May 2017 AdSense Earnings & Observations

[Ironside]

Today has started off very well, 28 clicks and I'm already into double figures

[CommandDork]

Strong start for me too. High page RPM and good CPC.

[rspwfaq]

Hey, first time poster. April was a complete disaster for me, record lows all around, and it's an immediate rebound today back to levels that I would consider normal again.

One thing I have noticed for myself, which probably won't apply for everyone, is that a major issue for my Wordpress-based site was Google's discontinuing the official plugin a couple of months back. They heavily pushed the Quickstart automatic placement program on me and after two months of trying it, I'm convinced it was a major part of the problem. Ads were inserted in bizarre places where no one was even looking at them, and weren't even reliably appearing on mobile. This weekend I finally just shut QS off and manually inserted the code where I wanted it, and pretty much got an instant 200% bump in revenue. It COULD just be the same increase others are getting now, but given the steady decline I've seen since I changed to Quickstart in February, I doubt it. CTR is back where it should be, at least.

[ember]

Welcome, rspwfaq.

Something weird is going on in Chrome on desktop. Ads are cut off all over the site, and link units are appearing as large image ads. Everything looks fine in FF and IE or Edge or whatever it is called now. I hope this fixes itself soon.

[Halaspike]

Poor start for me, very very low CTR for United States. It's like all the clicks were transferred to @Ironside's account lol.

[Mentat]

April was a complete disaster for me, record lows all around, and it's an immediate rebound today back to levels that I would consider normal again.

Welcome to the club, now you can never leave...

April was full of religious holidays and school holidays all over the world, end of a quarter + the Google Ads boycott.

May started "optimistically" with a long week-end (1st of May is Labour Day in most of the countries).

[Ironside]

I expect it will back to misery from today. But I will try and be optimistic.

[Runfun]

The new month didn't start very well and I've found out that one of the best ads suddenly dropped in CTR. From best ad to worst... I didn't changed anything with the placement.

Something else is bothering me when I block ads in the review center. Even when I block adwords accounts they appear again within a few days. It's not only the revenue that's poor...

[edited by: martinibuster at 2:21 pm (utc) on May 10, 2017]
[edit reason] Once is more than enough. Thx. [/edit]

[iwrkalot]

April was a record month for me. It is my season but the jump was quite dramatic. While there are a number of factors that it can be attributed to, the one that stands out the most is the move from fixed text link to responsive text ads.

[rspwfaq]

April was full of religious holidays and school holidays all over the world, end of a quarter + the Google Ads boycott.

Normally I'd agree, but I run a pro wrestling blog and April was Wrestlemania, which is normally 3 - 4 times normal traffic and revenue for me. Traffic was mostly there, but the revenue was just at what would be a normal level for me, instead of the crazy spike I usually get on that weekend every year. And that's at the beginning of the month, well before you factor holidays and such into things. I did notice the most severe drop after the Google boycott story broke, so that definitely helped to wreck the rest of the month for me as well.

[NickMNS]

April was a record month for me as well, both on strong traffic and continued strong rpm.

@Runfun

Something else is bothering me when I block ads in the review center. Even when I block Adwords accounts they appear again within a few days.

The spammers are continuously changing Adwords accounts and target domains. These ads are impossible to block using the ad-review center alone. I have tried, believe me I tried!
As I mentioned the only way to stop this is a combination of ad-balancer and blocking sub-categories (eg: celebrity news, skin care etc...). You may be able to block a large share of these ads by only blocking the sub categories. But without the ad-balancer to remove that idle inventory who knows what the ad slots will be filled with?

[Ironside]

I've learned not to get too excited when a month starts off really well. Good job, today is absolutely rubbish so far. However, I'm probably being a bit premature as is only 10 o'clock on the east coast in the US and obviously earlier as you go west.

[Ironside]

85p so far today, that's all I'm up to. Honestly, how can two days be so different?

[koan]

I don't understand when people provide absolute figures without context. For some, a $10 day is great, for others, it's awful. How are we supposed to know?

[RedBar]

85p so far today

My 25p easily trumps that:-)

What the heck is going on, I have 3 clicks so far with average PVs, my ads look normal, therefore I'll call it Trashed Tuesday!

[Halaspike]

Funny how today one can make $10 the next day its $2 with the same amount of traffic. It's just crazy to see how Adsense is falling off. I know this won't last forever tho, I hope they'll eventually get their sh!t together.

[Mr_Jefe]

"Adsense is falling off" .. "Adsense is dead" etc have been recurring statements for as long as I can remember.
However, many are still making a killing on it.

When I'm having a rough time with my Adsense earnings, I don't dwell on pointing fingers at Adsense.
Instead, I focus on ways to improve my content, user experience AND optimize my Adsense implementation.

I think micro-analyzing hourly performance, or even daily performance is futile.
7-day periods and up paint a clearer picture, and give more actionable data patterns.

No need to get a stroke over isolated daily fluctuations.

[RedBar]

I think micro-analyzing hourly performance, or even daily performance is futile.

That is not what most are doing, they are simply posting an observation that on one particular day AdSense seems to be performing extremely badly and invariably several others post similar observations.

Just why is it after a major worldwide public holiday, which for me was completely normal, that the following day is as flat as a pancake when seemingly having similar traffic etc.

