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Latest update on 11.00am and i am earning like 10% of what yersterday was earning at the same time.
Come on yahoo. You can do this better.
11 cents seems to be the magic number right now, because that's what I'm getting across several domains, and multiple niche categories.
I've been singing the praises of YPN ever since I got accepted. But - 11 cent clicks isn't going to cut it for me. I could more or less do that with clicksor.
One thing that's worth mentioning though, and it maybe completely irrelevant, is that I'm seeing something pretty similar with chitika revenue for the last several days, as well.
What's up guys? Maybe mars is in retrograde for publishers this week or something . . .
Could it be smart pricing they are introducing? I wonder.
Today I am earning 5% of what I was earning 5 days ago with the same clicks and same ads.
Now I don't know what to do. Drop started on Friday ans is getting worse every day. CPM is now 35% of what it was 9 days ago.
I've tweaked a few pages to remove some recently added chitika ads, made sure top half of page with ads was a clean as possible (no distractions) - removed a copyscape notice.
Last was to block vonage ads which started appearing all over the place where i hadn't noticed them for the last 3-4 weeks.
Nothing I do seems to have any positive affect.
Unlike Adsense cycles I have a feeling this isn't going to recover.
May be time to move back to G.
We all want to love Y! . . .
Sadly this is a numbers game.
I'm starting my own affiliate program in the next couple of weeks, so maybe I'll just cut out the contextual adds out of all of my sites, and run banners for jv's.
I was and still hoping that during beta the payouts remain high, but that's not always the case.
Because their targeting is not that great (but getting better), the higher per click made up for it even with the less clicks. However, if the new low per click in my sector continues, I'll keep away until it gets better or targeting become really great.
Both of my main sites (the ones that I actually care about and put much effort into)are targetted mainly towards people from the US/UK/Australia who live overseas, and the people who employ them.
So, my traffic is almost exclusively outside the US.
If it were just that, we would be upset about a drop in ctr, but it's the drop in epc that has all of us feeling really uncomfortable.
Even though my traffic is all outside of the US and I could probably earn more with Adsense and chitika, I've chosen to go with YPN, more for reasons of brand loyalty, than anything else.
But I'm going to drop them like a cold turd if my epc doesn't get back to at LEAST .50. . .
In my case that is absolutely not whats happening. I know for certain 99% of my visitors are from the U.S.
As others have said the low ctr was made up for with higher paying ads. Now I'm receiving lower prices per click than adsense and about 1/3 the ctr. Which would you choose?
Adsense has things that are so frustrating it makes you want to cry sometimes. Yes we really want this to work, at least I do.
Maybe it was just a fluke or something related to the most recent upgrades?
iamjonathan
Mine has slowly come back about 8-10% each day for the last 3 days. 7 more days of this and I'll be happy :)
Around 78% of my visitors are from the USA, however when comparing the YPN stats to Adsense, there are more Adsense stats! (and when adding them both up it doesn't even equal close to what the actual pageviews are) :-¦
I'm talking about 1/9 of the actual pageviews are showing up between the two. There is a problem somewhere and it is with the Y! reporting system. Anyone else having this problem or is it just me?
and when adding them both up it doesn't even equal close to what the actual pageviews areAnyone else having this problem or is it just me?
I have been having that same issue for a week or two, YPN shows fewer ad impressions then chitika or my pageviews.
YPN shows about 1/3 as many impressions at Chitika does, on some days the difference can creep as high as 5-10x. Does anyone have any ideas, besides beta test stats?
No drop in EPC for me yet, earnings are rising still but not up to what they were.
I think the honeymoon has passed for me. I'll be migrating more pages over to Adsense until this is figured out :( I love YPN too.. I hope it gets fixed soon.
glad i only did this as a test on a low traffic site
95% of traffic was US based
and adsense was always fairly well targetted even though clicks were lower paid good ctr compensated
steve
adsense was always fairly well targetted even though clicks were lower paid good ctr compensated
That USED to be true for my pages too. Now, in the past week or so, while my # of clicks and CTR have both gone up nicely with YPN, the earnings per click have dropped so much that I'm actually making less than before. Geez, there's NOTHING more frustrating than that!
YPN had a good future and I still think it does, but imagine what will happen when the program become available world-wide.
Google must be smiling!
My worst day so far ... Saturday.
There are natural spikes (both upward and downward) that occur in the PPC Publisher game. Learn to accept this, and look at the overall performance over weeks or even months.
Once I got YPN back on my earnings went back to normal. So, all smiles again!
For targetting I do have some tips (in no particular order):
1) Use Meta Tags Wisely
I was getting poor targetting on some pages until my meta keywords/description was fixed up a bit. I took out all words which the ads might confuse with something other than what it is intended for and the ads became more targetted.
2) Repeated Ads
If you don't like repeated ads (which hardly anyone does), use only one ad unit per page if possible.
3) GeoTarget YPN
For now, use MaxMind (easy to find when searched for) to display the ads to US visitors only. The clicks are already discounted from other countries, so you might already disable the ads for non-us ip addresses. MaxMind is built-in to many geo-targetting software such as phpads.. You may also build your own (which is what I did, didn't take too long to do.)
4) To Use, or Not to Use.
Ad Targetting is there for a reason: to help us, well, some of us. Others... not so much. Test it out. Not always what is expected will happen. For me, an ad generally related to, but not exactly the same as the content I provide, is more valuable. Visitors come to my site and find what they want, then they go on their way. I want to give them an idea of what they REALLY want.
5) Use Ad Blocking Sparingly.
I have seen many people post here that they are blocking so-so ad because it doesn't look 'good for their site'. As a famous advertiser once said, the ad copy doesn't have to be great, just the content once they get to the site does. So be careful who you block. Use it the same way you would use the Adsense blocking feature, only block competitors. If the ads aren't performing correctly YPN will figure out what to do with them.
6) Report any Problems to YPN.
This has been overlooked by many publishers. You must remember that YPN is still in BETA, and lets face it; this isn't a Google BETA, it's a normal BETA, meaning not complete. The system will have some problems, just report them and go on your way. If you can't get through them by email (which, I have never received a responce other than automated telling me my 'number') call them up and tell them whats going on.
I make around 3x as much with YPN as I would with Google alone. I admit that targettin isn't perfect (even with ad targetting), but the CPC (cost per click) is amazing.
The first page I put up is humming right along so I left it and gave the others back to adsense early this morning and already they are showing traffic and clicks.
I'll experiment again when it is out of beta.
<edit> Glad I only stuck a toe in instead of the whole foot.
