First day was great

every day is worse since then.

[Tonearm]

I opened a site on the 6th that gets traffic from AdWords and makes money via AdSense. That first day was awesome and gave me a great outlook. However, every day since then it has been a totally different story. Like 180 degrees. Does that make any sense, knowing what you guys know about how AdWords and AdSense works?

[hunderdown]

So you have five days of data--it could easily be pure chance that your first day was the best.

Let it run a few weeks. Look at weekly averages.

[Tonearm]

The first day I had one article. I spent $3.34 and made $10.36. Since then I've added four articles, and every day I've spent between $2 and $5 and made between $2 and $3. It seems like I had something working for me on that first day that hasn't been working since.

I know broad matching doesn't kick in until your kewords are established a bit, but I don't think that could account for this.

[hyperkik]

It could be that the keywords matched to your first page were more valuable than the keywords matched to your subsequent pages. It could also be that your traffic didn't convert, and you got hit by "smart pricing".

[Tonearm]

Even if the first page had the most valuable keywords, they should still be performing with the other pages up right?

Can you tell me how smart pricing would affect me here?

[hunderdown]

Smart Pricing discounts the cost per click based on conversions.

You would get full price the first day because there is no conversion data for the site. Then it drops when the data is in and they see that your site performs at only, say, 50% of the best sites in the network....

[hyperkik]

Tonarm, it is possible to have one page which delivers high value keywords and, despite your belief that the content is such that similar ads would be delivered, substantially lower-paying keywords on another page. (Or most other pages.)

[Tonearm]

What I'm saying is that the first page should still be performing even if I have 10 other pages that aren't.

[hunderdown]

Pricing for the first page could come down AFTER the first day's data. As I said earlier, you got "full price" on the first day, and then the clicks were discounted after that.

Does that make sense?

[Tonearm]

Thanks hunderdown, I gotcha.