Forum Moderators: martinibuster
I don't think the decline has been a normal fluctation, or growth in adsense-site supply - we also advertise with adwords and this spending has not gone down at all. Plus, the messages on this board indicate to me that while it hasn't affected everyone, it seems to have negatively affected a lot of quality sites (perhaps even the majority). Perhaps there was some adjustment to the earnings calculations that senior management is not fully aware of, but i think it is going to have a negative impact on the future of the adsense program, particularly as competitors like yahoo emerge. More communication and transparency, at the least, would help. Since adsense is such a significant source of Google's profits, it would serve its best interests to communicate with webmasters about these adsense problems. In the short-term, many webmasters who use adsense to supplement their adwords budgets will cut back on adwords. And if such lack of transparency and unexplained declines in earnings continue further, webmasters will continue to tarnish the Google brand and eventually leave adsense. More importantly, the first ones to leave will be the quality publishers as competitors like Yahoo move into this space and cherry-pick the best publishers. Adsense will be left with the made-for-adsense scraper sites.
So I wrote adsense support an email expressing these concerns. i received one reply so far (which wasn't canned, and seemed to be paying attention somewhat), then asked that another message i sent be forwarded to management. Not that my individual email is going to do much, but i think a handful of emails from high-quality publishers like those who frequent this site would actually make a difference.
maybe other folks could also chime in and send a note to adsense? i know for my small business at least, we get concerned when a number of customers send the same complaint. while google is a gorilla, at some point they should be willing to listen.
The point is you are facing the effects of supply and demand. The supply of ads is not keeping up with the demand, even if the demand is growing. As more and more publishers hear about Google's program, it is natural that existing publishers will suffer.
Not everyone is seeing a drop. I've seen a couple of odd dips, usually around the first of the month, but averaged out my earnings are way up.
I'd prefer more consistancy from day to day, but in the end if I make more bucks, I'll live with it.
Maybe this is a zero sum game. If some site's earnings go up, other site's earnings go down.
Often you can negotiate higher then standard offers on affiliate sales after you prove your worth. Google is great for a lot of reasons, but it doesn't work for everyone.
Perhaps experiment with affiliate marking - try cj or linkshare.
M
