May: +10.93%
June: +3.97%
July: -6.05%
August: -8.86%

Indeed, not up, just down. Perfectly... predictable! And September looks even worse so far.

When all is said and done, after the day-to-day up, down, back and forth variations, whenever I do an (ahem) "analysis," it all boils down to--except for a bit of seasonality--average.

Jim,

you are so right. All one has to do is to increase the number of samples. :-) For example, if you do a 90-day-moving average, each day all of a sudden becomes very predictable (at least on the 90d average).

my 2 cents says there is no middle
you are building content, adding depth to existing or adding new topics
you are gaining or loosing traffic
you are tweaking ad locations, removing or adding ads
your advertisers are coming and going
your seasons are flowing
your network (AdSense) is changing
you competition is gaining on you to loosing to you
and you're trying to find a middle ground to stand on

no middle, no roof, perhaps a bottom if you're really bad.

enjoy :-)

May + 2.69%
June - 9.59%
July - 2.36%
August + 8.37%

These numbers are for a travel-planning site that normally has its highest traffic in May with a secondary summer peak in August. (September will be worse, and AdSense revenues will continue to slip between now and next year's boom season, which will start on or about January 1.)

it's just going down. I think it's because of many ads from spam sites.

My site is getting very stable traffic, over 70% are repeated, so it is a good sample:

May: +8.8%
June: -20%
July: -3.8%
August: +15.07%
September: -23.71% (latest estimate)

Interesting?

I have a graph of past earnings, so knowing how far I deviate from average (whatever that is) is fairly obvious.

I would agree that the excercise is interesting rather than meaningful, as there are just too many factors to consider. In my case I'd have to factor in an improvement in serps where most of my traffic comes from, and a deterioration in ad quality.

But the figures are as below:-

May 2.9% +
June 0.21% -
July 3.6% +
August 5.7% -

The previous five months average was double, and before that was double that. But the trend has been a slow slide into the toilet. Over the four months in question, I've seen the site go from number 5 in serps to number three, and the ads getting spammier and spammier until I removed them a couple of weeks back. The fact that the earnings held up remarkably well is due to an increase in clicks and traffic.

The earnings wasn't part of the decision to remove the ads, but the ads sure were! An increase in serps SHOULD bring about an automatic increase in quality advertisers. However, all I got was the odd one or two real ads, and loads of scrapers. Hopefully Google will improve the quality of it's advertisers one day, and make me proud to have the ads on my site again.

[...The previous five months average was double, and before that was double that. But the trend has been a slow slide into the toilet. Over the four months in question, I've seen the site go from number 5 in serps to number three, and the ads getting spammier and spammier until I removed them a couple of weeks back. .... ]

******
I am not very surprise to learn your story, look like I am going to run into a similar trend.

Now I am ready for an *** EMERGENCY STOP *** of AS for spammer ads or unreasonable earnings or whatever reasons. It would just a ON to OFF switch that completely removes AS codes from all pages from my web site in seconds ..... :P

[edited by: GoldenHammer at 11:52 am (utc) on Sep. 17, 2006]

I love this thread, but don't have enough data to join in properly yet.
I launched my site (and Adsense) late June

May: N/A
June: -95%
July: -41%
Aug: +84%
Sept: +51% (and counting)

Currently I'm a happy bunny ;-)