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YPN's earnings have been dwindling at a rate of 10 to 25% per month for the majority of publishers. Within the next 4 months earnings may go down to that of Adsense according to the trend experienced by most YPN beta testers.
Do you think the honeymoon is over for you? For me I have 2 months to match my old Adsense earnings if this downward trend continues.
I feel sorry for international publishers who are still waiting for YPN.
Oh, and Yahoo stock is taking a lot of beating in the stock exchange.
What is next? Microsoft? ... maybe ... maybe not.
I figured out why this is happening:
my example pages are now showing appropriate ads which pay 1/10th what the random ads were paying. That's why the ctr is going up. My pages are really only worth pennies compared to dollars when the targeting is correct. Oddly it is the same epc as what adsense thought they were worth :(
I may as well switch back to adsense since the CTR is double there and I don't have to worry about foreign visitors.
The honeymoon is over - I'm wishing for crappy targeting now.
I'm wishing for crappy targeting now
I have one new site with crappy targeting but still gets the low click thing. I think YPN lowers all ads at the same time regarding the targeting.
Very sad to see money floating away. :(
It does seem like earnings have gone way down (I bumped them up a bit by using their targeting thingy -- that does seem to help a bit), but on the other hand, Yahoo are still feeling their way into it so I'll give them a chance.
I do wish they'd offer an "alternative ad" option like AdSense does, though. I do get quite a few foreign visitors, and it would be nice to not totally lose that potential income.
JK
Since mid-Dec I have been running YPN on odd days and AS on even days on my forum site and AS is now handily outperforming YPN.
I am in the exact same boat as you.
My prediction is right on the mark.
YPN CTR is less than 1/5 of Adsense.
But, YPN Total average earnings per day is almost *double* Adsense even WITH the abysmal CTR.
I admit that I've been dissing YPN a bit due to the horrid CTR. I probably should have looked at actual earnings vs. Adsense a little more carefully.
It's still peanuts, 'cause I'm not moving my most profitable site to YPN yet due to overall ad quality, but it's interesting to see that it does seem to be beating Adsense for the last few months.
But I sure would like to see one now with CPM down 70% for a week now from a fairly steady 5 months.
I have almost identical drop in adsense cpm so I think it must be something like general advertising cutbacks in the software sector. Any one else agree with this theory?
Something I did notice.. The second ad block on some of my pages was showing different ads for the first time. Until now they've always been duplicates, which is to say the second ad block would simply repeat the ads shown in the first. Yesterday for about an hour or so (very early) I noticed that the second ad block held unique ads. As far as I can tell it only lasted for about an hour and then the layout reverted back to showing duplicate ads again. Immediately after this my targeting went all the way south and at this point doesn't seem to have recovered.
If you blinked you would have missed it. That's how quickly it came and went.
It's almost getting to the point where it's worth the effort to deal with adverisers directly.
Expecting record earnings today.
Isn't this fun?
I will have AWESOME days, and then days with a 1/3 of the profits with virtually the same amount of clicks.
I've come up with somewhat of a theory as of why:
Ive noticed that during the morning, ad revenue is huge. I've attributed this to various ads in my targeting category, as the day progresses they dissappear and the earnings dissapear with them and are replaced with general ads.
Also, throughout the week, the ads stop appearing;
I'm assuming this all has to do with advertisers budgets and such.
However, I wish there were more advertisers with higher payouts...
Oh, and I got a little call yesterday from YPN just to see what I thought and what feedback I had. While I generally don't like getting phone calls from things I sign up with, they were more interested in knowing my feedback and what specific improvements I would like to see. I was more focused on reporting improvements/changes, but I should have mentioned... improve the CTR! :)
-Alex
Maybe it is something with the advertising budgeting that is common to many companies.
There are coorelations, at least from members here, that when someones earnings go up, someone elses go down.
As today, you said yours was up 90%, well mine are down 90%.
And before, when many people were reporting low earnings, I was reporting high earnings.
Certain industries might go through ups and downs. Some may become more diluted with publishers, others may have boosts in advertisers... or some may be influenced by season or holidays. Too many factors to effectively compare, except with maybe those that are VERY similar and showing the SAME sets of ads. Those might be relevant to compare... although, they'll likely see a similar effect at the same time. Of course, that's assuming that website specific factors are also the same. The TYPE of users that you get on your site also play into the CTR and thus the CPM, and the looks/layout of your site can also influence numbers.
In summary... too many factors. I only compare my numbers to my other numbers, and even then look for potential trends WITHIN my control.
-Alex
I have a narrow nitch, it is a very small site with less than 20 pages. No, it was not built for Adsense or YPN. This is the fifth year it has been on the web.
The ctr, ecpm, and ppc have been steady during that time, when you consider an entire month compared to an entire month. You can not compare days to days or weeks to week. Advertising budgets are based on many factors, within a month, and fluctuate, as do the effectiveness of ads themselves.
My ctr is steady. My ecpm ranges around $50. Daily earnings on average over the 2.5 months, is almost identical to the first week, at $11.32. That is three times the amount the site earned daily with Adsense.
The total earnings for this tiny little site, for the 2.5 months has been $849.18. YPN and I are still in the honeymoon suite, as far as I am concerned.
I credit this to ads that are highly targeted. This was not the case with another site I tried for a week. The earning dropped in half compared to what the site earned with Adsense. That nitch, the advertising bidding wasn't competitive enough to drive up the cpc, unlike the nitch I have YPN running on still.
I will try more sites, when Yahoo begins to offer EFT payments, supposedly, next month. Getting paid with a check is a stumbling block for me, as I am rarely near my mail box and it has hindered me putting more of my eggs into the YPN basket, because it creates a long delay in getting my money. I need to have the bulk of my earnings coming electronically, net 30, and they do... all but YPN.
I can wait the four to five months it takes me to have the check mailed, get my mail and cash the check for the $300mo earnings this one little site gets. But, putting higher earning sites on, is not really something viable, without the EFT option.
YPN shoul dhave hired half off India and called all their publishers to tell them to switch to AS while we F around with low paying stuff. Or an email would have been nice, not everyone is on these boards 24/7.
