How One Couple Grew a Small Gardening Blog into a Multi-site, $1 million+ Portfolio

Jim and Mary Competti had a shared dream of starting a small, self-sufficient farm back in 2010, turning to blogging to keep family and friends updated on their progress. Starting with small homesteading projects and planting their first garden, the Compettis’ dream of farming ultimately uncovered their passion for writing and love of connecting with others through their content. Old World Garden Farms was born to detail their endeavors further. 

In the early stages of beginning to blog, the Compettis continuously added to their site with topics ranging from their favorite recipes to tips and tricks for keeping chickens, and even the process of building their own barn. They quickly expanded their readers to outside their immediate circle of family and friends. The passion with which they write grew Old World Garden Farms to a steady following of over 15 million monthly viewers from more than 220 countries. 

While it’s hard to imagine the beginning where the Compettis admit they didn’t “earn a penny” from their site from 2010 to 2016, they knew they needed to find a way to monetize their content in order to make their passion a sustainable business. 

The Compettis decided to try their hand at managing their own ads, in addition to keeping track of their growing list of farming tasks. Despite their best efforts in ad management, the revenue share they saw while self-managing was low and the payoff minimal. Plus, they quickly grew tired of controlling all the ad settings and functions themselves, especially when chickens needed feeding and garden beds needed weeding.

Through the suggestion of a fellow website owner, the Compettis sought out ad management from Mediavine. Now, with direct access to Mediavine educational resources, tried-and-tested ad settings and recommendations from experienced Support Specialists, they’re able to rely on Mediavine’s expertise for their ads and focus on what they love: creating great content. 

The Mediavine Dashboard has become a favorite resource — with full visibility into their earnings and performance. After coming to Mediavine, the Compettis’ revenue quickly grew to extremes they didn’t know were possible back when they sowed their first crop. Over time, revenue growth from their partnership with Mediavine has resulted in an excess of 250% YOY, seeing continuous increases in revenue every year.

Old World Garden Farms reached the status of earning over $500k per year in ad revenue soon after joining, and the Compettis were invited to Mediavine’s Premiere Publisher program, gaining access to one-on-one account management with a L2-certified and experienced Premiere Account Manager. 

During one of their initial audits with their Premiere Account Manager, additional opportunities to increase their ad RPM and revenue were quickly identified. Having never previously optimized video, they had turned everything off due to uncertainty of site impact. Their RPM from video nearly doubled overnight after following their Premiere Account Manager’s suggestions. Starting with video at 0% of their revenue, Universal Player is now at 32% of their annual earnings. 

The success of Old World Garden Farms took off even more dramatically with the help of their Premiere Account Manager’s suggestions. From 2019, the final year before reaching Premiere status, to 2023, the most recent full year with the Premiere Account Manager, Old World Garden Farms achieved a 174% increase in RPM, a 194% increase in traffic, and a staggering overall revenue increase of 705%. Not too shabby for the pair who just wanted to keep family informed about life at the farm.

Through continued partnership with Mediavine, the Compettis have expanded to several successful sites. In addition to Old World Garden Farms, Simple Garden Life and This Is My Garden have also reached Mediavine Premiere status, with a fourth site, Make Your Meals, destined to follow suit. It’s currently approaching Mediavine Pro status, making a minimum of $100k per year in ad revenue.

In the meantime, the Compettis continue to rely on the expertise of their Mediavine Premiere Account Manager, who they now trust with full control over the ad settings on all of their sites. 

“The support and help and openness [at Mediavine] are what we love most. For us, it is the only way to go and the trust is there. At the end of the day, performance is very impressive, but it is that we trust Mediavine so much.” – Jim and Mary Competti, Co-Owners, Old World Garden Farms.  

Being one of the first and only publishers to reach three Mediavine Premiere sites, we are so proud of their success, are inspired by their passion, and are counting down the days for their fourth site to join the ranks of Premiere publishers. 

The above results represent this user’s experience with Mediavine. We cannot verify these results are typical and we do not guarantee your site will see the same results.