@alika
I'm not sure what you mean by ridiculous. alika, you have been registered here longer than I have by about a year, and you have (as I post) 1286 posts - Far more than my puny 70 posts. I give you credit for that. However....
Rules of the WebmasterWorld Adsense forum:
1 - Never ever say you are doing well with Adsense. This forum is only for those earning cents per month, and those who complain about declining incomes, missing incomes, declining epc, declining ctr, declining everything.
We don't want to hear stories of anyone succeeding and earning money. We only want to wallow in our collective discontent with Adsense.
I'm not complaining. It is always true that people who are happy are typically not complainers. People who are happy are typically going to participate in more 'cerebral' discussions (as opposed to 'complaint' discussions) or not actively participate at all. I'm mostly (obviously) a 'Lurker'. I do watch people who do participate in complaint threads, but as is always true the minority who are not succeeding are the most vocal. This is not to say I have
never participated in a 'complaint' thread. There are threads here, as well as on many other 'webmaster' forums where you see the same thing. It really tickles me when I see a thread titled something like: "Major AdSense Reporting Lag on Oct 6. 2010" as if real time reports on a minute by minute basis is important. To me it doesn't matter what is happening minute by minute. I check a couple times a week to see how my earnings are doing, but I have better things to do (or not do in the case of napping or such) than reload AdSense pages every minute (or every day, for that matter) to see how much I've made. I can't even imagine myself getting all caught up in monitoring how my "key words" were doing in different Google data centers as algorithms change (as if one could instantly respond to algorithm changes in short periods of time). I haven't changed my SEO techniques in years, yet my sites continue to gain in the number of visitors, and my income from each site increases year by year. The old saying "Content is King" is my mantra.
I've done well with AdSense since I started using it in 2003. My only down year was 2007. I am more than happy with AdSense and have been since the beginning. I do take direct advertising on my sites, so I am not 'joined at the hip' with AdSense, but I make well into the 6 figures yearly in US$, and AdSense is part of it. I own a lot of physical gold. I've been buying coins for many years. To me AdSense is like gold - I look one day and it's up. I look another day and it's down. I track everything in Excel spreadsheets so I can see year to year as well as month to month. All I care about is the long term trends, especially year to year and for 5 year periods. When I look at my AdSense income which goes back to 2003 I see a positive trend line and doing the math shows I make about 15% to 20% more every year on average (income is increasing) which is well above the rate of inflation (at least in the US right at this moment) which is fine with me.
I know a lot of people "...wallow in [their] collective discontent with Adsense...", but that's because they want to make a lot of money and they (typically) want it now. And they feel that Google (through AdSense)
owes them a living. And they feel that Google
owes them high rankings despite the millions of web sites on the internet these days. I laugh when I see stuff like "I was on page 1, 4th on the list and Google did something and my traffic is down so what ever they did was "bad" or "wrong" in some way." It's just competition and algorithm changes. And sometimes even hard work on their web site won't reverse things for them. Those are the breaks in life. You're up some of your life, and other times you're down. It's not always "Good Times". I can totally emphasize with people who feel Google has 'shortcomings' (e.g.: when I do a search I still see so many MFA sites ranking highly it amazes me {I think they could do more to weed out the garbage}, not to mention it disappoints me). But - All in all I think Google does a pretty good job.
In this, I agree with you. Unfortunately the gold rush is over. To succeed these days one has to over come very stiff competition, and as is well documented over 95% of all new businesses fail within the first 5 years (or is it in the first year?) so we know from the get go most people will not be happy because they will fail or are failing. These are the people who are complaining - The "Vocal Minority". Instead of taking the responsibility for failure on themselves, they want to blame someone (or in this case a company - Google) for their failure.
2 - If you say you are doing well with Adsense, don't ever make the mistake of asking a question because:
(a) People will say you are greedy
(b) People will hunt down your every last post and fling you the "why-ask-a-question-when-you-are-doing-well-and-should-know-everything" line
I'll accept "b" as directed at me in this thread, at least in part.
