Factors that decrease your earning (assumptions)

[jason77]

I dont know, but my assumptions are there:

- if you advertise your website with adwords at the same time, you will earn less per click

- if you traffic suddenly increases you earn less than if it gradually increases

- you earnings depend on the kind of the size of your website. medium websites earn more than big websites.
if your impression are between 2000 and 3000 per day you get paid more per click than if you are between 8000 and 140000

-if you have google adchannels for different website and you add another website that is less valuable content (as for highly targetted keywords), also the revenue from your other channels will get worse as the belong to the same google account.

- if you traffic increases quickly but remains stable, your earning go up after 2-3 weeks.

- if your website is run by a company and not by an individual you earn more

- if most traffic comes from google you earn less

- if you have many returning visitors you earn less as they will only be shown less expensive ads after the highly paid ones.

[Macro]

All speculation, some is blatantly incorrect, all points are invalid. Sorry.

You come close to facts on returning visitors but you earn less with them not because of cheaper ads but because they are less likely to click.

There's a lot of stuff in this forum about Adsense and what factors influence earnings. I'd suggest reading up a bit on those.

[alika]

if you traffic suddenly increases you earn less than if it gradually increases

this statement assumes that as impressions increase, your clicks remain constant. this is true if you are getting traffic from questionable sources.

if your website is run by a company and not by an individual you earn more

there is absolutely no evidence that business accounts are given preferential treatment to sole proprietorships

if most traffic comes from google you earn less

about 6/10 of our visitors come from google, yet we belong to the fedex club. absolutely no truth

you earnings depend on the kind of the size of your website. medium websites earn more than big websites. if your impression are between 2000 and 3000 per day you get paid more per click than if you are between 8000 and 140000

it is not about traffic, it is about the type of site that you have and what visitors expect from the site. there are sites where the visitors are actually prepped and looking for something - product, business opportunity, looking to buy tickets, etc. -- and these are the types of sites that do well with adsense. there are also sites where users are not in the least interested in any ads but just want the website's offerings.

[howiejs]

"if your website is run by a company and not by an individual you earn more "

Google states that this is not true

They are a public company now - they have to follow what they say!

[loanuniverse]

Jason: I have not seen any evidence to support even one of your assumptions.

[Sally Stitts]

Good job Jason!
I frequently make wild claims, for the sole purpose of generating feedback. Quickest way to get to the truth.

Works good, huh?

[Macro]

Sally, no it doesn't work that well :)

Rather than posting detailed answers some silly sod may just dismiss the post by saying something like:

There's a lot of stuff in this forum about Adsense and what factors influence earnings. I'd suggest reading up a bit on those.

[irock]

loanuniverse,

I couldn't agree with you more... Way too many speculations w/o solid backup proof.

Here's what I know that brings in good revenue...

1. Create a site on a topic with enough keyword diversity. Create enough pages on different subjects within your topic
2. Put lots of real content that with emphasis to a certain keywords. Don't worry about the CPC rate. If the business has a high profit margin, they should be able to allocate more marketing budget. My experience is with printers... which produce lots of printer cartridges.
On the contrary, my site has a section filled with brand name MP3 players whose sales have very low profit margin. Hence, merchants couldn't possibly make high bids.

[Dpeper]

I like the idea, of discussing off the wall factors. No one on this board, can say yes or no that affects your earnings.

For all of you who were quick to say, these assumptions are all with out grounds, Whats your grounds to dismiss them with out an utter thought.

Jason, even though your ideas, are a little rough, I like the deviation from the standard posts we see on adsense.

Donny

[dvduval]

It would be impossible to know the answer to these theories without surveying multiple accounts, which would involve violating the TOS.

I personally believe there are some buffers in place (excuse me if restate what you said jason77):
1) If you get a lot of clicks, but no conversions, your epc is reduced
2) if you get a lot of conversions, your epc is increased
3) increases in traffic must be maintained for at least a couple of weeks before your average epc per day is increased substantially.

I don't think anyone can prove any of this, so we should all agree this is purely theory, since we cannot "compare notes" without violating TOS.

[ogletree]

Where did you come up with this. I can just say you are way off. Not one thing you said is true. What you gave is a list of rumors that a lot of people believe. I can prove each one of those wrong from experience. You really need a large sample of sites to prove any of that anyhow. If you just slap AS on a website you will see all kinds of weird things. If you set up sites for the sole purpose of making AS money then you can really see how it works. AS is not some dynamic set of rules it is very predictable. I am never supised by them. Everything that AS does can be explained quite easily if you have enough data and have your site and account set up right.

