Adsense cpm epc

Sudden drop in epc, same advertisers,

[pcooklin]

Hello - This is my first post. I joined to try and find answers to a sudden drop in the epc/cpm.

Let me explain.

I have been consistently making a steady climb in my overall earnings using adsense by means of buying traffic. I reached £600 profit per day for a few days but it fell back to £500 on monday, thats fine. Im more than happy with that.

Then, today, I noticed my epc was 1/4 the normal rate and my cpm had fallen by half. This makes my working model not viable as its now costing me more to get the traffic than I am making profit from it.

I have not changed the site in question at all. But I did change a sister website by following the same methods of the first which uses the same google account. The sister website (site B) has a good google rank and so does site A. However, Im wondering if this change of 2 websites with similar front pages has caused site A's epc/cpm to radically drop.
The advertisers are the same, same ads.

Naturally Im in shock and nearly crying in my beer :)

Is this just a glitch?

Something else, I emailed Google about my site 2 days ago when all was good just to double check my site met their TOS and they confimed it did. My paranoia is telling me perhaps they lowered it manually, but Im sure that cant be true, it wouldnt help them to blow me out of the water or the advertisers who were getting lots of relevant traffic.

Many thanks in advance.
Paul.

[mzanzig]

I had experienced a similar drop in EPC in February without apparent reason (i.e. traffic quantity, traffic sources, advertisers, and clicks were fully in line with expectations).

I think what I saw was "Smart Pricing", and both EPC and total revenue increased slowly -over a six week period- back to previous levels, almost.

At some point in time I tried to analyze what was going on, but I concluded that it's not my fault, because I did not make any major changes, and that I could do little to prevent this in the future.

[pcooklin]

Thanks for the reply. I think I have found another reason why my epc/cpm may be down. The site B I changed has just shown up in Google after 48 hours. Perhaps this site is linked as it uses the same adsesne account although doesnt make any real earnings, its rank is good. The meta details in the page were changed also.

Does anyone know if sites are linked in this way.
i.e you could have 5 websites but only one pays the bills but its earnings are determined by the other pages/websites?

TIA

[pcooklin]

..by the way, site B's google rank and Alexa seem to be the same..its just the index page that changed.

[pcooklin]

I know the amount of traffic is important but as this new model doesnt work right now, Im tempted to pause the traffic Im paying for as its costing more than Im making. Do you think this will hurt the cpm/epc? Do I need to continue as normal although Im making a loss. I read somewhere that continued traffic is important.

Any thoughts?

[pcooklin]

I know there are a lot of Finance/Law websites out there all making money but it does seem strage to see such a radical drop considering we have a real finance company, not a quick one-page wonder.

[charlesgan]

pcooklin, can i have your website? i do like to visit it. TQ

[greedy player]

eCPM doubled this morning!

[pcooklin]

No you cant. But its similar in code/design to other law/finance websites so cant see how that would make a difference if thats what you want to see.

[pcooklin]

Greedy Player? How do you mean.
Our advertising costs as much as we earn from adsense, its not a cash cow, it just gets traffic to our website. How is that greedy.

Why do you need my info on that link?

Any thoughts to why this is happening. Its making our advertising too expensive.

[GoldenHammer]

Be patient, AS probably needs some time to "rebuild" their "knowledge base" for your sector. See how it is going a week later.