Getting to the $50/day mark with AdSense

Since I hit $50, my eCPM keeps lowering

[thedigitalauthor]

Although I do not post often, I come back from time to time to read what is going on -- and I'll admit, especially when something negative is affecting my sites. Anyway, I just read one of the best post/threads on this forum at [webmasterworld.com...] where a webmaster surpassed the $100 a day mark. That is fantastic. He, and other posters gave some great advice in the thread.

One of the posters mentioned that every time he reaches the $100/day mark, his eCPM seems to go down. I too have had that problem when reaching the $50/day mark. I am also referring to the Adsense for Content results, which is 95% of my Google revenue. [However, I have noticed a sharp increase in the Google for Search eCPM results since January.]

Probably 98% of my revenue and traffic come from one site. The site is a little over 2 1/2 years old, but I have only been using Adsense for just under 2 years. Every page has original content, including human written original news pages.

The site was originally created as a "fun site" to relax with while working on my e-Commerce sites. However, this site grew and grew and I have finally hit the 1 million unique users two months ago.

My eCPM has been fairly consistent throughout all of 2006 through the third week of April (even when I was 950'd in January). Throughout April, I was hitting the mid $40 mark with a few days here and there over $50. Then one day of a sudden my eCPM dropped by 60%. At first I thought no problem, this is Google and that could happen. After a week it still has not changed and I started to get nervous.

I checked to see what ads were coming up and did not see too many PSAs. I then tried playing around by filtering out some of the ads. This only raised my eCPM to about 45% of "normal" from last year's average eCPM.

I also looked back at last year's reports to see if there was the same type of drop last year. I figured that maybe this was just an industry specific thing -- but there was no drop during that same period.

I don't mean to complain. I never set out to make this into a revenue-generating site. Luckily as my traffic grows, so does the alternative revenues streams I also have on the site. However, I find this extremely, extremely frustrating.

Reading the many posts, I know that the best strategy is just to hold tight and wait for the next upswing in eCPM next week, next month or maybe next year. One suggestion on the post I alluded to above also mentioned diversifying many sites. However, I put a lot of time into my main site and do not want it to suffer because I am working on other websites. My early e-Commerce sites still exist, but they pretty much all went bust because I put them up just to make money and did not really have a passion for them. There are some other subjects I am passionate about, but as I said, I do not have the time to create a site with the same level of content.

Well, enough said. I just wanted to see if anyone else has experienced the same type of phenomenon, or if anyone has any other pearls of wisdom they could give.

Thanks a lot!

[nomis5]

I have seen these plateaus in earnings at certain points for my sites and am still not clear if this is controlled by Google or not. I was of the opinion that it was Google controlled but I'm not so sure now. It took about 6 months to get above the plateaus each time. My advice would be to do two things. First accept it. Second, change the add formats, try something out of the norm for your site, even if you don't like it. Experiment. One nagging possibility at the back of my brain is the navigation structure of a site. I changed it on one of my sites recently which had stuck at a lower plateau than your $50. The eCPM doubled almost overnight. It could be because the old navigation structure was bad and the new one good, but....

[Hobbs]

thedigitalauthor,
You already tried everything I would have suggested or done if I was in your shoes.
One thing that worked for me once was segment an unsuccessful channel into several, and try to fix it or remove ads from the least performing.
Finally remember, some sections perform best blended others need to stand out, play with that.

[tabish]

I coulen't understand this logic too. And seriously, I have no intrest about talking my e-cpm, b-cpm, c-cpm, d-cpm.. etc.. it's all useless.

When I started my adsense journey, My ecpm was way up. It was about 3 years ago. it went very good for about 8 months and as soon as my site started getting lots of hits.. my revenue started going down.

Now If I compare my earning from my previous days, I should have getting thousands of $$ per day.. but as much as hits increased, revenue decrease. I told google about it, but I am never satisfied with canned answers. My site is same, contents are much more better than 3 years before, hits are almost thousands times more BUT revenue is less.

As soon as my site starts getting more hits more clicks, I see that overall my revenue comes at same point.. sometime it looks like that someone is controlling it by hand.. but.. i really dont know how all thse things works.

I think this logic is beyond my understanding.. My work is to make useful sites for my users and I am happy that i am getting few money by adsense and I am able to pay my server bills.

Regards

[Hobbs]

Go for CPM networks (Good luck finding a good one) if you want to see proportional jumps in earnings with your traffic, otherwise, PPC carries this uncertainty, PPC is fishing not catching.

[iwannano1]

CPM network will work but getting good CPM network is difficult these days most of them shows lots crap ads.

[timwestla]

Could this be a matter of perception? If a site averages $20/day, then one day the performance is half of the average (which happens once in awhile), then the difference is only $10. But at $50 or $100 per day. if performance gets cut in half then it's alot more noticeable.

Another thought - if there really is some manipulation by Google, could it be the other way around? Google could be giving the lower-earning sites a boost by sending them a greater ratio of higher paying clicks. [[Personally I think it's about perception, but I just couldn't resist throwing another conspiracy theory into the mix ;) ]]