How to Deal With AdSense Income Dropping

[Swebbie]

Well, the month I dreaded finally came - the month when the AdSense empire would crumble. OK, "empire" is just a joke, but hey, it was paying my bills and letting me enjoy some leisure time with the wife and all my kids (20 dogs). Alas, all good things must come to an end, and end they have in "Black October." Like a faucet being turned off, my AS income dried up. Interestingly, traffic did not dry up. Just a big drop in CTR and EPC. I think about all those long long days and hours in front of this slave box (er, computer) writing articles and getting links, and yeah, I'm pretty sad right about now. Not sure what I'll do, but I'm educated and can probably find a job that isn't too tedious. Hate the thought of going back into the rat race, but that's life. Anyone need a good writer? OK, I'm done crying over spilt milk. Just needed to vent. Moderators, I'll understand if you delete this thread. :-)

[Frequent]

Time to diversify! Plenty of other options to test besides Adsense now-a-days.

Not to mention that a huge drop in CTR from long term norms probably indicates poor ad targeting through-out your site(s). Perhaps implementation of the new targeting tags can turn things back around for you (if you haven't already).

Freq---

[jetteroheller]

As I had an income drop in February, I started with optimizations bringing me a much higher income.

So what's about trying to regain old income and even get more?

[4crests]

had this happen about 6 months ago. It lasted about 2 months, then returned to normal. So, don't give up hope yet.

[OptiRex]

Sorry to hear the bad news Swebbie.

Any idea what in particular/specific has created/caused the problems?

Interestingly, traffic did not dry up. Just a big drop in CTR and EPC.

That reads like probable untargeted niche traffic?

[TheDonster]

I had a major crash in earnings in Oct. as well. It was really weird. The first 2 weeks of the month were my best ever. Long overdue changes in my site that I had made in August were starting to show results in late Sept. and then Oct. really took off. Then for no obvious reason the bottom fell out on the 17th. My traffic was at an all time high but CTR tanked. I had the worst earnings day ever that week. No changes in advertisers, all the same ads, EPC remained constant but CTR and eCPM were in the toilet. Google stats showed 250k page views for this month, my all time high since I joined. I suspect advertisers simply put large amounts in their budgets at the beginning of the month and then ran out before the end. That plus smart pricing probably contributed to the dive. Hope Nov. & Dec. improve because for some of us, October was certainly a bust.

[LeoXIV]

I know its easier said than done but dont give up Swebbie.

My October was half the August.

[dzcap]

My october was the best month but I only joined recently. I got hit hard starting the 3rd week of october though and never recovered.

[AlexPAlex]

Swebbie, try to optimize. Take out non performing ad placements. Blend! Try rotating colors in between. Drop in CTR could means either non targeted ads or non optimisation of page. Work on that. Never give up!

[Mentat]

October was the best month ever.
I use Adsense from the begining

[jetteroheller]

October was the best month ever.
I use Adsense from the begining

Income little bit up on highest ever
daily eranings average a little bit below September
only second highest ever

[Romeo]

Donster,

if traffic is steady but CTR tanks, the reason is simple: your visitors don't like the ads.

Time to check your ads and block cr*p ads for made-for-adsense sites and the like, which may probably be best targeted on niche-target "niche-widget" but competiting out other better (= more intersting for yor visitors) ads for "really interesting widgets" and "these widgets generally".

I did so since mid-October and recovered well.

Regards,
R.

[Swebbie]

Thanks for the tips and the encouragement everyone! I'll always build sites and write... it's in my blood I guess. It's just so hard to see it build up month after month, then come crashing down all at once. I'm sure others here have been down this road, and now I sure do sympathize. Google's ad targeting tanked on exactly Oct. 1 for me. In fact, it started more or less at midnight (Google time). So the problem appears to be something tied to timing, not so much anything on my sites. I still don't know what happened, but it just keeps getting worse. I've added Chitika and moved a lot of pages to YPN in recent days in an attempt to salvage what I can, but it's like putting a band-aid on a gunshot wound. Whoever said "don't rely on Google for your income" doesn't know how right he/she was!

[edit]Oddsod, your sticky mailbox is full.[/edit]

[djulien]

You took the words out of my mouth, Swebbie.

I'm experiencing the same issues as you since last Friday (sharply decreased CTR and eCPM).

I haven't seen lows like this since I started with Adsense back in June of this year.

I run a white hat niche content site, so my ads are usually sharply targeted. Looks like whatever G is doing is dinging the wrong online demographic.

Whether it be due to advertisers budgets' running dry or sudden, non-targeted ads, I'm tired of trying to chase down spammy site URLs to block them.

I was just accepted to YPN, and I applied to Chitika today. Let's see what happens.

[jetteroheller]

if traffic is steady but CTR tanks, the reason is simple: your visitors don't like the ads.

My first action to optimize in Febraury had been to fill up the URL filter with all annoying ads for MFA or made for Overture

[TheDonster]

Romeo:
Yup, I had an advertiser hawking a "Get rich at home" campaign and he targeted my site. I let it go for about 1 week but then yanked it when I realized the ads were returning about 3 cents per click. Since yanking those ads, the eCPM is slowly starting to climb back to previous levels.

