July has started off absolutely abysmal. In fact, I have gone right back to square one almost.

This is my month.

All my sites have stepped off a precipice today and in freefall, almost zero, wtf is going on?

All my sites have stepped off a precipice today and in freefall, almost zero, wtf is going on?

Don't worry, you are not on your own. I just cannot understand what is going on, yesterday was almost nothing, £5. Today we haven't even reached £5, this is ridiculous, how can things just be this bad within a few days. I just cannot believe it is my site or visitors that are responsible for the decline, something has happened somewhere

Thankfully there must have been a reporting delay since things came back to "normal" overnight for me.

Complete DS across the board to start July. Times like these makes me once again consider closing out a majority of projects that I have. Might happen this time because this yoyo is a solid as a LBM. Yes Adsense is terrible right now for me, but other monetization aren't fairing much better at all. Big picture thoughts right now.

According to Google analytics my daily traffic has dropped considerably, A few months ago it was telling me that my daily hits where anywhere between 3000 & 3500, approximately. For the last few weeks I've been averaging between 2200 & 2800, so it's considerably down. However, I just don't see how this can make such a massive difference on my earnings. I've spent a few hours yesterday changing all of my Google ads so that they are responsive When viewed on mobile phones, such as the iPhone which seems to be one of the most popular people used to come to my site. I'm just wondering whether it has got something to do with the influx of people using mobile devices, rather than desktop. I've noticed that my 160 x 600 skyscraper ad still displays exactly as that dimension on an iPhone, do you think I should make these responsive as well? I've noticed that my 728 x 90 banners now adjust into smaller rectangle, maybe 250 by 250, at a rough guess.

I have made quite a few alterations to my placement. I've gone back to a skyscraper unit in the left-hand column because that seems to do really well. I've also decided that less is probably better than more, so I'm not going to use many ad units within the text in an article. I've got to try everything I can think of, if it gets any worse then I'm not going to be making anything. A few months ago, it was disappointing if I got less than £20 in the day in earnings, now I'm lucky if I get anywhere near £10, it really is that bad. I'm still getting over 2000 hits every day, I've just got to try my best to try and convert more of those visitors into clicks.

[edited by: martinibuster at 7:54 pm (utc) on Jul 3, 2014]
[edit reason] Please no site reviews. Thanks! :) [/edit]

Hey Ironside. Thought you'd been around long enough to realize that posting links to you site is not allowed here. That said. You're using an image only ad at the top of your home page which, when it goes into magazine mode, pretty much disappears. I'd recommend using the Text and Display ads option there. Try using a white background and border color with a blue similar to the intense blue in your header for the title and link color. I'd also position it over the body column of the page and move the left sidebar content along side it. Probably what that means is putting it in the body column instead of the header section the way it is. The wider things are, The less control you have over positioning with text ads. They'll align left but some will be ridiculously narrow. I think I'd try it below the helpful articles, faq, advice section first but it might also work well above.

You might also consider inlining your bottom ad just below the content in the body column (above the YouTube, Members, Photos sections).

In other words, put the ad more into the normal reading stream instead of spanning the whole page width.

Earnings just keep on going down here. Adsense is my livelihood and now i'm just losing hope if it will ever pick up again. Im so depressed. Ouch.

How do you guys cope?

I'm good. Up over last year.

Hey Ironside. Thought you'd been around long enough to realize that posting links to you site is not allowed here. That said. You're using an image only ad at the top of your home page which, when it goes into magazine mode, pretty much disappears. I'd recommend using the Text and Display ads option there. Try using a white background and border color with a blue similar to the intense blue in your header for the title and link color. I'd also position it over the body column of the page and move the left sidebar content along side it. Probably what that means is putting it in the body column instead of the header section the way it is. The wider things are, The less control you have over positioning with text ads. They'll align left but some will be ridiculously narrow. I think I'd try it below the helpful articles, faq, advice section first but it might also work well above.

You might also consider inlining your bottom ad just below the content in the body column (above the YouTube, Members, Photos sections).

In other words, put the ad more into the normal reading stream instead of spanning the whole page width.

Oh, I didn't realise, I do apologise about posting a link to my website.

Anyway, I appreciate your advice, I will certainly look into changing things. Having said that, it always used to perform really well for me, but I don't know what's happened lately, absolutely dire. Just one question about responsive ads. I have actually installed a module that enables me to make my Google AdSense ads responsive if people are using a mobile device, really clever stuff, and it was free believe it or not. Anyway, should I leave my 160 x 600 as it is? Unlike the wider banners, the skyscraper renders perfectly okay even on a very narrow mobile phone.

