OptiRex - 2:17 pm on Sep 1, 2005 (gmt 0)

I am fortunate since I do not rely on one penny income from Google therefore some may consider this posting merely academic however it is not.

To justify displaying Adsense it needs to derive a reasonable ROI, that ROI needs to be roughly the same as if I were to sell my own ads direct to my niche trade.

I could sell that space in 5 minutes with a couple of phone calls however I choose not to do that since it would mean the sites being dominated by a few large industry players who don't give a fig about the trade, they're merely grey suits trying to justify their bloated positions.

Instead I prefer to offer the entire world trade, via Adsense, the opportunity to compete for the space on a reasonably level playing field.

That's me being philanthropic towards the trade and snubbing the mega corps!

My actual earnings for August were up 6.31% compared to July however with my current reduction in EPC, if I were to continue with Adsense I would obviously be looking at reduced earnings of probably 13-14%.

Now the thing is that I know that my advertisers are not paying any less, in fact some are screaming about enormous increases and that has been reflected in some clicks which have gone up more than 300%, but at the same time I am seeing a much larger volume of low value clicks in the region of 10-30% of the prior lows.

I said I would give the new Adwords system a couple of weeks to settle down however it is precisely this new settling down level which has promoted me into action.

The one thing most small businesses like is stability and Google is not giving us that. Of course there are many people who have earned more and they're not complaining, however how will Google ever know that they've turned the knob a bit too much much without the complainers posting here?

As we all know it's a pointless excercise even writing to Google since all one receives are canned answers, and even if someone were to read those complaints or queries I really do wonder whether there is anyone there who would either understand or appreciate the effects of what they are doing to either the advertiser or publisher.

It's a symbiotic relationship we have yet every now and then Google seems to want to test that relationship as far as the divorce court...and that relationship will be sorely tested when the "others" do get their acts together.

One last comment. I just wonder what the "other" companies feel and how they react when they see postings like this?

Rubbing their hands with glee at the thought of all the advertisers wanting to try out their offerings or throwing their arms up in horror at the possible simple mistakes they were about to make themselves?