I noticed lots of topics regarding certain raises during certain parts of the days, random click earnings, how most people have started earning less money than before, and much more. From my experiences, not saying I'm any expert, but I've learned that there's always a logical reason to the most part of adsense earnings. I don't mean to lecture or anything, however, I think it might be a little helpful to share my theories and wisdom of using adsense to improve the knowledge of other adsense users. Especially to those who are new to adsense and lack the wisdom most of the seniors have. Regarding Decline in Adsense Earnings I've noticed lots of people saying how adsense earnings have dropped majorly from what they used to be months ago. Well, if you look at it, the majority of users of adsense/ adwords have increased as time goes on. More people now know about adsense and thus we get more crappy advertisers looking to get the bang for their.. pennies. Lots of MAF sites have increased which could make a huge difference and it lessens the chances of quality paying ads appearing on our sites. Rather than few publishers displaying a majority of quality paying ads, their most likely split between more publishers of the same category intermixed with MAF ads and random penny ads we fail to recognize as low paying ads. Summer and September Decline/ Hike September, the down fall of adsense earnings and increase of other few adsense users. Why? Well both myself (along with a few of my colleagues) have noticed that traffic on the web declines greatly during the start of the 'school year'. Most sites in which appear as attractive to users under the age of 18 take a steady decline of hits because 1/3 of their users don't usually appear online until past 5 p.m. It results in a lot sites losing impressions, but it also means that a lot of other sites (student sites, study sites, other information sites) take a steady hike in traffic during the school years. The traffic almost always re-appears after the end of the school year and during holiday weeks along with the study increase of traffic due to the longevity of the domain. 1 Click, 2 Clicks is.. what, how much? Sometimes a click is .30, sometimes it's a penny, and other times it may even be over a dollar. I think adsense calculates many things when they decide your pay rate. I believe Adsense takes in account for most factors: 1) How high the ad pays, 2) The amount of impressions per click (more clicks per less impressions usually results in higher payin clicks but less pay for less impressions), 3) The category of the ad displayed, being clicked (some categories pay more than others). A good example of this 'calculation' would be; Sometimes I've even noticed that you could earn up to 30,000 impressions but if your ads only get 2 clicks then it could result in you earning less than .50! Multiple Ad Types and Different Ad Types So let's say you have two large rectangle ads on the same page like megaupload.com. Displaying two will give you really sweet CTR because they add up right? Well, I learned that it doesn't really. You don't get double impressions for displaying two of the same ad types, the only thing you get paid for is the extra clicks you get on both ads which doesn't really pay out very well in my experience. It's usually better to display different ads on the same page. Such as if megaupload.com were to display a large rectangle with pictures to the left of the ads. Then vertically where the toolbar ad is, display a wide vertical ad. Many different types of ad builds impressions but you also earn less eCPM. However, using many different ad types could increase your chances at building a successful adsense site. I noticed most ads get calculated differently. A high CTR large rectangle ad with 120 clicks and 1,700 impressions could earn an eCPM of $6.80 but a banner ad with 20,000 impressions and only 4 clicks would earn a measley .80. Combined togethor on your earning's stat page could make your earnings look really insignificant all because of the straggler, the crappy banner ad. ---------- Anyways, I hope everyone understands my reasons and people could understand why their being paid what their being paid a little bit more.This is in no way 100% accurate but only the rambelings of another adsense user who has learned some things. Adsense, in my opinion, isn't random at all. It's very accurate and very right on. Some people just have better 'luck' is all with complying to all the best of written above. Good high paying ads, less penny ads, all ads working productively with no stragglers, and a site that isn't influenced by yearly events are all the most important keys to keeping your site's earnings consistant. Remember though, life can always be unpredictable.
informative post but I don't agree with all of it. a lot of MFA sites actually perform better than a standard, classical, useful content site. this becomes obvious for anyone that's ever worked with affiliate programs. a crappy datafeed driven site that has a list of products will convert tons better than a site with information about that topic. people who land at the first are likely ready to buy, people who land at the second are likely just researching, or not interested in the ads at all. keep in mind that there are of course multiple types of MFA sites.