CONFIRMED: Payouts Lower by URL over Time

I can now confirm with 99% certainty that YPN is paying domains that dispaly ads for the first time top dollar and as time gos on that domains cut slowly lowers.

Here is how I tested:

1. 4 months ago my main site was paying an average of $10/click. Each month that amount dropped.

From Nov-Dec : CPM dropped 33% overall
From Dec-Jan : CPM dropped 25% overall
From Jan-Feb : CPM dropped 50% overall

2. Since I now have a second site on the exact same topic I decided to put YPN ads on it and see if it did better than the first site which has had ads on it for 4 months.

It shows me the exact same ads as the first site - and since I put the ads on a few days ago - it has paid me 10x what the first site currently is.

 

like I said before, I have noticed this trend also. thats not right at all.

 

If it ever paid me $10 id be so happy ;p its always been the same for me but your research shows that they might have a condition to keep a ceirtain profit depending on how long you are with them. All i know is once i reach $100 payout ill move to google.

 

I'm not sure what I said is clear... Here's what I'm saying

If you have two sites, both showing the same ads, only difference is that 1 has been showing ads for months and the other just started - the older site will payout tiny amounts while the new one will payout the full price.

 

It was, sorry if i didnt phrase my words right.

 

Hmm, interesting for sure. I definitely have noticed decreased earnings per click but not as clear-cut as you. Mine's fluctuated a LOT....high days and low days. Sometimes I still get a day where I make $4/click but not as frequently as early December when I started.

Seems to be true what you're saying. If so, not cool at all...

 

There is a major flaw in your conclusion.

Almost all advertisers run the same ad with different payouts. A keyword of "Breast Surgery" may display an ad that pays $3.00 but if the keyword is "Breast Surgeons in New York" that same exact ad may pay $30 per click.

Just because the same ad displays, the payouts can be vastly different depending on what the advertiser is bidding for that particular keyword. Prices paid per click are based on the specific keyword, not the actual ad.

I run a fairly large number of sites on YPN, and some are paying less, some more. Generally speaking, advertisers seem to be dropping out or lowering their bids. As YPN adds more publishers, it is supply vs. demand, and the lower payouts are likely a result of not enough advertisers with an unlimited budget to spend. Yahoo may be taking a larger cut, but it certainly isn't going to result in a 50% drop. Those large drops or increases are controlled by the advertisers - and the number of advertisers running YPN also factors in.

 

dude......haha. I told you. Seriously, thats why you called me this morning.

I still dont understand why they would pay you progressively less though.

 

I took this into account, and can tell you the KW's are the exact same on both the old and new sites. I'm not going to give anymore details than that, you can come to your own conclusions - all I know is the same content, same kws and same ads on different sites are paying a difference of $9/click.

No they are not. I track the bids on overture and I know exactly what they're paying. My kw's are in very HIGH competitive areas, are not seasonal - and are still paying just as much per click as they did 6 months ago.

 

so one should use yahoo for few months and switch to google and switch back after fews months to get high rates.

 

this is HORRIBLE!!!!

What about those small sites that start off slow... it takes them months to get a good amount of clicks/visitors, and by then, the payouts are total crap????

 

Same here, i agree.
I wonder who has more conspiracy theories YPN or Kenndy? lol Its just a simple fact With Google and Ypn, you will have good days and then really bad days as well. There are tons of factors that cause this.

 

The ideal test would be

Start a new site with similar content to an established site (showing YPN ads for more than 4-5 months). Observe the payouts on this new site and compare with the existing one.

Even with this setup, its difficult to conclude your point, due to the keyword/key phrase differences (unless you have exact copy of website) in 'similar content'

This whole thing is too speculative and if YPN does gradually decrease payout, YPN is not going to change it if you prove it

So its more fruitful to focus on building quality websites/content than spending time on such open ended tests

 

This is exactly what yo-yo did. From all of his posts, I know he's not an idiot....and combined with trends I've seen, I believe him.

Why is it hard to believe that payouts would decrease? As an ad company, wouldn't you want to attract publishers with high payouts and then gradually lower them? Makes sense to me.

 

aaah my bad...I didn't see second point.

 

From limited testing performed before this thread was posted I would have to agree with Yo-Yo. I didn't see quite as extreme a shift, but the overall trend is similar.

 

You don't understand the process. You can advertisers bid on 100 keywords for the same ad and the price can range from 10 cents to $30. You don't know all the combinations of keywords any particular advertiser is bidding on or what keyword yahoo is going to credit the account. You may be looking up the keyword you think yahoo is using, but it is just a guess. It could be one of a hundred other ones. You don't get to control what ad keyword yahoo serves up. You just don't ad the $30 keyword you want to your page and expect to get paid for those ads. You would need to know the geographical location of the visitor, the keyword they found your site with, the page name - a number of factors which you aren't factoring in. If you site has the keyword "breast surgery new york" yahoo could decide to charge the advertiser based on "breast surgery" or "breast surgery new york" (which can depend on the IP address). Both keyword are on your page but one pays 10x more than the other. An advertiser could also add a negative keyword to a particular ad which would prevent you from being paid the higher amount, even though the same ad is going to show.

You are coming to conclusions which may work for your situation, but that is a long way from proving something.

It's absurd to think that yahoo pays advertisers more at the start and automatically lowers the payout based just on how long you are running the ads. I know for a fact that it isn't true - because I have multiple sites in the same sector and some are paying more than they were 4 months ago.

 

I didn't say he was an idiot, just jumped to conclusions and didn't "confirm" anything about yahoo's policy. If I checked all my sites and found sites with a .net tld were down, I could state that yahoo is paying less for ads running a .net tld - and while I could "confirm" that happend in my particular case, it certainly doesn't prove squat about a yahoo policy of paying .net tlds less.

Adsense pays most new sites more because smart pricing hasn't been factored in. Adsense assigns a quality score to a site and can adjust its payment to the publisher. In that case, it's a quality issue, not an accross the board policy that means every site is going to get paid less - and it isn't based on age of the ad either.

 

I see what you're saying, mjewel, and even agree with most of it. But isn't it strange that a lot of us are seeing gradual trends downward in earnings? Yo-yo as well as many others do see it as strange, and that's why he did this little study. It's not in-depth and it's only 2 sites, but it is interesting to see.

 

If you read my post, I wasn't saying earning weren't decreasing. I just don't believe it has anything to do with how long you are running ads. Yahoo certainly needs to attract more advertisers and it only makes sense that the more publishers running YPN, the lower the prices will go (assuming no other changes).

Before YPN started for smaller publishers, overture advertisers saw their ads running on far fewer sites - and sites that certainly aren't as prone to click fraud. If I was an advertiser willing to pay x, and now the budget for x doesn't last to the end of the month (because so many more sites are now showing my ad) its going to affect something. Advertisers aren't going to pay a lot more for ads if they can get the same ad to run on adwords for a lot less - (unless the conversion rate is higher, and a there really shouldn't be much of a difference with sites that can run adsense or YPN). On the other hand, if yahoo doesn't pay as much or more than adsense, they aren't going to be successful.