is still higher.

Validation for Publish0x

There are plenty of other pros and cons to using a self-hosted website versus Publish0x. Self-hosting brings with it hosting costs, for example! But I've promised myself that I will only focus on revenue in this article, so I'll stop there.

What I will say is that Publish0x is a viable alternative to - and in my case, outperforms - a self-hosted website when it comes to monetization. This is particularly the case in the early stages, when a self-hosted website can languish for months with no organic reach. Publish0x brings you a ready-made audience and a battle-tested approach to generating revenue.

Are you publishing on both Publish0x and your own website? I'd be very interested to hear about your experiences!