April 2015 AdSense Earnings and Observations

[Mentat]

March was a UP/Down month for many, but was generally a quiet month.

April has "two Easters" (Catholic on 5th and Orthodox on 12), an official Google update on 21 (mobile algo) and probably the doorway pages update.

In the last yeast, Google rolled some big updates on holidays, so it's time to prepare yourself for a rough month.

[samwest]

Easter has nothing to do with the recent drops. It's more like end of 1st quarter earnings and they are falling short...time to dial it up in G's favor.

[jbayabas]

Is there a delay? Page views are low for some reason.

[RedBar]

What an utterly bizarre Friday, as expected traffic would be extremely low from Europe and it was, China and India were normal however the USA was completely average except for EPC at 63.3%

Doesn't the US celebrate Good Friday? I couldn't believe the US numbers they were so close to average it was uncanny, literally 6 PVs less, 1 click more, 0.06% difference in CTR...if my EPC had been average it wouldn't have been noticeable as being a holiday.

Today is dead so far but after yesterday what the heck do I know? It certainly went against all my historical AdSense records.

[dethfire]

I seriously hate all US holidays. No one uses my sites on holidays.

[RedBar]

Wow, talk about new lows even for holidays...in six hours I've had one click from India and one from Kuwait, 9 PVs from the UK and 22 PVs from USA...this means my sites are almost dead, definitely on the endangered species list!

I seriously hate ALL holidays no matter which country it is.

[webcentric]

Doesn't the US celebrate Good Friday?

Of course some do. Some are also celebrating Passover.

[trebuchet]

Traffic to my sites always dies on Saturday regardless, however today it's at about 30% of the usual level. Add to that a lousy CPC, around half the average, and it's an appalling non-earning day for me. I need big months in April and May because June and July usually suck, but it hasn't started well.

[RedBar]

however today it's at about 30% of the usual level.

I'd love to be at that level right now, since my last post I've added 10 UK PVs and 1 from the US, my sites are at an almost standstill, I've never, ever seen such low traffic, Xmas Day was positively manic compared to this...I'm switching off and going to watch a film, all my incentive for sites has died this past few weeks.

[netmeg]

I love holidays.

[AlexB77]

Everything is gradually going UP since 1st April.

No jumps, everything is just as expected and if it will remain as it is right now I surely will hit 5 figures this month.

I thought that I would never listen to G when they are suggesting something, but looks like I have and have done a right thing.

[RedBar]

A typical holiday for me, US PVs ended up at 57.1% and the UK 39.6%, all my European countries were down with France at 11.1%, overall I was at 56.8% thanks to countries like India at 95.1%.

It was my third-lowest PVs of 2015 but after 3 hours of a Googleday, today looks as though it's going to be even lower, utterly dead for me.

[scottb]

Fed is now predicting zero growth in U.S. during the first quarter. March jobs report was worst since 2013. If the U.S. economy is going south, hold onto your shorts. Can't imagine AdSense will shine.

[vdR7]

if i have regular job i will never work with adsense...today until now i have 15k wiews and my RPM Is 0,25 cent...#*$!y the lowest rpm ever...this is #*$!

[Mentat]

Saturday was unspeakable.
Sunday very low PV, but good CPC, so unexpected good result.

I predict that the big Google Doorway update will be next week (Orthodox easter).

Tomorrow is another non-working day in the "civilized world", so no high hopes.

[Jacky258]

Until now, April is a very bad month for me either :(

[Peanut45]

Very quiet today, expect it to improve a bit from tomorrow onwards.

[Mentat]

I wasn't expected that Monday to be worse than this Saturday!
FUBAR!

[MrSavage]

So bad it actually hurts.

[Mentat]

Usually, when it hurts, you hear a lot of screams.

So:
1. Few are hurt
2. Many are already dead
3. In space, no one can hear you scream

[RedBar]

Judging by how quiet this forum has been I can only conclude many actually have a real life and had time off with their families therefore they probably haven't yet seen the state of their accounts.

Monday almost came back to normal for me thanks to excellent EPCs from the US and 90% of the earnings. Europe was still on holiday, unbelievably low traffic from there again, and with the weather predicted to be nice in the UK this week I may have a couple of days off myself.

