Forum Moderators: martinibuster
How do you tell?
I think you'll be able to make a better-informed decision when the economy is up, your sector is doing better, and consumers are more confident about discretionary spending. If things are still going backwards for you when things are going forward for your peers and competitors, then you'll have a good reason to consider throwing in the towel.
How do you tell?
If this is your thing and you're determined to end up making a living from online publishing, you never quit, you just keep at it, keep on experimenting, try another site idea, and wait a few more years with your current job if necessary. That's how I feel about it. The current state of the economy is kind of depressing with poor Adsense revenues, but I'm in it for the long haul so I bite the bullet and take what I can get.
If you're lukewarm about the whole thing and you think you may find more success in other (offline) endeavors, just stop working on your site, it'll still make passive money, and invest your energy where you might be happier.
Pretty simple really.
Now things are going backwards.
Things? What things? What are these things that are going backwards?
Let's analyze your things
Things? What things?
The fact that he said ads are being clicked for free shows his CPC has tanked.
J_Evans, do you have a lot of traffic outside the U.S.?
Did a lot of this start at the beginning of the month (May 1)?
Why stop when its your hobby?
That's a good point. If the OP doesn't have to earn a living from his site, he's better off than many of his competitors are. (He's also better off than the hotel owners, restaurateurs, etc. who are trying to survive the economic slowdown.)
Reviewing search phrases to visit site and improving on page seo to improve rankings
The OP's profile [webmasterworld.com] shows he regularly posts in this forum and only has a single post in another one. It's important to get out to the other forums and ask questions, explore other things beyond the adsense code.
Significantly in the only post [webmasterworld.com] not in this forum he's discussing his daily traffic of about 75-100 visitors. If after three years that's how far the site has gone then perhaps it is indeed time the OP started asking more questions on the other WebmasterWorld forum categories.
[edited by: martinibuster at 5:05 pm (utc) on May 22, 2009]
With the declining revenue, this year I have decided to try relax about my websites, stop thinking of them as a business and try to go back to having fun with them once again.
Last night I didn't work on my sites, I read a book.
I have a travel, sights and area information site
One of my travel sites is not doing so well, but I happen to enjoy the thing so I share what I know with the visitors (emails) and sometime some business come out.
Yep, starting out the first year things were slow - I was kind of excited when I started averaging a few dollars per day (now that seems silly to me). My original goal was that I would monetize my hobby site to sell a few items, etc. and my hosting costs would be paid for and I'd make a couple bucks, nothing significant. It didnt take long to achieve those original goals.
Over time, I got more and more ideas to improve the site, started writng for a magazine related to my hobby interest, and got some name recognition. The website traffic kept growing and so did the Adsene income. Now I am writing a book (paper and ink, not an e-book) that I will publish and also sell on the site, and the book promotes use of the website as well.
Now I am planning to leave full time employment in about 2 years. The magazine articles, book and website will all work together to make a little publishing empire. I'll have enough income from other sources to meet all my basic needs, but the dollars from publishing (most of which are from adsense) will make the difference to allow me a very nice lifestyle in my "retirement", with opportunites for travel, toys, living well, etc.
I've been real pleased with my Adsense results in a bit less than 3 years time. I certainly could not live on the AS money I get, but its a very nice extra chunk of change. It certainly has more than met my expectations and I plan on growing the site in the future and have now doubts things will get better as the world economy improves.
Yep, its work to get noticed, and if you have a site that 10,000 other folks are doing exactly the same thing, its tough to get noticed. If you provide interesting, desirable and unique content, plus you take the proper steps to promote your site, I can testify that the right "hobby" site can make decent money.
My site pays for itself and actually allows some funds for purchase of some business extras so it is not all bad.
It just seems sometimes that the more I learn, the harder and longer I work and the results do not improve and actually go backwards. And by backwards I mean less clicks, lower epcm and of course a lower income.
