Different niche do go through different buying cycles as different advertisers target their customer based on specific buying cycles and intent, I would dare say that a good chunk of ads buying is now algorithmic too. Most of my holdings belong to 1 general niche while I am trying to break into a few others. But they do appeal to different demographics that I am aware of. Different age groups and male vs female.
@IronSide, perhaps people are less worried about their fish, but buying gifts for others for the Christmas time, or planning holiday parties. Lack of money and time causes people to do bare minimum to keep their existing fish alive without trying or buying new ones. Thus no need to buy more gears or items. Which causes advertisers to speculate and bid less for the corresponding keywords. Which makes it less competitive to try to bid any of the keywords higher than it needs to be. Finally resulting in a much lower earnings for you who provides such information. However, you will see roughly same traffic since people still search about how to keep their fish alive...My shot in the dark guess...After March and well into summer month is probably your hot season? People have more time on their hands after the New year resolution fades away. So they pick up hobbies between seasons.
@MrSavage & kopparberg, I don't think people lie about their reports nor their belief about adsense being rigged, it's that people usually hush when they are making bank, and only cry out when things are going wrong. If I only look at the data from my nonperforming sites, I would come to the same conclusion that adsense is totally rigged.
It is smart for winners to stay hush, why else would you want to bring more competition into your might already crowded niche. All the ones that have publicly disclosed and said they are making millions sooner or later goes out due to crowded niche or even malicious attacks, look at the people on the "adsense stories", and how many of them have failed since then. It can be why the forum is largely negative over positive voices. A few mostly "positive" voices usually get called out as bragging by the decliners which is a little disappointing.
It's hard to see some of the patterns when you operate in a specific niche, with the exact same demographic, especially when it is a declining one, since once that specific site is declining, it is usually a vicious cycle going downhill. I experience quite often with my web properties, if I only hold on to 1 success and be content, I probably will not survive more than 1~2 years since I have 50% churn rate and a semi-long launch time, most of my properties also have a decaying life span as it goes out of favor, think...fashion....but once you start getting enough verticals and varying audiences, you may witness different patterns in CPC, RPM like I do, even with exact setup.
Ad blocker is nevertheless worrisome and a general trend against publishers. A higher and higher discrepancy is showing between google analytics and the amount of pageviews shown in Adsense.
From what I can tell, for the ads that still get served, some adsense niches are slowly dying or died already mainly in B2B setting and some are thriving. I do not operate for B2B but it feels that the majority of the most outspoken ones that cry foul are B2B, or do not target the main "final" consumers, it can be selling to a business, or to contractors who are mainly using your information for other services, those seem to be doing poorly. In short, if you are operating a site that is consistently declining for a downward spiral death, maybe it is time to break things and rethink strategy, rather than blaming the middleman.
From my personal experience with sites that mainly target end consumer, roughly 50% of my sites are decline while 50% are rising. My new content is enough to "refill" my declining ones. It evens out for me in the end. I have a natural churn rate because of the non-recurring topic that I cover. I have nuked plenty of sites to do experiments, bomb a few into SERP oblivion in the process as well. I am used to having sites that are dying and declining so I can totally understand how the system can be rigged against you in certain conditions. It is after all, just computer programs behind all of this, with little manual directions here and there.
RPM for December is still looking good, higher than the average of November but lower than the Black Friday weekend. I am expecting decent revenue to continue until Christmas, then decline to drop dead come January by falling off the cliff, I call half to 60% RPM for my sites relative to now. Then it will be 3 months or worrying for me wondering what to come next year! And by April I should feel pretty good about myself again to survive another year in this crazy business.
