Earnings are down..did you get hit with smart pricing?
I got hit with smart pricing couple months ago. If i didnt i would be making $300-400 a day. Now its half of that.

I got hit with smart pricing couple months ago. If i didnt i would be making $300-400 a day. Now its half of that.

I read about smartpricing but how to know you are beeing hit, anything other than lower revenues?

ArtistMike,

I feel your pain. Same thing happened to me, same s*** different numbers.

Ann

I am not sure it is only smart pricing. It is that AND the fact that Google wants people to run ads on their site, and they want them to pay much more for doing that, and they don't really care that much about the little web sites. They have allowed people to choose to run ads for MUCH less money on the small web sites and have forced people to increase what they pay to run on Google Search Results. That is what I think is driving down the profits for the small web sites.

It is not in Google's interest to care about the little web sites when they can take 100% of the money that gets generated by ads on their own site. So they are using the little web sites as a "loss leader" ... a way to get people with ad money into the system, but their real profit is when those people pay to have their ads on Google Search Results and their Partners. Not the little web sites.

People are now having to pay 50 cents to get ads on Google Search Results when they were paying 5 cents for both the Search Results and the small web sites. I wonder who is getting that money now? The little web sites?

Why would you pay 50 cents to run ads on some small web site when you can pay that same 50 cents to run your ad on Google. If you have to pay 50 cents to run your ad on their system, there is really no reason to run your ad on the small web sites. Plus Google does nothing to stop Click Fraud, Scraper Sites, Spam Sites, so why buy into such a system with your ad money?

The small sites are the poor step child in this system. Getting the left overs ... if there are any.

My bottom line is that I no longer work to increase anything from AdSense. I put all my efforts into my other revenue streams.

AdSense ROI doesn't add up...

When an advertiser runs an AdWords campaign they can now specify separate bids for search resuts and ads on content sites that display AdSense. A lot of advetisers have adjusted down their bids on the content side. I know because keywords that cost me .50 to 1.00 per click on search can be had for .10 per click on the content side. Perhaps the search would have a better conversion, but many advertisers are getting great traffic off the content side for relatively little money. You just have to play both sides.

Google has decided to cut the small sites lose and raise the prices for their own Search system... thus you can see what they really think of the small sites. We are not worth that much to them.

gabby,

Sure is alot of complaining in the adwords forum about rising costs and qs. Recently, some are commenting on how thier ads are slowing on the content networks side.

If you have a really good site, some related advertisers will start to target it in their campaigns.

I don't see it as being Google's "fault" that some advertisers' sites have been judged to have a low quality score which caused their bid prices to rise because Google would rather provide ads that point to higher-quality sites. While to some it may seem that they are stepping some people's toes, one of Google's key objectives is to provide a good experience to their users.

My site's AdSense earnings are increasing every month.

If you developed more organic traffic to your site, your earnings should also be increasing.

[edited by: Car_Guy at 10:15 pm (utc) on Sep. 20, 2006]

Right now 90% of my AdWords traffic is coming off content, and the CPC is reasonable. If I had to rely on search my ROI would be in the bucket.

You might want to check out this news report for even more bad news that seems to be looming on the horizon

[smh.com.au...]

Combine the possible downturn in the news about Ford buying out their employees and Chrysler talking about temporarily shutting down some plants soon and it could be a long tight winter for advertisers.

I think PPC is becoming more competitive to the advantage of the advertiser. I've seen my CPC pretty much cut in half in the last year.

[edited by: WallyWorld at 12:47 am (utc) on Sep. 21, 2006]

My bottom line is that I no longer work to increase anything from AdSense. I put all my efforts into my other revenue streams.

AdSense ROI doesn't add up...

I second that...

Well, I have a small site, and I've had the opposite experience from that which the OP and some others have had.

Sept., for example, is on track to outdo September last year by a good 20%. This is almost entirely due to increased EPC! Traffic is up slightly, but CTR is way down (by more than a third) so if EPC hadn't gone up so much I'd be doing worse this year.

Maybe some sectors are not having the same problem.

I've read this threats and seems like most of GA publishers experience a downturn in their revenue.

I have a small site with around 1,000 unique visitors a day, joined GA on Aug 2003.

Here is a brief information for my monthly revenue from GA:
NOTE: $ figures are example, as of August '06 period ending
------------------------------------------------------------
Year 2003 monthly earning $ 1.00 (Joined Aug 2003)
Year 2004 monthly earning $ 1.34 (Monthly up 34% from 2003)
Year 2005 monthly earning $ 2.17 (Monthly Up 62% from 2004)
Year 2006 monthly earning $ 6.53 (Monthly Up 201% from 2005)
------------------------------------------------------------
From 2003 monthly earning, it's already up 6.53 folds.
------------------------------------------------------------

From my personal experience, GA still give me a good ROI, maybe it's because my site is still small and has not reach it's peak hits.
I believe some major parts is because I did some optimization as suggested by members of this forum.

