December 2017 AdSense Earnings & Observations

[james007]

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System: The following 6 messages were cut out of thread at: https://www.webmasterworld.com/google_adsense/4874961.htm [webmasterworld.com] by martinibuster - 11:50 am on Dec 1, 2017 (utc -5)

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November - page views were down by about 5%; earnings were up by over 10%; page RPM up by 15%

[Ironside]

"This month's earnings" are still three times higher than what they should be and have stayed like that for the last 24 hours. I think AdSense have got a gremlin in the system somewhere

[RedBar]

I can't believe you're still hanging in for that minimum payout

Quite simply why leave free money on the table? However that's gone from $10k month to less than $100, if that this month, and if today's so far single click is anything to go by then I doubt I'll get to the minimum in 2018!

[Ironside]

@Redbar I am absolutely astounded that your earnings have dropped from 10k to less than 100 a month. I've dropped down from a peak of £700 a month to an average of around £200 in the last few months. Have you had a look at Google analytics and gone into the real-time section? It will tell you exactly how many people are on your website and it's completely live. You will also see traffic which is coming from organic means and also direct links and social media. Have you ever considered that you don't actually have any real people on your website?

I haven't actually checked lately how many people I get on a daily basis but it was anything between 2000 and 3000. I can expect approximately 50-70 clicks from this amount of traffic each day. Even if you are only getting 1000 people on your site every day getting absolutely no clicks is just not right, something must be wrong.

[nubchai]

Has anyone hit an ad balance setting that's more effective?

[Maleda]

Quite simply why leave free money on the table? However that's gone from $10k month to less than $100, if that this month, and if today's so far single click is anything to go by then I doubt I'll get to the minimum in 2018!

My point was that on the linked post from 2016, you were hanging on in there for the minimum payment back then, surely you haven't been waiting over a year?

[Pistoche]

Optimal ad balance setting will be determined by a lot of factors such as: your website niche, website template/theme, ad placements, country of origin of audience, etc. So what works for someone else won't necessarily work for you.

For example, for one of my sites the optimal setting seems to be 70/100, another one is 50/95, yet another site performs best when I don't touch ad balancer at all. All I can tell you is to test different settings yourself and see what works best for you. Hope that helps, good luck!

[Ironside]

My ad balance has been on 67% for the last few weeks and I'd say that my earnings have improved slightly. I've just dropped it down to 65% and am still on 100% earnings so let's see if that makes any difference.

[puente]

@redbar that's a stunning drop in earnings but how long were you able to hold that? do you think your site actually deserved that commission level or perhaps you were even astounded yourself when you reached it? were you updating the site much, adding content, regular maintenance, etc.?

i'm also down significantly from last year but tbh, i didn't think my site deserved that amount when i got there. now it's more in line with reality.

still, why leave adsense? it may kick back up again, even if not to its past glory.

[Ironside]

30 quid every couple of months is better than nothing every couple of months

[Ironside]

"This month's earnings" has finally dropped down to where they should be

[nubchai]

Thanks Pistoche and Ironside :)

[robzilla]

30 quid every couple of months is better than nothing every couple of months

Not if it means you're spending hours poring over performance reports and complaining about them here. That's a measly hourly rate :-)

[Squarix9]

@Ironside: my earnings are also down, to about half of what they were last year. I have a website about parrots instead of fish, but still we're both in the pet category. Found an awesome IRL job to make up for the lost earnings though, so all is well. :-)

[RedBar]

Have you had a look at Google analytics and gone into the real-time section?

Don't need to, Getty Images are taking action.

that's a stunning drop in earnings but how long were you able to hold that?

For several years.

do you think your site actually deserved that commission level

Obviously Google determined sending me 100,000 PVs per day were legitimate until their illegal image theft!

were you updating the site much, adding content, regular maintenance, etc.?

Corporate brochure sites promoting our OWN products.

Not if it means you're spending hours poring over performance reports

I can assure you that I do not spend very much time going over what Google's FUBARs are, I post my real information here as a warning signal for those who feel that G is the milk mother, it ain't, and I realised that many years ago, Google couldn't give a crap about YOUR business no matter how unique or honest.

Learn one thing right now, Google doesn't give ONE toss about YOUR business other than trying to get you to spend advertising money, it does not care about you, it has absolutely no freakin' interest in you nor your business, it is rapidly turning into one of the most useless, albeit profitable, syphoners of money that has ever existed .. and why, because so many MBAERs buy into this garbage!

[puente]

@redbar valid points and of course these companies don't give a rat's ass about us. it's just that after being attached to the teat for a period of time one forgets that one is as expendable as a piece of toilet paper. i learned that a few years back with amazon associates. at this point my attitude is never depend on it being there forever. today may be the last day.

[csdude55]

I'm still cautiously optimistic... my November was the best month of the year (which isn't saying much because the rest of the year has been almost 1/3 of the previous year), and so far the Page RPM for December is even better!

So far, Dec 1-6 is 6% higher than Nov 1-6, even though pageviews are down by 3.6%.

And Dec 1-6, 2017 is 19.3% higher than Dec 1-6, 2016, even though pageviews are down by 15.7% (eek! gotta figure out what's up, that's a pretty big decrease in traffic).

[RedBar]

@Maleda

surely you haven't been waiting over a year?

Sorry, I missed your question.

No, that was just one specific site and herein lies a cautionary tale. At that time all my sites had been converted to html5 and only two remained under my old template design. I generally use Firefox with its ad blocker enabled and it was whilst checking my AdSense stats one day that I noticed that the other site using my old design was also not getting any earnings from its 728 x 90 leaderboard even though Google was showing PVs and Impressions running into the thousands.

