About 2 weeks ago I had a breakthrough day in one of my websites. I made 36 bux. Now Im still averaging the same amount of clicks but make about half of tha a day.. Whats this mean? Wouldn't smartpricing pick up on my adplacement before I made that one day of good earnings? thanks
The same thing happened to me. I showed steady gains for the last year with a peak about 10 days ago. Since February I have taken big stepped backwards.
Consistent earnings, yes, but that's not much good if your traffic is increasing but your earnings remain the same. I started a thread about this here: http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=56691 How many times have you had a really good adsense day, and said "Wow! If I continue to earn this much every day, I'll make X amount this month!".... and then reality kicks in....
I've also seen a big drop as of lately, in-fact, my first hadful of clicks today earned under a quarter total. That's the worst I've seen it, but it has been on a steady decline it seems like so I have to wonder if this is the worst it will get or not? And, will it begin to improve again? These kind of numbers aren't worth subjecting my traffic to the ads for, if it continues like this or gets worse I'll be switching to all YPN on my sites or a mix of YPN and hard-link deals. More hassle but at-least a steady return for your efforts.
Is this surprising? People are getting their credit card bills from Xmas and post Xmas shopping and are tightening up. They're less likely to click on ads selling (widget) now. Things will pick up again.
This is more than discouraging. My traffic growth has been battling drop in cpcs for 3 months now, but it seems that prices have finally stabilized, so traffic growth is FINALLY resulting in slight increase in revenue.
miked, I appreciate your optimism, but I haven't seen a drop in clicks, just a huge drop in revenue. If you look around, others are claiming steady or increased click numbers but also less revenue as well. It's obvious that the value of clicks has dropped. My concern is whether or not this is a temporary thing or an indication of a long term trend for AdSense. Does the introduction of YPN and MSN's ad program have anything to do with it? That would seem to make sense, since a market with options is better for advertisers; but not so good for the publishers. Threads like this are good for publishers to exchange information and experiences on. It appears that some aren't seeing the same drops, I'd like to know what 'general' genre their sites are. For instance, my sites range from technology to sporting news and politics. All of these areas seem to have lower paying ads now then in the past, but perhaps sites in the medical or automotive areas are still doing the same or even better--I don't know, I'm just saying it would be nice if we could get a clear idea of what's up and what's down. Fortunately, my primary business isn't affected by any of this. I only run ads as a secondary income on my side-project sites, but it's still been enough of a drop to make it worth me looking into and I'm sure for others it's been far worse.
Good points Scott. But, I would imagine the belt tightening is happening for the advertisers as well. Since the big shopping/ big sales season is over, I would imagine that advertising money would also be drying up. Just a theory as I have absolutely no practical experience with advertising.
That may be so miked, it makes perfect sense for some genres but not for all. For instance, I have 2 sites in the political area and these should actually be seeing an increase from advertisers as the election period nears, but what I've seen is the exact opposite so far. On a side note, I shifted one of these 2 political sites to YPN a few days ago and while it's caused a slight decrease in clicks, the total revenue is up by over 40%. I know everyone's waiting for the foot to drop from YPN's payout rates, but until it does or AdSense quality improves I'll probably be converting more sites over.