September trends

For those with a short memory

[darkmage]

I've been here a while now and it's beginning to feel like Ground Hog Day. Around similar times of the year many sites see a *temporary* downturn in earnings. Late June to End of September is very bumpy, so is late December to early Feb. There are winners and losers, but fluctuations are normal, particualarly in those two periods I mentioned. Have alook through the archives and you'll see lots of posts. It's not unique to this year. I'd be willing to bet that we see lots of "October best-ever" posts in a few weeks time.

Here are some for the month of September (from 2004):

Arbitrary AdSense revenue reduction?
Revenue cut by 75% on Sept 16 - no explanation
[webmasterworld.com...]

First monthly decline
[webmasterworld.com...]

What's your lowest revenue day in September?
[webmasterworld.com...]

Smart pricing update every quarter?
[webmasterworld.com...]

[con771]

Yeah Sept has left me scratching my head in disbelief.
I'm at a loss what to do...Keep working harder and harder I guess.
Right now I'm down about 40%

Hard pill to swallow
Oh WEll, back to the battle

[makes a little sense]

Gives new meaning to the phrase There's always safety in numbers

[indias next no1]

i am getting down from Aug 19th and september is too worst. nearly 50 % down

[moneyraker]

I wonder if G is also experiencing a down trend in September, or in any 'season', for that matter.

[howiejs]

Google disclosed that their was seasonality in their business- and the stock market reacted poorly to it -- I can't remember when they announced this (summer)?

[kartiksh]

Aug05 was high and Sept 05 is back to normal till now but today's earnings on stats are much higher all Sept and if trend continue it might end up highest day in last 45 days.
[PS: Yesterday i changed hosting to my own vps of this site]

[Buford]

August was abysmal for me, but I had a record day yesterday. September so far is my best month ever.

[kartiksh]

Finally this amazing day ended last 300 days best for me!

[uhwebs]

So fare Sept is my best month.... but then I've only just started really getting into Adsense and learning about it. It keeps improving and I hope it will continue indefinately.... :)

[mzanzig]

I see a constant decline after August 10th - down to May level. September started as bad, but alas the decrease seems to have stopped by now. Seeing flattening of the decline. Too early to speak of a major turn, though.

BTW, this seems more related to Adsense itself - CTR and EPC seem to vary much more these days - instead of traffic. No site changes, just little changes in Google SERPs, almost steady traffic with occasional hits by the holidays in the US.

I will need a small miracle to get this month at least to August level, revenue wise.

[Swebbie]

You have to be careful assigning too much relevance to early September stats, especially this year. Labor Day is a big holiday in the States and surely affects things every year. But this year you have to add the double whammy of Labor Day + Katrina. I'm ignoring the first 6 days of Sept. Good thing I am, too, because the last 2 days have been very nice! LOL

[ann]

And there are more storms heading our way in Florida...I will be glad when this hurricaine season is over!

Maybe then earnings will stablize somewhat...or is that just wishful thinking? ;-)

Ann

[lilyfr2k]

Sept is my best month ever. CTR stays the same, but eCPM increases 25%. Very nice Adsense!

[TheDonster]

Labor day weekend was the worst earnings weekend I've ever had. Plus I just re-designed the ad layout prior to that weekend so this compounded the poor earnings. I removed 3K banner footers and left only the leaderboard site-wide and saw EPC go up almost 70% for those pages. However, I'm just starting to see the results increase over the last few days due to a sluggish ctr now returning to normal. It seems a lot of regular advertisers have suspended their campaigns this month, at least in my niche. I'm sure Sept. will be average with the next couple of months steadily increasing for the X-mas frenzy.

[pescatore]

"Sept is my best month ever"
here too ,both adsense & affiliates

[foxtunes]

A technology site I'm involved in has seen a 25 percent decline in traffic since start of september.

When do most kids and students return to school/college in the states? Is it the 12th of september?

[endomorph1]

Last two days have been some of the worst and I don't know why. G has finished dancing and my indexed pages has just trebled from 5300 to 15,700.

Traffic is roughtly the same though.

[europeforvisitors]

Late June to End of September is very bumpy, so is late December to early Feb.

Seasonal dips and peaks can vary by topic. A site about Christmas widgets will probably lose most of its traffic and revenues in January, while a Spring Break travel site may get busy as college students begin to think about sunshine, beer, and beach volleyball.

September is usually a pretty good month for my European travel site, since a lot of my readers take fall vacations, but I'll almost certainly experience a slump in November and early December when people are thinking about Santa instead of Sintra.