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Impressions were up approx. 60% and yet earnings more than doubled over the same period last year.
Earnings per day followed the general traffic trend. If Google put a cap on daily earnings, I think we would have seen eCPM tumble, and we didn't. Quite the contrary. eCPM, CTR, EPC were all steady or on an upward trend.
The traffic bump won't last, but I wanted to let people know to keep trying, experiment with site layout and ad formats, the revenues come with quality traffic and quality, topical, timely content (it doesn't hurt to rank #1 on Google search for very hot topics, either...)
I will also mention that we saw a significant increase in eCPM and CTR in the months leading up to July by experimenting with ad formats in preparation for what we knew would be a hot month. We did not change placement.
No, I won't advise anyone as to the format I used, because I think it depends on your site's layout. I will say that I think that some ad formats generate higher CTR and eCPM, and I am not sure if this is due to advertisers bidding higher for those formats.
Historically, we do not have a large percentage of repeat visitors, so I am not sure that 'ad blindness' was a factor, therefore I don't think that the change in ad format raised revenues due to previous ad blindness.
Anyway, I just thought I'd share a small success story with everyone here. Hang in there, if you think you have a good site topic, you are generating quality content, learning to use the available tools to find sources of organic traffic, and letting the 'net know about your content (very important) I think you will prevail. The trick is to be able to hang in there and keep trying new things, learn from past mistakes, and make adjustments as you go.
[edited by: inactivist at 4:51 am (utc) on Aug. 2, 2008]
The only thing I can see that can affect daily revenue is the pool of available advertisers (bids) and their daily budgets...
How would it serve Google to put an arbitrary cap on revenues? In order to spread the love among a wider range of sites?
Not saying it's not possible (I edited my original post to point out that my experience may not be the same as others), I'm just trying to understand how it would benefit the Big G to put a cap on a site's revenues, say, at $5k per month?
So steady or growing demand for the increased inventory may be the key.
Frankly, as much as we enjoy the times when AdSense pays well, we've grown weary of ringtone ads and the sometimes extreme variability in monthly revenues for any given traffic level - we are acutely aware of the potential for sudden, seemingly random drops in AdSense revenues (yes, it's happened to us in the past.)
Well there still could be a cap at higher earnings levels. I doubt if Google would notice a difference between $300 and $700, and probably wouldn't look at it the same as a jump from $3000 to $7000
Well said Tim222, every time I see a post about how one's website earnings have increased I'm happy for them. However, I doubt they publish in my webspace, at my traffic level or are at my revenue level.
There does appear to be some flavor of earnings cap at the higher revenue levels or on my website anyway.
Please note: I have no ideal what the root cause is of this apparent earnings cap, but it is real on my website.
[edited by: Edge at 1:59 pm (utc) on Aug. 2, 2008]
Good job inactivist!
I don't think there is any cap.
I went from $1,000 to to a peak of $40,000 in a year. (working 60 hrs a week)
So go for it!
I'm not sure I understand the logic. What's the difference in Google's eyes? The percentages are the same, aren't they?
While the percentages are the same, the difference is thousands of dollars. *If* there really is a cap, then it's likely to be software driven, and factors such as dollar amount can be easily programmed.
Here's another thought on the earnings cap issue - it could simply be a result of supply and demand. Let's say a specific keyword gets 10,000 clicks per day, across the board. If your site doubles from 100 clicks a day to 200 clicks per day, then that won't have much impact. But OTOH if your site doubles from 1000 clicks per day to 2000 clicks per day, that might increase the total clicks enough to have a significant impact on the price.
In addition, the drop in price might not be linear. What I mean by that is a 10% increase in clicks might result in more than a 10% decrease in advertiser cost. Those 1000 extra clicks might trigger budget caps for some of the advertisers, which in turn decreases the competition and therefore lowers the cost per click.
Those were dollars? ;)Good job inactivist!
I don't think there is any cap.
I went from $1,000 to to a peak of $40,000 in a year. (working 60 hrs a week)
So go for it!
Thanks... we are 'going for it'. The existence or non-existence of an AdSense cap won't dissuade us from our goal, which is to be a significant player in the space we have targeted. Ultimately, we don't care about ad revenues from Big G, because we have always had other, non-monetary goals in mind, and, we do plan on taking greater control over our ad space inventory. Perhaps AdSense is the way to go, perhaps not. We will find out over time.