Note that I did not say sutips is greedy. What I did note was that sutips had joined this forum about a month ago, claims to be doing quite well to do what he claims he has to be doing
at least US$150K/year and my bet is it takes more than that to buy a house in DC, buy a couple luxury cars for cash and have a couple of kids in private schools, *and* have at least twice his implied income in cash (he says he can last at least a couple of years if AdSense goes caput), yet he asks a question that has been asked and answered 1000 times in this 'webmaster' forum alone, not to mention the many, many other 'webmaster' forums out there. Although I registered here in 2004 I only have about 70 posts because typically my question(s) have already been discussed, if not in this forum in another forum (not to mention the 1000's of "information" web sites which aren't forum based). I use Searches. Having forums online myself I see the same thing every day and it really makes me wonder why they didn't do a Search. They would have typically found the question was already asked 100's (if not 1000's in big forums) of times.
In this case the thread title is:
"How Can You Get High eCPMs?". Ummm, sorry. That's a no brainer.
We know that eCPM is the effective Cost per 1000 impressions which represents the
average earnings a publisher will earn for every 1000 impressions that s/he gets. eCPM =
Earnings divided by Number of Impressions multiplied by 1000. What some people don't connect right off is that eCPM is a *relative* number.
In short, eCPM tells you *relatively* how much your ads are paying. If one knows what eCPM is, they know what is necessary. High paying ads. More traffic will always make you more money, but eCPM is dependent upon what advertisers in your niche are willing to pay. Remember that what advertisers are willing to pay in large part depends upon the *
conversion rate*.
*NOTE: You can only keep a high eCPM if you have high *conversion rates*. The original question was:
For those whose eCPMs are over $20, how did you get to have high eCPMs?
I'm not interested in sites that get only 10,000 or so pageviews a month, that's just so new or with only a handful of pages. I am not interested in eCPM for channels, only the whole site. I want to hear from established sites with decent traffic.
I just noticed that a $1 change in eCPM for my site can result in a significant increase in revenues.
So - To answer the original questions:
1.
You need a topic/focus for which advertisers are willing to pay a lot relative to other advertisers in other niches.
1a. Your web site has to be
desirable with a good *conversion rate*. You need a web site which advertisers *want* to advertise on. This part is a personal thing as it depends upon how one sets up their site. For example, while I do use AdSense companies contact me directly. I do not seek out advertisers. I have never contacted a company and tried to 'sell' them on advertising on any of my sites. It is typically a matter of someone in a company (usually someone in the company sees it and tells their sales department) seeing the site and liking it. They try it out and when they do well they continue their ad. I have a waiting list because my current advertisers are long term advertisers and I seldom get a cancellation (which would open up a space to get a new advertiser in). But that is part of my personal approach of keeping advertisements to a minimum which keeps visitors happy. I set a fixed number of advertisements for every page and will not add more just because I could make more money. If it matters, I do not do anything like "banner (or ad) rotation" (other than what happens in AdSense slots). Every ad is fixed in a space on a page. I do my sites this way because I think about *
visitor experience*. If they have a 'good' experience they will return. They will also probably tell others about the site. If they don't - In the business world the phrase is "You've lost a customer".
As to how AdSense comes into play, if you have a desirable site (or sites) AdWords will recognize it. Much has been discussed about "smart pricing" for example. I can't say I know much about "smart pricing" but I don't really need to so far as I can see. I only care about eCPM and the daily income. My sites are forum sites. Typically discussion forums (and most 'social sites') have a low CTRs and low conversion rates. But, because of site niches and uniqueness I have high conversion rates. I do not know this from AdSense, but I do know from feedback from direct advertisers. Some advertisers have given me some of their statistics. Advertisers can see a good ROI or they would cancel their ads on my sites. From this, I *assume* AdWords ranks (or what ever word you might want to use) my sites appropriately. My high eCPM in AdSense correlates with feedback from the direct advertisers with regard to conversion rates (aka ROI).
I will add this for general principles:
1. I take direct advertising from companies, but I do not give them any statistics other than site statistics which I post publicly monthly.
2. I only sell "presence" advertising. If an advertiser wants to track click throughs and conversion rates they have to give me a URL and they have to track and do any analysis they want done. I give them page views, but that's it. And, each advertisement is for 3 months minimum (although most of my advertisers have been continuously renewing for several years or more).
