Forum Moderators: martinibuster
It's barelly even worth using them anymore...anybody has an alternate source of income for publishers? How about cj.com?
Bruno
But now...
Heck, I can't even see any ads across 15 websites right now. Looks like their adserver is on the blink again.
One of my adsense pages looks like this:
<snip>
I would agree that my site is low quality, was built by myself in 2001...
But it never affected my earnings before, regardless of how pretty the site is...
Anybody want to share what pages are getting low earnings so maybe we can gauge what they mean by good or bad quality.
Bruno
[edited by: Jenstar at 12:50 pm (utc) on April 22, 2005]
[edit reason] No URLS as per TOS, please! [/edit]
Anybody want to share what pages are getting low earnings so maybe we can gauge what they mean by good or bad quality.
I believe they look at the conversion rate data that the adwords advertiser gets from their site.
If a high percentage of your traffic converts into business then you may get a bigger portion of the pie. Quality in Google's case isn't subjective (ie aesthetics or usability) and is more likely an automated quality measure like conversion rate.
Over the 2 years or so that I have had adsense on my sites I have experienced 2 30-40% drops in revenue that I believe were smart pricing adjustments. I never recovered the CPC (or eCPM) but I did recover the earnings through a higher number of impressions.
What I don't understand is how clicks, ctr, cpm and earnings all hit new, unprecedented highs a week ago, stay at or near that level for 6 days, then plummet like the proverbial rock. Less clicks, lower CTR, lower cpm, lower eanrings - like a third of what they were a week ago.
I'd just like a little taste of stability, just a little, instead of these wild swings which make no sense whatsoever.
What I don't understand is how clicks, ctr, cpm and earnings all hit new, unprecedented highs a week ago, stay at or near that level for 6 days, then plummet like the proverbial rock. Less clicks, lower CTR, lower cpm, lower eanrings - like a third of what they were a week ago.
Depending on site specifics, that could be explained by a big spending advertizer or two cutting back on bids or dropping out of the content network.
Or adjustments to the Smart Pricing algorithm that overshoot, with the next adjustment overshooting in the other direction?
I tend to think you need to look at entire months if you're going to find real long-term trends. There's too much daily and weekly up and down...
March 04 to March 05
Ads Served UP 30% up 149K units
Clicks on ads UP108% up 10k clicks
Revenue Down-40%
Pd Per Click Down-71%
Last year March getting a quarter per click
This year seven cents per click.
Will see what will be next.
Yesterday system WAS quite slow.
It could mean new filter (smart pricing) is
on the start phase.
Let's wait couple more days.
Actually trying to suck out those 2 cents clicks
by starting my own Adwords campaign.
But it really looks like I still need to spend
20-30 cents per click to be shown on pages
where I'm ACTUALLY making 2-5 cents per click in Adsense.
Funny story. :(
But I think this time it's over. Time to find a new way to generate income...I've been trying www.cj.com for the past few days, 291 impressions ( all organic traffic ), 5 clicks $0 payout...
There must be some alternative to adsense. Anybody know other solutions?
Affiliate marketing is a good substitute (and a good supplement) to AdSense, but there's a long learning curve. Here's a hint: CJ has a lot of dogs, even programs with high EPCs. Look for companies fitting your website subject who run their own programs.
I'd just like a little taste of stability, just a little, instead of these wild swings which make no sense whatsoever.
Become a premium publisher with a CPM deal. :-)
In theory, Google could offer a CPM option to mom-and-pop publishers (not just to the megamillion-impression-per-day crowd), but such an option would have to pay less because Google would be assuming more of the risk than it does with the present model. In practice, such an option isn't likely to happen because it could be abused too easily by unscrupulous, incompetent, and/or lazy publishers.
[edited by: Woz at 7:45 am (utc) on April 25, 2005]
[edit reason] TOS#4 [/edit]
Say there is an "a-list", premium publisher, one who has been on the program since the beginning, like for eg., EFV's site.
Then an adverstiser (with a big budget) tracks their prime conversions coming from a site like his, and communicates to G that they will keep spending good $ if they can keep the relationship with EFV as a publisher. G obliges the advertiser and gives EFV a bigger portion of the profit to keep them in a key publisher--advertiser relationship.
Then G obviously has to get the extra profit that they give to EFV (in the form of higher eCPM) from a finite pool of revenue. Which would mean that there is then that much less revenue in the pool to go to other publishers.
So then, all of the publishers who are not on the a-list, (such as my hypothetical example of EFV) would notice a decline in eCPM and $. From there, they start an endless conjecture about what the causes may be, such as SmartPricing, etc. ad infinitum. This is why most people will claim that their income is declining, while there are those few who say that profits are going through the roof.
But the real reason is that G is simply dishing out more moolah to the prime publishers to keep its prime advertisers happy. This all makes the most sense to me. Which is G's bread and butter -- a little site with 1k page impressions a day and avg conversions, or a big site (like EFV) with a good niche, loads of targeted traffic and excellent conversions in a competitive area. It makes sense that G will do whatever it takes to grease the palms of these publishers over all else.
[Of course this is also yet another addition to endless theorizing, since G will never reveal its pricing/payout scheme, we will never prove or disprove these notions.]
I have a page that's going crazy right now (see my post about having a blog featured on TV), and it's been interesting to see the ads change in response to the traffic.
For instance, ads for "Discount Widgets" were replaced within 24 hours of the traffic spike with ads for "Deluxe Widgets." I saw this change across the board, and my guess it is that it is due to the high number of conversions (the targeting was/is really bang on!).
I've noticed other ads which *seem* to pay a different amount for clicks on the same ad (imaginary price 1=88 cents, imaginary price 2=5.88), which I theorize (in all my ignorance) may be because of a customer sent via my site makes an actual purchase rather than just browsing. Is G's system that dynamic, or am I full of it (again)?
Anyway, I'm enjoying my ride with "deluxe" ads while it lasts!
You can easily have a drop in EPC and still have a bigger check at the end of the month.
Those spikes from media or prominent temp links can really be fun to watch, and you never know where they will pop up.
Enjoy the ride!
I'm not sure what happened since the 18th, but there have been no changes on my part, no drop in impressions, but I'm earning less than half of what I was, CPC.
I'm gonna just ride it out and see what happens, but this has definitely taught me that adsense isn't something I can depend on. I think before I would ever consider making a career out of something like this, I would have to wait until I was consistantly earning 3X my current salary, haha.
Cheers.
Half the revenue, been like this for close to a full month now, don't get your hopes high for a rebound...
Google's SERPs changed quite a bit after March 23 (at least for some topics). If your AdSense numbers started declining around that time, search referrals could be part of the reason.
Also, there was a thread somewhere else on WW (it may have been in the Supporters Forum) about a slow April. If e-commerce sites are having a sluggish month, that's likely to translate into lower bids and budgets for AdWords/AdSense.
Pretty disgusted with the whole thing. Waiting for an alternative service that respects publishers.
Never trust anybody who says "trust me."
CTR drop which is weird
