January 2012 AdSense Earnings & Observations

[Habtom]

I had a good run in 2011 - managed to add one more figure to my monthly AdSense earnings.

January historically is not a bad month for me. What are your hopes and plans for January and the new year?

Half an hour too early according to WebmasterWorld server clock :)

[fezziwig]

This is the worst January I've ever seen and I've been at this for a good seven years. Something is amiss.

[Play_Bach]

Yesterday earnings at just 30% of average. So far 2012 is not looking good in AdSense land at all. :-(

[JCKline]

Yesterday was as awful as today. Way, way down.

[snickles121]

Today is looking great for me. I got some crazy high value clicks. However, CTR is still lower than average.

[fezziwig]

Anyone have a handle on how Behaviorally Targeted ads have influenced CTR/CPC/RPM on high-value vertical sites over time?

It is impossible to turn them all off ...

[JCKline]

CTR up 30% today, but low pay-out in US and the usual crap countries. Indonesia, India, Malta, etc.

[Lame_Wolf]

It's a shame we cannot block by country. I'd rather not show adverts to countries that never/rarely click.

[Play_Bach]

Having another very low day. Clicks have all but dried up. Are the ads really that lousy these days?

[Rockyou]

Google is your biggest competitor, Tell everyone to use Bing, Only then we can bring this mammoth down.Use only Bing for all your searches. If every one follow this Google will have no way but to pay us more.

[HuskyPup]

Hopefully this should be turnaround week IF AdSense performs similarly to previous years. I've just compared Jan 1-8 2012 to 2011:

Clicks 45.8%
CTR 56.6%
EPC 140%
Earnings 64.5%

Therefore so far this month my earnings are actually up in comparison to my last few months of under 50% since Panda 2.1

If every one follow this Google will have no way but to pay us more.

I don't quite follow the logic of this since I would have thought that if users used Google less then advertisers would use AdSense less then there would be less competition for the ad space therefore their ad rates would come down which in turn would mean lower EPCs for ourselves.

Google are not suddenly going to start giving us higher earnings to keep us happy, I wish they would however this is just not going to happen.

I'm quite happy with my current EPC, it's the CTR which is a disaster zone.

[Rockyou]

I don't quite follow the logic of this since I would have thought that if users used Google less then advertisers would use AdSense less then there would be less competition for the ad space therefore their ad rates would come down which in turn would mean lower EPCs for ourselves.

You got it wrong Huskypup, Google just to shine its quarterly report, Keeps good high Bidding ads to itself & give us low quality ads which doesn't convert well and you get low payments. Proof for this is your LOW CTR.

If Google loses its market share, Then Google will give us those high conversion ads to generate more revenue & so you will be back to those Great earnings period of before 2007

Why many senior webmasters have already quit the adsense game?

Ans: No matter what you do you will earn less with the same traffic you have quarter after quarter.

[HuskyPup]

If Google loses its market share, Then Google will give us those high conversion ads to generate more revenue & so you will be back to those Great earnings period of before 2007

Hmmm...after more than 40 years in business I've never given my commission representatives more money for providing me with less business.

You'll need to keep more than your fingers crossed.

Proof for this is your LOW CTR.

My CTR was affected by Panda 2.1 and most definitely not by low paying ads. My ads are on-target and insofar as I can tell very well themed.

In general for many, I know not all, advertisers, we have seen a steady decline in CTR from when AdSense was introduced, I was holding firm until Panda 2.1 which lurched it downwards again.

How much of this is ad blindness I am not sure however I do have my own ads CTR with which to compare for a brand new site and the CTR is just as miserable. Personally I feel, like many others I suppose, that Google let far, far too many sites into their programme and should definitely have been much more selective.

That's hindsight for everyone though, they tried something that no one had attempted before and basically it succeeded for everyone until the recession came along and smacked a lot of us around. I'm sure if G had the benefit of hindsight that they would have implemented the same way but much more discerning.

[alika]

Google just to shine its quarterly report, Keeps good high Bidding ads to itself & give us low quality ads which doesn't convert well and you get low payments. Proof for this is your LOW CTR.

I think we're barking at the wrong tree here

Google does NOT prevent advertisers from placing their ads in the content network. It's not as if Google has removed the option to advertise in the content network from the dashboard of Adwords advertisers. If and when they do, that's when you can say that Google keeps ads to itself

It is the advertisers who choose not to place ads in the content network and simply show their ads in Google.

The right question to ask is:

How can we (Adsense publishers) convince Adwords advertisers to use the content network so their high paying ads filter to us as well.