Yeah, this can be a lot of work. I can't even count the hours I've put in, learning PHP, CMS systems, CSS, JavaScript, SEO, not to mention helping in content generation (I'm one of the main editors for the site).
But all of that fades into the background when things start to 'click' -- again, not just traffic stats and ad revenue, things like hearing people say "I've seen your site, it's great" when conversing offline with people in the target audience, or, when we are granted full media access by major organizations and manufacturers in our market segment, or, having target market businesses ask us why we are so often at the top of search results pages when they are searching for information related to their market -- We think those things provide a major motivational boost and signal that we are succeeding in building brand recognition and credibility.
Ad revenue? It's only one measure of success. It's important, but we think that the revenues will follow, if we do our prep work and follow through.
Here's another thought on the earnings cap issue - it could simply be a result of supply and demand. Let's say a specific keyword gets 10,000 clicks per day, across the board. If your site doubles from 100 clicks a day to 200 clicks per day, then that won't have much impact. But OTOH if your site doubles from 1000 clicks per day to 2000 clicks per day, that might increase the total clicks enough to have a significant impact on the price.
Certainly, available advertiser bids in the keyword space relative to publisher real estate for the same keyword space is a limiting factor. There may be other factors, but I have yet to see a useful explanation of how Google or advertisers benefit by placing any other kind of earnings cap on a particular site.
In our case, we saw a dramatic rise in impressions, over a relatively short period, while CTR, eCPM and EPC stayed remarkably stable and earnings rose in direct proportion to impressions -- suggesting that there was plenty of advertiser money in the pool, and that there was no detectable 'cap' on earnings, even though traffic, clicks, and earnings rose almost 10x over a relatively short period.
If there is an algorithmic earnings cap, I can't see any evidence of it, at least on my site, at this traffic and earnings level. (Admittedly, we're still 'small potatoes').
I have yet to see a useful explanation of how Google or advertisers benefit by placing any other kind of earnings cap on a particular site.
I don't think there would be any benefit to earnings cap, but there could be several reasons for Google to have a daily impressions cap for a given ad or advertiser on a publisher's site(s):
- To reduce the impact of click fraud by an individual publisher;
- To keep a spike in junk traffic (whether by bots or some other factor) from resulting in a flurry of poorly-converting clicks;
- To ensure that ads are spread around on multiple sites, so that publishers and advertisers aren't tempted to cut out the middleman.
If there were a daily impressions cap per ad or advertiser for any given publisher (and I'm not saying that's the case), the results might give the appearance of an earnings cap.
Those were dollars? ;)
Good job inactivist!I don't think there is any cap.
I went from $1,000 to to a peak of $40,000 in a year. (working 60 hrs a week)
So go for it!
Congratulations Khensu, however I don't think you have reached your cap yet within your web space. Don’t get me wrong, you should keep building your site until your efforts do not provide any return.
I knew when I posted on this thread that somebody was post about their success, so I think it is time to define what I think an AdSense revenue cap is.
AdSense revenue cap is where there is nothing you can do to increase your income from AdSense. More specifically, nothing works anymore, this includes: more traffic, moving ads around, changing ad colors, more content, better content quality, more links, better server, etc, in short nothing works or increases your AdSense revenue. You simply have no means to increase your revenue from AdSense, period. For clarity (lets see how many folks read this), I serve approximately 120,000 page views daily, most pages has one Adsense ad unit on it. I serve about 100,000 Adsense ad units Monday – Friday, weekends are less. I have approximately 18,000 high tech, written by degreed engineer’s articles on my website. I’m sure that my site qualifies as high traffic and quality. Small changes in click thru's and eCPM rates have big impacts on my revenue.
Let me share a specific example of what an AdSense revenue cap looks like and share an optimization ideal.
I have two vertical tables on most of my web pages positioned on the extreme left and right side; the middle is my content area. Currently, I show ads on the left side and my main menu choices and search are shown the right side. Occasionally, I change the sides which the ads and the menu are shown. So, next change I will show my main menu on the left and ads on the right. Whenever I do the changeover, my click thru’s, always increases, and my eCPM coincides. This will normally last one day or less. On the second day, my eCPM will lower to a rate such that my total revenue for the day remains about the same as before the changeover, really. I can reproduce this symptom with other methods as well.
