SPLAT ... Tuesday was USD 0.60 from being my lowest-ever day however my prediciton is that today is easily going to beat that. EPC fine, CTR dire, big difference between my logs and G impressions ... hmmm
I often wonder why you put up with Adsense
It's very simple Andrew, apart from making a bit extra money without actually having to do any extra work apart from adding code, as you know my sites are well-ranked for specific trade widget terms in many different countries.
Before AdSense was launched I used to get hundreds of enquiries a month from Joe Public wanting to know where they could buy my widgets, if I could supply them direct etc. As you know I'm a full container load only producer and pointing JP in the right direction every day was a right royal PITA.
Along came AdSense in 2003 which provided all my answers, install it and let advertisers in their respective countries promote their own businesses using my sites.
Because AdSense was so new to JP, obviously in the early years and whilst there was a global boom occurring, my AdSense did extremely well. Even after the 2008 meltdown I continued to do well, not in the UPS club any more but enough not to need to draw ANY earnings from the business whatsoever.
In the last couple of years or so I have seen some wild fluctuations way outside of my norms, these have always been on the low side, never a high side spike! Just before Thanksgiving in November 2010 I was hit big time, a 50% reduction in earnings for no reason whatsoever but come January then February 2011 earnings suddenly went back up again purely at G's behest.
I did nothing, they did, my advertisers were the same, my page impressions were the same, CTR went up, earnings were up and then, and then came, for me, the infamous Panda 2.1 of May 6th. My earnings were slashed to 47% overnight, my CTR was well down however my EPC remained more or less the same and has continued until now at this new, much lower level and now at the point of me waiting until w/c January 9th to evaluate whether or not to keep AdSense on the sites.
For those who are wondering for a metrics' comparison just from one year ago for one site 1st December until 20th December, 2011 v 2010:
Impressions 131.4%
Clicks 48%
CTR 36.6%
EPC 108.7%
eCPM 39.6%
Earnings 52.1%
How much has the global economy got to do with it? I'm sure there is some however MY evidence is that Panda 2.1 had a devastating effect on my AdSense earnings and as you can see from the figures above this specific site has nearly a 1/3 extra impressions but with drastically cut earnings.
I do not feel it is coincidental that Google posts record earnings meanwhile many of us see and report massively lowered returns.
So I'll make a decision in mid-January, if AdSense recovers I'll be delighted however I am realistically not expecting anything much more than the monthly earnings since May 6th but what I do know is that I am launching one new site a month during 2012 and none of them are going to be carrying any form of advertising whatsoever except maybe one AdLink.
