August 2015 AdSense Earnings and Observations

[RedBar]

I'll start it however I doubt I'll be contributing very much!

[FourDegreez]

Unusually low RPM right now, anybody else?

[RedBar]

I'll bet mine's lower than yours! I'm already predicting a worse day than yesterday especially since I am now removing about 3,000 more ad slots.

[nubchai]

Off to a good start today. July was definitely better than June. Hoping to continue the uptrend in August.

[trebuchet]

RPM low but nothing surprising about that. I'm more interested in seeing how much G hacks off my final earnings for July.

On another issue, I've been trialling a block on adblock users for the past fortnight. They're now redirected to a page asking them to whitelist or deactivate their adblocker. No alarming results other than three pieces of hatemail, including one particularly nasty one today likening me to certain sexually transmitted diseases. Seems like adblock users don't take kindly to being called on their freeloading.

[Vader1206]

Worst day in 10 years.

[systemaddict]

My juli ended 11% below june. It started catastrophically but picked up towards the end.

August has started a bit better. The real test is monday where most of my visitors (Europe) are back from holiday.

My main task for august is split testing DFP (with price floors on Adsense) vs. Adsense Native.

[RedBar]

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear, I'm having a normal Sunday traffic yet no one is clicking on anything, even my most popular ad slots are doing zilch ... AdSense has died and disappeared up its own rear on my sites meanwhile realworld business enquires and orders are booming.

[Mentat]

Lowest RPM ever :(
Disaster...

[yassinelaz]

My lifetime RPM is 2.16€ and today's RPM is 0.41€. I've been with adsense for 5 years now and I'm struggling since the begining of this year. I'm gonna be out on the streets if things don't change next month and I don't know how to break the news to my kid honestly.

[robzilla]

I'm gonna be out on the streets if things don't change

Harsh, but that's self-employment for you. You don't get job security, so never rely on any single source of income. Diversify. Don't wait for "things [to] change", make change happen (apparently you've had all year) -- or find an offline job.

AdSense has died and disappeared up its own rear

Getting a little tired of this. These threads are for observations. AdSense has not "died" and, in fact, works well for many publishers, but apparently not for you. Besides, didn't you remove the ads [webmasterworld.com]?

[ember]

Adsense has dropped a bit this summer, so I did something proactive. I got a part time job out in the real world! It gets me away from obsessing about Adsense all day and gets me interacting with non-techie people. For now, the money is extra, but it feels good to know I'll have a set amount coming in if Adsense really does fall off a cliff.

[RedBar]

Besides, didn't you remove the ads

I've removed all the unproductive AdSense ads for me, note for ME, this programme is well and truly fubard, don't try and be clever, you may be the next one!

My CTR for the USA and UK today is 0, a bit fat freakin' zero ... Don't even go there!

[bradleydrake]

I was getting started late last month, and I have yet to earn with my website. However, I am now building more targeted traffic in order to get possible Adsense clicks. I'll be monitoring this for a week or more to find out what adjustments do I made to increase my earnings.

[nomis5]

Harsh, but that's self-employment for you. You don't get job security ....

Neither do you get security in normal employment nowadays. Over forty years in work and self-employment of various types has proven to be the most reliable for me in my line of business. The problem with self-employment is not security, it's that when things go a bit pear-shaped you have no-one else to blame but yourself.

The reality check can be very painful, but the lessons learnt are probably very well learnt. My commiserations to the poster who fears for the effect on his child. That's not a situation any of us want to be in.

[avalon37]

The first 3 days of August have been the best days for me in months. CTR and CPC both way up. Not sure what Google changed, but something did. It's not as simple as beginning of a new month and advertisers have full budgets...most previous months have started slow. Fingers crossed it keeps up.

[Ebuzz]

Aug been horrible so far. But July was already bad towards the end, and August continues it.

Adsense has dropped a bit this summer, so I did something proactive. I got a part time job out in the real world! It gets me away from obsessing about Adsense all day and gets me interacting with non-techie people. For now, the money is extra, but it feels good to know I'll have a set amount coming in if Adsense really does fall off a cliff.

How old are you? If you're above 40, finding employment can be tough unless you are really good at something and have the drive and energy to keep up with the 20-somethings.

[MrSavage]

My new best is likely to be 1/3 of what I once considered average. So per day, on a monthly basis, I expect 1/3 earnings. Could I see big traffic increases and see 1/3 turn into 1/2? Perhaps. I'm not banking on it at all though. My expectations are at an all time low, but I'm at peace with it. I'll take what the program offers me at this point. I'm not sure if I've adjusted my time, by cutting the effort and expenses by 2/3, but I'm certainly looking at other means and other projects. Adsense and organic traffic cannot exactly support the things I'm passionate about unfortunately. So keep in mind when I rave about a days earnings here now, it's with an asterisk.