Now please don’t be discouraged, if your efforts on your website will increase your AdSense revenue, GO FOR IT! I reached my AdSense revenue cap about 2.5 years ago; nothing that I have done over the last 2.5 years has helped my AdSense revenue, including adding 4500 web pages and almost doubling my traffic.
When each of you reach your AdSense revenue cap, sticky mail me so we can share a virtual beer…
[edited by: Edge at 6:48 pm (utc) on Aug. 2, 2008]
When each of you reach your AdSense revenue cap, sticky mail me so we can share a virtual beer…
Cheers...and mine was about 2.5 years ago as well.
Those 1000 extra clicks might trigger budget caps for some of the advertisers, which in turn decreases the competition and therefore lowers the cost per click.
Yep, I've been thinking along those lines for quite a while since I know most of my prolific advertisers use a daily budget rather than monthly.
When I used AdWords for an experiment to understand how the system worked I deliberately bid a low price for my chosen keywords. During my UK daytime they were hardly ever seen yet as the day progressed more and more of them were as higher CPC ad budgets were exhausted or stopped.
Therefore the "glass ceiling" most probably does exist purely coincidentally through the lack of higher EPC ad inventory.
Hey, I'm happy with that, it fits in nicely with all my other theories:-)
Yep, I've been thinking along those lines for quite a while since I know most of my prolific advertisers use a daily budget rather than monthly.
Using one without the other. That would be novel. Perhaps you might want to look again at adwords and how the system works, before indicating what you "know"
And check out how advertisers can schedule for times of day, which you didn't mention.
...might help you out.
Using one without the other. That would be novel.
Do you mean "my prolific advertisers use a daily budget rather than monthly.".
That's nothing new, I know many companies that do this rather than let the ad team burn-up their budget willy nilly.
And check out how advertisers can schedule for times of day, which you didn't mention.
Of course they can switch on and off when they want to or are you suggesting something else?
I know some companies that only advertise when their offices/sales lines are actually open for business in their geo-targetted region. That may seem strange to some however I can assure you it works for them.
Well there still could be a cap at higher earnings levels
There is no cap on earnings, it's an old tinfoil adsense legend.
The cap is actually your traffic.
Sometimes getting more traffic can have the opposite effect which makes it appear like a "cap" because the traffic isn't as well targeted so smart pricing most likely kicks in and discounts the value of your site.
To put it simply: high volumes of high quality traffic will generate higher payouts whereas high volumes of low quality traffic will generate lower payouts.
It's does appear it's also possible to have a combination of both high and low quality traffic visiting a single site, yet different pages, and some pages displaying relatively similar ads pay out slightly different based on the traffic they attract.
[edited by: incrediBILL at 10:51 pm (utc) on Aug. 2, 2008]
I just have the best content in my niche. Averaging $20K(off a bit right now for summer) and looking to beat my best before Christmas.
I think you have to roll into completely new niches to be able to grow significantly. I have tried adding new pages but at not much of a positive result. At a certain point I think you saturate your visitors attention and don't experience the exponential growth a new project has. Maybe that is the effect you are describing?
[edited by: Khensu at 11:27 pm (utc) on Aug. 2, 2008]
I think it's basic knowledge for all adsense webmaster pros.
Let me be clear that was $1K per month to $40K per month with a 10 page website.
OK, I'm jealous, especially with only 10 pages.
Good job!
OK, I'm jealous, especially with only 10 pages.
so, i don't think anyone's account will be capped to keep them in some limit.
When I feel I've reached the max earning potential of a site, then I start looking around for another niche I work my way into.
There is no cap on earnings, it's an old tinfoil adsense legend.The cap is actually your traffic.
Sometimes getting more traffic can have the opposite effect which makes it appear like a "cap" because the traffic isn't as well targeted so smart pricing most likely kicks in and discounts the value of your site.
To put it simply: high volumes of high quality traffic will generate higher payouts whereas high volumes of low quality traffic will generate lower payouts.
AdSense is not a bottom-less money pit as you seem to suggest. There are not a endless supply of advertising money in every niche or catagory.
Let me drop a bomb-shell: When I asked my Adsense Account Strategist if I was "Smart Priced", he said "No, you are optimized very well".
Straight from the horses mouth..
The split does gradually shift towards the Big G's end as the volume goes up.
I would get plateaus at certain monetary volumes say at $300, $500 and $1,000 per day where going up to the next hundred became difficult even as the visitor volume steadily increased.
So the more you make the more they take, just like the government.
But that is the way of the world.
