August 2018 AdSense Earnings & Observations

$0.02 CPC, Clawbacks and 50% Revenue Drops

[andymorris]

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System: The following 14 messages were cut out of thread at: https://www.webmasterworld.com/google_adsense/4909075.htm [webmasterworld.com] by martinibuster - 1:36 pm on Aug 2, 2018 (utc -5)

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I've had days the last couple of days that had 0.02 CPC. 0.02 ! When my average the past years was .10. I mean, it's never been so low. Yet, Google was kind enough to raise to CTR so that i earnt more or less the same each day.

I've said it in the past, but i'm pretty sure Google just give you whatever money they want and adjust those numbers accordingly.

[lakybel]

Google update their algorithms.. most of big website , their traffic is dropped.. so adsense earning may this months be dropped

[Sillysoft]

Yes but the explanation for the update is weird. Google said if your traffic dropped its not your fault. Its just them rewarding other sites that werent rewarded before. My buddies sites that I sold him has took off since the update went into affect. But my sites all have dropped. Its crazy how these updates work. Google said they are still rolling out, so hopefully after they are done things will settle down and get back to normal. If not, then Im done, Im actually done. Had a 15 year run with no problems. Scary to think its over.

[lakybel]

still there is an ambiguity about this update.. most of rank website; their position is still changing

[MayankParmar]

Kind Google sent me payment for June 2016 again. Thanks, big G.

[hindifun]

I too got a mail twice today that they have sent a payment on July 21, 2016.

[Bobb11]

Me same. June 2016 and July 2016

[RedBar]

I only got the June 2016 one however it has to make one wonder if G can make such a stupd error as this, just how "clever" is their supposed reward update?

[robzilla]

Same, June and July. I guess we're getting paid twice!

My buddies sites that I sold him has took off since the update went into affect.

Ouch. I had that too, in 2004, when I sold a site to a friend when it was getting ~4k/uniques per day. Less than half a year later, with no changes made to the site, it was at 6k, then 8k a little later. It's a nice, instant sum of money when you sell for, say, 2 years of revenue, but it's nothing compared to the amount I would have made over 10 years. Haven't sold a site since then :-)

[nomis5]

About the June payment, isn't the link on the email spam?

[robzilla]

No, it's legit. Only AdSense has this e-mail address, and the links point to google.com.

[lakybel]

may be payment old closed account or closed channels youtube...

[MayankParmar]

I don't understand how someone can do such a blunder...

[RedBar]

may be payment old closed account or closed channels youtube...

Not for me, nothing closed and never had a YouTube account.

[lakybel]

ah ok, so it seems to be an erreur of calculator earning,..by the way, that's good..congratulations !

[Dhillon]

I hope the glitch is deep and google actually send us the payment. I used to make a lot more back then.

[Halaspike]

I got a payment email today, i think it's a mistake tho lol.

[MayankParmar]

scenes if we actually receive the payment again.

[bugthinker]

GA, what's going on with you lately? lol :)

[leebow]

We sent a payment for your Google AdSense earnings on Jul 21, 2016.

Has everyone had this email then.

[ember]

Non-clickable, fluffy white cloud ad is back, just like last August 8.

[NickMNS]

@ember I was suspecting something like that but I haven't seen any show up. I see a lot of other low quality spam ads, green buttons and ED ads.
@leebow yes those emails have been going around. It is an error on Adsense's part. There is thread dedicated to the topic I believe. Nothing to worry about.

[westcoast]

Our earnings started off the month fine. On the 6th they plummeted. Today they took another huge plummet.

Lower across the board -21% impressions, -17% RPM, -10% CPC, etc etc...

Anyone else seeing this? This tends to happen on the first few days of a quarter, but suddenly appearing on Aug 8 is very weird.

[Mentat]

For me, the daily earnings are 30% less than May, so it means that I will close the site soon.
The payment is lower and lower each month.

On another level, there are no more fake green download buttons. This is really strange.
The ads are really clean!

[Sillysoft]

My earnings have dropped drastically. In fact yesterday I saw I got 1 or 2 clicks in like 6 hours. This morning Im seeing clawbacks. It would show Im making money, then its gone. Also, Im apart of the first user beta program and a few days ago it says Im at risk of not being in this program with a warning symbol under high quality clicks. However when I view their recommendations to fix this it says no recommendations available. However there is a link to some information about this and it mentions ad placement. But Im not being told what sites and what ads are not in the proper place. Adsense support did get back to me on another issue and they verified that someone else is looking at it but said I should get a response yesterday. It never came. Gonna try contacting them again today. I think this is part of the issue of why Im not earning as much.

[Sillysoft]

Was able to actually chat with someone from adsense support. The good news is there is nothing wrong with my account. They said CTR is stable, CPC hasnt dropped, after looking at it Im losing traffic from my desktop version. Talk about being broad... Obviously less visitors, less potential of earnings. Momma mia! The cool thing is Adsense support is willing to go deep to try and help you.

[CommandDork]

Ya, adsense support has been extremely helpful for me when I've needed them. Good peeps there.

[NickMNS]

@Sillysoft

They said CTR is stable, CPC hasnt dropped, after looking at it Im losing traffic from my desktop version.

I don't see how this is particularly insightful. One should be able to observe this directly from the reports in your account.

In your previous post you stated:

My earnings have dropped drastically. In fact yesterday I saw I got 1 or 2 clicks in like 6 hours. This morning Im seeing clawbacks.

What was their response to that? What did they say about the clawbacks?

[frankleeceo]

My vertical has not really been affected by the latest google update. RPM looks fairly stable to me vs last month, with a slight 5~10% decrease. Traffic dipped 10% due to school starting as well as more competition all around.

I am officially entering into YouTube space combined with my knowledge / skills of sites/SEO. I find that quite bit of my theory / practice coincides with YouTube's best practices touted by the youtube experts, with a few minor differences. With the observation that Google is now giving significantly more weight of Youtube onto SERP for niches that I compete in. it will be my necessary step to remain relevant.

I have avoided to take that step for as long as I could, and now thinking back, I was an idiot.

I will try to see if I could at least make the monetization tier of 4000 watch hours / 100 subscribers by Q4.

My Q3 will be super busy, and hopefully I could take a breather in Q4 and enjoy the fruits of my labor. If one's not moving / adapting /changing...one will be left behind. Competition is no joke.

[scottb]

Frankleeceo, I hate to discourage you, but getting to 1,000 subscribers is a huge amount of work with no guarantee of how long it will take. And then there is the possibility that Google will change the rules in their favor yet again. RPMs are even lower than AdSense.

Still, it's a calculated risk. If you pick the right subject and produce enough quality videos at least every week, you can get there.

[Sillysoft]

@NickMNS I didnt give all the details of what they said, since its specific to my account. But they did dive a lot further with specific. With regards to not getting a lot of clicks and clawbacks, they said it was actually normal for my account. I just dont notice because I wasnt monitoring my account like I have been recently. But they said Im not in any violation. They also said the message I got about the user first program can be ignored. They said sometimes it does this where it gives these warnings without a reason and that is what happened here. So I am not at risk of being dropped out of the program, though I was surprised to hear they said it doesnt affect my performance or earnings. Then whats the program about?

But the gist of it is, I lost traffic and its mainly from my desktop site. After looking at the reports and my ads, I realize I need to get back to the basics and start rebuilding.