Swebbie:
I wouldn't abandon all your hard work just yet. IMO one month of bad earnings does not justify pulling AS site wide. Continue to diversify your site's potential, but from all the different posts I've seen on here, AS is still the top performer for small publishers. It certainly doesn't have to be the ONLY one. Think of your earnings for the entire year and just don't concentrate too hard on Oct.

[ken_b]

Ad targeting seems to have gone missing again for my site. I don't think it's the targeting algo though.

I think who ever checks the relevancy for ads when they are approved at Adwords is missing the boat, or letting irrelevant ads through because the advertizer is willing to bid high enough.

The problem with that for publishers is that even if an ad pays twice as much, it's worth less if the cTR is to low.

On top of that, readers might get tired of clicking on ads that take them to irrelevant sites and stop clicking any ads because they don't trust them.

[wheelie34]

Then for no obvious reason the bottom fell out on the 17th.

The start of the Jagger update!

[sailorjwd]

You may have gotten a different mix of visitors with the Jagger update.

Due to a variety of factors I've had to triple the content of my site since last spring just to stay even with the adsense revenue.

YPN has been a big help but I don't know how much I'll lose from non-USA clicks on YPN.

[jack_dt]

Change placements and colors and you'll probably see a small boost. I always do.

[bbunlock]

been a strange few days for me as well, my ctr is about the same as usual my ecpm is just under the norm and my clicks are higher than normal but strange thing is im getting less money?

for example my average day a couple of weeks ago was

impressions 51,000 clicks 550 CTR 1.1% eCPM USD1.35 Eanings USD68.00

those are about average for a couple of weeks ago but the last few days they are something like

impressions 61,000 clicks 700 CTR 1.2% eCPM USD1.10 Eanings USD67.00

so 10,000 more impressions, 150 more licks, CTR about same, eCPM little lower than normal = less money? when in fact I should have earned more?

I have put it down to end of month and advertisers low on budget so will see what happens in the next few days with the start of a new month?

havnt made any changes to the site other than removing the ads from some poor paying pages, I cant see that being the reason as clicks went up (more traffic) and the poor pages were only earning me maybe a dollar or 2 a day

regards

[moTi]

the role of ctr is absolutely overestimated!

it's not about clicks, it's about expensive clicks.

lower ctr is not necessarily an indicator for bad targeting.
it's completely natural, that most high paying ads generate less clicks than cheap mfa ads. you can't have it both ways.
my ctr has dropped by 30% in the last month, steady traffic. and guess what? i earn the same amount and more.

[dollarshort]

Been there several times, usally after major dips I've always seen my earnings come back stronger than ever (knock on wood) I too rely on the internet as my only source of income.

[Swebbie]

so 10,000 more impressions, 150 more licks, CTR about same, eCPM little lower than normal = less money? when in fact I should have earned more?

Your EPC is down. eCPM is not the same thing. I started seeing the same thing toward the end of October (where I didn't see it at the end of the other months in 2005). October just sucked all around. <shakes head>

[ken_b]

a different mix of visitors with the Jagger update.

That's a very important point. Not all visitors are going to behave the same way.

If you get visitors from different serps, you can end up with more visitors but less appropriately targeted traffic.

[TheDonster]

Different visitors is what I attribute to my site's poor performance this month. I had someone from Brazil frame my site which significantly increased traffic, but a huge surge of non-English surfers will definitley not convert AS-wise.

[rogerd]

I try to keep multiple ad sources running at all times, but give most views to the highest CPM source. I've made some major shifts when Adsense or another ad network starts running consistently low. These things seem to cycle as advertisers come in and out, budgets run out or get renewed, etc.

Sometimes, of course, these moves don't "scale up" the way you'd like. A great eCPM at 10K exposures per day may end up considerably lower at 200K exposures. So, keep monitoring and tweaking.

[markus007]

I believe part of the smart pricing stratagy deals with how long visitors stay on the destination site they clicked through to.

If someone clicks on a ad and then clicks on the back button your earnings will tank and smart pricing will kick in for the theme your keyword is in.

Google will see this on there end, User sees ad on your site, user clicks on ad, user clicks back button and user sees new add again. Total time taken 3 seconds. Google will then correctly assume that your site is low converting. I believe the core of the smart pricing algorithm is based on this.

[sailorjwd]

"User sees ad on your site, user clicks on ad, user clicks back button "...

G should see this as a poor converting destination page and smart pricing should remove this ad from the rotation. (in an ideal world).

[TammyJo]

Last month I started a test comparing YPN & Adsense.

I took all ads off my site from AS and posted YPN Woo Hoo what an income difference...but when I noticed the decrease in search results from Google I decided to reinstate the adsense codes (Jagger deal here). Earnings per click when way up and remained that way until a few days ago. I started replacing the YPN code on the lowest paying AS pages first and the earnings started to go back up again. Here is what I think may be happening.

1. Taking lower paying click pages out of AS increases overall income per click.

I think it is almost like farming. Sometimes you need to let your field rest and plant something else to get it's nutrients back. After a time you can replant the original crop. The only problem is the supplimental crop is paying more in harvest than the original crop :)