What I ment about "free clicks" is that I don't understand why a slow economy would greatly affect your ctr. There are more than a few nights that I should be working on my sight that I am look at hot rods on e-bay. Or if I visit a site and see an ad about something I am interested in I click it. If I can "afford it" does not stop me from looking and seeking information.
Thanks again for the help and ideas.
google says they track whether the user goes on to do something useful on the advertiser's site (like visit the checkout page). if they don't, then the click is worth less to the advertiser. so we get less money.
if all people are doing is clicking your ads and nothing else, then your earnings are bound to take a dive
What I ment about "free clicks" is that I don't understand why a slow economy would greatly affect your ctr.
OK, let's say that John Doe is thinking about a trip to Widgetville and is visiting your travel site, wonderful-widgetville.com, to get information about Widgetville. He doesn't need to click on ads to get that information (or at least he doesn't if your site is any good), so--if he sees an ad for "Widgetville hotels" or "Widgetville vacation rentals"--he won't have a great incentive to click unless he's ready to price lodgings and possibly make a booking.
In the current economy, people don't have to book months in advance, and many of them may be afraid to book months in advance because they don't know if they'll still have jobs or disposable income when they're ready to go on vacation in July or August. Uncertainty may not keep them from thinking about trips or researching trips, but we shouldn't be surprised if that uncertainly leads them to put off researching details (such as which hotel to stay in or which tour to buy) and making final purchase decisions.
but we shouldn't be surprised if that uncertainly leads them to defer purchase decisions.
We also run travel sites and have seen bookings, as well as AdSense, decrease over the past 6+ months (and have theorized the same reasoning as signor_john, as well as the Swine Flu and other negative news that can affect travel). And lead times between booking and trip has dropped dramatically- we are getting only a few reservations months in advance these days- most are within a week.
Yes, it's very frustrating to add more content and see revenue going down. But we are in it for the long haul (already been through the .COM meltdown, 9/11, SARS, etc.) and have diversified enough that we should (hopefully!) be able to weather this downturn as well.
Always look for the silver lining and see how you can spin things positively. While things are slow, that's the BEST time to develop new content and functionality so that you have a head start on your competition when things pick up again. And if you outsource any of your content/development, economic downturns means cheaper labor.
For many years there wasn't a penny to earn. I had deals to offset the hosting costs with some banners ever since early 1996 till prior to to .com burst, but honestly that's charity more than anything else.
I did wonder at times if I should just drop it or if I indeed still had a reason to go on and hand out free information to those interested in the topic.
I then found amazon's associate program and my very first US check of 70 US$ was the start of a big change. Through an offhand comment in their support forum I managed to find WebmasterWorld and Google's Adsense (I lurked a bit before I signed up for an account at WebmasterWorld).
Now that site pays for far more than it's hosting costs. So I can only say I'm glad I never stopped (and in now almost 15 years there have been ample moments I thought of quitting).
So yes, you can hang in there if it's an hobby.
But competing as a new startup with established sites is hard so don't expect miracles overnight. See it as an opportunity to learn things.
And if it doesn't work in one area in the long run, try in another niche. But make sure you have a bit of passion about the subject.
I've a site in even more of a niche that the one above, I've it for like 5 years or so now. I never did more for it than for the other. The subject is also something I really like. Still, it never earned enough to pay for the domainname. But I'll hang in there and let it sit there and do it's thing.
If your hobby is the goal, there's no reason to get disappointed about not earning a lot. Every visitor you have that's happy with what they found might be just what it takes to go on.
I have a travel, sights and area information site and I am just getting tired of working on the site without any real gains. It is not my job. Just a hobby that I hoped would lead to more...
I started my site as a hobby around ten years ago. I'm glad I didn't know about AdSense at the beginning because that might have caused some doubt. I mean, I put A LOT of time and energy into it so if it was making only a few bucks a day that might have made me feel like I was failing, when that really wasn't the purpose at all. But over time my website picked up some steam and now it's definitely worth having around.