[AlexB77]

All of the weekend was actually fine with absolutely nothing to report, just like my usual weekends except Friday, but this was expected.

Monday was very strong, with US leading as always. I am in the UK, and have always been here, but my UK stats are always low so, when it comes to Adsense UK is almost always very slow on clicking :).

I have emailed G. to check what was going on with 2 of my other sites, but the answer was as always "You need to check the health of your traffic" and another "As you have a lot of returning visitors, you visitors have developed blindness towards your adds and therefore are clicking less than before". Big time BS as I have only 15% of returning visitors and to add more dropped from 7.5% CTR to 1.90% CTR in less than a month.

[netmeg]

I'm about exactly on par with last April, and hopefully it will pick up. I'm trying a different third party network (Vertoz) that so far isn't too bad - nowhere near AdSense, but outperforming media.net at the moment, and I will be mailing out my direct ad solicitations at the end of the month. A few of my direct advertisers from last year have already signed on for this year, so that's good. But AdSense is pretty much the same.

[avalon37]

First three days of April were well below normal in terms of CTR AND CPC; last three days have been at normal levels.

[MrSavage]

@mentat, I've seen a poll online, which I put a lot of faith in regarding accuracy and Adsense earnings. Within that poll more than 70% said their earnings were down. Only about 10% I believe said that their earning were up. Another 10 or there abouts said things were about the same. So unless I see a counter poll or see a flourish of posts in a positive light, then I'm going to be real and realize that a vast majority are "sucking" right now.

[Ironside]

I'm wondering whether AdSense has seen its day? With me, I seem to have reached my peak in the last few months of 2014. Since then, payments have slowly declined to about a third of what I was getting at my very best. If you think about it, the amount of people wanting to make money online can only increase each week, month, year. For most people, AdSense has been the easiest way to make money since you don't have to sell anything, all you need to do is put together a website. But the way I look at things, There are probably just as many, or more people wanting to make money then there are people using Google to display their adverts. So it makes sense that once it becomes one-sided, i.e. More people displaying Google adverts, the money is going to start dropping because there's just not enough to go around.

Maybe it's more important now to try and display specific adverts on your website, rather than letting any adverts show. If you think about it, host Gator must have their AdSense banners and units displayed on millions and millions of websites around the world. In my opinion, you are probably better off blocking them because the amount of money you get for each click is absolutely minute. Maybe it's better to block all of these advertising companies who are literally bombarding the Internet with cheap paying adverts. That's just a theory, I'm sure you guys will have something to say about it.

The way I see it at the moment, I really don't have anything to lose by testing and trying different things. What I might do is go through the list and block a large amount of different subjects that may display adverts on my website. Maybe that will encourage higher paying adverts to display. Also, how important is it to show advertisers which of your AdSense units are available for them? I suppose if you don't use this function, anything will show.

[ember]

AdSense has been the easiest way to make money since you don't have to sell anything, all you need to do is put together a website

I agree that Adsense is the easiest way to monetize a site, but it takes a lot more than just putting up a website. You need to attract quality traffic and keep it, help users solve a problem, understand ad placement and design, understand the buying process and a lot more. Yes, Joe Blow can put up a site, but if he can't do the rest, then he won't make much money.

I've seen a poll online

Was it a self-selecting poll? If so, it probably doesn't mean too much. If it was a random, scientific poll, it would carry more weight.

[MrSavage]

It's a poll from a very reputable site. There is ZERO reason to doubt those results. The only shortcoming is that there is no scale on the "making less than I did a year ago" question. Maybe some people make 10% less, others make 50% less. Outside of that issue, around 10% saw increases. If anyone has a reliable source of the state of Adsense for publishers, do share.

[Mentat]

Search Ads are going UP, Display Ads are going down + I see more and more blending in google results.

See this image.
The new related links under the ad are something new to me.

[i.imgur.com...]

[Ironside]

Sorry for my ignorance, what is the difference between search ads and display Ads?

[AlexB77]

@Ironside adds that appear in search results in google, Display adds are those adds that you have on your website.