A side note about conversion tracking, supposedly the base of Smartpricing: I have made a small suvey on about 30 Adwords advertisers in my country. Only 6 knew what conversion tracking was, and only 1 tried to implement it, but later gave up. Is that the sort of data G relies upon to decide how much should I get? Bah!

Thanks for this statement, frox. I have come to believe that Google is mostly hot air, smoke and mirrors, and the reason they keep such secrecy is because they would be embarrassed to be exposed for such simple-mindedness.

They have and will continue to spout all sorts of nonsense which will affect everybody differently. In the meantime, I will ignore just about every word and continue to work on my site. A day will come when either they or some other mechanism will allow me a reasonable return.

I have not seen such a return since April of 2005, when my Adsense revenue was 40% higher than it is today. When they decide to pay me what I was worth then - including all the work I've done on the site since then - I will sing their praises.

In this current state of secrecy and obfuscation, I give them failing grades on meeting even the most simple rudiments of customer care.

Bah! indeed.

On a more positive note, July will be my best month since February, mostly due to hard work and diligence on my part (building traffic apart from the SERPs).

its doubledup earnings here :-)

My best month ever!
And with that the first month I go over $100 in earnings in one single month.

For all the highs and lows, June and July were my two best months ever.

July continues to be a good month for me, and the numbers--including earnings per click--have been climbing in the past week.

I'm a firm believer in common-sense explanations, and for me, there are two likely reasons why the numbers are headed upward:

1) The World Cup tournament is finished;

2) September is just over a month away, and readers are starting to plan fall trips.

I'm seeing a bigger jump in AdSense revenues than in affiliate bookings at the moment, which is fairly typical of my revenue pattern: Readers click on AdSense ads when they're in the early planning stages, but they tend not to book rooms, cars, etc. until they're closer to departure.

I expect to see AdSense and affiliate bookings improve even more when the current U.S. and European heat wave is over. Right now, it's hard for a lot of people (including me) to think about travel to scorching, steamy cities in Europe or anywhere else.

I started in Adsense in Sept 05 - have increased earnings every month including July, but traffic peaks in summer so I expect to start the downward slope in Aug.

How are people doing who use Adwords to get traffic?