Ok, I just read an article on smart pricing in AdSense today. It says that if you have poor CTR, Google will lower your commission (earnings). so say you just earned 0.30 for that click, but because you have low CTR, they give you 0.15. (just a rough example, the numbers are not real) what matters is that it affects your whole account. so if you have website A and website B. A have CTR of 5% and B have CTR of 0.2%. You would have earned (example) $5 daily from A, but due to B dragging down the whole CTR, you earned (example) $2 instead. the remedy is to remove or improve the CTR of website B. The usual option is to remove all AdSense from B. The logic is if you can get high CTR on A, B should be no prob unless it is the niche of B. This can be on internet marketing, widgets and etc. where the targeted traffic is internet (and monetization) savvy. and here is the article: http://courtneytuttle.com/2008/01/02/how-to-get-worthless-adsense-clicks/ ps: I wrote the stuff in this thread out of my own words and understanding. maybe I am missing something here, so read the original article yourself if you had no idea smart pricing exist. and for the record, I am not taking the bite yet. I just removed all Adsense from my Make Money Online site because this niche is the worst to monetize with AdSense (CTR < 1%). so what I did is remove all Adsense and replace with Bidvertiser for temp measure, I am looking for affiliate networks to place more relevant ads later on. now to see if my Adsense earnings for the next 14 days will increase. (apparently, it takes 7 days for Google to revert out of smart pricing).
ok, my results so far shows no consistent increase in CPC. but its only the 5th day. seems like not many know about this. I wonder if its a hoax to display adsense competitors.
this is not new info actually, thats the way it has been. your low paying /low CTR site brings down the average for the entire account.
The CTR on your site has nothing to do with smart pricing. Smart pricing is based on the quality of the clicks from your site. You can see my smart pricing FAQ here: http://www.admoolah.com/blog/index.php/2006/12/smart-pricing-faq-for-adsense-publishers/
This is yet another reason why I do not use AdSense anymore! Anyway, I hope that you do find a solution that works well for you.