PS: congrats on those dreamy earnings.

Your comments about having gained income through dropping ads on low-paying pages intrigues me. I've read of this effect many times before but never had the trust in it to follow through with an experiment. For one thing, I can't see why Adsense would be set up in that way. It's obvious why Google would want to penalize publishers (by smart-pricing) for low conversion rates but why penalize for low CTR? I'm prepared to believe the effect is real but what's the logic behind it from Google's point of view?

I also made some other changes to up my eCPM.

Could you specify which changes?

Any idea how you got hijacked? Do you use a common CMS?

$500/day, that is $15k/month, awesome! way to go man... congrats..
what kind of website you have (if you don't mind asking)?

Don't tell anyone here your ideas unless you enjoy competition and sharing your earnings.

I've also noticed that ctr affects Epcm drastically.
Don't tell anyone here your ideas unless you enjoy competition and sharing your earnings.

So following what you just said everyone on webmasterworld should just shut up on everything because that might increase their competition.

What's the point of these boards then?

I've also noticed that ctr affects Epcm drastically.

There's a revelation.

I've also noticed that ctr affects Epcm drastically.

Nothing like the clicker's location though, that's the critical one.

Congrats!

I don't use a CMS, I believe they got in through bad and outdated PHP scripting that was written when I had little knowledge of PHP. I have since gone back to my original way of doing things, just plain 'ole hand written, rock solid html code on static pages. All my dynamic pages are gone now. Also my site has been online since 1996 so there were really outdated pages and old scripts just sitting on the server... these got completely attacked and corrupted. After they entered through the unsecure, badly scripted dynamic pages, it spread to even my static html pages, adding a sniplet of code to the bottom of each page, breaking my code and attempting to re-direct visitors to a .com website(pro**log.com - the ** stands for 2 letters that I omitted before posting the URL) that then re-directed to a .ru website(******.**quotient.ru). The site they were funneling through, the .com site, was an innocent bystander that was also attacked by the same folks. The malware could somehow spread from site to site and they even started using my site to funnel the malware to other sites. As soon as I realized this, I completely removed my site from the Internet. That's when I re-vamped the site, going through each page with a fine toothed comb to make sure the coding was perfect, no loopholes they could slip back through.

The pages I removed were old and outdated and made hardly any money. I wouldn't want to advertise on those particular pages so it makes sense that noone else would want to either. If a page doesn't make you money, it's a waste of time and money for advertisers too. Might as well just remove the pages. Removing them ups the value of your site as a whole thus causing an increase in revenue from fewer pages.

The attack started with attacking every .index page on my server, but then spread to non-index pages as well, making it nearly impossible to fix the old site so I had to rebuild everything. Google never de-listed my site from the SERPS, they just added the "this site may be harmful" speil and wouldn't let visitors click over. In Firefox, even direct entry visitors only got a big red warning page instead of my content. G lifted the warning without me having to go through the usual review process involved when your site gets attacked like this.

The advertisers that I now see on my site are much better sites than I saw with the old design. I'm really glad that this forced me to make changes and really make my site secure. Many, many all-nighters, pot after pot of coffee to keep me awake and now I am reaping the benefits. YES!

The pages I removed were old and outdated and made hardly any money. I wouldn't want to advertise on those particular pages so it makes sense that noone else would want to either. If a page doesn't make you money, it's a waste of time and money for advertisers too. Might as well just remove the pages. Removing them ups the value of your site as a whole thus causing an increase in revenue from fewer pages.

Imagine that, putting up web pages for some other reason than to make money.

So following what you just said everyone on webmasterworld should just shut up on everything because that might increase their competition.

What's the point of these boards then?

There's a big difference between sharing some coding help and giving away your unique ideas. Most people here enjoy helping someone but no one would want to create a direct competitor either. Come up with your own ideas.

And btw I don't see how sharing how he increased eCPM might increase his competition.

Well, people share much more than "coding help" on these boards (from SEO to marketing strategies), that's why they're so useful.

Which is also fine, very generalized information.

And btw I don't see how sharing how he increased eCPM might increase his competition.

The follow up questions are what I was talking about.

"what kind of website you have (if you don't mind asking)?"
"ditto, what kind of widgets do you write about?"

These have nothing to do with general strategies such as increasing eCPM, they are just "Since you make a lot of money, what do you do so I can try to do the same thing?" questions.

Thanks SpaceyLacie, for this thread, it gives us hope that maybe we too can make some decent money.

To me, this does not make sense from a usability perspective, since you may have folks out there looking for that information, regardless of whether it converts a sale of a product.

I have always tried to remove ads from pages that just were not earning (and dragging down my overall CTR). But never had I thought of removing the actual pages. Interesting.

I don't think it is the best approach, but curious what others think?

Personally I don't agree with the approach. Assuming the pages were still being read by somebody and didn't contain tons of misinformation, then removing the ads would have been a better approach, at least for the user. IMO.

I hate having to delete pages and do so very rarely and only if I absolutely have to.

I didn't have to record it, I didn't have to write it down in notepad or word, or with a pen and paper, I just remembered it, the speech, from a WebmasterWorld conference. A google rep was the speaker. He was addressing the many college students wanting a job working for Google when they graduated when he said this. Stated above is his exact quote.

This one sentence explained a lot to me, I hope it expains a lot to others as well.

To me, this does not make sense from a usability perspective, since you may have folks out there looking for that information, regardless of whether it converts a sale of a product.

I can see this sort of thing being more of an issue as the web matures. Sometimes you just have to dust the cobwebs, and let go the fire hazards.

This one sentence explained a lot to me, I hope it expains a lot to others as well.

I didn't hear that speech but I think some of the current books on data mining may make a similar point.

"If you want a job working for Google, major in statistics"

This one sentence explained a lot to me, I hope it explains a lot to others as well.

Thanks for your story, as other stories I have seen here it kinda motivate us all.

That way people could still stumble across it from old links. I notice the BBC puts up "this page is no longer being updated" on old content.

I have a website with old widgets, including out of business and no longer existing places. I received complains from people asking me to remove those pages, but on the other side, a lot of people consider those pages as some sort of historic documents allowing them to see places and widgets that have changed a lot with time.

I think old content is part of documentation for some procedures, also historical documents and a view to the past. I believe old content means traffic for other kind of readers.

An average Adsense publishers sometimes lingers on for a month or two to make the threshold of $100

They simply lurk around, picking up valuable pieces of information, and they lurk back into their money den where they nap on mattresses filled with 100 dollar bills. ;-)