[ember]

How old are you? If you're above 40, finding employment can be tough unless you are really good at something and have the drive and energy to keep up with the 20-somethings

That's what I thought, too, but I am 56 and had 5 interviews in the course of two weeks. Two job offers. I do have a college degree, post grad work and live in a big city. My experience and age actually seemed to be an asset. Turns out not everyone wants to hire 20 somethings.

[atladsenser]

It gets me away from obsessing about Adsense all day and gets me interacting with non-techie people.

That, to me, is the best reason to combine working at a "regular" job with running an AdSense business. It's what I've done -- a couple of times, actually, I've left my full-time job to focus on my AS business, only to return back to the regular working world. Each time I loved working on my site for a while, but after about 6 months, the walls started closing in and I missed the day-to-day interactions with my co-workers and the non-financial boost you get from just being around people and collaborating with them.

I also branched out from doing everything myself on my own site to hiring a couple of freelancers who help me out a ton. That helps a lot. But what really helps is not putting all my eggs in one basket -- not relying only (or primarily) on AdSense to make a living, and not relying only on a job you can get laid off from. It just puts too much pressure on it when you turn your hobby into a job.

[child please]

You have to go with the times. My AdSense revenue is down year-over-year, but I have diversified and use other networks in competition with AdSense through DFP.

In the summer of 2012, I was running only AdSense and I was generating gross revenue well into four digits per month
By the summer of 2013, I was running AdSense in up to 6 ad units and I increased my revenue by about another 2k
By the summer of 2014, I was running AdSense in competition with multiple networks through DFP and my revenue almost doubled from 2012
This summer, I have streamlined to AdSense + 2 major networks and my revenue has climbed another 3k per month or so.

I can't wait for Q4 into Christmas, it's going to be awesome.

Very happy and thankful!

So my tip - don't rely solely on AdSense.

[Runfun]

I've tried to set up Google DFP but it's not user friendly and sometimes very slow with showing reports for example. How can you add floorprices for Adsense at DFP?

By the way, my CPM dropped dramatically last days and maybe it's just a coincidence but it started when I was serving banners asynchronous instead of synchronous.

[Ironside]

My August has got off to an awesome start. Okay, I'm not doing £25-£30 a day like I was 15 months ago, but the last two days have been £14. I think it's down to my slightly more aggressive advertising campaign, I can't see any other reason why impressions have soared. I been averaging around 11,000 impressions for the last few months each day, the last two days has been 14,000 impressions. Clicks have have increased considerably as well, which of course is why my earnings have been so much higher. I actually made 10p off of a large unit yesterday from just an impression, no clicks at all. Let's hope it continues with this trend.

[Whatagreatdayitis]

Google is featuring a sale on ad space on my website today. Why am I always the last one to know?

[Ebuzz]

It looks like August is going to rival May (could be even worse) as the worst month now for 2015. Simply terrible. And the clicks that they are counting now, are even less than ever. More and more people are reporting massive deductions for last month, especially those who plumbed social media for their traffic.

Horrible.

[trebuchet]

Yes, my ratio of paid vs. raw clicks seems to be slipping even further. When I last checked in early July it was around 30%. The last four days it seems to be just under 20%. That's fewer than one in five clicks paid out. I can rule out perhaps a third of unpaid clicks as multiples or accidentals. As for the others, I have no idea.

For all that, average CTR and RPM have not changed. Hey, it's like they're discounting clicks to keep a ceiling on the CTR (yes, we've been at this well before).

[Ironside]

I'm trying to work out why a Google AdSense unit advertising a dating site for single Muslims is appearing on a help and support website for Oscar Fish cichlids and other tropical fish.

[netmeg]

Even MY AdSense has tanked so far this month, and that's a first. I'm pretty sure it's because my mobile ratio (already high) went way even higher. I'll figure it out.

How old are you? If you're above 40, finding employment can be tough unless you are really good at something and have the drive and energy to keep up with the 20-somethings.

I'm pretty old and my last full year of school was 9th grade, and I have a waiting list of people who want to pay me. And I barely got started before age 40 (at least, I was doing something else entirely up till then) It's all about keeping your skills current, and having a knowledge differentiation. As long as you know something other people don't, and if there's even a small market for that knowledge, people will hire you. If they won't, then you just need to find a different market or up your knowledge, which is actually pretty easy nowadays.

[trebuchet]

I'm trying to work out why a Google AdSense unit advertising a dating site for single Muslims is appearing on a help and support website for Oscar Fish cichlids and other tropical fish.

Someone googling Plenty of Fish?

[azlinda]

For the past several months my AdSense income has been within just a few dollars of the previous month. It's as though they've capped AdSense. Usually during the early afternoon until early evening, there is no clicking activity at all. This started occurring about five months ago.