May 2011 AdSense Earnings & Observations

[HuskyPup]

For me, so far today 1st May, it has continued in the same vein of the past few days.

I've never experienced such bad endofmonthitis before, here's hoping for a kick-start Monday or Tuesday or whenever anyone, asides from us lot, go back to work!

[HuskyPup]

Welcome to WebmasterWorld zarathustra2011

and that single click paid out £2.54

That's usually when the advertiser makes a mistake meaning to actually bid £0.25, I nearly did it once myself when I used to do AdWords.

[zarathustra2011]

Thanks HuskyPup... I have had a similar pay out once or twice before now, but it's very rare... As you say, it could be a mistake, and I'm sure they won't make it twice!

[Pepito]

Last month I had a click of 10 Euros. My best single click paid out ever. It is a pity that April and now May the earnings are going down, changing the tendency of past months.

[jmccormac]

Low traffic, earnings today. Targeting looks completely banjaxed. Had to break out a 2009 block list it is so bad.

Regards...jmcc

[zarathustra2011]

Just had a 40% jump - hopefully the day will end consistently.

Wow Pepito - if only all clicks were that good. :) Any idea what general field that was in? I've a feeling my £2.54 was hotel related, even though my site is something altogether different.

[Automotive site]

I think I might be on course for a decent day for the first time this month.

It must be said I have had a signficant boost in traffic to one of my sites today from Google so that could be a reason why adsense figures so far are pretty good today. I suspect I would be having an all-time high today if adsense performed for me like it did in April.

[jerdomainer]

Some advertiser must have made a real mistake (more than once) as I received a couple $20+ clicks on the same site a few months ago (each occured on a separate month). I couldn't believe someone would pay that much for a content network click!

[HuskyPup]

Ah, so it's official, there was a Panda update on 6th May:

[searchengineland.com...]

Did they also screw-up AdSense at the same time for some of us?

[Play_Bach]

Earnings unusually low for this time of day. Stuck?

[JCKline]

Clicks are still way down, payout sucks, and impressions are high. Time for a stiff drink.

[azlinda]

I got a $100 card for AdWords from Google today. I mistakenly threw it out with the rest of the junk mail. That must be an omen.

[Play_Bach]

Stats today make no sense. Looking forward to tomorrow.

[koan]

Stats today make no sense.

Another sorry day. It's like they're testing new waves of advertisers that really, really suck. No CTR, or low CPC. Then they get back to normal but the next day it starts again. In the past you could have awful days like that once a month. Now it's a few times a week. I find it often coincides with days where I myself see the same annoying interest based ads everywhere, although I wouldn't bet my house on it.

[zarathustra2011]

Woke up at 3am to feed the baby, so I thought I'd check mine again and got another click dump. I don't normally log into Adsense very often, but it seems the reporting of revenue gets stuck on a daily basis, and there's three times during the day or night (times vary each day) when the reportings jump significantly. I think I'll just check once a day from now on.

I'm an hour away from the end of the day, and it seems I've had three back to back very consistent days, with almost the same revenue each day. Just hoping it will last, as I always used to have consistency until April.

At the start of May I paid closer attention to the adverts on my site, and noticed so much irrelevant rubbish, that I started up a big block list... I say big, it only has about 30 sites on there. These past few days, the ads seem to be consistent and relevant, so again, I hope this is something that lasts, and wonder if that was what impacted on April's earnings.

[Automotive site]

Spoke too soon. Ended the day at around 60% of normal despite all indications midway through the day that it would be a decent day for the first time this month. I have taken the ads off the highest earning site, which is also the site that's giving me major problems in terms of completely messed up stats in the way of impressions not being recorded.

I am going to keep it off for the whole day and put it back up tomorrow. I know I will miss quite a bit of revenue, but I am willing to forgo that in the hope that the stats will sort itself out.

[HuskyPup]

I am willing to forgo that in the hope that the stats will sort itself out.

That doesn't work, well, at least not for me!

AdSense seems to be fubard right now and there's nothing we can do about it and it seems to go back to 5/6th May when they have now admitted there was a Panada 2.1 update.

That's precisely when some of us saw AdSense go belly-up which cannot be a coincidence, my best paying url channel's EPC is now down 40% on a week ago and its 2011 average...no coincidence whatsoever, no one will be able to convince me otherwise.