[netmeg]

Ans: No matter what you do you will earn less with the same traffic you have quarter after quarter.

This is certainly not true for me, across a WIDE number of sites.

[HuskyPup]

Ouch, I'm assuming stats are stuck for me, I've never seen such a low CTR and earnings are at about 15% of daily average.

[farmboy]

How can we (Adsense publishers) convince Adwords advertisers to use the content network so their high paying ads filter to us as well

I think a publisher risks losing credibility by trying to convince advertisers to use the content network in general, considering some of the sites in the content network.

I think a publisher should build good sites so that advertisers will want to use that publisher's sites in the content network.


FarmBoy

[alika]

@farmboy -- I was not thinking of going to each and every advertiser to use the content network literally. That's a futile effort.

I was thinking more of your second point :o)

It's very easy to blame others. But we all have to remember, while many are seeing their incomes plummet, there are those whose incomes are doing really well. That's who we need to find and probe as to what they're doing that's working despite the economy and overall situation with Adsense (assuming they will even share their secrets :o)

[Jaideemaak]

2011 was my best ever year. I had good gains every month and November set yet another new personal record. I wasn't sure if it would continue but my December earning were 39% better than November.

The 1st to 4th January continued how December left off, but then something happened. Since the 5th my earnings have been lower than they have been for a very long time. Since that day earnings are consistently low every day.

Page impressions and clicks are about the same but my EPC has plummeted. I don't know why. The only thing I have done is to continue adding content.

[Rockyou]

Google does NOT prevent advertisers from placing their ads in the content network. It's not as if Google has removed the option to advertise in the content network from the dashboard of Adwords advertisers. If and when they do, that's when you can say that Google keeps ads to itself

But they control when the ad appears & position that is enough to manipulate.

For ex: Suppose advertiser A has targeted my website, Suppose on day wednesday my website give more conversion to this advertiser during office hours, What google can do is either put this ad on other low converting days or on offpeak hours or lower its position. So result even though my traffic is converting Google holds the button what my earns would be?, You got to be joking if you think Google doesn't do all this things to increase bids on its search pages.

[tictoc]

I am seeing lower CTR so far this year. Could be less advertisers even though the budget restarted in January for most.

[Burningcoals]

2011 was my best year with a nice income in the five figures. However, since December 25th, I've seen a 50-70% decrease in revenue, depending on the area of the web site. My forum, for example, made the greatest bulk of income but the CPM has since dropped to pennies.

Has anyone else noticed that if you turn off your ads for a day or two or your site goes down for more than a day that this affects your ad revenue negatively and it takes days or weeks to climb it back up? On December 24th we had to turn off the Google Ads, our only ad revenue, due to user reports that a Google ad was triggering malware alerts (several other sites have reported a similar problem in the Google Adsense Help forum). We turned it back on December 26th but revenue has still not recovered to pre-December 24th levels.

[Play_Bach]

Yesterday earnings at 35% of average. At this rate, Jan 2012 will not be breaking any records.

[azn romeo 4u]

@Burningcaols

Yup something happen after that. It could be the advertisers pulling their money (most likely) or something else. But comparing stats from years gone by, I see a definite dip that shouldn't be happening at around this time for my sites.

Still gonna have the highest earning January ever, but compared to before December 25th, not that amazing.

[HuskyPup]

Strange, I never thought I'd be using Xmas Day as a good example however yesterday v Xmas Day:

Page Views 304.5%
Clicks 150%
CTR 49.2%
EPC 66.66%
eCPM 33.2%
Earnings 101.1%

Definitely no records being broken here.

[alika]

You got to be joking if you think Google doesn't do all this things to increase bids on its search pages.

Have you ever visited the Adwords forum? Have you seen how skeptical the advertisers think of the contextual network? Some are even adopting the "hands off" approach with regards to contextual advertising.

I've been with Adsense since 2003. I rode through its ups and downs. I've had enough focusing and obsessing about it and blaming everyone else for the dips and lows.

I'm not giving up on Adsense (earnings are still 5 figures a month) -- but instead, I'm focusing on things I can control to grow my websites and finding other revenue streams.

[jbayabas]

alika, how many websites do you have if you don't mind me asking?

[Play_Bach]

Another dismal AdSense day. :-(

[zarathustra2011]

I've had no exceptional days so far in January, but every day (bar one) has been above average earnings for me, and if it continues for the rest of the month, it may equal or better my best ever month, which was December 2011.

[philipjterry]

@everyone.

Can you recommend a good source for videos on this topic?

[Lame_Wolf]

Can you recommend a good source for videos on this topic?

There isn't one, and why should there be ?