Ask yourself 2 questions.

Are there other similar sites and how many? Too many and your real estate becomes far less valuable. And gets less traffic at the same time. Big problem for your niche as there are hundreds!

And are your visitors techy computer types because these people are less likely to click ads or buy if they do because of age.

[edited by: Genuine1 at 5:34 pm (utc) on Oct. 8, 2006]

In my opinion those ARE pretty low earnings-per-click (EPC).

While I see my fair share of one to three cent clicks (especially as the day progresses), a typical daily average for my site is $0.10-$0.20 per click. Some days are much better and some worse, however, I've never seen my EPC fall to what you are experiencing.

I guess my first question would be, are you getting GOOD ads... ads from real companies offering a real product or service OR are the ads for sites with just a lot of links (MFA)? If so, you should filter them as they're probably the cause of your clicks having low value.

Other questions would be:

Has the EPC ever been better or has the site always performed like this?

Is the ratio of page impressions to clicks outrageous (like 10,000 impressions yeilding only 30 clicks)? If so you might be experiencing the effects of the "smart pricing" algorithm.

Chapman

Chapman, thanks for the constructive feedback.

To answer your questions...

Yes, I have always had these kinds of results with this site. I have another site which gets anywhere between 1$ - 10$ per click.

Do you know if "smart pricing" is based on site, or account?

Also, I just took a look at the ads and it does seem alot of the ads are to really crappy MFA sites. I will start the filtering.

Smart pricing is per account according to conventional wisdom on here. And that seems about right to me too across 12 sites.

MFAs are a problem, and banning them from US, UK and Canada using the preview tool helps my sites enormously. But if you only have these kind of advertisers in that niche then more will appear to fill the void or you may get PSAs in their place. I would do it anyway though!

It was once thought that the company line (Google's) was that smart pricing effects were felt domain wide, however, there are a number of respected Webmaster World contributors who believe it is really site specific.

As usual, we actually know very little for sure.

In any event, if you ARE seeing a lot of MFAs... that really should be your focus. If you haven't already, you might want to consider whether there is anything you can do to "fine tune" your targeting before you try to filter out the entire internet. :-) Things like content adjustments and section targeting have helped me on a number of pages where the "ringtone people" tried to setup camp!

Chapman

[edited by: Chapman at 10:25 pm (utc) on Oct. 8, 2006]

Yes, I have always had these kinds of results with this site. I have another site which gets anywhere between 1$ - 10$ per click.

Do you know if "smart pricing" is based on site, or account?

well this comment has me scratching my head, you say you have one site which gives you 1 cent per click and another which gives you between $ 1 and $ 10 per click and you don't know if smart pricing is based on accounts or sites?

surely those statistics answer the question rotundly.

Not necessarily. That other site could perhaps be worth $1.50 to $15 per click if the SmartPricing factor were removed.

Wait a minute . . . You're getting $1 to $10 per click? What subject matter is worth that sort of PPC? You're not a mesothelioma expert, are you?

Hi DigiChaos,
Is the subject matter of the other site the same?

As far as gaming is concerned, it doesn't look like a high CPC sector and you may be getting what your clicks are worth. Very likely it doesn't have anything to do with SmartPricing or MFAs. More to do with advertising inventory and how much advertisers are willing to spend on the content network.

Games sites pay pretty low, but not quite the figures you show. In your case, it's not games as a topic that is the problem - it's MAME and I'm guessing the ROMs. MAME and the issue of ROMs is on the borderline of copyright infringement. I'm not saying your site is in this category, but it's not exactly the ideal world for an advertiser trying to sell something on this topic.

Good point, darkmage. :)

Also, if your site is one in which visitors come to play games, forget it, pretty obvious your earnings are going to be as low as they can go.

If you're going to be doing a game site at all, your best bet is to do reviews of games, with links to where they can be purchased, supplemented with AS. And that's not saying you're going to make money at it either because the average CPCs look low to begin with.

I seem to have the same situation. Not a gaming site but travel and regional information. I am just getting my site operating and it has been up for about two months. What I am lacking is traffic but here are a sample of my clicks.

2 Clicks earning a total of .05
0
0
1 Click earning a total of .05
11 Clicks earning a total of 6.68, I got real excited
0
5 Clicks earning a total of .71
0
0
1 Click earning a total .03
2 Clicks earning a total of .05

The 60 cent clicks seem to be gone for the last month all I have seen is a few or 1 click per day all at .03 per click. I'm getting a little disapointed. I wouldn't mind the .03 per click if I was getting thousands of visitors. My ctr is above 5% which is average? With my lack of traffic I hate to anything that will drop things any further. I don't know whether to remove one of the two ad blocks I am running on each page or what. Need some imput. Thanks for any help.

Jamie

My travel and local information pages do a lot better than that in terms of CPC. (I don't get any traffic to the travel pages, if that's any consolation.)

My pages are article format, though. Are yours article, or directory, or forum, or other?

I'm guessing that regional information will see different CPCs depending on where the region is. Manhattan may see great CPCs, while Chernobyl may, just possibly, give rather poor CPCs.

I really wish Google wouldn't keep us in the dark about this information. They give us only enough information to keep us informed that we have a site.

Haha, yesterday I got 10 clicks netting me 5 cents! I have to believe that Google is just not showing me some data. IE: Google is telling me that I got 10 clicks. But the system doesn't like 5 of them so they aren't going to give me my penny, but they will take their 1/2 cut of their share.

Martinibuster,
The subject matter for both sites are different.

My site is a mixture of articles, directories and photos. Although I am just up to 30 pages and alot more to go I am just surprised that I started out with clicks that were worth approximately .11 each and now the best I can do is about .025 to .03. Just wondering if anyone had any suggestions. Thanks

Jamie

Not all clicks are CPC, some are from CPM.

The subject matter for both sites are different.

What I thought. You can't create expectations about a site's revenue potential based on the potential of another website in a different niche.

Your situation very likely has nothing to do with smartpricing and everything to do with poor inventory and subject matter. Not your fault, not your website's fault. There may just not be sufficient profit margins to support higher click prices.

I wouldn't mind the .03 per click if I was getting thousands of visitors.

you surely would, believe me.
but newbies, try to focus on things you can influence. for example creating quality content and attracting traffic. everything else is nonproductive.

content is king, but page optimization is very important as well.

so is identifying the best relevant keywords for the page text, which can drive up the epc of the ad blocks.

Not necessarily. That other site could perhaps be worth $1.50 to $15 per click if the SmartPricing factor were removed.

well that's exactly my point isn't it? i don't think you understood my post, if it operates only one site and not the other then obviously it is only site related and not account related and there is no reason to ask whether it is account or site related.( at least in this case )

You seem to be suggesting that if one site gives 1 cent per click on average, and a second site gives ten dollars per click on average, then we have conclusive proof that SmartPricing is enabled on a per-domain basis.

That would be a foolish conclusion.

Games are not high ticket items, +games can be purchased anywhere, Walmarts, BestBuy, etc etc, they are not going to spend alot of money per click for meager returns on thier investments. Plus why buy a game online when you can get it at your local store.

For convience sake. :)

Ann