Hi all I have been lurking here for a while, and have found some really useful info, thanks to many for that... As far as AdSense goes, I am a little despondent about it. I had enjoyed great improvement in my revenues, up to just over $150 per day for 4 days back in September. Then the wheels came off. I am not sure why and am struggling to come to terms with it. First, earnings were down a mere 50%, to roughly $60-70 per day. Recently, they have plummeted even further, to around $20-30 per day. It is really baffling, since I put a lot of time into creating genuinely original and comprehensive content, have never used trickery or deceit to get traffic or clicks, etc. Despite this, it seems the root of the issue is that my site has dropped way down the Google indices for the various search terms that were relevant and it once dominated. I have one of the more detailed and ginormous sites in my niche out there, and have quite a number of good links in, including numerous Wikipedia pages. I also took the conservative route in changing the images that were next to my adds - not removing them completely, but making sure I was not in a position to have to answer to Google about misleading users, which I certainly wasn't before, but now there can be absolutely no question of that. I had pictures directly related to my subject matter before, now I have pictures only indirectly related... and they could not be interpreted as possibly being an example of anything offered for sale in the ads. Initially, I put down the decline to smartpricing, but somehow competitive sites rank higher than me in the search results, despite them not having as many inbound links or as much content. In fact, some of them rank higher despite the fact that they simply use my information... Anyway, just needed to talk about it and hopefully find some reasons to be cheerful in this new year... Thanks for the shoulder to cry on guys!
Seems like the downfall was caused by reduced traffic. Try and improve the rankings to their former positions.
I know what you mean about other sites outranking you. I have the same problem with a client. The site above him uses 100% copied content and it outranks him despite having no inbound links. I think Google is giving priority to some of the older sites lately... Can you share you site so I can see what you're talking about exactly. By the way. $30/day is still nothing to be ashamed of but I can see how making $150 would be better I wish you all the best of luck getting it back up.
Update your content quite regularly, nowadays SE's looks fresh updating content sites to give some good positions in their rankings, check back your statistics when you got good traffic and compare now with that and find out what's going wrong...
Thanks for the words of encouragement. I do not currently want to let anyone know anything about my site, as I am instigating legal procedings against a couple of sites that have simply pulled my content without credit or retaining my copyright notice. I'd hate to jeopardise that by opening my big mouth prematurely. I'm sorry about that. I will add though that my site has been around in concept for over 20 years, beginning as a collection on paper, eventually being manually captured from that by myself and finally into its present form online. I have dedicated a large amount of time and money to it, so AdSense and the chance to get a little back after many years of work I thought was a gift and a means to really put some extra effort in. Just after a few months of nearly $100 average per day I hired someone to help, soon after that we hit the $150 per day mark I mentioned previously, and unfortunately it's been a pretty quick downhill slide from there. Thanks again for your responses though, and perhaps I can pull it back...
I'm sure you will. Adsense is like that. Actually, you should look at click rates as opposed to money. Sometimes the ads are just worth less money so if that's the case, you can get it back for sure. In any case, good luck.
As people said, your decline in earnings is directly related to your decline in traffic, which is the result of poor SERPs. Nothing we can do to help you there; SERP positioning is the bane of all webmasters. But you should be aware that Google no longer allows images next to ads -- either related or not. Just because you remove the related ads with non-related ones, you are still giving the impression your ads have something to do with the images. Don't be mistaken in thinking that you are now "safe", because while you still have images next to your ads, you are far from it.
According to this: http://adsense.blogspot.com/2006/12/ad-and-image-placement-policy.html I think I should be ok. I'm really not wanting to be confrontational, but as far as I can see I'd consider myself to be OK as per that clarification... I certainly hope so. Thanks anways for the heads up. Edit: Decided to be ultra-safe, and not apply my own interpretation to it. I'm going without images...
if things work out well, make sure you keep us updated on your progress good luck with your procedings
Update OK, it's been a few weeks. I've messed about, played with ad colours & layouts, tried to buid traffic, etc. Results so far are promising. Traffic is up to 75% or so of where it was, CTR is hugely improved, and eCPM fluctuates quite a bit but is overall much better. The last few days I am up around the $50 mark, which is still a long way from the $150 of old, but happily quite a long way from $30 as well. I've found that for my site, blue links, very light coloured background, 336x280 ads are the way to go. My 468x60 ads get a quarter of the CTR of the other size. Astonishingly, it makes very little difference how often I add news items, possibly because of the nature of my site though. My content, aside from news items, changes often and regularly, but that hasn't and won't change, that's just how it works. For the short term, I plan on building more traffic and making small html tweaks to the site, mainly to get ads positioned very precisely compared to content - either above or below certain headings, near the bottom or the middle or the top, that kind of thing. The colours I will leave as is for now - I don't think I can improve them greatly. I might play with 2 468x60s together, to see if that works a little better than the 336x280 blocks. Anyway, I'm fairly happy with the progress, and will keep sharing as far as possible over the next while as I keep on in my pursuit of returning to $150 per day and beyond!