That, I thought, was very strange since that used to be my best-earning position yet now it was showing nothing so I checked the two sites in other browsers and, lo and behold, no ads were being displayed! I quickly checked the source code and there was my AdSense code so what was going on?

It would seem that, at some point and I have no idea when, Google decided to stop serving ads to that particular code which I had uploaded in 2010 yet still continued to count PVs and Impressions even though they were not serving the ads. As soon as I replaced that code with the responsive AdLink code it displayed ads.

Did I miss a notice from Google that this code would no longer display ads? I don't think so and I'm fairly sure that if there had been a notice that someone would have said something here.

Nevertheless it looks as though this month will be my first-ever time of not reaching the minimum since AdSense began, it's been looking that way for the past couple of years however the end of November and the start to December has been horrendous and with the new Google localisation SERPs my traffic has, once again, been slashed by the all-knowing Behemoth.

[allhearts]

10 hours into the day here and so far it's horrendous, worst day in Months by far.

[kegnum]

For me the RPM... when seen as the average I make per person.. not over all... has been going down since 2014. Though the last few months have been exceptionally horrible. I am making about 2/3 money as last year but with 2x the traffic and a much more aggressive ad placement..

Another concerning thing is that every year since 08 rpm/cpc/ctr and over all money has gone up starting in mid october through mid jan. This year there was little to no change.

I still make more than i need to live and pay bills.. but it does not look good.

I should also mention that I make about 50% of my income from affiliate offers which are preforming the same has they have for years. No drop in income there. So its not my traffic or my sites.

[Ironside]

Yesterday was very good, today isn't too bad because it's only 10:30 AM on the East Coast of the US and 11:30 AM Midwest. The best time of the day for me seems to be between 7 PM and 12 AM US time. So really, I'm never too worried if I've not got very far by the afternoon here in the UK.

[allhearts]

Affiliate offers kegnum?

Would love to have other ads running alongside adsense on my sites, any susgestions?

Thanks.

Eddy

[MayankParmar]

I'm planning to but ads from the network that pays in Bitcoin. Should be fun and apparently better than AdSense :D

[Ironside]

I reckon bitcoins are too good to be true. I keep seeing fantastic stories about people who bought them and how much they are worth now. Not sure I'm going to buy into all these stories.

[nomis5]

More than a few have be tricked when buying BitCoins and lost their total investment. Be careful who you buy from and just as important who you sell to.

Ethically, I'm not into participating in any network like BitCoins. Many owners of them are simply trying to launder money.

[nomis5]

It would seem that, at some point and I have no idea when, Google decided to stop serving ads to that particular code which I had uploaded in 2010 yet still continued to count PVs and Impressions even though they were not serving the ads.]

Thanks for that RedBar, some of my ad code is ancient, I must check the older ones out.

[robzilla]

Learn one thing right now, Google doesn't give ONE toss about YOUR business

Everybody knows that. You're in business with them, not in bed. It's clear from all the name-calling that you're carrying a major grudge and taking all of this way too personally. Like bad-mouthing an ex-girlfriend (for years on end) just because she didn't want to be with you anymore. It's all especially pointless with a company that relies mostly on algorithms and data to make decisions; the algorithms don't care because they can't. Maybe it's time to take a look in the mirror. You lost traffic to Google Images*, maybe relying on that traffic was a shaky business model (be glad you profited when you did). Your ad slots stopped working? Maybe you messed something up on your end; plenty of sites still run the old ad code. (Also, link units aren't ads). You were smart-priced? Clearly, Google doesn't like the traffic you present it. I don't need you to get into that, my point is that everyone's always so convinced they're not at fault, but I have yet to see a case of smart-pricing or long-term lost rankings that wasn't justified, so yours probably is, too. You can call UNFAIR! and bad-mouth Google 'til the cows come home, but to what end, and who would want to listen to that? Only the people who also carry a grudge. We don't need "warning signals" for the same reason we don't need them every time we cross the street; we're well aware of the environment we're in, and behave accordingly.

* A service that you call "illegitimate", but it's been considered fair-use by all court cases I'm aware of.

[Ironside]

Maybe it's just a case that a certain website like what red bar runs become obsolete and maybe other people are offering more up-to-date stuff which is why people may be leaving us soon as they arrive. I don't know, just a theory.

My niche will remain fairly strong as long as people are still interested in the subject. My website has been running since 2006. When I started there were two other websites with exactly the same niche, now there is only one and they have dropped well down the rankings when I checked a few days ago for the major keyword. Even though I've not really done a lot of updating on my website my keywords remain very strong. I'm not actually into keeping these type of pets any more but the money comes in handy which is why the website is still running. If the time comes when the money drops to a point where it's not paying for my expensive server then I will scrap the website. I've been meaning to create another website dedicated to my favourite hobby. I reckon that could bring in some money in time. And because it won't have a forum I could get away with a much cheaper hosting package.

[robzilla]

It's all market-driven, supply and demand, across all industries.

Pets are somewhat of an evergreen topic, but I would imagine it would get more difficult to maintain if you are no longer as invested in the topic as you once were. So if you can do something with that favorite hobby, I'd say go for it! You're in a great position to know what your users want.

[Cyril TechWebsites]

Guys! I want to ask US citizens if it's possible that are here on forum. What's happening right now in USA with fires? Could it cause a drastic CTR drop on my website? (US traffic is a general channel for my website)

I changed the theme recently (from 1-st December) and since then my CTR dropped drastically (more than 50%). On the other hand it happened exactly since the day when fires in California started (by the way - California is a main part of traffic for my website from US). Niche - IT and tech tips and tutorials.

Does someone noticed the things started bad with Adsense since 1-st December or the problem is with the theme change? Would appreciate for answers.

[frankleeceo]

@Cyril, it should not matter unless your site tailors to that specific region in california. It is a big state you know.