Inauguration Earnings

An All Time Low!

[newborn]

This is so weird, well it wasn't an all time low but were people just searching for Obama yesterday or what... not clicking ads and searching for anything else. Traffic nosedived and so did earnings. Am I alone in this?

[johnnie]

Nope, the effect was even noticeable in Europe ;) That man is popular, you know.

[asinah]

Traffic has been down too for me and on top of that the Chinese New Year of the ox is on the way. Our traffic will only improve from next months but Adsense earnings have been stable.

[jetteroheller]

You are not alone, very bad Tuesday.

[HuskyPup]

Strange since I was expecting a quiet day however yesterday was my 3rd busiest day of 2009 and it was consistent all day, not just big spurts every now and then.

What was very evident though was my Leaderboard had its normal EPC however my AdLinks had a very low EPC day, 66% of average, therefore my daily earnings were average rather than having a good day.

I'm guessing that many of my regular visitors were having a quiet day in their businesses and took the opportunity to catch-up with trade news etc...that's the only thing I can come up with at the moment.

[jmccormac]

Complete waste of a day so far. Tuesday was down a bit too.

Regards...jmcc

[simonuk]

I had the busiest evening so far this month. From 7pm (GMT) onwards I had a lot of hits and clicks.

I'm not complaining :-)

[netmeg]

It's not just Google down yesterday - across twelve Ecommerce sites that I host/work on, ALL traffic and sales have been way way way down all week. First the holiday on Monday and then the inauguration yesterday. People may have been searching, but they weren't coming to these sites (which span from small to mid-size, consumer to B2B)

I'm expecting (and in fact, already seeing) a pickup today. In fact, I'm already having my second highest AdSense day of the month (and it's not 10:30am yet). Granted that's not saying a lot. January has been pretty slow overall.

[purplecape]

A little down, but not as much as I expected. Different demographics...

[farmboy]

Tuesday was outstanding for me.

FarmBoy

[Freedom]

Monday down a bit, Tuesday traffic was up, but eCPM was Way down.

[signor_john]

My Inauguration Day AdSense earnings were almost identical with what I earned on earlier Tuesdays this month. (Traffic was higher, but CTR and EPC were both down somewhat, resulting in the month's lowest eCPM to date.)

[vivalasvegas]

After a great Monday my Tuesday was way below average (traffic, clicks and EPC).

[Roseb44170]

Well this past Monday & Tuesday were one of my better days for this month considering Monday was a holiday and Tuesday was the Inauguration. While none of my sites targeted the above events, my earnings were still good so I can only attribute that to the popularity of the subject matter of my sites.

So I do believe that it is true when they say that the content is the thing that really matters.

[newborn]

Ok great to hear the comments but I noticed that the problem seems to have been exacerbated due to a shake up in the YAHOO Serps. I never even knew that Yahoo was paying attention, they are just going to let MSN or Live snatch the money bag from right out of their hand in broad daylight in front of an FBI building with NYC Cops walking the beat...

I just got a kick from the Yahoo Serps to my Adsense Earnings!

[OnlyToday]

It's a good thing my new President made me feel good because AdSense sure did the opposite.

[maximillianos]

We had a slow day, but then it somehow took off in the evening and ended up pretty much right on average...

[renomart]

Earnings might be down but hey, Obama is now president so that has to be a good thing. :)

[andrewshim]

Obama is now president so that has to be a good thing

Yes. He's put a freeze on smart pricing and promised me eCPM will be on the rise from now on.
;)

[CalArch90]

I'm so glad to see this thread. I was starting to wonder if there was something wrong with my site. I saw my ecpm drop to half what it normally is on weekdays. This morning started out unusually slow also but fortunately it seems things are coming back to normal. That was a good scare!

[OnlyToday]

Well, it's not just inauguration because my earnings are still stuck. Obama did say things would get worse before they got better, they must have heard him in Mountain View.

[Scurramunga]

My earnings are bordering on woeful this week when compared to my January average.

[tomda]

A good day for me ! Understandable since I blog about Kenya :) I called since the Obama-effect, all data are tripled

[Scurramunga]

Well, it's not just inauguration because my earnings are still stuck.

Didn't you hear that Google is deducting 70 percent of our earnings to help pay for dubya's mistakes ? Looks like we will be in the $#it for some time to come ;-)

[OnlyToday]

...to help pay for dubya's mistakes ?

No president could have stopped this, it was widespread corruption throughout the financial system and government not respecting any party. Only panic can stop bubbles and greed. In theory Bush could have stopped it but that gives him way too much credit for even being able to see it when Greenspan didn't even see it coming.

[iThink]

Can we have a stimulus package please?

Look I'm not asking for any bailout...yet :)

[edited by: iThink at 3:02 pm (utc) on Jan. 22, 2009]

[nealrodriguez]

looks everybody was tuned into cnn live which "served more than 21.3 million live video streams globally from 6:00 a.m. to 3:30 p.m," ustream, justin and every other video streaming site on the planet [webmasterworld.com]

[GabGoldenberg]

how come so many folks here still like AdSense? I thought the consensus in the independent webmaster community was that it was a poor option for monetizing your traffic?

[koan]

how come so many folks here still like AdSense?

Well this is an Adsense forum.

I thought the consensus in the independent webmaster community was that it was a poor option for monetizing your traffic?

Which independent webmaster community? Where? Never heard of that.

So what's that other option you're talking about? Having your own ecom store? Back to affiliates? back to CPM banners? Don't tell me it's pop-ups or text links ads... and about contacting directly advertisers.. not many have the time to manage their own ad system.

[signor_john]

I thought the consensus in the independent webmaster community was that it was a poor option for monetizing your traffic?

Depends.

If you're doing well, it's a great way to monetize traffic.

If you're doing poorly, it's a poor way to monetize traffic.

If you're in between, it's likely to be a pretty good way to monetize traffic, especially if (a) you're smart enough to use it as one component of a revenue strategy, and/or (b) you want a "set and forget" advertising solution that's available to publishers of any size.