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.

[Ironside]

Thanks Alex, silly me, I was thinking more along the lines of what you had on your own website, not what appeared after you did a search on Google :-)

[SnowLeppard]

Re.

I'm trying a different third party network (Vertoz) that so far isn't too bad

I received this offer (not sure if it is spam, Google said no)

My name is Shady Malof and I am in charge of recruiting Publishers at Wafra Media.

I am contacting you regarding your website www.__i__removed__it.com/ .

You can start earning in minutes, please go ahead and register a publisher account:

[waframedia.com...]

I'll approve your account shortly.

Best regards,

Shady

Does anyone else think that sounds a bit shady?

[netmeg]

Well if his NAME is Shady and the first part isn't Slim, I'd probably toss it in the garbage.

(Never heard of Wafra. I don't answer most of the ad networks solicitations I get, unless someone I know speaks well of them, or their solicitation contains enough information specific to my sites or audience that I'm convinced they did their homework)

It's a poll from a very reputable site. There is ZERO reason to doubt those results.

Well one reason to doubt is the sample size, which I would think would be of more relevance than the reputation of the site.

Most publishers don't participate in forums to talk about AdSense. And particularly most publishers who are reasonably happy with their earnings are not participating in forums to talk about AdSense. So there's that.

Even on this forum, not everyone is dropping. My March was pretty close to last March, but year to date I'm still up 24% over 2014. Of course, that doesn't mean much until my peak season starts. But I'm also not a set-it-and-forget-it publisher either. I put a lot of work into it, and I'm pretty sure I'll meet or exceed last year's total AdSense earnings.

Be careful about making assumptions based on what you see in forums - even this one. It's a datapoint, it's not necessarily enough to draw a conclusion from.

[MrSavage]

The poll is far more accurate than a forum. Sample size is certainly something worth considering. However, consider the veil of secrecy, it's something I will take at face value. If WebmasterWorld Adsense forum posts countered the votes, then I would have reason to question it. I really haven't seen any polls of this sort or any sort of concrete evidence one way or the other. It's not an Adsense website doing the poll. I would think the majority of people who viewed it and voted on it are somewhat professional or at least somewhat competent webmasters. The point is that it's a poll on an authority site and for me, combined with these forums along with my own experiences, I trust the results to at least gauge where this monetization method is currently or over the past year. Of course it could also speak to the general status of web traffic of a large majority of webmasters too. I'm dealing with the forecast by chopping and flushing. I wasted a lot of money over the years, no doubt about it. This has allowed for some belt tightening, so that's a positive step moving forward.

[Mentat]

Again a bad CPC day, but another thing is that in the last few hours of the day, my ADX was frozen, almost no click or $!

[RedBar]

All metrics came back to normal for me on Tuesday with, literally, double the earnings of the Easter weekend, tis a pity with the current state of my widget SERPs that I cannot get any increase in traffic, in fact it's amazing anyone is finding anything in my UK SERPs at present.

[Mentat]

I don't know that's the GOD of GOOG is doing today, but my CPC is lower than Saturday (Easter).

It's really a disaster, the traffic seems to be ok, clicks ok, the payment is abysmal!

[whyohwhy]

17 hours into the day here in the UK and according to Adsense I have had one solitary click which was there when I switched on this morning. Logs show a very different picture so am guessing, or in truth hoping, that things are delayed once again at Adsense.

[Ironside]

What's this, a new look for the forum? Don't appear to be any controls. A measly £1.52 so far today from 8 clicks. Most of my traffic comes from the US, it's now gone midday there, I would have expected a little more than what I'm getting. I thought things were looking up a couple of days ago, yesterday was pretty shocking, today isn't looking any better.

[Mentat]

A "red bar" message would be nice now.

[RedBar]

Here I am :-)

Yes, I agree, no earnings' movement in hours for me even though PVs continue to rise.

[netmeg]

What's this, a new look for the forum? Don't appear to be any controls.

They're working on updating the code and making it responsive. The options are up there ^^^ in a dropdown under the Msg#.

[dethfire]

My CTR was cut in half today. Are they messing with any adsense styling?