I gave up worrying about AdSense years ago after their image theft screwed my earning by more than 95% however I still have enough traffic to be able to see these strange earnings' phenomena.

[Runfun]

I've about 150k to 200k ad impressions a day but seeing the revenue from Adsense reduce with about 60% within weeks is ridiculous. I would understand fluctuations with low amount of impressions but this motivates me even more to reduce my revenue from Adsense.

About half of the revenue is coming from other networks and affiliates but that's only for 1/3 of all impressions. By the way I've noticed some advertisingnetworks in Adsense stopped advertising since the beginning of April. Years after years they where advertising and since the boycott they are gone. It influences other bids too because of lower competition. In the meanwhile Google adjust the algorithms si they won't miss to much revenue and the publishers are :-)

[ember]

By the way I've noticed some advertising networks in Adsense stopped advertising since the beginning of April. Years after years they where advertising and since the boycott they are gone.

[phys.org ]

"Google parent Alphabet on Thursday reported strong gains in quarterly results, beating most market forecast....The results did not appear to show a major impact of an ad boycott of Google's YouTube earlier this year."

[Ironside]

Wow! I have just hit the £2 mark :-) this time yesterday I was up to about £12.

@:Koan put it this way, my average hit rate at the moment each day is probably between 2400 & 2700. An average day's earning is about £6. Yesterday was into double figures which nowadays I would consider very good. Three years ago I didn't get anywhere near dropping into single figures, in fact, I will be really annoyed if earnings were below £15. Things have really gone downhill. But this is nothing we can do about it, we just got to do what we can to keep our websites higher up in the search rankings.

I was reading about a recent Google update which has affected some websites. I decided to check one of my major keywords on one of these websites that tells you where you rank on Google. For quite a long time now and other website with exactly the same niche as my has been residing about two spots above me. When I checked today I now above them. I don't know how long it's been like this for, but it may improve my Google earnings, will just have to wait and see

[NickMNS]

@Mr_Jefe your are correct. Unless, you have made some specific changes and are not sure if they are implemented correctly, you should simply turn off the AdSense screens. Check it once a week or so and that is it. Staring at your screen will not make you earn more money, and on down days it will make you feel like crap for no reason. Turn it off!

In the meanwhile Google adjust the algorithms so they won't miss to much revenue and the publishers are :-)

Google is publisher agnostic. (obviously not the case for spammy publishers but we will assume here that all publisher are "tremendous") Whether an ad shows and/or is clicked on one publisher's screen versus another is completely irrelevant in Google's eyes. They will still get paid the same the cut. Now advertisers on the other may or may not care (personalized vs contextual ads). Those that care have a specific interest in having their ads appear on your site and will pay more to show it there. Yes, you may say but some sites command a higher price for their clicks, so Google would prefer to show more of those pages. Not really, the reason the price is high is because demand is high and supply is limited. So if Google suddenly tweaks the algo to show more high paying pages then supply increase but not demand and the price comes down.

So really it is the advertisers that drive the price, if there is no interest on the part of advertisers in your site then there is nothing Google can do to change that. The only thing you can do is to reduce inventory to make up for the lack of demand.

I'm not sure that replacing some Adsense content with other ad networks is really the answer. If you feel that Adsense is not delivering than you would be far better served by replacing all the ad units with the other network. Holding two auctions in parallel will certainly lead to a less than optimal outcome on both.

[Halaspike]

@Mr_Jefe yeah many are still making a killing out of it but the fact still remains, adsense is not what it used to be. If you were making $1000 a day with adsense back in 2008 & you're presently making $300 a day yeah you're still making a killing but not like before.

[Mr_Jefe]

@Halaspike
I agree it's not what it used to be. However, dwelling on the past neither benefits today nor tomorrow.

[Samsam1978]

Bad may start here, terrible April. Down £200 my affiliate saved me. I am about £20-30 down a day since April 1st

[Squarix9]

April was awful. Made some changes, and May seems to be back to my old earnings so far...fingers crossed that it's a good month!

[csdude55]

I'm happy for you guys that are seeing a May bump!

For me, April was a record low that didn't come close to paying the bills by a LONG shot, and so far May is slightly less. We're not allowed to give real numbers, but I'll say this: Adsense paid all of my bills for many years, but April was less than 1/3rd of what it was in 2014 or 2015.

I'm not even joking, I've been seriously trying to come up with an alternative line of work, JUST in case. A few more months like April... my Capital One card will be maxed out, my 15 year old business will get downgraded to a hobby, and I'll have to start spending my evenings flipping burgers at Wendy's or something.

[Samsam1978]

Its a grim thought for us all. I was also thinking the same. I was down but my affiliate was 3 x ups from last year so allowed me to pay the staff. Yes, it is an awful thought of having to get a job for someone else, lets hope things pick up this month.

[Halaspike]

I have a feeling low earnings are caused by the zombie traffic google keeps sending nowadays and not your content, ad implementation or adsense configuration.

I say this because the little traffic i get from bing and yahoo converts like crazy.

[andymorris]

Traffic is exploding for the last few days, but click rate is still very low for me. As is CPC. But here it's basically two dead weeks with 2 three day weekends.