[alika]

1) If you get a lot of clicks, but no conversions, your epc is reduced
2) if you get a lot of conversions, your epc is increased
3) increases in traffic must be maintained for at least a couple of weeks before your average epc per day is increased substantially.

these are more solid theories than what the original post was about.

[Never_again]

IMHO, there are a number of REAL reasons Adsense earning will vary (both up and down) on a specific site, including, but not limit to, the following:

* Existing Adword advertiser meeting budget for the month and dropping out until next month.
* Existing Adword advertiser adjusting their CPC (up or down).
* Existing Adword advertiser dropping “content” sites from their campaigns.
* Appropriate targeted ad inventory become depleted triggering more PSAs.
* New advertiser joins Adword program.
* Your users profile and demographics change.
* Your website topic is of seasonal interest.
* You add or delete content.
* You change the Adsense ad format, color, etc.
* Your page views increase or decrease due to good/bad promotion, PR, linking, search engine position, etc.
* Google changes the programs payout formula.
* Google changes the targeting algorithm.
* Ad apathy sets in with your site users.

[jason77]

I know that for low targetted keywords the variations are due to the main advertisiers budget planning. If there is only one or two big advertisers thats true. But if there are 10-20 advertisers competing, competition ensures that the click cost remain more or less stable at a certain maximum rate that should not be crossed without loosing money or paying to much for visitors.

You can test it by advertising yourself for the same keyword. if that was true, you would get more visitors for less money at the same time your earnings go down. if you always get the same amount of visitors, the clicks should cost the same.

anyway, even if my theories just happen to be true to my experience and are not at all correct, the main point still remains:

- you blindly need to trust google adsense
- adsense is not contolled by an independent institution
- if they jus decide one month to pay only 10% as they need more money, nobody will be able to prove it.
- google adsense is my only "client" that writes its bills itself

imagine you go to the cinema and tell "i would like to see fahrenheit 911" but i will pay for the ticket after i have seen it as the amount i am ready to pay depeneds on how much i will like the movie

google does not give you any statistics about where clicks came from, what the rate was and what the percentage was.

my feeling is that they do not pay the same to anyone, which is not right.

[Shyam]

There is some truth in his statements imho.

Yesterday my impressions almost doubled, CTR reduced a bit but CPM reduced drastically and my earnings increased only slightly as compared to normal...
Its a small site which gets 500-600 impressions everyday.

Today till now it seems to be normal and im earning at previous CPM again

[europeforvisitors]

you blindly need to trust google adsense

Sure, in the same way as you'd need to trust an affiliate program that pays you commissions or a book publisher that pays you royalties. If this makes you uncomfortable, why not sell ads directly to advertisers?

adsense is not contolled by an independent institution

What independent institution would you recommend? The UN? The International Red Cross? :-)

if they jus decide one month to pay only 10% as they need more money, nobody will be able to prove it.

Right, and if my leading hotel affiliate program needs cash one month, all it has to do is tell me that bookings are down. Or if my book publisher wants to cheat on royalties, all it needs to do is tell me that returns exceeded sales. If that's a concern to me, I can work out direct deals with hotels and publish my own books. But it isn't, so I don't.

google adsense is my only "client" that writes its bills itself

Google AdSense isn't your client. It's an ad network that's buying space on your site.

[jason77]

assuming the payment would be done by a different company and the statistics too it would be more trustworthy.

or if you had statistics showing what ads have been clicked.

i always have the same kind of adwords on all pages...always the same topic/keyword.

and from adwords experience (and overture) i know for sure that there are many competitors for those keywords and that it is impossible to get any clicks or ad exposures if you do not bid a certain amount.

therefore any click on my website at any time should in theory have a minimum commission unless they randomly show ads about something to a different topic which i can not imagine as i never saw any other ads on my site.

my suggestion for adsense: settings to choose a minimum click cost so that no ads will be shown that do not meed a minium amount....and maybe display alternative ads or nothing instead.

i honestly rather prefer showing no ads than 5 pence ads on my site as i know i will be losing visitors from my website due to adsense....i dont mind loosing visitors if the paymet is goog enough. but i dont want to loose valuebale visitors to competing websites for 5 cent or less per click.