Forum Moderators: martinibuster
I started running adsense back in Jan. and my jaw dropped the first time I check my stats. My epc was great(about $0.80) and I was averageing 45 clicks per day pretty good from a hobby niche site like mine. I almost broke $1,000 the first month and would have if I didn't start on the 13th of the month. I couldn't dtop thinking about what sites to open next. Man I had a bunch of ideas even wrote them down and the list is somewhere around here.
Then Feb came in and the epc started to spiral down.
So I started mass advertising (ppc, lick exchanges, running ads on ebay)to increase my traffic and in turn increase my clicks. It worked I was now averaging 90 clicks per day but now only a $0.40 epc. overall earnings held steady...
I increased my advertising and running more traffic to my site.
I am now happy to report that all of my hard work has turned into an average of 450 clicks per day for the last few weeks of march and the start of April. I poured my sweat, blood and money into the site.
Thats right 450 clicks a day.
WOOOOOOOOHOOOOOOOOOO!
But wait....... I am not rich :)
My epc has now in fact dropped to an all time low of $0.03
If this keeps up I will soon be paying G to run adsense for them.
How in the world is this possible?
The ads showing today are the same ones that were showing at $0.40. per click.
The only explaination that I can come up with is Smart Pricing.
I must have been put on a list of publishers that get the lowest payout possible.
No matter what I do to increase my traffic now I am fighting a loosing battle.
I have done everything possible.
Google you win.
I am out.
At least now I do not have to check my stats all day long and I can get back on with my life.
Jb
I also suspect that adding AdLinks to my site caused EPC to go down. Lower CTR = lower EPC? Maybe....
I feel for you. But I have never bought traffic, and I've had a very different experience from yours--on a fairly small niche content site. Since I joined AdSense in October 2003, the two things I've done to improve performance are find a good ad placement color scheme, and add content to my site.
I've also taken low-performing pages out of AdSense. The net result is that my monthly earnings (around $300) from AdSense have stayed fairly constant while others have reported declines, and income has increased overall because I've put other ads where AdSense wasn't doing well.
Monthly AdSense impressions are actually down from a year ago, but that's because only the pages that do well in AdSense still have AdSense codes.
I now have a good idea of what works on my site and plan to add more of it to my site over the coming year.
You might try doing the same. Use channels to find out what pages perform better and put the energy you were putting into AdWords into creating more pages like them....
Good luck!
Traffic comming from search engines have a referer containing the search words. In the case of google organic traffic, it is something like www.google.com/search?q=blue+widget. Traffic from PPC and other advertisment methods will not mention the keywords in the referer in most cases.
If your page is about blue widgets AND the referer contains the search words blue+widget than AdSense knows that this is not just a casual visitor, but a visitor interested in blue widgets. With PPC traffic AdSense might not be able to determine for which keywords the visitor is entering the page which will probably reduce the EPC.
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In the case of traffic generated by your Adwords campaigns, Google knows which keywords you are bidding on. You are probably using keywords with low bid price, for example "green orange" and not the "red apple" keyword which is attracting the high paying Adsense ads on your own site.
So, when users enter your site through ads from your own Adwords campaign, Google knows already that they are interested in "green orange", because this was the keyword which triggered your own ad. Now the visitor arrives at a page with ads for "red apple" and Google concludes that these ads will probably have low conversion rates and therefore low EPC for you, because these visitors were interested in oranges and not apples.
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the referer contains the search words blue+widget
mmh..
I thought a javascript calleed with script src=... would see as a referer YOUR page, not your page's referer...
That's worth some testing...
Do certain ad groups pay at a different rate?
I am trying this one last effort to make a go at adsense.
Does having more than one Ad group affect your epc?
The first ad on my page gets the most clicks. That should be good thinking that the highest paying ad is going to be served first at the top.
I am going to try this and will report my findings.
But FWIW, I have noticed a difference between the two ad block types I use. I use a vertical two-ad format on "short" pages--pages with just a couple of paragraphs. And I used a vertical four-ad format on pages with more information. Sort of keeping them in proportion to the content. And what I see is that the clicks on the 2-ad blocks are generally worth more than the 4-ad blocks. Makes sense--I've removed the two lower-paying ads.
