June 2008 - Earnings went straight to hell

anyone ever fall off?

[JerryOdom]

I've had an interesting month for one account so far. Nothing about the website has changed but it's Adsense earnings have fallen off around 30%. It has added content and there isn't anything fancy about it but here we are earning a significantly smaller number. Anyone ever experience anything similar?

[azlinda]

I have an almost identical scenario at my main website. The traffic is there, click-through rate is way down, and earnings are down by about 30% for the last three weeks. I'm wondering if it could be a lack of good ads that no one is tempted to click on.

[explorador]

I'm there too but only on weekdays. Weekends have my usual daily earnings. Weird... my traffic just increased.

[Lysandra90]

Yeah my earnings are way down this month too.

[Edge]

My CTR is up and my eCPM is down.

[Bddmed]

Januuski,

Maybe it's time to put your forum efforts in the Advertising forum.

It is common for your earnings to go up and down, indeed. Unless you run a large network of sites evening out the uncommon for one site. Even then you'll find seasonal influences.

Keeping moaning how it didn't work for you doesn't help anyone.

[coachm]

Keeping moaning how it didn't work for you doesn't help anyone.

Course, on the flip side, the constant moaning has driven a good number of adsense veterans who contribute constructively to give up participating. As a long time former contributor, I can't justify even spending 2 minutes a day trying to help people here because the signal/noise ration is so poor (read the good ideas/moaning ration).

Then again, I'm making more money by saving time a) checking my stats, and b) trying to correct bitter forum people.

PS. Our ECP is WAY up.

[andrewshim]

June has been a roller coaster ride to the heights of heaven and the depths of hell.

Hey... there ya go... maybe Google has a dial that selects which park ride the month's earnings is supposed to follow... if this month is the roller coaster month, maybe next month will be the merry-go-round or kiddie bumper cars... me like kiddie bumper cars...

[HuskyPup]

I agree with Andrew, darned thing's all over the place but interestingly I am actually a couple of Dollars ahead of June 2007 however still way down on June 2006 by a big percentage...27.7%.

There have been some huge reporting inconsistencies recently, I simply do not trust the metrics now, they fluctuate far too much for it to be an acceptable pattern.

Oh...is there an updation delay today?

[netmeg]

June is always good for my main niche; today is the first day of my peak season, so no complaints here. Way up over this time last year.

[Atomic]

I reached record monthly earnings by the 11th of June. Whenever that has happened in the past Google has put the brakes on and this time was no different. eCPM and CTR fell off a cliff but earnings have continued to trickle in putting me deep into record territory.

Overall CTR and eCPM are steady because the month started out so well. I can't really complain but it does seem as though Google's decided how much my site can earn a month and that's a bit annoying.

[andrewshim]

but it does seem as though Google's decided how much my site can earn a month and that's a bit annoying.

the glass ceiling that I keep bumping my head on that EVERYBODY says is NOT there.

[Hobbs]

Andrew, I can confirm that there is an anti-spikes effect, but the sky is the limit, your head must be bumping something else, maybe it's your eggs basket?

[Atomic]

Has anyone else encountered what seems to be a glass ceiling? While something seems to slow me down if earnings accelerate too much, too fast they still manage to increase almost every month.

[Oxydada]

Maybe those new little arrows on our ads have something to do? Remember that if people click on those arrows and then click the ads there, you don't get paid. I suspect somthing like that is happening in my account. What do you all think?

edit: I was confused, you DO get paid.

[edited by: Oxydada at 12:47 am (utc) on June 24, 2008]

[andrewshim]

anti-spikes effect

agreed Hobbs.

but the sky is the limit

again agreed Hobbs. somehow, my glass ceiling is higher than it used to be, but it's still there. I figure the higher you push your glass ceiling, the effects of gravity lessen and it becomes easier to finally poke through to the heavens.

your head must be bumping something else, maybe it's your eggs basket

now DON'T get me started on my eggs basket. Besides... it's eggs baskets...(plural) I believe in having MANY eggs baskets (plural). ;)

[andrewshim]

Oh by the way...

I'm noticing that my click tracker is now useless. It used to be fairly accurate in that I could more or less expect my daily clicks to tally with those reported by my click tracker.

Not so now.

It seems to me the delay before click earnings are confirmed may be up to 2 days or more. I think this is probably the reason for the roller coaster ride (one day high next day low) I am experiencing. Only other reason I can think of is Google is experiencing tech problems and loss of data. It also makes my "glass ceiling" theory more real because Google can then "set" my earnings level for the month since stats are not live...

Okay. Okay. 99% of you still say my glass ceiling is half boiled. Go ahead... grill my egg basket... ;)

[Play_Bach]

> It seems to me the delay before click earnings are confirmed may be up to 2 days or more.

I'm not so sure about that. I made major changes to my sites today and the CTR/impressions reflect that. Not quite real time stats, but definitely from today.

[edited by: Play_Bach at 2:04 am (utc) on June 24, 2008]

[andrewshim]

Not quite real time stats, but definitely from today.

YMMV.

[JerryOdom]

Well interesting to know that others see similar occurrences. In my case eCPM is the metric that has really gone down. CTR and impressions are down but not by such as large margin. Other things I manage aren't seeing the same trend. Hopefully things will improve.

[dhaliwal]

traffic is the same
but the earnings are almost half of May

[drall]

Earnings down substantially, ever since the October smackdown we have slowly started moving a few million impressions a month away from Google, well I guess its time to move the last few million away.

[bbd2000]

I just checked the AdWords Keyword tool for the first time in a couple of months. The bid prices for my niche have been fairly consistent for years. The latest prices are about half their historical average.

Has anyone else seen a similar decrease in estimated CPC prices?

If this is common across the board, it could explain the decrease in revenues.

[katherinez]

Mine have tanked this month. Wayyy down. So I took off my main vertical scyscraper from the left and put a rectangle in the middle of each page. I was nervous about taking my main ad off the site, but earnings went up. Still not anything like they were with same traffic, but the smaller amount of real estate for ads seems to have boosted the income a bit - for now.

[Huntster]

Yeah I took some hits but I stay the course. I'm in for future decades with Google and the ups and downs are part of it.

[andrewshim]

I'm in for future decades with Google and the ups and downs are part of it.

whoa. long term planning dude. i dig it. don't forget google aint the only goose that lays eggs, ya dig? there's chickens, and ducks and aligators...

[Huntster]

whoa. long term planning dude. i dig it. don't forget google aint the only goose that lays eggs, ya dig? there's chickens, and ducks and aligators...

Yeah. I know and I work the affiliate thing - have tons of partners and all that, but after a few affiliates and ad partners merged or went away over the last year - it's a pain. Dropped advertisers and invalid clicks on CJ and other programs suck after a while too (removing pages of ads). Google is not going anywhere. They buy. They don't get bought. Maybe I'm just getting lazy....

[andrewshim]

I'm just getting lazy....

whoa dude... my twin!

[HuskyPup]

and aligators...

And don't forget the snakes:-)

whoa dude... my twin!

No, that's me...therefore we must be triplets! :-)

[m0thman]

Having a weird month here too. Traffic is fine but the income and to some extent the CTR is down too although I've noticed it goes up and down, not as consistent as it used to be. Not sure about the arrows thingy, but I suspect all this messing with fonts isn't helping much. Some of them (notably the Comic one) look really silly.

Personally, I think the arrows for more ads should be an opt-in thing anyway. As for fonts, would be nice to be able to choose them for ourselves.

Anyone else have ideas?