CONFIRMED: Payouts Lower by URL over Time

Actually I do, I'm not some noob who does't know how this works, I know exactly how it works and this is exactly why I've been getting $10-25/clicks for four months.

The site that was getting $10/clicks 4 months ago NOW GETS NO CLICKS OVER $1.50, and the CONTENT hasn't change, the VISITOR base hasn't changed either.

I put the EXACT SAME PAGE (exact same HTML, pictures, words, everything identical) on a BRAND NEW URL that had never used YPN before, and BINGO - $10/clicks again.

That's all the testing I need to know that something is fishy, and that they are most likely devaluing clicks based on age.

How much are these ads paying though? If your only getting .50 cents a click to begin with theres not much furter down to go... maybe it only devalues clicks worth $x amount, I don't know everything and my testing is limited.

My conclusion could be wrong, I'm going to be trying it with a 2nd site that has gone from $6/click to $.80/click just like I did with this one. We'll see what happens...

 

No this is good when people discuss diffrent ideas and such, and nobody was implieing he was stupid. BUT on the flip side, i have not seen what you are talking about on my sites. I am making more now than i did before. My payouts have stayed the same and i am very happy. Facts of my situation, Over 70 sites, real sites not computer software stuff. Most are from the begining of the beta test. They all payout about the same and doing good. Of course there are drops and rises but this is normal. Remember is not like we are getting salaries here. There are all types of known factors working here.

But then i again i could be one of the lucky ones who continue to do good. I in fact am more worried about being baned for internation traffic than the payouts. But this is a good thread going here regardless.

 

New test to try. Dump Yahoo and place Google ads there for a month. Then put the Yahoo ads back. Do they make the $1.50 clicks, or $10.00 clicks!!!

 

Most likely to be the $10.00 clicks

 

Hey yo-yo, when you performed your test, did you use a domain name completely different, or was a variation from the original. I'm thinking about performing the same test, as my results are very similar to yours, and wanted to ask! Let me know!

 

Completely different domain.

 

Thanks, I'll try and see what happens.

 

Yo-yo if you will check months back, I saw the same exact thing with AdSense, I thought it was what they called 'smart pricing'. But I also saw the same thing with YPN.
Huge clicks of $5 each, then less than a month, same ads, same traffic amounts, clicks of $3 each. Now 5 months into the program and I am averaging 50 cents or less per click, same ads, slightly more traffic. Like I said before, they pay high at first, then it's a downhill trend, unless you constantly switch to different urls or jump every 30 days from totaly adsense to ypn, etc.......

 

It's clear that you understand the system quite well, as you are obviously making some good money.

But your conclusion that YPN is lower EPC over time is scientifically flawed, because with any scientific study you can't reach a conclusion based on partial facts or anecdotal evidence. You have to consider all other possible causes for the drop in earnings per click before reaching any conclusions.

The drop in earnings could be specific to a very narrow range of keywords that YPN is monitoring, or it could be caused by something else. There is no way for a publisher to know, because you and I don't work for YPN, and therefore don't have enough information to reach any conclusion.

Everyone knows that smoking causes cancer, but scientists first had to rule out all other possible causes before reaching the conclusion that smoking causes cancer. Could have been the sulphur in matches that was causing the cancer--it's not, but this had to be ruled out first before reaching any conclusions.

Everyone thought that stress and diet caused stomach ulcers, but scientists recently proved that stomach ulcers are actually caused a bacterial infection (H.pilori) and that ulcers can be cured with antibiotics.

If you included some sort of control in your study, then you probably wouldn't have reached the same conclusion about earnings per click. If, for example, you also tried starting a few sites, each with a new domain name, and you targeted a bunch of randomly selected keywords like "student credit cards" and "oven mits", you may have found that with other keywords/keyphrases, earnings per click don't drop at all over time.

With many of my own sites, earnings per click have been consistent and even improved since I was accepted into the YPN beta program back in November, 2005.