Over the ten years, I took a several breaks to work on other projects. My most recent break lasted over a year, and the most work I did during that time was to check my stats a few times per week to make sure it wasn't dead. But I've become interested again, and the interest is as strong as ever. After all, it's a hobby and I really enjoy it. Maybe I can increase the earnings again, and maybe not. Either way, it's cheaper than most other hobbies so at least I won't be spending money :)
Anyway, the point I'm trying to make here is that maybe it's time to take a break. That doesn't mean "throwing in the towel." That simply means hanging it on the rack for a little while so it will nice and clean and dry for you when you come back to it.
I read 1 Unique Visitor = 1 Penny/Cent! That is totally nonsense and although I am only in my 1st week of Adsense the writing is on the wall. I did everything I “thought” was successful. I built a site and managed to accumulate 1000 Unique Visitors per day (Google Analytics) with over 150K Pageviews ( per month) in over 3 months time. I thought that should bring me some kind of success. 75% of my traffic comes from Search Engines mostly Google. The result though is NO ADSENSE MONEY just peanuts, enough to buy a butter roll and tea for breakfast.
I stupidly chose to write about something I love and the result is I am worthless as far as Adsense goes. I probably wasted more than a 1000 hours into my site. But I won't throw in the towel in this non money making niche, I still have a little dignity and pride, and hoping for some kind of miracle but I know there's none.
Having 1 site is a curse because we become attached and I believe that's what happened to people like me and the OP. So don't throw in the towel but start another site and use the brain and not the heart, well that's what I tell myself. The only way to get over a girlfriend is to find another one and I think it applies to websites too!
Seriously Disgruntled,
S
When To Throw In The Towel?
Now is a good time to explore other opportunities outside Adsense. For us, eCPM is heading to an all-time low, and we have begun reducing Adsense impressions, replacing them with Affiliate Links. Works so far.
Anything you can automate? Or maybe shutdown a section of the website that is taking up most of your time. I always believe its always better to try and mould in to something different, than simply to stop.
Seeking advertisers who will advertise directly would surely be the next best step. That used to be more time consuming than adsence but I'm not sure it's still the case.
As far as income from Adsense per unique I come up with the following: 2007 - .0174 per unique 2008 - .0164 per unique and 2009 Jan 1 to May 25 .0125 per unique So per visitor there is no doubt the income is falling. But on the other hand if you had 10,000 visitors a day that wouldn't be bad.
... I question the usefulness of the site to the general public. Seems useful to me ...
I have built more than a couple software sytstems where I really questioned the value. But I've always felt that if it satisfies the owner, then there is value. You are your site's most important visitor. If you see value in your site then it's worth something.
As far as income from Adsense per unique I come up with the following: 2007 - .0174 per unique 2008 - .0164 per unique and 2009 Jan 1 to May 25 .0125 per unique So per visitor there is no doubt the income is falling. But on the other hand if you had 10,000 visitors a day that wouldn't be bad.
Actually those are not bad figures.
Also, you said your site is related to travel and that sector has taken quite a hit this year. Your revenue per visitor is down around 28% from last year but meanwhile, Hertz has reported a 23% loss in revenue over last year (this is hundreds of millions of dollars) due to the drop in travel. So maybe the apparent lack of progress is out of your control.
As far as income from Adsense per unique I come up with the following: 2007 - .0174 per unique 2008 - .0164 per unique and 2009 Jan 1 to May 25 .0125 per unique So per visitor there is no doubt the income is falling. But on the other hand if you had 10,000 visitors a day that wouldn't be bad.
Those are great numbers and many webmasters here would be thrilled with those payouts. In fact, those are some of the best numbers I've ever seen reported on this forum.
[edited by: BillyS at 12:04 am (utc) on May 27, 2009]
Those are great numbers
Yep...I'm glad others have noticed this.
@ J_Evans
Are you writing about really low visitor and earning numbers vis-a-vis the amount of effort and hours you are expending?
I wouldn't call those great numbers, but they aren't that bad......
... IF you can maintain them while building up a great deal more visitors. And that might well be easier said than done.
I'd suggest focusing on building high quality visitor counts.
