Forum Moderators: martinibuster
I'm constantly adding new content, so it's sometimes hard to compare stats to previous years. But I can tell, my Clicks and eCPM have never been that low what it used to be... starting from late-October.
To me, it seems like Google did some tweaking.
Still, I'm making a good amount of money from AdSense. It's just the sudden, obvious drop that quite surprises me. I'm wondering if Google is moving more into CPA ads, which I guess would be better in the long run (more value clicks, advertisers would pay more per click, publishers & advertisers wouldn't need to worry about invalid clicks, publishers would pay more attention how to get the best results for the displayed ads and not just try to get the highest amount of clicks, etc.). In the end, I believe, it's the ROI that matters.
Anyways, it's quite obvious to me that there was some major update on Google's side in October. So, I'm hoping that as soon as advertisers see better results for their money, the eCPM will rise. I still believe in quality content and that the market place will decide the value of clicks.
I'm very curious if anyone else is experiencing this?
While everyting goes down, you can do whatever you want but just to decrease less than others. When 'flat times' come, you will see you income move up or down.
Adsense just reflects what's happening in Main St.
October is, so far, a great month for me.
Groundhog day?
I thought it was quite strange that earnings suddenly drop like that.
I'm not sure what's going on, but I can tell the earnings are noticeably down. I mean, I don't even need to take a look at my stats of previous months or compare them to previous years... it's just so obvious that something happened at the end of October.
In the past, October and November have the best months of the year, but this year, it looked fine in the beginning of October, but then something happened at the end of October.
It seems like this hasn't affected everyone, but this certainly has affected me. I don't know if Google is experimenting only with some number of publishers, or if they introduced smart-pricing "2.0" or something like that ... other reasons like bad economy, more competition, euro/dollar exchange rates, ad placement, too many ads, etc. can't just explain the sudden drop like that.
I absolutely love AdSense, but the most frustrating thing is that, when things like this happen, I just don't know why and I need to keep wondering and wondering what's going on. It would be so nice to get at least one word from Google if they did some updating, changed their rules or if they tweaked something, or whatever they did.
Of course, I'm not talking about minor fluctuations, that's very understandable. This is just so obvious to me that Google tweaked something at the end of October, so it would be nice to get even a hint from Google what's going on.
Google is run by the smartest people on earth (no question about that), so I'm quite surprised that they haven't paid much attention to the fact that many publishers find it absolutely frustrating that the only real advice they give to publishers is just to "build quality content". Yes, that's right, I absolutely agree with that 100%, it's all about quality content, and I believe I've been faithfully building quality content for years now. But why the sudden drop now? So, it would so nice to know a little more what's going on... especially if they did some tweaking or applied some new clicks/earnings accounting methods, etc. Otherwise, we are just left here to speculate and wonder.
[edited by: photojack at 10:15 pm (utc) on Nov. 10, 2009]
Roughly 7.00am Google Time and I'm at $4.20.
Groan...
Bad here today as well. And it's all CTR.
Groundhog day?
Ooops. I meant November, although October was a great month.
Are things getting any better?
Not for me. And I still can't find a good reason.
My earnings went down just a little bit but I have more (way) more traffic than before and one more website. This means that I can't no longer earn what I used to with what I had. All my work went down only to make things less ugly.
Two things I can share:
1. My worst scenario was when I gave "base interest ads" a try. That went bad!.
2. A friend working in the field of the kind of widgets my sites are about was just telling me that the sales, the market itself is suffering of low activity. So in my case I can say it has something to do with how is the market nowadays.
Ever think that Google has the money switch, when there earnings go down they just give us less to compensate? Make sense to me.
Ever think that Google has the money switch, when there earnings go down they just give us less to compensate? Make sense to me.
Yes, that has crossed my mind, but from what I've read, Google is run by the smartest people on earth, and I'd be quite surprised if they had built a business model based on that kind of principle.
(but yes, the money switch idea has crossed my mind and in certain extent that's certainly true, when their earnings go down, so will our earnings go down too, but I doubt they'd deliberately try to "switch on" to "steal" a bigger share of the ad revenue from us. That kind of business model wouldn't perform well in the long run).
I can see the AdSense program is constantly changing in terms of value clicks, smart-pricing, etc... but what really is the most frustrating thing to me is that when things like this happen, I just don't know why... but I can tell the earnings are noticeably down since late-Oct. I don't even need to take a look at my stats of previous months. It's just clearly obvious that something happened in the end of October, when it comes to my AdSense Ad performance....