As always, IMO.

AmCy

 

AmCy, just one question - your steady amount/click... how much is it? I'm willing to bet it's not over $10/click

 

I'm willing to bet that the drop in earnings in your test domain was caused by the YPN algo interpreting the content of your test sites somewhat differently, even though the content is the same. The YPN system is in beta, so I think that slight inconsistencies in the way the YPN algo determines which ads will be shown and how much they'll payout will should be expected. We've all seen the YPN algo do strange things, and we pretty much deal with it because, again, it's a beta system that the YPN folks are still tweaking.

Of course, I don't work for YPN, so the above is just a bunch of IMO.

AmCy.

 

AmCy.. you didn't answer my one question?

I started testing on my 2nd site which has the same trends (totally different kw's) and already my daily balance is much higher than the last couple days... I can already predict what happened

 

That's because I didn't think that the question had anything to do with your original premise.




AmCy

 

Well we've established that not everyone's payouts are lowering, so we continue to discuss theories until we narrow it down.

Obviously if you're being paid an average of 50 cents to start out, they don't have a lot of room to work with for dampening your payouts... however if you started at an average $10/click they have plenty to take away correct?

So maybe the ave. decreases i've been seeing is because my averages are above $x.00 amount and will only go down to a low of $x.00 before it stops. Many of the people here have noticed earnings decreasing EVERY MONTH since they started, so it's reasonable to assume I'm not the only case.

 

its fairly obvious that it is something along the lines of smart pricing, however not exactly the same as what google is doing to people

i dont really remember the overture interface for advertisers off of the top of my head BUT, i am going to go out on a limb and think it mirrors adwords a little... (someone correct me if i am wrong here) there has to be some kind of way to block sites that dont convert as well for your ads... when you first start out with a new domain you are obviously not on the block list of advertisers yet so when you target your ads you are going to get literally, the highest paying ads possible. over time, advertisers will block you for not converting to a level they see fit and then you are not going to be seeing the highest paid ads on your site which will obviously diminish the payout received on your end

this would also solve the part of people saying their earnings havent dipped - you're more than likely using different ad targetting and are probably converting a little better. people targetting higher paying ads also are going to be serving ads for the most aggressive advertisers overture has so theyre going to be a little bit more "tighter" than a lower or mid-range paying advertisers - they obviously want their money to go on sites where the conversions are a LOT higher than the norm.

another thing to take into consideration, if yahoo was behind this and not the advertisers then why wouldnt yahoo just limit your entire account id to lower payments and instead do it by domains? doing it by domain wouldn't make a whole lot of sense when they could easily just limit you by your account id instead and prevent anyone "bypassing" the payout fixing.

just my 2 cents!

 

This seems like a much more reasonable explanation to me. Is it true? Only the folks @ YPN know for sure.

I just can't accept that whole conspiracy theory idea, that the YPN people have somehow programmed dimishing payouts for high paying keywords into the YPN system.

As always, IMO.

AmCy

 

i agree 100%, if ypn wanted to slowly lower your payments they would do it by account id not something so easily bypassed like domains.

i am almost certain the advertisers are the ones to "blame". i say "blame" because you really can't blame them for wanting the best possible performance for their money... especially the ones paying $10+ per click

 

Yep; I'm an advertiser as well as a publisher, and I expect at least a decent ROI with my ad campaigns, and I would think that many other advertisers do as well.

AmCy

 

I'm 99.9% sure advertisers have no way to block domains in Yahoo (yet).

 

well it could very well be some sort of smart pricing in that case ... i know there is conversion tracking available in overture although im not familiar with exactly how "deep" that gets, as far as conversion per domain or just per category/kw or whatever

they can also opt out of content match which would limit their ads to yahoo searches only, but that is less likely. i guess that could be answered by you though... are you seeing the SAME exact ads on both domains? same ad wording and url? if they are the exact same ads then it has to be a form of smart pricing