PS: In the last 3 days of seen some of my all time highest earnings in 4 months with LESS clicks. However the majority is from 1 site, some of the others are down by a lot. I will be posting a detailed 4-month review of YPN shortly.
I think yahoo was undercounting my clicks before they fixed the glitch. Somehow the number of clicks nearly doubled afterwords but my revenue stays on the same level. I'm clueless as to what's going on.
I have over 25 sites on YPN. Some are up some are down. Yahoo stated that during the Beta period they would be paying a higher promotional payout in some cases. It is possible that they are cutting back on that, but I think it's because they have limited advertisers compared to adsense, and as the program expands, advertisers are adjusting their bids. On the sites I have with the largest percentage drop, it's a direct result of advertisers dropping out or lowing their bids. You can monitor this with the overture bid tool. Most publishers running YPN has the choice of running adsense. It's a free market and publishers should just switch back to adsense if YPN is no longer working out for you. I have sites that run exclusively YPN or Adsense, or a combination of both. The best thing about YPN is that Google now has competition - but imo the main factor resulting in a decrease or increase in payouts is the advertisers for a particular sector - they are what is driving the price. I have some sites that are paying more per click that they were last year - it's just something you have to monitor. Most advertisers don't have unlimited budgets, so the more YPN publishers, the quicker those budgets are going to be eaten up.
I have had great luck with them. They are targeted well and pay better than google for me. I don't know why people complain when they have adjustments, the truth is your traffic just wasn't worth what you were getting, so you advertiser quit more or less...mine has gone down a bit, but it it still about the same amount I could make actually selling the product...with much less work...
I have a different theory. From what I've been analyzing over the last 4 months I've come to the conclusion that one thing is happening: When you put ads on a URL for the first time, you get the max payouts possible. As time gos on your sites payout % will decrease. I have seen this exact thing happen to 3 of my sites, each month the ave payout per click and eCPM decreased by x% until 1 site that was making average $10/click in November is now making average $1/click. I can confirm the top advertisers are still bidding the same amounts as always (very competitive kw's). One site I just put ads on 2 months ago is still averaging very large payouts, and I'm anxious to see what happens in the next 30 days.
I can confirm what yo-yo is saying. I was making a modest amount the first two months before revenue (and CTR) tanked on the same ads in the same positions with the same targeting and the same traffic. Literally nothing changed except the CTR and revenue. Also, when I say tanked, I mean TANKED...I went from 15-30 dollars per day to zero.
I back up xboxundone, in that my site, which is consistenly displaying the same 4 ads (as I check all the time) haven't been paying as much as they used to. I have checked Overture Bid Tool and the advertisers are bidding the exact same amount, yet the CPC has declined almost 50% as well. I don't complain to YPN because I love it so much more than Google, and am still very pleased with the results. It just sucks that nothing lasts forever in the internet world, and we can't rake it in all the time, consistently....
I have looked into it a bit more, my numbers are down recently too, it appears that the ads themselves have been down a bit and in the default ads status a bit, also my traffic has dipped a bit too, so we will see.
Down a bit here as well from record highs a week ago. I'm trying a different targeted category, so I'll see how that goes.
my payout is about %75 lower than usual, still better than adsense, but still kinda crappy.. ohh ypn , cant we increase the payout just a little more?? please!?!? Pretty Pleaseeeee?
Currently testing my theory (that payouts drop over time based on a specific site). Trying the same subject/content on a second site/url (starting today).