March 2012 AdSense Earnings & Observations

[HuskyPup]

Well, my February was all over the place, very similar to The Himalayas in profile!

[anteck]

Google have completely stuffed things up. First time in years i've had zero earning days. Ad's being shown are way off the mark. There's really no point in showing them anymore.

[tidewatcher]

I would not consider myself a "respected professional", but I will report that things are going fairly decently for me. Yesterday was my best earnings day of the month.

I don't really do much consciously in the way of SEO, I try and make an interesting site and there seem to be enough people interested in my topic to make it worthwhile for me to carry on building it. My site is based on latest news, so I need to keep writing posts.

[pelizden]

I've come to a point where 0,75% ctr should be considered good :(

[netmeg]

"Hey, I'm going 'gang-busters', what's your worry"

Opinions of respected, professional web designers such as, among a great many others, "Netmeg" could be of assistance.

First of all - yea, I'm actually going gang-busters. Despite having one site under bot attack (so I can't run ads on it) I already passed last March's earnings, so it's all good. As long as I'm moving upwards - even if it's only by a few cents (it's by more than a few cents) than I consider it good. That's another reason to look at things month to month rather than day by day. If I worried about day to day, I'd have stroked out years ago.

As far as professional web developer... thanks, but HAHAHA. If my developer could see that, he'd laugh his rear end off; it's a constant in joke that I'm a word person and can't design my way out of a paper bag. I'm trying trying to make enough extra this year to actually GET a professional designer. Seriously.

But I do know something about marketing and monetization and building traffic. And that makes up for the design flaws.

[karkadan]

Today it starte low... low low lowww.

[karkadan]

Worst day ever

[IanCP]

HP. Something I should have asked you and. others much earlier.

Now this is on the back of one of those "rare" occasions I actually get up off my backside and make comparisons from month, by month from years back.

MY CTR has slowly declined, excruciatingly so. I have no control over that.

Krap ads= Krap CTR.

EPC? Utterly amazing, given the rampaging $A. In "real" terms I get more today than I ever did average in 2003.

Traffic? I've been well and truly been Pandarised. Over 80% of my losses relate to that loss of traffic.

How say you and others?

No, I've never obsessed over figures for the simple reason I ran an informative "content" site long before AdSense was even invented.

I will NEVER EVER organise my content to suit AdSense nor Google.

Back to HP, what is your personal experience with CTR, EPC, Impressions over a reasonable period of time?

I'm not trying to be smart, I'd just like your take on it.

[denisl]

I have also passed my March 2011 figure (about 15% over at present) so I guess I should be happy.
However in January I was looking at double the 2011 figure so this feels a bit of a let down.

Like everyone else, my increase in traffic sugests that I should be making more than I am, but then this is what I expected if I am honest.

[zarathustra2011]

My server's been down for the past 5 hours, so I don't think I'm going to have a very good day today! The hosting company have just fixed things.

Yesterday didn't finish too badly, but I'm certainly holding out for more. Next month I relaunch a much updated version of my site, so it will be make or break time. I should have made implementations in smaller steps ideally, but we'll see how it goes - if I'm desperate I'll kiss goodbye to a month's solid work and put the old site back.

[karkadan]

Second day that starts way below the usual. This usually doesnt happen at the end of March. This is behaving even worse than the usual Februarys.

[NomadMan]

End of the month - advertisers running out of budgets and Panda 3.4 has been rolled out a few days ago.

The click winter is coming to an end - time to get outside for some sunny clicks on mobile ads while eating an icecream.

[clearvision]

IanCP - I hear ya and wish I could be the "doing great, keep at it", person:D The positive comments are encouraging when they have meat behind it. I have to admit once you've made thousands of dollars a month/day working Adsense, someone cheering a wonderful day because they made $2.50 more than yesterday may be exciting for them (and don't get me wrong...I love seeing seeing increase for others) but may not really be a significant example of an up trend, it could just be really happy clicker :D!

[NomadMan]

IMHO - with the strict click validation & manual Adsense reviews - getting back to a thousands of dollars a month income from Adsense - now requires lots of time and heaps (too) good news.

I doubt if any Publisher nowadays is allowed to keep it's Adsense account with income spikes from $nn to $nnnn / month in lets say 6 months.

