I am not sure if it's just me but the CPM has decreased considerably since the last week. Anyone else experiencing it ?
You can't generalize the entire monetizing market at once. Each market has a different set of advertisers and a different set of publishers. If your market all of a sudden gets a ton of new publishers, the number of good paying ads will decrease. If your market loses a few advertisers, the competitive price bidding wars go away, leaving everyone with lower paying ads. When my eCPM dropped a few times over 5 months, I just cut back on the number of ads shown. This often returned my eCPM to average, and when I saw it increase, I added ads (which increased my CTR). The only way to know if your income is truly dropping is to trend it over time. Here's a graph of my income from when I started monetizing (December05ish) to today. You can see the spikes and drops, but the trending curve goes up. If I look at any 1 or 2 week period, I could think I'd be rich or poor. As long as it trends up, I'm happy. Some of my markets can see 1-2 month drops! Nothing to worry about, it corrects itself over time as the market returns for whatever reason. Seasons, holidays, tax day, everything affects markets differently.
That's a good looking graph. Take some green When i look at the graph, i see a smart and hardworking webmaster..
Haha thanks. I actually don't check my AdSense stats at all except to look at the previous day's stats to update my charts. My CTR is miserable but my average visitor goes 5-7 pages deep, so higher impressions will give one lower CTR, but people return again and again. That is my profit motivation -- gaining information from my readers. AdSense revenue is just a nice side income, but it is inching closer and closer to being almost a full time profit. Over time, traffic seems to build itself, there is very little I have to do to promote. The big problem for many is trying to make changes and see instant gratification. My blog plan is a 36 month goal, not a 1 day or even 1 month goal. No business succeeds right away, and some of my businesses took 7 years to make a huge profit. I'm in no rush, and those who come and go will only make my sites more worthwhile when people come in 2009 and see 3-5 years of history. As long as the graphs don't plummet over time, I don't really care. My income could plateau and flatline from now on, and I'd be happy.