The Laws of Adsense

What are the natural laws that govern income?

[21_blue]

"What goes up must come down." I don't think Newton actually said this, but it's a summary of the basic law of gravity. The question is, what are the basic Laws of Adsense? Here are some thoughts:

1. In the short term, income varies (goes up or down each day)
   
   
2. In the long term, if a website is left untouched, there is a tendency for income to decline
   
   
3. To increase income, you need more original content
   
   
4. To increase income, you need more (different) visitors
   
   
5. To increase income, you need better ad placement
   
   
6. To increase income, you need to prune poor performing pages (ie with low conversion, if only we knew)
   
   
7. Cheats get their comeuppance sooner or later
   
   
8. Publishers will never really know the Laws of Adsense
   

Any other thoughts?

[perldiver]

There is no rule 6.

[petra]

When you write your content, pretend you're a salesman of whatever topic you write about, that usually works for me ;)

[hunderdown]

There is a rule 6, for some sites. I've certainly made it work for me.

[jomaxx]

"Income" = Total Pageviews * Blocks per Page * CTR * CPC

I don't think it's useful to create rules that fail to distinguish between these diverse elements. For example, I tend to disagree with #2, but I don't know if you're suggesting that traffic goes down on stale site, or CTR goes down if users see the same ads in the same spaces repeatedly, or that CPC goes down due to smart pricing or other factors.

P.S. Geek alert: I think perldiver's post was a reference to a Monty Python skit.

[hunderdown]

jomaxx, you're saying income increases as a multiple of the number of blocks per page?

Then if I have one block now, I'll double my income if I add another? That goes against everything I've read here.

[21_blue]

jomaxx wrote:
>I tend to disagree with #2, but I don't know if you're suggesting that traffic goes
>down on stale site, or CTR goes down if users see the same ads in the same spaces repeatedly,
>or that CPC goes down due to smart pricing or other factors.

I was thinking mainly of the latter. Historically, the traffic to our sites has tended to creep up over time. But as more sites use adsense, the law of demand and supply will tend to push CPC or EPC down, perhaps.

[jomaxx]

hunderdown, I was just citing a general formula for the different elements that factor into a site's bottom line.

If you could double your ad blocks and keep CTR and CPC constant, then I guess income would double. But you probably couldn't and that's not what I was trying to say.

[perldiver]

Yes, Hunderdown, "there is no rule 6" is from the Monty Python Australian philosophy professors sketch. Two points to Jomaxx!

[21_blue]

perldiver wrote:
>"there is no rule 6" is from the Monty Python Australian philosophy professors sketch

Darn it. An obvious opportunity for some humour slipped from under my nose ("missed a sitter" would be the expression in footballing parlance). And for a moment I was even preparing to cite Jensense's blog in defence of rule 6.

[cornwall]

For those lacking either a sense of humour, an education, or possibly both the Wiki reference is here to "rule 6" [en.wikipedia.org]

[calman]

Can't argue much with what 21_blue has said.

Rule 2 - stale content can certainly cause traffic (and probably income) to decline. I have definitely witnessed it with competitors in my niche over the last 5 years. I know that some sites, such as those devoted to travel, can create a lot of "evergreen" content . But even there, I have noticed a couple of sites with a lot of badly dated content.

Rule 3 - I would agree. I may be wrong and I have no proof, but I will throw out the argument that the increase in AdSense ad inventory is outstripping the increase in the number of ads. This, among other factors, is tending over the long term to dampen EPC (lower ad bids) and CTR (quality of the ad supply) and thus create a downward pressure on earnings. This, of course, can be reversed by creating additional content. Some niches will experience this more than others.

Rule 6 (make it 6A) - possibly true, but only Google can tell us what conversion rates are "assigned" to our various pages. They are unlikely to ever give us this information. We can only guess.

Rule 8 - Google is constantly changing the AdSense environment in ways which we do not really know. Consequently, publishers must speculate to some degree as to the environment within which they are working. Consequently, any "laws of AdSense" will always be subject to change and modification.

[netchicken1]

What about...

9. Over the long term adblocking software will eventually screw any income generated from adsence

[FrostyMug]

I tend to disagree with #2. If you have a page about widgets, and it's on an older, well-indexed site and still linked from some main page and still linked from other sites, it will do well overtime, but not decline.

[LeChuck]

netchicken1: Certainly not. There will always be people/AOL users who either don't know how to block ads, don't know they're ads, or don't care.

There will always be ways to monetize a high quality legit website with lots of traffic. If filtering adsense by blocking the pagead2.googlesyndication server becomes common then google will probably be forced to open up the fetching ads by xml feature to us lowly normal users too. Then we can integrate the ads as html.

Though I suppose adblock could remove any links that go to adsense servers...

[hunderdown]

Actuallyi I know my Monty Python but was not accessing that part of my brain at the moment.

Anyone care to define a "wottle" -- and how do you spell it?

[sailorjwd]

10. No matter how much you make it ain't enough

[novice]

There is no rule 6.

LOL. Nice catch perldiver. We must remember to always pay homage to Monty Python. If it wasn't for them what would we call the obnoxiuos bombardment of unsolicited email we all get.

Spam, spam, spam, spam, spam,spam.....