The Role of AdWords: I will admit ignorance here. I don't use AdWords and never have. Maybe I would have more visitors if I did, but then again it could increase my bounce rate. Essentially I'm just not interested in advertising to get traffic. I'm happy with the traffic I get. I depend upon organic search and "word of mouth". I also get a lot of referrals from links people and companies put on their site(s), from links people put in various forums or social sites they visit, and links people put in sites such as Wikipedia. I stay "White Hat". I use no "Black Hat" SEO techniques (such as going to social sites or forums and linking to my site {aka 'SPAMMING'}).
2. I get over 1.3 million page views a month on one web site alone, and I think having started putting web sites online 15 years ago (one of the first sites I put online is still online today) qualifies me as having "established" sites. So I guess you're asking someone like me to reply.
But, I do watch channels. I do want to know what content does better than other content. I'm 60 years old, and pretty lazy, but I do statistically analyze my sites. Google Analytics has some very good site analysis tools. These days people talk a lot about 'channels' (I assume because of AdSense's introduction of 'channels'). In the 'old' days I did log analysis of my Apache log files. I still do log analysis. I also use Google Analytics. I also use Quantcast and a couple of traffic monitors.
In the end, it's just the use of statistical analysis techniques for decision making. Statistical analysis techniques are important. In my 'real' life I am a business consultant who essentially retired about 8 years ago. My clients over the years included Motorola and Harley-Davidson, which is some evidence that I'm not a lightweight in evaluating businesses and telling them what they're doing wrong (as well as what they're doing right). I have worked with companies in locations from Bangkok to Guadalajara to Paris (France, not Paris KY in the US) to Nairobi. Not all clients took my advice, but they paid me US$1250/day (six hours on-site/day) on 6 month plus contracts to US$1750 a day for shorter term contracts (plus all expenses) for my evaluations and advice whether they 'listened to me' or not. The biggest failure mode in businesses is the failure to utilize statistical analysis techniques, or if they are using them how to use them correctly. The same is true of 'brick and mortar' businesses as it is for web sites. Statistical Analysis (aka math).
To me when I read: "I am not interested in eCPM for channels, only the whole site." I know that person/business is not utilizing statistical analysis techniques, and if the person/company did they would better understand, and be able to react to, trends and events, as well as to better understand their strengths and their weaknesses, and reasons for successes and reasons for failures (Google FMEA) at all levels of the company.
3. Ummmm, yes. And a US$2 increase in eCPM will make a more significant increase in your daily income. And a US$3 increase (rinse and repeat)...
3 - Don't ask for advice because people will never tell you their secret.
The is no secret to tell. See PSS below.
4 - Lurkers - please remain lurking and don't come out of the woodwork!
OK - I'll go back to my inner sanctum. I get what I need by reading. Sorry I was so bold as to essentially call someone out.
@sutips - I hope this answers your question.
Sincerely,
Your friend in the internet world,
Elsmarc
PS: I updated my profile here today adding my "Home Page" so you can see one of my web sites.
PSS: I have revealed all my "secrets" in this post. If I haven't, please ask a more specific question. Asking "How Can You Get High eCPMs?" is so generic that you're almost asking "Tell me how to start a profitable internet web site". In short, do some research so you can refine your question.
PPSS: Some Things to Think About (for Continuity and Risk Reduction):
Content is King, Visitor Experience and Satisfaction, dedicated servers, load balancing, rsync each master server to a server at a data center in a different city with failover, Raid 1 on every server, full server daily backups {and *verify* each backup}, keep your kernel (preferably a tailored 'hardened' kernel) and scripts up to date, Think Long Term. Oh, and if you do social sites or any site where people can comment (aka 'post' such as a forum), keep spam out... :)
Have a Good, Profitable Day! BTW - sutips; (member has stickymail off) and no web site in profile. Nothing in his/her profile. Now - What does that tell us? Hmmmm?
[edited by: Elsmarc at 11:31 pm (utc) on Oct 10, 2010]
