Long story short: I've recently been put in charge of a site that's featured on major publications such as The New York Times, although the site has experienced a major downturn in ad revenue since a change in owners occurred about 2-3 years ago. Prior to that, the iPhone-oriented site had generated about $300/day. Now? It averages just a few dollars. As much as I've been reading about Adsense optimization, we're still only seeing a CPC of a few cents; although, we did have one decent day with a CPC of almost a dollar last week. The site is being bled dry since it's losing money and quite frankly I would be happy with getting back to the outlier CPC of almost a dollar if I can figure out exactly what the site needs to properly pick up the high-paying keywords an iPhone site should be. Please excuse the site's current appearance, it's re-launching very soon. Post-relaunch, I will optimize ad positions as they are quite standard for the time being. I'm experimenting with ads so there's a reason for some of the add oddities you may encounter. The site is www.iPhoneAlley.com. Frankly, I'd be happy to compensate any useful help received on here. Thanks very much for any advice.
are you still getting the same CTR? your ad placement is prro you should have them at the top your page.
Have you tried blocking any of the lower paying ads? Also, have any of the keyword/keyphrases you were previously targeting changed at all?
CTR is poor at around 1%, although I will be blending the ads in better to fit the articles once the site switches over to a new theme.
Could you please inform as to how I could find out exactly which ads ads are responsible for the low CPC? I've blocked some categories and seemingly low-paying ads. Quite honestly, we have never targeted keywords and simply wrote as was required for posts. As much as I'd prefer not to have to target keywords and make posts repetitive, it may be worth experimenting.
Unfortunately, tech related niches have slowly been in decline in revenue. It is actually one of the lowest paying now.
"its relaunching very soon" and "i will optimize ad position ..." there are 2 phrases that are ... well not acceptable. You can't expect to make money from a unfinished website. And about your iphone revenue, Google is making Mobile Ads (im sure you're aware of this) and in the beginning when the whole mobile hype started a avg. click of a ad would pay 2.50$ now.... since it has grown so much the value of a click has gone down, and you only seem to be able to make good money from ads on a App (think about developing a App, people are crazy to advertise on Apps) from safari on iPhone, Apple's iAds now make an avg. of 1.50$ (still more then Androids 0.80$) Awesome blog, huge Apple fan and have been reading through the news. Looks awesome, i btw suggest you check out a app called "Appy Gamer" (there is a same on for Apple-gadget ish, i forgot the name, its made by the same guys "Mobiles Republic" and maybe see if you can get your feed on there, they share 50% revenue.)
It's possible that the original owners tried to maximize the selling price by massive advertising (and consequently more earnings) and so you are seeing a drop in earnings since the ownership changed. Alternately, is it possible that you are having other low paying niches in the same host or with the same Adsense account as this one? You could be getting smartpriced because of this. I would suggest you to take a look at the traffic levels and compare it with the revenues. If the traffic has been the same and only earnings have dropped, in that case, replace Adsense with another ad network - direct selling works great for the iPhone niche since a lot of app developers are hungry to find new installs. Otherwise, work on getting your traffic up to the earlier levels, and revenue will automatically follow.
The more competition there is for a given keyword drives the click cost up. It may very well have been at an all time high when the site was sold and was just steadily declining. Unfortunately that is the nature of the business. Trying to stay on top of what's hot and what's not isn't always easy.
This. If your CPC is down, it's not because of your site as such - it's simply because people aren't competing for the keywords. To rectify that, you need to find better keyword phrases and use them. Of course, the way Google works, your visitors are still going to see stuff appropriate to THEM as much as to the site (as best I can figure it with their infuriating tracking cookies). For example, I got real estate ads on your site because I used to write for the company sending the ads!! That said, you can block low-price stuff, apparently, so that'd be worth a shot. There are loads of tutorials online, just search for "how to block low cpc ads" like the one on Technosom (I tried to link but the URL redirects to... er... itself?!). Personally, I'd be more concerned with refocussing my keywords to higher-paying niches. By the way, is the site for mobile? 'Cos it looks really ugly on a desktop screen (no offense intended, just my opinion).
Go and download skype, Shoot me a PM with your Skype handle and I will help you out. I have some very simple techniques you can do to raise your CPC. Holla!~
On the bottom of your website: Visit our partner site: iPad Apps | iPad News | iPad Reviews All 3 links are giving this warning: Just you know...
i quickly check your site alexa ranking and noticed that it was somewhere in 60k ranking in the past probably that was the reason behind 300$/day earnings If you not receive traffic no matter what u do results remains 0
If you have lost traffic after panda/penguin updates, I can help you to recover it. I faced similar issue and found a guy who did a wonderful job to get my site on the first page for the same keywords.
I would place Adsense above Recent Post and move Adsense from the bottom post to place inside the post instead. Make it <div align="right"> Adsense code </div> Hope this help.
Have you updated a review of the keyword profile of your site? What happens over time is the keywords that WERE easy to rank for expire in their easiness, either because of Google changes, or more often the SEO competition got steeper. Check your main keywords against a simple phrase search in Google, and if it's over 100,000 - 200,000 results, it's not a very good keyword anymore. Backlinking to overcome that heavy competition becomes a herculean task, that may only temporarily work to regain rankings. In the current Google environment, you may have to focus on new keywords that are related to the existing main keywords, and these new keywords should be CURRENTLY low competition in order to reboot the traffic to the site. The new and old keywords should then work synergistically to help with rankings. No one can guarantee a sustained, permanent high ranking for a good keyword. Improved rankings, yes, but what sometime seems to be asked for is a stable ranking regardless of the amount of SEO competition that emerges for the same word, or the competing authority status of those competitors.