It undoubtedly raise lots of flags instantly with a deep review of traffic, site contents against Adsense policies.

For those who are already at the $nnnn income level and survived Panda probably fall easier through the review net.

[zarathustra2011]

Wow, so far looking like a very strong day indeed despite having 5 hours of server down time.

[pelizden]

ctr continues to sink to new lows...

[zarathustra2011]

Could several hours of down time yesterday cause the targeting of adverts to stray off the mark today? I've usually always had relevant ads, but I've got all sorts of junk (text links remain fine), from financial marketing to hotels (on an art related website) and few clicks as a consequence.

It could be that my unexpected good earnings yesterday (with 5 hours of the server being offline), was because the reported earnings are at least a day out of sync? Perhaps I'm also feeling the consequence of yesterday, today?

[NomadMan]

Yesterday was a day of total irrelevant ads on my end - causing a nosedive of clicks and CTR.

Today back to normal....

I can't understand how displaying irrelevant ads serves anyone from advertiser to publisher to visitor. A waste of time, adspace and resources. I'd rather see no ads at all.

[netmeg]

You don't know that the users are seeing the same ads you are.

[zarathustra2011]

Mine's almost back to the usual ads, though I'm getting a lot of Asian dating sites, and that's not from my browsing habits! :) I've tried different browsers and computers, and it's still coming up. May have to start blocking some categories.

[clearvision]

Clicks and CTR are WAY down...still not seeing any improvements on my end...darn. I'm seeing a lot of blank spaces on my websites now and irrelevant ads.

[Play_Bach]

March has been a bust. Looking forward to April.

OT - anybody else in Pacific time (Los Angeles) have their WebmasterWorld clock off by an hour? I had to set mine to Mountain (utc -7) to get it in sync.

[nomis5]

Netmeg has got it right, no-one knows what ads individual viewers are seeing. Google killed that ability a year or so ago. Even going down to the local internet cafe gives you no idea because personalised ads are the flavour of 2012 (and 2011 for that matter).

I live in the UK and regularly used my ex-wife's PC to try and guage what ads were generally being shown on my pages. A month or so ago the SERPS and ads on my site went totally weird when viewed on her computer - no correlation whatsoever with what I was seeing at my home even with cookies turned off and a one-off IP address.

I realised a couple of weeks ago that when accesing Google from her PC, it sometimes used Google.co.uk (the default all the time for most in the UK wheteher you like it or not) but most of the time it defaulted to Google.com.

Now, my ex knows damm all about PCs / internet so she hasn't managed to manipulate the default intentionally. When I sussed that out, I gave up completely trying to work out what anyone else is seeing ad-wise. It's a total, absolute waste of effort.

[NomadMan]

The 'what Ads are other users seeing' is an interesting debate.

My question in this context;

What Ads would Google show on a no cookie free / no history machine when it connects to the same website (no referral) from various locations in the world?

1) Would Adsense start-of with a country specific default set of Ads related to the site shown?

2) Or would Adsense show a random irrelevant set of Ads for the same site?


The question is, why would 2) happen as already seen by so many?

[Lame_Wolf]

no-one knows what ads individual viewers are seeing. Google killed that ability a year or so ago.

It's always been like that.

[zarathustra2011]

I've tried it from a new machine and a different location in France, and get a lot of country specific ads showing - usually irrelevant, but advertising French business. From my home machine, I do not see too many country specific ads.

[clearvision]

Not knowing the specific individual ads others are seeing is okay, only because I'd think you can get a general idea of what the challenge may be with CTR by seeing what comes up for yourself.

With a huge tank in CTR either you lost a major advertiser or they aren't showing relevant ads. I just I doubt everyone gets ad blindness all at the same time :)

[Go60Guy]

Looks to me that the ads shown that I'm seeing are reasonably relevant. It would be far more interesting, however, if the report also indicated whether an ad actually was clicked on.

[netmeg]

OT - anybody else in Pacific time (Los Angeles) have their WebmasterWorld clock off by an hour? I had to set mine to Mountain (utc -7) to get it in sync.

That's always been the case. You'll have to change it back again when the time changes.

[netmeg]

I'm at 150% of last March with a few days left; I'm cool.

[breeks]

I'm at 70% of last March, with 30% more traffic.