How I am beating Adsense Smart Price and getting back to $3000 a month

A follow-up to my previous post From $1000 dollar a month to $1500

(I have a network of entertainment blogs.)

I went close to 3000 dollars end of August but then I was heavily smart priced by Adsense... All stats were roughly the same but because my Earnings per clik (EPC = revenue / number of clicks) decreased (it means that a click is getting less valuable) and my revenue just went down the drain: from 3000 to 1200 --> -60% !!!

I read that many people were affected by a general decrease in September and end of October: well I was damn hit! Even more hit than others actually...

Have a look to this EPC graph over the year 2009 (it's not against the TOS, I just show the curve without any number):



The red circle is when I took a stance against smart pricing and tried to get out of it.

About smart pricing first:
- I confirm that smart pricing can affect you whole account (so one bad site can weaken the revenue of the others)

- if you do what is needed to get out of it: one week can be enough to recover a bit

How to get out of smart pricing: (from my experience)

- check your sites that generate impressions but no click, and take ads out of them!

- I had too many ads on my sites (before I had a square, 2 banners and a link unit), all was fine until Adsense considered it was too much in September... So I decided to show only one or two ads per page now, and I stopped using link units (link units had a good ctr, but low epc, hence negatively impacting my whole account...)

Quite soon, my EPC went up and even outperformed my previous average. But because I'm showing less ads, ctr is much lower (ads area has been reduced indeed, so people are less likely to click on ads ) so my revenue is just back at $2000.

To sum up, if you want to get out of smart pricing:

- export your data in an excel file and calculate your EPC every day (also, make a colum, variation of EPC), EPC is probably the most important indicator (but google does not make it easy for your to check... isn't that strange?...)! You have to check your EPC every day!

- cut the bad apples (sites with impressions but no clicks)

- less ads brings more money (use a skyscraper, a leaderboard or a big square)

- avoid links units!


Comment:

What I did to get out of Smart Pricing makes me think that Adsense is categorizing sites: if your ctr is too high or too low compared to your niche market then you may get smart-priced... Be better than average, but not by too much!

Diversification

I was using only Adsense int he past, but following the epc decrease, I turned to some other networks. I strongly suggest to use kontera (inline text advertising) and tribal fusion (CPM)


My new revenue for december
Adsense: around 2100
Kontera: 400
Tribal Fusion: 350

Total around $2850


I was really depressed when my EPC went down... If you're victim of smart pricing: you know there is a way out by now!

 

Great post! Thanks for that info

 

this is really going to help me.
I am also facing the same problem but didnot knew the reason.
now i will remove less CTR sites

thanks for info

 

You have to guess the average of your niche: sites with ctr too high, may get smart priced, and the whole account follow in smart pricing

 

That's one of the dilemmas about adsense I guess, well, good to know, there's always a way out.. thanks for sharing this info!

 

Was caught in a new smart pricing vicious circle (-->adsense smart price algo kicks in, gives you bad ads, so you get shit clicks, hence more smart pricing)

This time to get back on my feet I decided to use skyscrapers and 300x250 ads (instead of 468x60 and 200x200 previously). It worked great! Now I am above 110 dollars a day (and that's since a week!)

So switching to mainstream ad types is a solution to take into account too!

 

Smart Pricing? I get weird ads and posted a thread, I tried the methods suggested but nothing's working.

Help?

 

im trying adbrite on my blog...........

 

plz explain smart pricing

 

If you have these pages and unique content you don't have to worry about "Smart Pricing"

Contact Us, term of service, privacy policy, about us

 

Thanks for the very informative post.

 

Everyone who is going on about removing sites with low CTR, please step back a moment and think about that logically.

Who cares what your CTR is (unless it's too HIGH)

Smart pricing occurs when conversions on the advertiser's site become too low. What if you had 1000 page views and only one person clicked. Pretty poor CTR on _your_ site isn't it. 0.1% CTR in fact. BUT, what if that click resulted in a conversion? That's 100% conversion rate on the advertiser's site. Why the hell would you be smart priced for that? Anyone?

EPC _is_ the measure that I look at as the OP says, but there are many factors that contribute to that besides smart pricing. Bad advertisers is the biggest. Occasionally these get flushed out of the system and EPC goes back up without anything being done on your part. Earlier this year I flushed a few off my site when my earnings had gone down. They are back up where they were now. I didn't change anything on any of my pages other than to not allow certain advertisers to show up.

EDITED:

Do you have a source for that? I'm having a hard time believing that having those pages will keep you from being smart priced. I don't have a TOS or an About Us.

 

It is not about taking out low ctr pages, it is about guessing your niche average ctr: I think if you're lower or HIGHER (!) than the average then you may one day cause smart pricing to kick in. Better to stick to the average.

And if your page has a good epc despite a low ctr then you're probably in the average So sure, no need to take it out!

one more thing: below 100 impressions a day, you may get a good epc even if low ctr (or too high ctr), i think adsense smart pricing algo put focus depending on a site's traffic (you may have heard of revenue ceiling, that could be linked): the bigger the account/site traffic the more likely you are to get smart priced.

 

lol, Inform yourself, contact us, TOS and About US have nothing to do with if you get smart priced or not.

Every site that runs adsense must have a privacy policy in the publics view anyway.

 

It doesn't have much to do with YOUR ctr (unless it's absurdly high which would likely mean less conversions since something is probably going on that is resulting in deception) What matters is how the clicks convert on the advertiser's site.

If all of a sudden your epc goes down, I'd first look at the quality of ads appearing on your site and not be worried right off about being smart priced. All my epc drops were the result of crap mfa ads showing up.

 

Thats great .Do keep sharing your experiences , it helps everyone .

 

How many websites are you using to earn that much? It would help the studies if you told us that information too.

 

Very interesting indeed and certainly worth a try.

 

around 200, but actually but only 4 or 5 sites really bring meat daily (take a look to my previous threads to know more)

 

I'll say it again, it shouldn't matter WHAT your CTR is (unless of course it's way too HIGH) It's conversions on the advertiser's site that matter.

Someone answer this...why would a LOW ctr be bad if the clicks convert?