Is this normal?

I improve my earnings and then they drop back again.

[BeeDeeDubbleU]

Apologies for starting another thread about earnings but I am really puzzled (and disappointed!) with recent Adsense performance. Late last year I tinkered around with my ads and got a noticeable increase. I enjoyed this for two or three weeks then the ads seemed to drop back again.

At the beginning of April I optimised more scientifically and my earnings trebled overnight. This traffic lasted through April and into May but it then started to drop back again. I now find that I am not far ahead of where I was before I made the change.

The table below shows my earnings from December where December = 100.

Dec 100
Jan 85
Feb 86
Mar 66
Apr 192 (when I made the major changes)
May 140 (109 for last two weeks of May)

The major boost in earnings that I achieved in April was sustained for about six weeks then it started to drop back and for the last two weeks I am back to where I started. Does Google reduce your earnings if they see you getting too big an increase? Is there some other explanation?

[icedowl]

You may be experiencing what I'm currently going through - bad ads. Bad targeting and/or plain-vanilla-bad-ads. I've been overrun by "vote for this" or "do this" and "you'll receive that" type ads. I'm currently playing whack-a-mole trying to get some legitimate ads to show. My filter list is growing by leaps and bounds. Yes, I'm well aware of Jenstar's posting about not blocking too much, but the weeds have gotten too thick.

[spaceylacie]

It all really has to do with the way Adwords advertisers are bidding. Just because you tweaked your site and are able to send out more visitors doesn't mean that advertisers can afford to pay for them all. So they lower their bids and still see the same number of visitors... you're getting paid less now...

Spy on the Adwords advertisers sometime, you can learn a lot about Adsense that way.

[BeeDeeDubbleU]

I appreciate this but I am in small niche with very high cost per click and I am only averaging 30 clicks per day. I would have thought it was unlikely that the advertisers were running out of funds at this rate but then who knows?

I just checked and June has started the way May finished so if they are on a new months ad budget it doesn't show :(

[incrediBILL]

For what it's paying, how much time do you spend working on it?

Anything over 10-15 hours/month is less than minimum wage :)

[creepychris]

Incredibill,

Hehe. I think the 100 is not meant as $100 but as a reference to compare relative increase.

[BeeDeeDubbleU]

Well done Chreepychris. At least someone is paying attention :)

100 = 100

$100 = $100