April 2012 AdSense Earnings & Observations

[HuskyPup]

March was one heck of a roller coaster ride for me and many others, let's hope they've ironed out whatever it is they've been attempting to do!

[Play_Bach]

> Yesterday had normal traffic, but very low CPC.

Same here. CPC only 1/4 of what it was the day before. :-(

[NomadMan]

Past week was pretty good, except for yesterday. CTR skydived, clicks practically gone.

Must be some processing issue again - click avalanche, overloaded machines - hence large pile-up of clicks.

Google Q2 2012 revenue just can't be another 20 % rise....

[Play_Bach]

> Must be some processing issue again

One can only hope.

[HuskyPup]

Google Q2 2012 revenue just can't be another 20 % rise....

Of course it can...it's extremely easy when one is the gatekeeper...ask Enron!

Honestly, we've got to the discussion point of uselessness for some of us, we've been royally screwed and there's absolutely nothing that we nor any government is, can or willing, to do...history will no doubt prove otherwise but until then AdSense is a pointless waste of time and excercise for some of us. For a perfect example look at the fiscal corruption in the EU, it's been extremely well-known about for years and years BUT does anyone do anything about it? Nah...all the puppetmasters are on the SAME gravy train, they do not want the status quo to change so long as the taxpayer never revolts!

I've done nothing wrong, I've done nothing any different, all I've seen since 2004 is a consistent year on year reduction in CTR to the point whereby I am now at less than 10% of when I first started. How many public sector employees can say that?

Ad blindness is the very obvious problem (when was the last time you clicked on an ad?), however I feel it goes much, much further than that.

Joe Public is now so experienced with using the WWW that they mostly know and automatically go to the sites where they want to buy...I do, I'm happy with my suppliers, I use the Net for research on for any new product I may want to learn about and buy but as for buying from any new supplier I haven't done that in a long, long time.

My earnings are now at the level of do I or do I not remove them? It's now at the few hundred Dollars per month as opposed to thousands per month. If I remove them do I go ad free or do I leave them and say to myself "The income is paying for the servers and domain registrations and a few beers per month"?

For those with millions of page views per day you may be wondering what the hell I am writing about, however the vast majority of us are not in your camp, we're niche, we're small-fry, probably many of us are one-man businesses, we're nothing compared to governments and corporates, however we do have extremely long memories and believe me when I write that when companies have come to me after many years of rebuffing me as a non-entity and then suddenly requiring specific products...I get my own back, BIG time.

[Lame_Wolf]

Must be some processing issue again - click avalanche, overloaded machines - hence large pile-up of clicks.

Can't see that myself, I had a great day yesterday.

Google Q2 2012 revenue just can't be another 20 % rise....

Why not ? Do you really think that Google ONLY receives money from the adverts that appear on websites ?

[Play_Bach]

> Can't see that myself, I had a great day yesterday.

Good to know LW, thanks!

[AndyA]

I'm pretty disappointed in AdSense this month. The last few days have been really bad. I'm not sure if it's due to Google's updates, or the fact that I recently unblocked ad categories.

Some time back, I blocked categories that were getting impressions, but had a lower percentage of clicks. Then I read that by doing so, I remove ads that might drive up the overall value of ads displayed on my site. With interest based advertising, I thought I might try unblocking some of those categories to see if CPC increased. (It hasn't.)

Of course, my timing was incredibly bad, as I did this just before the Penguin update. Not sure if the poor performance since is due to Penguin, or Google having to "figure out" which ads perform best on my site again with these additional categories. Yesterday, clicks were up but CPC was down. If anything, it seems allowing these categories has lowered the overall CPC instead of increasing it, opening the gates to lower cost ads being displayed on my site.

How much time should I allow these categories to display ads before I block them again?

[Lame_Wolf]

Good to know LW, thanks!

No problem. Just wanted to balance things up with what's been going on recently. I too was kicked in the nads by Google at the beginning of the month (not the first time this has happened to me on April 1st.) but I have pulled myself out of it. I removed adverts from pages that either paid hardly a thing, to ones that hadn't had a click for a while. Changed colours of the adverts and moved a few. Nothing else.

[breeks]

Yesterday worst day in about four years, today looks to go even lower.

[zarathustra2011]

Far from great, but looks like I'm making a recovery by contrast to yesterday.

[tonyolm]

[Inside AdSense] Tips for creating high quality sites

Learn from this:

Provide content that gives users a reason to visit, and return, to your site.
When you create content on your site, it’s important to ask yourself if the page provides substantial value or service when compared to sites covering similar subjects. It's worth the effort to create original content that sets your site apart from the rest. This will provide useful search results and keep your visitors coming back.

[breeks]

My site is 100% original, I write all content take all pictures. Only one ad above the fold, and just barely above the fold. Has way more information on subject that any other site, none even come close. Several thousand pages of "original content that sets site apart" so much for Google's tips.

