Congrats on the earnings! That is very impressive! I am actually getting my first $100 month with adsense this month So I am excited, but I think you are a lot more excited than me haha.
Me lose my touch, never that If I did, ain't no problem to get the gat... Just been busy playing with Google, they seem to like to change the rules in the last minute of the game when your beating them by 20 points...then they say the team with the lowest score will win...WTF! Something changed in April that has effected income...still trying to figure out what the heck is going on...
Have you lost traffic as well? I believe this is around the time of penguin? If so this could be the cause. I'm sure you already looked into this but just in casee you haven't I know a lot of sites were penalised due to excessive linking and maybe that's the reason? If sites sending you traffic are getting less traffic due to their drop then you will et less traffic as well. Less traffic for your referring sites means less traffic for you which likely means less clicks on ads. Anyway I hope you get this sorted.
I think it will take me a few months to get back on track. It seems the closer I got to that 10k goal the harder it was to make money with adsense. Example...I had been growing by an average of $1500 a month since Nov. Then April hits and I only see a growth of $400! Then May comes and now I drop back to $7---. Now with June I will see somewhere between $5000 and $6000. I am still not complaining as I am now making most if my income without adsense. I would love to get back to $10,000 or more a month but with the cost of clicks in the US 50% less or worse...I would need to double my US traffic. Yes and there was a change in traffic...due to Panda and due to me slacking off in May and June to work on better income sources. I am hoping to move google into 3rd place..right now google is 2nd place in my income stream.
Right on that is really good money foe adsense in a year. I hope you are planning on branching into other areas.
When you talk about the cost of clicks in the USA being a certain amount that tells me you are paying for clicks what is your NET earnings per month since you must be paying a lot for clicks
It all depends on the site of course, but once you have enough traffic to be making thousands off of AdSense you could usually be making more by selling targeted CPM banners either directly or with a network. Or sponsored posts, affiliate ads, any number of methods. What I am getting at is this: it's rare from AdSense to be the primary income source for a large site. I think you are on the right track to be moving away from AdSense.