Forum Moderators: martinibuster
I can't give any numbers, but it's so bad that I'm now seriously looking at moving to TribalFusion or another network.
It seems like the Adsense Bonanza is over. I can only assume that they got flooded with publishers, because it paid so well.
Etc. It's impossible to know whether your conclusions are right or wrong, but I disagree with the assumption that what you personally see on your own site necessarily translates into a "general trend"
Also, since no-one's allowed to say anything, I have a feeling that an epc that some people think is good, would seem bad to others.
I can't saaay anything, so I'd like to recommend a song. It's one from the Sound of Music, sung by one of the Von Trapp girls, and Ralph the Nazi collaborator.
I am da-da going on da-da-da. Blah blah blah something... :)
Can anyone else recommend a song?
I like songs :)
So perhaps force a reindex by changing the format of the ad a bit and see if that nudges things in the right direction.
My traffic is up 25% since the first of the year and my AdSense income is way down. I'm getting a ton of non-relevant ads which has affected by CTR and my EPC.
I'm making half of what I made last September/October and my traffic is significantly higher than it was then. So I would say I'm down well over 60%!
Traffic over the last couple of days to my site is steady (same daily average) while earnings are SHARPLY down. 60% down from normal daily earning average.
Seems like Someone is tinkering with the ad serving algo at google AGAIN.
I’m starting to notice a pattern......you get excellent above average for a couple of days and then a sharp dive for most of the following week. This is crazy!
Traffic over the last couple of days to my site is steady (same daily average) while earnings are SHARPLY down.
Earnings do tend to drop during weekends for most areas I believe.
Looks like clicks are not being counted. That’s what it looks like. Ads displaying fine (and i tried viewing the site from different ip ranges (US, UK, AU etc.)
Something is very wrong and it is worrying like hell...
And you can't even compare today to the July to August period, since AdSense was the new super hot thing and people were throwing money at it, testing it out. Things are stabilizing. Big money will return, but only at the appropriate time...
Also as i mentioned. I do see ads and plenty of them over the site. It is not like there is a shortage of advertisers. Completely the opposite.
My point is that changing ad spending patterns would have been noticed gradually and NOT over a two days period.
If you are used to earnings of X dollars per day and then oops, you get two days of only 1/2x per day. This is a problem and not a changing ad spending pattern, it is just too sharp to be.
It looks to me like another google stuff-up.
Google has a new face ....check it out.
This must have somting to do with it, the adword boxes look diffrent and i think that i can see more adword ads per SERP then the nubmer of ads they used to display before...
Anyone willing to comment?
Something is very wrong and it is worrying like hell...
Hi Max,
Sorry to hear your earnings are down. Your posts in this thread rather indicate that you have all your eggs in the google basket?
You will experience huge fluctuations in earnings doing that. The only way to avoid it is to spread your sites a little more widely.
If you can't do that, you will forever be in that "worrying like hell...." mode, which is no way to be making a living.
TJ
Online stores are a "serious" basket of course, and can always be subsidised by AdWords if you are out of the SERPS for any given period. Advertising, I think, must be factored in to the profit margins equation. Reliance on "free" advertising in the SERPS is going to cause similar levels of stress as you're experiencing now (look at any google update thread).
There are a number of members on here making quite serious money with affiliate marketing. I'm doing that at the moment privately, having a content site which drives traffic to an online shop, which we built but is being run by an existing bricks and mortar store. AdSense rounds that sites offerings up quite nicely but if AdSense ever goes pear-shaped, it won't hurt all that much.
AdSense is great for what it is, but if you rely solely on it as your income stream, you will hit dry patches. It's not a case of if, it's a case of when.
TJ
I by no means suggests that adsense is my main source of income but must admit it is the lion shre of it.
The other affiliate sites were doing pretty well, surpassing adsense per day revenue for a while but then came the recent update and wiped most of the traffic to these sites.
Tried paid inclusions on 4 (other) major engines and it proved to be a major bummer.
Tried adsense for a while, spent days on targeting the right keyprhases, ad wording and what have you not to mention the bidding war...did not see any major improvement.
Don’t get me wrong....i have 6 web sites with a total unique of around 12000 per day across the network....
It is not like there is no other revenue, there is (other) nice revenue and a nice spread of programs (like CJ, Clickbank, Amazon, and link share) but earnings is just not like it used to be.
Whenever you think you have something nicely going the SE's turns on you with some major sharp updates and changes.
But enough complaining....maybe I’m getting too old for this game and should start looking for a real job LOL (I’ve been doing this for more than 6 years now
and USED to enjoy it)
[edited by: max_mm at 12:02 pm (utc) on Mar. 29, 2004]
It starts and ends with the search engines. We are all (online marketrs that is) preety much in thier hands!
We're only in the hands of the search engines as much as we decide to be. All businesses rely on "traffic". In a traditional bricks and mortar business, that might be people passing the shop window on the street. If the road gets closed, their business takings will be down. Sure, google ups and changes it's algo far more regularly than the council dig up roads (actually in London I'm not so sure about that lol), but the principle remains the same. It's in the interest of any business to target it's product in as wide a net as possible. You can try various avenues, if they don't provide ROI, you move on and try something else.
Traditional marketing can work as well as internet-specific marketing. That can include advertising in the press for example - targetted magazines and/or newspapers, radio etc.
Content websites can usually quite easily get mentioned in the press - ours features regularly in several key magazines. We notice the difference that makes on AdSense. It costs us nothing, and it's not provided by google. Because it's free, it could stop at any moment. So we don't rely on that income. It's bunce.
If we were suddenly booted out of google, we'd survive. Sure, we would notice the drop, but we wouldn't be panicked over it. We'd be able to relax, look at what happened, and take our time repairing it. But it's also just bunce.
AdSense is obviously your main bread-winner. My point is you cannot expect that to be stable. It will fluctuate wildly. So you have three choices, imo. You expand out widthways and concentrate more on your affiliate marketing, you advertise in the traditional press for your online store, or, you simply accept the fact that in the shake of the dice, your turnover could drop by 50%.
The Google SERPS, and the performance of AdSense, will fluctuate. That's a fact. There's nothing you can do about it. It's not a "screw-up" by google when that happens. In fact, if *their* income goes up, it's a good strategic decision. They're there to make money for themselves.
TJ
[edited by: trillianjedi at 3:21 pm (utc) on Mar. 29, 2004]
What percentage of your traffic comes in from SEs?
I would guess that most of us get half or more of our traffic from SEs. Maybe not Google, but all of them combined.
I think that SEs hare the highways of internet traffic, and that everything else are local roads. Sure, a site could do without those highway exits, but it wouldn't thrive. {I am not referring to adsense revenue here, just talking about SE traffic}
Of course you could go PPC yourself, but then every visitor costs you money and you better convert or you will be in the red.