[NomadMan]

Must be some processing issue again - click avalanche, overloaded machines - hence large pile-up of clicks.

Can't see that myself, I had a great day yesterday.

Think Adsense is spread out over several servers - a shake-up moves in batches across many servers.

[NomadMan]

Recovery day after yesterdays all-time low CTR shake-up.

[zarathustra2011]

With around 12 hours left to go, earnings are pretty much level with the whole of yesterdays. A definite improvement.

[Lame_Wolf]

Must be some processing issue again - click avalanche, overloaded machines - hence large pile-up of clicks.

Can't see that myself, I had a great day yesterday.

Think Adsense is spread out over several servers - a shake-up moves in batches across many servers.

I should have added that i've not had a bad day in 8 days now. What is your answer to that ?

[Play_Bach]

Stuck in limbo land.

[netmeg]

Since I like to rotate different color ads to test to see which works (I use PHP to do this) I went back and looked at CTR by ad style for each placement for several million impressions. Some very clear winners stood out (mainly, on my sites, red) So for now I turned off the rotation and set all the ads to red. Saw an immediate improvement in CTR. Don't know if it will last. But it's worth a shot.

Sometimes I get so wrapped up in testing I forget to analyze the results, d'oh.

[zarathustra2011]

I opted for red on some ads recently, and it has made an improvement. From time to time I change the colour scheme - sometimes you think you've hit the nail on the head and then you have a bad week or two and have to rethink.

[Play_Bach]

My goose is cooked. :-(

[MobiAssassin]

Hello...I am new here :)

Anyway I started out with GA about 10 months ago on a site that was only 2 months old at the time. Since then I have been able to grow amazingly! April should mark my $10,000+ mark in 10 months. Growing my adsense at an average of $1000 a month!

April has been my worst month in 7 months. I should have grow by $1000 at least but it seems I will be fortunate to grow by $400 this month.

Everything was fine in April right up until about the 9th. Since the 9th CTR, CPC, RPM everything has been lower than March, leaving me at least $600 from where I thought I would be. But never the less it is still an increase since March.

The only bad thing is that once G does my Finalized earnings...I am almost positive it is going to knock me under the $10,000 mark so I am still debating if I should call it a $10,000+ month!

[zarathustra2011]

Past couple of days CPC has been a little above average, and earnings back on track. Today though I have had a lot more traffic which I was hoping came from Penguin, but turns out it was stumbleupon, with a terrible bounce rate so probably not worth my bandwidth.

[cien]

I see that Huskypup is at it still. :-) Thank God I don't depend on Google anymore and started my own manufacturing business which is growing by the way. Google killed my site exactly a year ago today with Bin Laden's news. I didn't even ask for the reconsideration crap. I was way frustrated with Google back then. It was a site built in 1998 with genuine content. I think the Rss feed did it. But it was the best thing that could ever happened to me. Google was running my life back then! I sleep better these days. Adsense account is still alive but will never use it again.

Good luck to you guys!

[IanCP]

What kind of a system is this? Traffic not being a major factor [well shove Panda/Penguin whatever], has a variation in earnings of 10:1 in two consecutive days?

Day one [Friday] best in many, many months has pleasing CTR [as one would expect for these sites] better than pleasing CPC [AdSense term now] average [now]traffic with a good results. Best for a long time.

Next day? Saturday? Approximately similar traffic, much, much less than half CTR and 30% of previous CPC.

Mates? This is complete BS.

Please!

Don't bother giving me possible plausible explanations.

This is NOT new. The system is frigging broken.

[NomadMan]

Recovered from a 1 day extreme dip in CTR - normal traffic, CTR and earnings are back again.

CTR skydived on multiple sites - different languages, countries. strange....

Find it quite remarkable there's no information leakage whatsoever from the Adsense engine room.
System architecture etc, maintenance horrors, fights in the serverroom. Nothing....wikileaks?

[LavingRunatic]

Over the last week my Adsense revenue has almost doubled! My traffic is about the same (if not a little lower) but CPC and CTR are both increased.

I was thinking it was because of some new articles I wrote that may attract some high CPC ads, but I'm seeing higher CPC on old content as well.

I'm not sure what is happening, but personally, I hope it stays!

[netmeg]

Great weekend here.

[tonyolm]

I'm happy. Even sunday which is low for me did just fine. Jan-feb-not so great. March started to come back but not pre 2012 levels. If the last week of April continues I'm a happy camper once again.

[zarathustra2011]

The weekend and today a welcomed improvement on last week, though I'd love a return to Jan/Feb earnings.

[CodeJockey]

Also a great weekend here under the 'new normal', sorta almost to the point where I'm hesitant to make any changes/add anything new that may upset the cart.