My last 3 day's earnings represent a thin shadow of what i used to earn.
EPC keeps dropping and it seams there is no bottom. Two many 1 and 2 cents all around. I have seven web sites and the viewers return rate on 4 of them is more then 30%. Yes they are quality sites with lots of content (so please spare me the smart pricing theory)
I used to make $150 per day up to the 1st of Feb but then it started (slowly but surly) to diminish with every passing day. I've got to the point of ending the day with only $40 (p/day if I’m lucky) and mind you with the same +- traffic and same +- number of daily impressions. I have not changed anything on the sites either.
The income just keeps dropping and dropping. $40 per day is unclad for with the amount of impressions across my network (approx 25,000 impressions per day).
Topic: Finance/stock market, home and family/pets, PC software & perl development, PC software downloads.
I'm to the point of sitting and writing google a nice long two page email with my entire statistics since starting the program (about a year ago). I want to hear some reasoning beyond the extreme drop in earnings.
I suspect that something major is off with their tracking system. If this is the best they can do then i see no point in keep displaying the ads on my sites.
I can almost swear that i hit some type of a cap when my earnings went past the $150 p/day. It all came crumbling down a few days later.
Those of you who keep tweaking to go higher with daily earnings beware.... earnings climb up nicely but then they tank like you wouldn't believe it.
P.S.
My sites get spot on trargeted ads, most ads with same old advertisers.
max_mm, you seem to think that because your site has good content, it shouldn't be affected by smart pricing adjustments. That's not how smart pricing works. Smart pricing has no direct connection to the content on the site--so sites with good content CAN be affected by smart pricing. There's been a good bit of information posted about it on this board, and you can even read what Google itself says about it. DON'T dismiss a possible cause of your decline as just another "theory," no matter how angry you are about it. You may just make it harder to find out the real cause....
I wouldn't use the word "adjustments". It looks more like "hammering down" from where i am sitting. The figures just dont make sense. I don't understand how clicks that used to pay 40 cents to 1 dollar now pay 1 or 2 cents (3 if i'm lucky). This is absoulte nonsense.
Will be emailing google tommorow and will post the outcome, and i suggest that everyone who is hevily affected do the same.
It looks like a major bug on thier system which they should know about.
P.S.
Could you please post the link to G reply re smart pricing. Thanks, I seem to have missed this post.
[edited by: max_mm at 6:34 pm (utc) on April 5, 2005]
If this keeps up I will soon be paying G to run adsense for them.
Stop buying traffics for a couple of days and then start to buy back AdWords' traffics. Forget about the other gabbage ppcs, link exchanges and running ads on ebay. Add some affilliates.
I have noticed that my epc coming from traffic that is generated from the adwords is much much lower than the organic trafic or other advertising methods.
So let me ask why in heaven's name would you continue to buy traffic if it was negatively impacting your earnings and continuing to throw good money after bad? Sounds to me like you needed to work on SERPs and get all organic traffic instead of cracking open the wallet and trying to throw money at the problem.
There is no quick fix but I was able to boost my traffic 300% in 4 months and cost me nothing but my time and the one time $400 expense when I broke down and bought WebCEO to track the hundreds of keywords.
My signficant drop happened at exactly the same moment that I rearranged my site to get a higher CTR. So, although I'm getting 3-4x as many clicks, the overall revenue is almost exactly the same. Maybe it's changes in CTR that trigger this?
My story is the same, sadly I m not alone.:(
After, I restructured my site , my impressions was multiplied by 3 and my earning by 5. I earned a lot during 2 days, then I dropped to the same level of past months. It seems like, that 100 impressions will net 0.40-$1 a day no matter the number of clicks,500 impressions will net 0.40-$1 a day no matter the number of clicks, 1000 impressions will net 0.40-$1 a day no matter the number of cliks.
I have tried the other ad block and they did not affect the epc at all. Still under .07 in a very competitive niche (making money)
The new real time channel reporting feature is cool. I like it.
Jb
