Am I smart priced? Earnings decreased

I have a blog in gaming niche which gets more than 5000 UV per day. From last few days especially from the start of the new year, I am seeing that earnings from Adsense are continously decreasing. While I was earning more than $40 earlier, the earnings for today are $16 only. Yesterday it was $25 and day before yesterday it $29 only. So it is decreasing as the days are passing.

This all started from the commencement of new year. Please give some expert advice on how can I comeout of this smart pricing?

 

I got the same problem.
20>16>8>4!!!
January is mad, I think this year didn´t began just with a Google Dance.

 

well what is your CTR? have you taken a look at the ads?
would you say they are more or less the same advertisers?

 

It's time for an assessment of your ads. Of course earnings are going to fluctuate, but that's pretty drastic to have over a 60% decline in earnings.

 

To come out of smart pricing, you need to take Adsense out from all the websites you have in your account where the CTR is very low [Lower than 2 or 3%] for a while [1-2 weeks from what I've heard] to get things back to normal. You should also take steps to drive traffic that will result in conversions for the advertisers.

Also

https://adwords.google.com/select/news/sa_mar04.html

 

According to some information I've collected, when we are smart priced we need to remove all of adsense ads from the blog for 20 days to completely free from the effect. Things should be reset to the normal after that. It's advisable to put less ads block or detect and remove which ads block that perform badly.

Well, I'm not expert. But I happened to trapped in this situation twice. So I knew it. It's true that this January is pretty unstable for some publishers...

 

Use adsblacklist.com for filter low paying ads.

 

I don't think it is smart priced. I went from 50/day 2 weeks ago, to 20 a day now. Nothing else changed. CTR and visitors are the same. (1 site)

5 days ago, I got a 2nd adsense account because I started a new business.... and the site is paying the same even with a new account.


I think the recession effect is really starting to take it's toll on a lot of niches.

 

Your earnings pattern does not suggest your account is smart priced.

- Dean

 

I'm crazy these days too. Earning is very low

 

I am having the same problem. It seems that after Christmas, my adsense eCPM went down by almost 60%. I am scared that I am smart priced, but I am wondering if advertisers are lowering their advertising spend because of the economy.

 

I don't think the CTR on the publisher's makes a whip of difference, it's how the click converts on the advertiser's site. Unfortunately, publishers can't get those data so we don't know WHAT the CTR on the advertiser's site is so what pages would we remove?

If anything, a HIGH CTR on the publisher's site would be more detrimental because it indicates a lot of clicks, thus the ratio of conversions is probably less.

 

Im in same situation sadly.

 

What many people think is smart pricing often turns out to be nothing more than an infestation of MFA ads. I experienced a drop in earnings after the start of the new year and cleaned house via the ad-filter. It was pretty easy to see the offending sites and, sure enough, after doing so, earnings are back where they were.

 

How to check MFA and LCPC ads?

 

Some more research needs to be done on smartpricing. Hard to get concrete facts on it. Most information seems to be speculation and/or outdated.

Ofcourse Google reveals very little information of use to publishers.

 

My sites have all went down since the first, some not as drastic as you but yes.
They have always had lulls too.
I try to change up advertising on the ones that fall too far. I go with a different type of advertiser, textads or amazon on a handful of others. it helps at times.
You have so many variables and you know your site best. Are you not getting new people and the old are just coming in, they click alot less this is just one variable. The economy is a big factor though on some of my sites and some it doesnt hurt at all.

 

That's the information Google gives us. That doesn't help hence Google does not care that much about publishers, only if you have 20 million page views per month...

I wrote a post about smart pricing and explained everything in detail. Let me know if that was helpful for you and I will help you a little more.

Smart pricing happens when your site generates less conversions than usual and when the advertiser is earning less (his return of investment gets lower).

 

That make sense. We need more case studies to put an end to the many myths and confusions out there.

Like

Smart pricing affecting only one website VS it affecting a whole account. [Contrasting info]

Site by site basis - [Newer] http://www.webmasterworld.com/google_adsense/3320516.htm [The posts towards the end]

And your experience as stated on your blog, of course.

Entire account - [Older] http://www.jensense.com/2005/10/25/one-poorly-converting-site-can-smart-price-an-entire-adsense-account/