Just for sharing experiences from my account.

If you developed more organic traffic to your site, your earnings should also be increasing.

Not necessarily so. I've done some work recently on my site that has got me promoted from 5 to 3 (sometimes 2) on Google.com. The traffic to the site has increased and you would have thought that there would be an increase in earnings due to clicks from increased genuine organic traffic. That's not happened.

Althought the traffic has incerased, Google has simply cut back the EPC again and again. On good days I would do OK, but in the days that followed the one good day, epc would slide dramatically. No changes to the site, same ads showing. Google just want a bigger cut all the time.

However, the epc and ad quality declined to such a point that I have since removed the ads.

[...My site's AdSense earnings are increasing every month....... If you developed more organic traffic to your site, your earnings should also be increasing.]

******
Unfortunately, that is not always the case. You probably still a lucky one, perhaps you would understand what does it means and happening some months later .... :P

[edited by: GoldenHammer at 11:33 am (utc) on Sep. 21, 2006]

The same thing is happening to me. I've worked hard to increase the content on my site, and it is getting almost 50% more page views than in the same period last year.

Revenue is stable, but the average eCPM has reduced.

Has G actually stated that its strategy is to drive advertisers to search as opposed to content-based sites?

[edited by: Wonderstuff at 12:18 pm (utc) on Sep. 21, 2006]

When I do an excel spreadsheet of my earnings vs. page eCPM, I noticed that earnings is inversely proportional eCPM - for the last 120 or so days. I have put in a lot of effort to optimize my site and increase clicks. The result is that my earnings have gone nowhere. It seems that gg has decided at the beginning of the day how much I will make then adjusts my eCPM to achieve that goal. I am even wondering if I should de-optimize my site to raise my eCPM and keep my visitors on my site longer humm….

Now, I still love and respect gg, however this is an anti-capitalistic business relationship, how am I to remain motivated? Certainly, if one’s partner chooses to bust their buns and market your product legitimately resulting in better performance, they should be rewarded.

AdSenseAdvisor?

[edited by: Edge at 1:53 pm (utc) on Sep. 21, 2006]

Revenue is stable, but the average eCPM has reduced.

Has G actually stated that its strategy is to drive advertisers to search as opposed to content-based sites?

If the content network is in fact becoming cheaper, the effect should be the opposite.

Yes, and to add to what hyperkik said, if Google is doing that, then they have decided to sabotage a significant source of revenue. They started the content network because they wanted to make more money than they could from search alone.

I haven't seen this. I think it must depend at least somewhat on niche.

I have five small sites (by which I mean eight pages or less with 300 visits or less per day) that have been consistently getting between 30 and 70 cents per click for the last four weeks. I don't really know why, and I don't expect it will last. My more heavily trafficked sites are closer to the ten to twenty cents per click range, and that includes a lot of one and three centers.

Just had a quick check of my stats.

The story is evidently different for different people. My traffic this September is approximately double what it was last September and my eCPM is up 16%.

As a result my AdSense earnings this September are just over double what they were in September 2005.

This is all still fairly new to me, and since my site is only in its fourth month with AdSense, I can't go back and determine any patterns beyond that.

We are seeing changes in both directions here. As I understand it, some of the reasons why we can't draw firm conclusions in all this include the wide variety of publishers' site topics, publishers' site quality, publishers' site traffic patterns, publishers' keyword search results, geographic perceived value on the part of AdWords bidders, advertisers' site quality, and advertisers' changing AdWords bids.

Though my income is lower in the first quarter compared to this quarter this year, revenues are still climbing higher compared to previous years

August 2003
August 2004 = 359% increase
August 2005 = 47% increase
August 2006 = 32% increase

Growth is slowing down, but still pretty good growth numbers. I just don't want to make the same mistake I did that led to my being hit by Jagger and seeing Adsense income drop by 80% in September of last year. Keeping everything extra extra clean

Not necessarily so. I've done some work recently on my site that has got me promoted from 5 to 3 (sometimes 2) on Google.com. The traffic to the site has increased and you would have thought that there would be an increase in earnings due to clicks from increased genuine organic traffic. That's not happened.

Althought the traffic has incerased, Google has simply cut back the EPC again and again. On good days I would do OK, but in the days that followed the one good day, epc would slide dramatically. No changes to the site, same ads showing. Google just want a bigger cut all the time.

actually, when I was #103 in my category of 74 million pages, I thought how wonderful it would be if I were in the top ten. That was 2 months ago. Now I'm #7 and wondering... "heck... increase in traffic but earnings not proportional to traffic"...?

Yep.

Seems like the more traffic you get the more clicks get reported and the less PPC.

Or, the same traffic=same clicks=less money. No matter how you twist it, the bottom line is always less money than the same configuration of clicks to traffic.

Sure is a mystery.

Ann

Sure is a mystery.

it's gooooooogle I tell you, goooooooogle!

Yup.

Ann