Number of Ads and Earning per Click

[blurblade]

I am working on two different websites that have completely different themes from each other (for example, one about swimming, the other one cooking).

Each site has their own adsense account (one of the site is belongs to my friend and I had her signed up for adsense)

there are 5 ads/page on the first site and only 1 ad/page on the second site.

I have noticed that the difference of the earning per click for each site is so big that I wonder if less number of ads actually do bring in more income, here is what I have got:

first site: 5 ads per page = $X per click on average
second site: 1 ad per page = 3x$X per click on average

right now the second site, which has only one ad per page, is actually making more money than the site with 5 ads on each page.

Is this happening because both sites are in different business or because the number of ads on each page? Anyone experienced something like this before?

[koan]

My take: don't listen to Google when they suggest to max out the number of ads, they're just trying to let all possible advertisers (including the low ballers and other dubious ones) get a piece of your site. Limit it to just a few so you ideally get the highest bidders and higher quality ones, and diversify your screen estate with other revenue source (CPM, affiliate, etc). You get increased security for yourself and diversity for you visitors. Of course, Google doesn't profit from those.

[netmeg]

My EPC went up to almost three times as much when I took the ads down to one ad unit and one link unit per page. You get more higher paying ads competing for the ad space that way.

Of course, it could also be your niche. all you can do is experiment. I wouldn't work with data less than a month's worth though.

[StoutFiles]

there are 5 ads/page on the first site

Isn't 3 ads per page still the legal limit?

[Scurramunga]

don't listen to Google when they suggest to max out the number of ads, they're just trying to let all possible advertisers (including the low ballers and other dubious ones) get a piece of your site.

Normally I would completely agree with this statement. However as you mentioned that the two sites are about completely differing topics, so there could be other variables involved.

[blurblade]

Thank you all for your answers.

I have just checked my site 1's daily earning for the past three months. I found that

1: I do get ads that pay well (more than a dollar per click) on site 1 but overall average is lower than site two.
2: Average earning per click for site 1's top earning day is also lower than site 2's overall average earning per click.

Site 1's average earning has been very stable for the entire time.

Looks like site 1 is not in a high income field does it?

There is probably nothing I can do to change the prices of ads on site 1 so I guess I should just reduce the number of ads on each page on that site.

I also heard that ads that are at top of the page generate better earning than those closer to the end of the page, but that doesnt seem to be true for my site. In fact, all ads on site 2 are put at the very bottom of each page but the average earning per click is still higher than site 1 which has half of the ads located on top of the pages...what do you guys think?

to netmeg: my site one has two ad units and three link units on all pages, sorry for the confusion.