I'm slightly lost now, traffic has gone up, roughly the same amount of clicks, yet earnings are down, why has this happened?

I'm slightly lost now, traffic has gone up, roughly the same amount of clicks, yet earnings are down, why has this happened?

This thread illustrates why Google discourages discussion about CTR, eCPM etc. It's not like they make all these numbers up out of thin air. Or do they?

Maybe its the location but I don't think it would be. I have a wide skyscraper on the right side, a small vertical banner on the left and a leaderboard at the bottom...

I think you are simply putting too much ads in the face of your visitors. Take some off for sure, and go with some link ads. I find that when you try to hard, your just doing the opposite, scaring your people away.

Then again I focus mostly on linux stuff...

I also think the nature of your users are more web saavy, and so will click less on ads.