[Automotive site]

Do any of you guys have experience with CPM banner networks? I think I might get a decent CPM on my health site (which talking from an impartial standpoint, is a decent site and a useful resource for my readers. Many people leave behind lots of genuinely helpful comments about their conditions and treatments). What sort of rates do you get and which network do you use?

I get approx. 350K page views a month and I am willing to create an ad spot right at the top of the site above the header (728 by 90 banner). Even a CPM of a dollar will be pretty good.

I am looking to diversify income streams as much as possible. Yes its partly due to what has happened with adsense since May but also because you don't want to rely too much on one source.

[bwnbwn]

First time I have ever reported adsense has gone south for us. Our traffic is within 20% of previous months, but the revenue is 60% off and dropping. Have people just gotten sick of clicking ads that take them to a site not revelant to the search they did?

I was at home last nite working late on some important research I am doing and couldn't find the needed content in the organic so I used a few of the ads that displayed revelant words in the search I did. The landing pages I went to were just plain junk. It was a waste of my time and then I relized hey if I am having this problem and frustration with the search got to be a growing problem with millions. I believe this has got to be the main reason we are seeing traffic not that far off but CTR down the tubes.

[zarathustra2011]

Earning reports seem to not have all the delay issues today.
I noticed a definite improvement in earnings so far, but then I also noticed the banner ads are displaying women's swimwear, so I wonder why that might be! :-)

[tristanperry]

CTR is higher than usual for me, whilst CPC has fallen off a cliff. Have had a good few days recently though so today's probably just temporary.

[MrFlex2600]

zarathustra2011,

but then I also noticed the banner ads are displaying women's swimwear, so I wonder why that might be! :-)

Most likely it happened because someone (maybe your wife or girlfriend or even you :) ) was searching for woman's swimwear on your computer recently.
Interest-based google ads kicked in and now you'll be enjoying swimwear ads to the rest of your life on all sites you are visiting.
You've been cursed with interest-based ads. LOL

[Play_Bach]

Another day of erratic stats updates. :-|

[JCKline]

Higher (not by much) eCPM today, CTR is up, yet CPC is bad, and yesterday was awful even though impressions were way up.

[HuskyPup]

You've been cursed with interest-based ads.

Clear the cache, most browsers can be set to clear the cache every time it is closed...problem solved.

[zarathustra2011]

MrFlex - that would explain it! Not that I've been googling women's swimwear! lol. I have a swollen knee, so was looking up 'housemaid's knee'.

A different pattern to reporting today. Throughout the day the reporting seemed up-to-date (normally I have a huge lag), and the way it was going up throughout the morning I thought I was in for an exceptional day, but this evening, it's really dried up, so I think I'll end on a normal day's earnings.

[Cancellara]

After Panda update our RPM is slightly higher. We are currently testing a second adSense unit as we are only running one (image) leaderboard at the top of the page (adSense get some unused inventory). Overall, adSense earnings are up but still just a fraction of our revenue. The usual everyday roller-coaster of earning from adSense (up/down 50%) is quite frustrating.

[Play_Bach]

Earnings today are already the second highest all month. 6.5 hours left to go. Thanks Google!

[zarathustra2011]

I've now had 5 days in a row where earnings have been consistent to within a few cents - I've never seen it quite that consistent, and don't expect it to last.

[Automotive site]

I placed my ads back on this morning after having them off yesterday. I will report back in the evening.

By the way, I replaced the adsense with Contextweb's affilate ecpm on my health site, and after setting setting the cpm rate at $2 which is several times lower than what I average with adsense on this particular site, the fill rate was still pathetically low and I ended the day with a measly 55 cents, something like 130 to 150 times lower than what adsense normally averages for this site (or use to average before May).

[londrum]

i've read a lot of your posts recently automotive, and i reckon you're going about it a bit wrong. i know that your impressions and earnings are down, but is your traffic down too?

if your traffic is down because of this whole panda hoo-haa, then it seems as if you're trying to fix things by getting a new advertiser.
but that's just a short term thing which may or may not add a few pennies.

you want to spend your time fiddling with the actual site, and get your traffic back. that's where your problem is.

(...but if you haven't lost any traffic, then ignore this whole post!)