The day I quit adsense...

[daunk]

... is fast approaching. I may not be a huge publisher since 1st jan I have given them; 8,608 clicks. But with a EPC which is about to drop below $0.05 it is not longer worth being in the program. My EPC was never hugely high ($0.15 was about tops) I have tried to censor the ebay and affiliate sites but it really hasn't helped. Surely my traffic must be worth more than this. I am going to try and go direct to advertisers/affiliates.

[yoyo8]

I think it's definitely worth getting rid of adsense on poorly performing channels to see if your EPC rises.

Isn't total revenue more important than EPC? I don't understand the logic of what you're doing otherwise.

[annej]

Thanks for updating us. I've been thinking about taking adsense off of some minor topics that aren't converting very well.

[dazzlindonna]

Isn't total revenue more important than EPC? I don't understand the logic of what you're doing otherwise.

Indeed it is. And my total revenue dropped to nearly nothing when my EPC shot downwards. Now that my EPC is back up, so is my revenue.

[JohnKelly]

Dazzlindonna thanks for the update. I too removed some low-traffic sites (and deactivated their channels in the AdSense control panel) abot a week or so ago.

I did leave one channel running that has very, very low traffic but a high EPC. Towards the end of the test I deactivated that one as well.

At first I didn't think it made a measureable difference. But then looking over my stats, there was a drop in EPC until the last low-traffic channel was deactivated. Then I saw a climb in EPC. I may have ended the test too soon, and will perform it again. FYI, when I deactivated a low-traffic site I both removed the adsense code and deactivated the channel in the adsense control panel.

A portion of the pages on my sites are in other languages, which often show English-language ads. I may removed AdSense from those as well, since an English language ad (often generic, run-of-network stuff) doubtless converts poorly.

[HarryM]

I have only had AdSense on my site for a few weeks, so have not yet got much of a feel for it. I have been following this thread with interest and get the point of the discussion, but there are a couple of things I am hazy on.

When the mechanism kicks in that adjusts EPC, does it do this on the previous days CTR? Or week? Or does it happen when a certain CTR is reached during the day?

Am I correct in assuming that AdSense looks at the CTR across the whole site when adjusting EPC, or is it done on a channel basis?

[Sharky]

A few months ago, I was using AdSense exclusively, and was very happy. Then after seeing how they treated their publishers with the "big change" they made in payout rates, and given how secretive they are and how Draconian their policies can be, I decided that I better diversify "just in case".

Based on some research I did a few years ago, I didn't really expect to find any better ad programs out there. Boy was I wrong. At this point I'm using three other programs, and my total site revenue has more than tripled.

I've already replaced AdSense on one low-CTR section of my site, with wonderful results. As I gain a little more confidence with things like reliability of payments from these other companies, it's possible that AdSense will be completely gone from my site in another few months.

[kwasher]

Isnt it only natural that when you remove 'low-performers' from anything, you're overall performance will increase (or appear to increase)?

Isnt that all that is happening regarding these "removed channels" posts?