Forum Moderators: martinibuster
I know its still early in the month, but I'm quite surprised that despite a slow increase in page views, our CPM's are spiralling down. Halfway through December, things started to drop - no surprise with Christmas and all - but things are definitely showing no signs of picking up. In fact, CPM's and overall payments are dropping substantially. I wouldn't be too concerned, but we've been dropping every month since October (November was quite close to October but Dec. was 1/3rd less than either month... and we're looking to be below that here).
We're mostly a general interest site, emphasis on business and lifestyle articles. Am I to assume that some advertisers aren't yet onboard for the new year? Anyone have an idea of whether we can we expect it to pick up in a month or so?
If you have experience with this from last year, I'd love to know. Right now, if things aren't going to pick up we're going to have to start moving in another direction, which would be a shame, as we're starting to get noticed in some circles.
Thanks for any insight you can offer.
What's the lesson in this? I think there are two:
1) Most sites are likely to experience ups and downs each year, with different sites (and audiences) having different month-to-month cycles depending on their topics.
2) In judging trends, you should compare January to January, July to July, etc. and not January to December or July to October. This requires time and patience, but it'll save you from getting an ulcer when (as is likely) you experience a drop in traffic and/or revenues at certain times of the year.
If you don't have last year to look at, then wait a couple of weeks to see what the trend is....
In judging trends, you should compare January to January...
Yep, that's why I was quite surprised this week to find that my main site was down all across the board. Started to dig into it a bit, and -- except for the overall drop in traffic -- couldn't find anything unusual.
I found basically the same percentages of traffic coming from each of the SEs for the same search phrases or groups of phrases I would expect, nothing that would indicate major changes in SERP positioning, etc.
Then last night I might have found one reason that traffic to my little local guide took a hit. Met a couple of friends for pre-dinner cocktails at a neighborhood restaurant that at 7 o'clock would normally have ten or so tables occupied. Nada, zilch, the dining room was empty. The manager, a friend, said that at most this week he had two tables busy at one time. When we went on to dinner at 8 at a somewhat larger, much more well-known place, we were the third table in a mostly deserted dining room.
In this example I think it's the timing of the holidays this year, spanning two weekends. I'm assuming that my neck of the woods is in a bit of post-holiday doldrums, folks not quite back in their day-to-day routines. Many arrived back in town late Sunday, early Monday and are still in the midst of unpacking, doing laundry and playing catch-up at work. They aren't interested or don't have time to find out what's happening in the City tonight.
Now that's really reading a lot into the tea leaves and I might be way off the mark. If I'm right, I expect a pick up in traffic starting this weekend. If not, there's going to be a lot of late night coffee and cigarettes for me next week as I try to find what the heck is going on.
In this example I think it's the timing of the holidays this year, spanning two weekends. I'm assuming that my neck of the woods is in a bit of post-holiday doldrums, folks not quite back in their day-to-day routines. Many arrived back in town late Sunday, early Monday and are still in the midst of unpacking, doing laundry and playing catch-up at work...
You may be on to something. I had my highest traffic this week on Wednesday and my highest AdSense revenues on Thursday. Normally, Monday and Tuesday are my strongest days.
But compared to November and December, I'm ahead, so far.
Traffic has been way up this week. Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday each set new records for traffic. I did have a short drop in traffic, back to pre-holiday levels, the last few days of December. That's normal for my site, but the ramp up in traffic since then has been very unusual. I can only assume I did well in some serps after the last update.
CTR is holding at Holiday levels, which was up about 20% over the Jan - October level. Cpm is holding right at holiday levels on average.
So far, so good. I'm hoping that at least one factor, traffic, ctr, or cpm holds for the long run.
pay back a bit of the credit card first
Unless you take advantage of the fact that people are looking to combat this ;)
My situation echoes EFV's completely. But my area is not seasonal at all. I certainly appreciate the uptick, but I have no clue as to why this is so. Traffic is up and I believe that may be due to pr increases along with added links that have good anchor text. But why the epc rise...I still wonder if, in some cases, pr increases have some "otherwise indecipherable effect" on smart pricing. Of course, maybe it's just advertiser behavior. In the end, nothing can be predicted, which is just the way google would have it.
The reason behind this is very simple - most advertisers know when it is the best time to advertise.
Take EFV, s/he knows that people are looking for holidays and so do the advertisers. Therefore January is a good month. On the other hand, January is traditionally a quiet month for technology/computer-related purchases, so it will be down. I would also expect general interest/consumer sites to be down for Jan too.
From this thread so far for Jan, here is what the sectors are experiencing:
Travel: up
Computer/IT: down
General consumer: down
But I can see now that one sector in particular was giving us a really disproportionate amount of revenue; that's gone dry for whatever reason - maybe they stopped content site ads, maybe its just the time of the year for the advertisers - and so we simply have to be more cautious in the future, and track down to a micro level in some cases to ensure where the money is really coming from. Literally a handful of pages out of 100's were bringing in as much as a third of our revenue. Still, I can't complain about the money it brought in when it did! "Better to have loved and lost than never loved at all."
I'll keep adding the content, stick with it at least throughout the month, and see how things go.
Thanks again,
Hunter.
Google wants to have more expenses in December.
Then they want to start off January with more profit.
Basic tax accounting. ;)