[MrSavage]

Whelp this is the kind of results day where throwing in the towel seems appropriate. I hope something is broken today and it's not me. Wow.

[kireb]

Yeah, RPM is picking up again and traffic as well. A low ROM during those dreadful holidays might have been a blessing. Better have a high RPM on high traffic days and vice versa. Having 2 jolly good days, after a truly horrible week.

[RedBar]

From somewhere overnight G managed to find my clicks, unfortunately the overall EPC value was 25% down from the previous day.

For me the UK continues to be in the grip of Easter holidays still running at 50% of average PVs, in fact ever since 1st April the UK has been terrible.

[BedSupperclub]

My daily earnings have been slashed by half since beginning of April.

The drop is mainly due to a sudden decrease in earnings from mobile traffic (mobile CPC has been slashed, traffic is the same as usual)

And April 8 was the worst day so far...

[kireb]

I should stop reporting good days as today seems to be slower than Christmas! Traffic is hiding on the moon and RPM is almost negative! Do I owe you money or something Google! Hope it will recover during the rest of the day.

[netmeg]

I did some comparisons to last year - CTR is about double this year, and EPC is slightly less. Overall, I'm up for April, and it's been looking good (I've been giving AdSense fewer impressions while I test some other networks, and also some of my direct advertisers signed up earlier this year)

Interesting about the CTR going up so much. Can't account for that on my end; I haven't changed anything (in fact I'm long overdue for a fresh design)

[Evan Salamanca]

CTR skyrocketed after switching from async to Synchronous ads. There appears to be far more ad variety with Sync at least from what I can see.

[Buzz50]

My earnings are down by 75% so far today and the impressions just don't look right.
1 impression for a link unit on my home page where a banner ad on the same page has had 1,459 impressions.

Any suggestions?

[netmeg]

CTR skyrocketed after switching from async to Synchronous ads. There appears to be far more ad variety with Sync at least from what I can see.

Doesn't explain my CTR rise. All my ads are responsive / asynch.

Buzz50 - I have never believe they update everything in real time at the same time. One day's metrics don't prove a lot.

[ember]

My CTR has dropped this month but the epc has shot up, so I'm where I should be. Can't complain.

[woody midrib]

For me, April started as good as March ended. It's shaping up to be my best month ever. Desktop is doing especially well.

[MrSavage]

Two days down, way down. This for me, right now, is the most depressing time since embarking on this. My earnings are an absolute joke when you consider the number of ads and real estate I've dedicated to them. I've had good in the past, no question about it. That said, this situation changes everything from the ground up. Aside from a couple properties, this is pretty much shut down time. It's been fun Adsense, and obviously this program was the glue that made working on websites worthwhile. I think I'm safe in saying that for the most part, working on websites is no longer worthwhile. I may have a couple exceptions, but that's about it. Big middle finger to a lot of my existing projects. I'm shutting down a good chunck now. F this. I read once a guy hiring for some project and he was looking for help. His offer for pay was so pathetic, I always remember one persons comment. They said to him, "I would rather shovel cow sh!t for free for 10 hours a day than to work for you at that rate". I'm not saying this situation is the same, but I'm reminded of it right now. You want my real estate and this is what I'm getting for it? Obviously I'm one of the bottom feeder publishers. Fair enough, point taken. Bottom of the barrel ads, that's my take on it. At some point I need to have some self respect and know when I'm being insulted.

[ianmacdon]

I am a YouTube partner for 6 years...and my earnings lately are lower than Christmas day or January 1st, typically the lowest days of the year ... looking for a return to better times. :(

[nubchai]

April is looking pretty good so far.

[RedBar]

Shouldn't there be a red bar, my G numbers are looking very low.

[AlexB77]

After changing position of one of the units last night, which apparently was not visible to visitors with the screen resolution that I get most visits from, the result is very very interesting.
I have less clicks, but CPC and therefore RPM is sky high. So today so far I am UP by 35% on my average Fridays earnings. It only has been a first day of my experiment and it is to early to make any assumptions, but I will give it a week or so and will get back to report my results.

[dethfire]

Last two days I've had the highest CPC in 2 years. I didn't change a thing. Totally random.