"Why are visitors not clicking these days?"

Maybe they still are but, as has been talked about before, Google is now better at detecting fraudulent clicks that it used to be. What used to appear as revenue no longer does.

Bit of a typo in that last post. I meant that the earnings should be up or down by several pounds give or take.

Anyway, was just scanning through analytics and noticed that mobile made up around 42% of all visits. Lots of Galaxy S5 and iPhone visits. Got to pay more attention to this. Also worth factoring is that more people use ad blockers today and people are becoming more internet savvy. Optimising through blending isn't likely to have the effect that it once had.

Google is now better at detecting fraudulent clicks

Not going to believe that. Rather the truth of the matter is they deliberately made the ads look like ads (that massive ugly blemish called a target box) is their new system. Oh yes if it's a click it's because that person didn't see it as part of the page and knew full well that is was indeed an ad. Fantastic for the advertiser obviously and as my importance as a publisher goes down the toilet, the concerns about my clicks/earnings is just background noise, nothing more. Irrelevance, stick out like a sore thumb, ad blindness and ad blockers create earning days like mine. That's the way they are beating unintentional or frivolous ad clicks. Of course what's good for us the publisher isn't ideal for the ads on the SERPS so draw your own conclusions from that. Mine screams to visitors "this is an AD" so I imagine reading the text even is hit and miss. Steer the sheep I say.

Regarding this year vs last year? About 1/3 down. That's a big deal because my main earner last year at this time was killed by one of the many algo updates. If I go back to 2012 with my main site still doing well, right now I would be about 2/3 down. For good reason I don't look at these stats.

If ad relevance went up, I'm sure the massive brick button would be less of a detractor. I've learned a valuable lesson from all this and I say it because my earnings this month have really bottom out to a new all time low. I realize that it's a kiss of death to trust anything for which I have so very little control over. My mini economy was dependent on their traffic and their relevant ads. I realize that even with the best content or articles that I can write, my earning dependency came back to the same source. It's a massive fail on my part. I know it's dead for me in this current model that I've been using.

July 2013 vs July 2014 Adsense earnings up 55%

Non Andsense earnings up over 60% which now exceed G money.

Will it last probably not. Saving as much as possible for the inevitable downfall.

Hope for the best, expect the worse.

Non Andsense earnings up over 60% which now exceed G money.

Well done Breeks!

It's nearly the end of the month and it doesn't make pleasant reading v 2013.

Click volume -9%, not surprising really since I removed an entire image gallery but that did increase CTR by 40.4%

Now for the really bad stuff, EPC -32.4% resulting in earnings -37.85%

This month has seen quite a few days with abysmal EPCs with earnings fluctuating from the average by +69.6% down to -39.1%, it's -56.6% today so far!

20 of the 30 days so far have seen my EPC at average or less and simply compared to June it's at -17.9%

August is usually one of my quieter months, I'm seriously wondering whether my free advertising for Google is worth the hassle any more if EPCs continue to reduce like this.

One thing that I have noticed this month, is that they have been filling a few of my 728 leaderboard ads with little 468s ads instead.
I know they sometimes do that if they think the smaller ad will make more money, but I'm guessing its to do with a lack of ad inventory instead, because I've never seen it happen before.

today is worse than Saturday...

Unless I have a massive click dump in the next couple of hours, this week will have seen my two lowest-ever earning days in 11 years ... At this level it's pointless, it's now at one beer level.

I can leave more money in my pocket simply by not going out for a beer (obviously).

Apart from AdSense, everything else is up, SNAFU G!

Best earning month this year so far. No seasonal drop in pageviews at all.

Glad to hear some people are having success. I can say that this month turned out to be beyond my lowest expectations. I once was, not that long ago, likely an average to above average earner. It makes sense to me that some people are still raking it in but that doesn't mean this is a worthwhile use of my time. I would sure like to know if the success stories are coming from that upper tier of Adsense accounts though. I'm still convinced that there is somewhat of a cull going on. It's not a pink slip but rather a gentle nudge. Less ruckus.

Same here, this month was my worst earning month for over a year.

July tends to sag a little as so many people are on vacation traveling or not sitting around at their desk surfing the Internet. School is out, university is out, etc.

August tends to be a bit of a "back to school" advertising month and some advertisers start to wake up. We'll see what happens.