January 2013 AdSense Earnings and Observations

[HuskyPup]

Happy New Year AdSensers - Make or break year for me I reckon!

[Fiky]

Starting to slightly pick up! eCPM has increased but about 50 cents off what it was prior to Jan...Fingers crossed.

[Afrosense]

Yesterday 21st January was the best day for me, 22nd was bad, 23rd was better, let me see how will 24th end.

[Afrosense]

Yesterday 21st January was the best day for me, 22nd was bad, 23rd was better, let me see how will 24th end.

[JCKline]

Still looking like the worst month in years for me!

[ember]

Good month so far.

[HuskyPup]

Fingers crossed, the second best day of the month for me so far with a CTR from a couple of years ago however that seems, to me, because Google lost a load of Page Views. My logs have shown a very consistent week so far with traffic yet Google's Page Views have peaks and troughs.

[JCKline]

CTR was up yesterday, yet CPC and eCPM were low. This seems to be the trend. When CPC is high, CTR is low. </sigh>

[azlinda]

JCKline, I've never understood the correlation between the two. It just doesn't make sense to me, although I've seen the same thing repeatedly.

[avalon37]

Yesterday was pretty good. Today is off to a very good start.

[Str82u]

@JCKline @azLinda

This seems to be the trend. When CPC is high, CTR is low.

I tend to think of it the other way around, when CTR is high, the cost of clicks goes down. I firmly believe (conspiracy theory) that advertisers not only automate their Adwords but know in advance certain days when traffic and CTR is going to be high and adjust their bids to that....

Non conspiracy theory is simpler; because there are more click troughs it lowers the cost per click because the are more clicks to go around. It happens here nearly every time the CTR goes high on a site the EPC/EPC is about 20-25% lower; very rarely do EPC/CPC stay up during high CTR periods except holidays.

[HuskyPup]

I've been assassinated by the new images SERPs.

I'll give it Saturday and Sunday however it looks like the removal of AdSense off my Coppermine Gallery PLUS blocking Google access to it. Thousands of AdSense Page Views on their Image pages yet hardly any visitors clicking though to my site ... Oh no Google, that's not the way things are done you thieving scrapers.

[Str82u]

HuskyPup - I noticed the new "Images" pages they have that's really crappy. Makes it really easy for people to swipe images without knowing who they are ripping off. Sorry

[Play_Bach]

Earnings markedly down since Jan 17. Glad to hear some of you are still doing well. No idea what happened to my AdSense or why. Completely tanked. :-(

[bluedog]

Very strange day for me so far. A couple of unusually huge clicks early this morning (£15/£5) then things got very slow for the rest of the daylight hours, with much lower CPC and CTR across all my sites. Things seem to be picking up a now, however, and I'm well ahead of where I would normally be at this time of day, so can't really complain. Never had an adsense day quite like it. It all evens out in the long run, I find, but sometimes its just so bizarre.

[HuskyPup]

Friday and Saturday earnings down as expected and today, Sunday, so far is a repeat of last Sunday's debacle. Apart from the images issue US/UK EPC is way down.

[ember]

No NFL football this weekend in the States. Yah! Traffic always decreases during football games.

[JCKline]

Yesterday started well and then just stopped. Today is lousy as every Sunday. Low accross the board.

[JCKline]

Sunday ended better than expected, which doesn't day much. Today I wait and see...slow start so far.

[tidewatcher]

Not sure what has happened to the US clicks lately. They have been worth about 2/3 less than normal recently. US CTR is not too bad. I have a fairly loyal user base and I wonder if I am getting repeat visitors clicking on the same ads, and Google has decided to place lower value on them.

[Play_Bach]

Monday ended as another dismal earnings day for no reason I can figure. Been uncharcterisntically low since Jan 18th. Anybody else seen a big drop starting then?

[chalkywhite]

I actually had a day yesterday with ZERO clicks , insane, nothing has changed on site. Im leaving it alone, something is amiss with goog here.

[JCKline]

Today should be looking good, after all it's Tuesday, but so far, all stats are low.

[Play_Bach]

> something is amiss with goog here.

That's what I've been hoping is the explanation for months now. Keep waiting for the big "correction" to come, but it never does. :-(

[HuskyPup]

but so far, all stats are low.

Way down here too, Tuesdays are usually good for me, today so far we're at 25%.

[tidewatcher]

Now I have a negative balance under 'current balance'.

[netmeg]

Not as good as I hoped, but way better than I expected.

[Str82u]

@tidewatcher

Now I have a negative balance under 'current balance'.

Yeah, right after MIB ours was like (29¢). Gets bigger too. It's the regular invalid click stuff but showing up in current balance rather than the payments timeline.

[Play_Bach]

Barring a miracle in the next two days, I'm looking at a 30% drop in earnings this month. Lowest it's ever been since starting with AdSense in 2004! WTF is going on?

[Mentat]

eCPM down every day!
I know it's January, but this feels bad!

[edinburgher]

I've always cared about the quality of my sites, so I block the spammy looking ads as soon as they appear. About a week ago I decided Adsense revenue had got bad that I'd experiment with clearing my entire block list. I removed every site and went through unblocking every single ad.

I expected more spammy ads to reduce CTR. However CPC should go up because there are now more advertisers bidding for the space (and some of those spammy ads take up a whole block). I hoped overall revenue would rise.

What I didn't expect was that CTR would stay roughly the same and CPC would *fall* still further. Did all the advertisers in different sectors reduce their spend at just the same time I decided on this experiment? Possible but unlikely.

I am, shall we say, a trifle peeved.