Niche profile, your site and average earnings

Does earnings potential of a sector limit you?

[nippon]

A thought struck me recently that perhaps google will limit your earnings potential (dare I say cap?) based on a profile of smilar sites in your niche and what they earn, then depending on your traffic, and I guess smart pricing or whatever, average your earnings to fit the pattern.

Seems to me that my across my sites, albeit only a couple, I seem to get a steady daily average and perhaps this is related to a wider picture of what other sites in my sector are earning.

Would this make sense from googles point of view that each niche has an average value to advertisers, in terms of delivering traffic and sales or conversions or whatever, and finding the medium price of a click in that niche and calculating your traffic etc gives you an average earning potential which is perhaps why we see publishers comment that they seem to get a steady daily average.

In that case would a large number of sites with poor quality entering a sector devalue the earnings average and thus decrease your potential. Do sectors with lots of MFAs see a drop in earnings in general?

Thoughts?

(I hope I made myself clear.... its still early and no coffee!)

[david_uk]

I think there is some sense in the idea. My site has been online since 1999, and #2 in Google for my keywords. It did very well until somebody decided that one of the keywords was high paying, and then a swarm of locusts descended to cash in. Although I struggled for a while to maintain earnings, the drop in epc has been dramatic. I've also seen a mass desertion of advertisers from the sector due to the fact their ads are mostly placed on MFA's that don't convert (even via Google's search pages).

Although I suspect that the reasons are many and varied, it does make sense to me that part of it may be that Google has decided that the sector as a whole isn't worth what it was and an effective cap is placed.

Now that does make sense in some ways as by limiting the earnings of publishers in the sector, the bid prices may also be low enought to tempt some advertisers back now that the locusts have started to move off. I am seeing an increase of relevant real ads, but unfortunately the epc is still pants. maybe that will improve - I'm hanging on in there.

[Pengi]

Surely the real "limit" is due to the total amount of advertising revenue provided for the sector. Of course there are limits, but not artificially set by Google as you suggest.

Google needs to make a profit. It cannot provide more well paying Ads to publishers than it has available.

David clearly has seen that if a niche gets a reputation for having well paying ads then it becomes swamped with golddiggers. Unless all this extra marketing results in a big increase in business for the original advertisers - i.e. those providing the product or service being advertised - then at best the money is spread much more thinly, at worst, the real advertisers just go elsewhere.

[DamonHD]

Hi,

I am running some mobile ads through G, and I think I must have saturated the market (or at least my corner of it), because my CTR was falling off sharply with an "unlimited" budget, but is now recovering with an artificially limited budget.

Some market sectors really are limited by volume I imagine, particularly if advertisers get scared off as suggested above.

Rgds

Damon