Why am I getting paid less now?

[StuntasticAudi]

For the month of december I was getting paid very well. After Christmas it has dropped to half of what I was getting a day. My CPM went down by half. I get close to 300,000 impressions a day. Is there something I'm doing wrong or is Google paying less now? whats going on? anyone else had problems like this?

[europeforvisitors]

AdSense is an auction-based system, which means that the rates paid by advertisers (and the money earned by publishers) are determined by supply and demand. It's likely that demand in your sector has dropped since Christmas, and you're now in the slow season.

[Porkchop]

I do adwords too. After Christmas, I dropped my bid price WAY DOWN. I needed to cut my expenses and didn't care if my ad showed or anybody clicked. So...if you get a cut of the price and Google takes a cut that is why your earnings drop. I assume this is correct. I am still fairly new at all this.

[europeforvisitors]

It works the other way, too. I have a travel site, and my traffic and revenues always decline in November and December. Since December 26, my ePCM has been higher than it was last summer, simply because travel advertisers start raising their bids (and readers start making their plans) in anticipation of spring and summer travel. But when the 2006 Christmas-shopping season arrives, my numbers will be dropping while widget sites' earnings are hopping.

[StuntasticAudi]

I hope it goes back up. Does anyone know what's google adsense smart pricing? I've heard thats something new that adsense came up with...but not sure how it works. Do you think that google is decreasing the price because of how many more thousands of page impressions i've gotten now then last month.

[europeforvisitors]

Does anyone know what's google adsense smart pricing? I've heard thats something new that adsense came up with..

Smart pricing was introduced in April, 2004, when Google explained it at:

[adwords.google.com...]

There have been many, many threads on smart pricing in this forum. Just scroll back through the forum to locate them.

[miedmark]

is Google paying less now? whats going on? anyone else had problems like this?

If anything I'm glad the holidays are over. Earnings are back to normal - even higher than pre christmas.

[Thez]

My earnings dropped to about half as well after christmas. Lucky enough traffic is going up a lot so I'm pretty much earning the same as I did before the drop :)