August 2013 AdSense Earnings and Observations

Another ride on the AdSense crazy train.

[JCKline]

What will August bring? July was a bust for some and great for others. For me, a bust, so I keep my fingers crossed that things begin to look up.

[explorador]

WBTRC That was a clever explanation.
PBCH True I refuse to believe it but every attempt brings me to... a dead end.

I'm about to get hands to work on another website. I plan on making it stand by itself, wait a lot of time and then add adsense to see what happens. My prediction says it will raise the earnings for just a while... let's see what happens, but that will be next year.

[netmeg]

At different times of the year, with several dozen seasonal sites of different types, I fluctuate between low two figures a day to mid four figures a day. So no, I don't believe in caps.

[webcentric]

The only thing I know for sure is that we made our non-existent cap 6 hours ago and things have gone as dead as a doornail again. Earnings have been flatlined (like within a half a percent each day) for most of this month (excluding one day). Some days it takes all day and tons of clicks to get there. Other days (like today) less clicks gets us there in a hurry...and then nothing. Of course, a couple of weeks does not a long-term trend make. But this two-week trend is bucking normal (whatever that is) for this season, for any given days of the week, for the given amount of traffic, type of ads, etc. etc. I just feel patterns in my gut and wonder out loud sometimes.

Just one more observation and I should probably let this go. We're talking variances of clicks on the magnitude of four or five times as many clicks on one day as another but still virtually the same revenue. It's stuff like that that makes me wonder. Not in a suspicious way, just in a way that wants to understand the driving factors so I can address them.

[netmeg]

Your *niche* can have a cap. But I don't believe Google's just arbitrarily putting one on. It doesn't make sense. When we make money, they make money.

[webcentric]

Your *niche* can have a cap. But I don't believe Google's just arbitrarily putting one on. It doesn't make sense. When we make money, they make money.

I believe every word of that which means, I guess, that I'm just pointing out a very bizarre coincidence. I'm not trying to be flip either. It's just an observation about what's happening and I now realize that I've stumbled into a long-running debate that also coincidentally mirrors my own independent observations. I could play devil's advocate for either team but really I was just trying to add an observation to the current conversation about earnings. I truly don't have any conclusions regarding the actual cause behind the experience, i.e. conspiracy, random motion, dumb luck or otherwise and I think very intelligent people have offered points supporting both positions quite well

@netmeg (including your main point above).

[zarathustra2011]

Earnings continue to be excellent. The little social media fling has lasted longer than I expected.

[explorador]

Yesterday looked terrible but didn't end so terrible so the good luck seems to go on.

[nomis5]

Your *niche* can have a cap. But I don't believe Google's just arbitrarily putting one on. It doesn't make sense. When we make money, they make money.

Agreed 100%, with just on small area of doubt and that's the word "we".

Lets say for example that on a given day $1 mill was to be spent by G paying publishers for clicks on their ads. I'm not 100% convinced that the share of that $1 mill is distributed 100% in accordance with market factors.

From discussions with G and other observations I have a small part of me which says that somewhere in the distribution of that $1 mill there is a factor built in which has a bias (maybe small) which tries to ensure that publishers receive a steadier income than might otherwise be the case.

That factor can easily be skewed in may situations (site down, lots of temporary hits, algo fluctuations etc) but over the medium term there is an intent on G's part to try and even out earnings to ensure a steady earnings stream to most publishers.

[blends]

$3.98 from 12,000 visitors! WTF? I'm usually at around $15-20 at this point. Steady loss in revenue since June. Looks like I need to go find a job again to cover my bills. So lame.

[littlecubpanda]

I made a lot of BIG changes today (unblocked ad categories, changed some ad colors, etc).

We'll see how it pans out. August is still a tremendously solid month.

But I've noticed CPC starts out high in the morning and gradually fades as the day goes by. Strange pattern.

[littlecubpanda]

@ blends

That's crazy. Is your CPC really low or CTR really low?

[webcentric]

I've noticed CPC starts out high in the morning and gradually fades as the day goes by

Same thing here, with the added observation that each day seems to end up in the same place revenue-wise. Unblocked all networks yesterday and had a boost but today it's right back in the toilet. Organic traffic is growing daily but no correlation to revenue is evident.

[Mentat]

A lot of countries have a day off on 15 August (15 -> 18)

[avalon37]

Haven't seen 1 click on one of my sites in the last 24 hours. I'm expecting to see a click dump later tonight or tomorrow. I've never seen anything like this - my ads are still live and traffic is the same.

[Inspector Gadget]

Worse than June, about the same as July but getting slowly better.

[littlecubpanda]

Made some big changes and CTR is up 1.5 percent. Hope this sticks.

[zarathustra2011]

My goodluck seems to be continuing. Had a great week, then yesterday looked like I was back to a typical lousy July type day, but even that picked up in the end. Today I'm flying again, despite traffic has diminished since my social media boost.
Not sure it's coincidence, but I did remove add this about a week ago, not that it covered or interfered with any ads.

[Play_Bach]

Dead all day here.

[JCKline]

Dead all day here.

Same here. Clicks haven't budged all day.

[littlecubpanda]

Saturday: worst day this month so far. I expected it to be slow for reasons I can't control, but ouch. CTR is low today.

[karkadan]

If not stuck this is a new low.

[zarathustra2011]

Yesterday was a brilliant day. If the month contiunues like ths it would be a return to the old days when I was making my best earnings with Adsense. I don't entirely understand the reasons for it, as my traffic is nothing like it used to be. EPC is far higher than it used to be, and stumbleupon and facebook help with the deficit of losing a lot of organic traffic with google.

[Mentat]

my CPC is going steadily to the minimum 0.03...
For me is like all the advertisers are bidding only the lowest value.

[JCKline]

Saturday was the worst day in my 10 years with adsense. Definitely broken and I have no hope for today unless a click dump appears from what MUST have been held from yesterday.

[littlecubpanda]

Well, Saturday miraculously recovered -- CTR returned to the high number that it has been averaging this month.

[MrSavage]

I can honestly say after the past while, couple months, that checking stats daily is counter productive. I keep doing it though.

Today is a comeback day, but the previous 2 days were around 2/10 days. So I have say, three days of 2/10 or 4/10, then one day of 7/10 or 8/10.

It's all over the place, it's frustrating, but that's how daily reporting is to me right now. I will concur with people finding the earnings not to be reflective on traffic patterns.

[karkadan]

Today is my worst day in almost 10 years. Everything is erratic. Stats. Earnings. Google is shooting me in the foot several times over this year. Over and over and over. 10 years doing business with Google = to the garbage.

Time to rethink what to do. New projects. Different models? Or a bricks and mortar business.

[zarathustra2011]

I've already smashed last month's earnings, so this month has much promise, but I have no faith in the consistency of Adsense, and don't have any confidence that the good times will stick.

[webcentric]

Finally a decent weekend (knock on wood) but Monday is not starting off well at all. Back off the flat track and onto the roller coaster again it appears.

[explorador]

Not that bad here, yesterday was average low, not the low low. And the previous days have been kinda good. Traffic reflects related behavior as the panda and penguin trends (when they fixed it).