What's worse is seeing $5 drops here, $3 drops there AND then seeing $300-$400 clawbacks at the end of the month.
I'll tell you what is the worst case scenario. But first let me say that one is stressing for nothing by focusing on the clawbacks, specially the real-time clawbacks. It is abundantly clear that the amount shown on the AdSense dashboard are "Esitimated Earnings". In otherwords subject to change. The money was not yours, it never was and it never will be. It is like going to a store and seeing a product on sale for $100 or 50% off the manufacturers suggested retail price. Wow what a deal, the only thing is that the item has never sold for the MSRP so the 50% off is really meaningless. If the next shop is selling the same item at 80$ (60% off the MSRP) then one would be over paying for the item buy purchasing it at 50% off. Overpaying by 20%.
This Jedi mind trick is called Anchoring Bias. See here: [
en.wikipedia.org...]
Now there is a reason to stress the bigger month end clawbacks, and that is that these can be sign a bigger issue that needs to be addressed, mainly invalid click activity.
Assume that Adsense didn't take the clawbacks, the simply let invalid activity pass giving the publisher the benefit of the doubt. That would work if the clawbacks are small and infrequent, but at some point the cost of the clawbacks would be such that the AdSense would need to act. The only action remaining is to suspend the account, the worst case scenario.
So for each time you see a clawback, one can think off it as positive, because that last clawback could have been the straw that broke the camels back and caused your account to be shutdown.
Now after this rant I'm going to check my account to find that AdSense clawbacked half my earnings (lol - schadenfreude)
