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.

[webcentric]

I'd say CPC was bad today but with ZERO clicks, it's impossible to tell. I'd say WTF, but there's obviously no answer to that question.

[karkadan]

My father's Google Adsense account is showing Zero clicks today. It has never happened. My account is normal.

[jbayabas]

I think it's stuck.

[jbayabas]

Not stuck. It was a very bad Sunday. Could be it's back to school in most countries.

[webcentric]

It was a very bad Sunday

Yes, it was a very bad Sunday and while it's time for kids to go back to school, it doesn't explain why record numbers of visitors chose to visit but not click. I did find one highly aggressive advertiser on my site who had no business dominating virtually every page and blocked their domain but it still only had a very slight effect toward late evening. Also see some significant differences in the Analytics and Adsense reports for yesterday. Something fishy about yesterday and like normal, can't put a finger on it. Sunday is normally our best day of the week (or at least one of the best days).

[MrSavage]

I had one of my biggest traffic day of my life yesterday.

This may come as no surprise, but out of the traffic I got, my revenue from adsense? I won't post that here. In fact I won't go on some tirade about it.

I am shopping for alternatives at this point. That's what I think about my daily earnings right now. The only thing I can pinpoint is that people don't give a rats a__ about the ad being shown to them. You give relevant, I get clicks. I don't buy any other argument at this point in time.

[webcentric]

The only thing I can pinpoint is that people don't give a rats a__ about the ad being shown to them.

I have arrived at the exact same conclusion. As for alternatives, what a mess!

Commission Junction - a mess.
Amazon - a mess (can't even show their ads on mobile).
Peerfly - junk.
Media.net - more irrelevant ads.
No other CPC program compares although right now, they all compare well to a pile of junk.

and I could go on and on. CPA, CPC, CPM, whatever!

We're set up to sell ads but that's a rough road too. At least with this route, we have only ourselves to blame if it doesn't work out.

[jbayabas]

Hit below average Sunday and today for the first time in a year. Horrendous!

[explorador]

Saturday was kinda ok, my lowest days seem to be over, I'm now having decent numbers. But Sunday was my best day ever, I had like 3X the old average and 4X of past week day average. Today looks like any ordinary day.

[Chris13]

Having an unusual occurance today, one I haven't seen before. Today the number of clicks on CPM ads has skyrocketed to over 40% of the clicks.

The overall CTR for the day is average, as are the number of overall clicks. Traffic is slightly up over last Monday by 5%. No unusual traffic sources that I can see at this time.

The percent of clicks on CPM ads from 1 Aug to 25 Aug was 11%. Today it's 44%.

Does this mean anything to anyone?

[Mentat]

27 August was a very good day, in the last 3 months or so...

I hope is not an accident...

[JCKline]

What happened on Monday? CTR hadn't moved all day for me, and thought it might catch up in the late night hours. Checked this morning and It never changed. No click dump. CTR stuck at 0.24%? Maybe it'll show some time today...I hope. Just awful.

[Mentat]

Monday in UK: summer bank holiday

[Play_Bach]

Dead.

[frankleeceo]

today one of my site had its highest ever rpm, I have no idea why other than I started testing image + text again. (in all of my previous tests pure image gave me better rpm than image + text, (by better CTR). It came as a huge surprise to me.

Could it be that some advertiser had been targetting my site with text ads but never went through because I never had it enabled?

[SEOPTI]

Split testing (A/B testing) is still the key. I was able to improve earnings through split testing by 300% last week and it was a split test which was based on changing the whole design of the website.

First CTR improved dramatically, after that I changed from banner to small rectangle which gave a CPC boost.

Two years of split testing and finally I found the best template for my local sites, probably thousands of split tests.

[jbayabas]

Monday was slightly normal again. Tuesday not as bad.

[Play_Bach]

Yesterday never recovered. Lowest CTR all month by far. Anybody else?

[jbayabas]

Tuesday's all good. Back to business. Sigh of relief.

[JCKline]

Dead

[richnash33]

Dead..worst couple of days ever

[ascensions]

Dead with worms crawling through the carcass.

[Chris13]

Yesterday never recovered. Lowest CTR all month by far. Anybody else?

No. CTR running slightly up. Of course, that's relative to last couple of months.

[Play_Bach]

4:30pm - click count unchanged for ten hours.

[frankleeceo]

The system works ok for me today.

[Play_Bach]

7:30pm - finally some movement! Not a lot, but at least some sign of life. Here's to hoping there's LOTS more on the way.

[webcentric]

Generally, the week is picking up on the revenue side but I'm thinking that the upcoming holiday weekend here in the US has put a bit of a damper on traffic generally. People are either already on the road or working their **s off so they can get on the road before Friday. I'm starting to wonder if the lack of decent ads earlier this week was just advertisers waiting to get closer to the weekend before pulling the trigger on their holiday campaigns. I used to be able to gauge holidays better but this 4th of July was off-the-hook in a good way which I didn't expect so what will this weekend bring? Who knows. Then there's the whole "Back to School" thing with may be keeping parents busier than usual as well...out shopping, getting some last-minute family time in...helping with homework. Again, who knows. One thing I know is these 3-4 day long crashed are nerve-wracking and I'm ready for a beer.

Cheers

[zarathustra2011]

Took a break in Paris, which meant I didn't compulsively check my Adsense account daily. Back to average earnings, but thanks to an excellent middle stint in the month, August has been a great earner for me. I'd be very surprised if I can match it in September.

[ember]

Typical month. No complaints.

[greatstart]

This has turned out to be my slowest month in the 8 years I've been with AdSense. Time to figure out what went wrong this month, and work on things.