Awful here, I am really really scared. How do you tell the kids you're screwed financially? Just awful. The harder I work, the worse it gets.

Saffron, I don't mean to insult you, but why are you sticking with AdSense, if things are that dire for you? Do you really think it's suddenly going to turn around?

@webcentric

I have made those amendments and I must admit it really has improved the homepage AdSense placement in my opinion. Whether that well translate into more clicks, who knows? But it definitely looks better. Thanks again

Adsense is the best of a bad lot, but Google keep on reducing the CPM, the ads are woeful and nobody is clicking. I used to get 3 times the clicks with 60% less content than I have now.

I don't really know what to do, how I can diversify. It's not that I don't want to, I just don't know where to look.

Until last year, Adsense went up every year. It is so scary having to face the loss of everything. I am looking for a job to keep us going, but that is proving useless. Having been out of the workforce for 4 years, it's hard to get back in.

I absolutely feel your pain saffron, I am in exactly the same position. Three months ago my monthly earnings were over £700, I will be receiving £337 for my earnings in June. If it carries on like it's been for the last two days this month, it's going to be half of June's earnings. Silly thing is, the page views haven't declined at all.

Thankfully the money isn't a means to an end, is basically a little bit of extra in my pocket each month. But it's still really depressing because I have put so much work into trying to get things exactly right, but it doesn't seem as if it's enough. However, the fact that this is happening to see quite a large group of people obviously points to powers outside of our control.

Every month is the same for me,starts off slow,picks up towards the middle of the month,ending on a high. Been like that for 3 years now.

Awful here, I am really really scared. How do you tell the kids you're screwed financially? Just awful. The harder I work, the worse it gets.

I don't know if I want to feel good because i'm not alone. I feel you. We're in the same boat. I used to have at least 3k extra money every month for the last 7 years. Now, i'm not even getting extra, i'm below 40% average. REally really scary. I just hope this is only temporary. But I doubt it. I've never seen my earnings this low in years.

I sacrificed my day job 5 years ago so I can concentrate on Adsense thinking it's a secure way of earning a living. Had I known I would be living with this much worry and stress, I would have never left my day job. I feel so incredibly depressed. AHHHHH

[edited by: jbayabas at 2:33 am (utc) on Jul 4, 2014]

I think the problem is that there are probably more people wanting to make money from displaying ads on their website than people actually producing the ads trying to advertise their business. Eventually it will implode because they'll be too many people who are trying to make money from AdSense, not enough to go around and make good money.

4th of July, US is closed.
eCPM is record low, do not open your adsense stat until Monday.

Until last year, Adsense went up every year. It is so scary having to face the loss of everything.

If you were up year-over-year, shouldn't you be able to take a couple of beatings, earnings-wise?

Biggest day of the year for me.

The thing is many of us make a living with Adsense. I was able to buy a house, a luxury car, and support a family of four. Im not bragging. I used to do really really well. It's just a complete shock that my AdSense revenue has taken a huge nose-dive this year and I was not ready for it.

I've made my main sites responsive and upgraded to a much faster server but nothing seems to work. Strangely, my 4 small sites which earn around $20 per day are doing well. However, my main site with 200k daily page views is taking a beating.

im now considering applying for a day job for the first time in 7 years. As Saffron said it's hard to get back in when you're out of the workforce for so long. Im depressed but this forum makes me sane a little bit knowing i am not alone. :(

I am already up to £10 mark already today. Mind you, £3.79 is down to 1 click from a website that gets hardly any visits in the day. In fact, it's a website created for this woman who sells fresh fish, I don't even know if the business is still running, I've tried contacting her and I haven't heard a thing. Anyway, the website does bring me a little bit of money every now and then, so I might as well leave it running :-)

July 2014 is off to a much better start than July 2013 so I can't complain.

I gave up on Adsense a while ago and then tried a little affiliate marketing.. These just didn't pan out. None of my sites generated a ton of traffic anyways.
I've gone back to my local roots and it has worked out a lot better in terms of monthly income.

Since 99% of my clicks are from the USA and since this is the 4th of July week with a lot of people on vacation or taking the long weekend away from home, I'm not surprised my numbers are lower than last month. The trend, at least for me, is upwards; but slowly. June was about 5% ahead of May. May was about 10% ahead of April.

WDR

The trend, at least for me, is upwards; but slowly. June was about 5% ahead of May. May was about 10% ahead of April.

That's not slow, that's miraculous. Think about it, if you started with earnings of £500 a month and that then increased by 10% every month, you would be earning a fortune after 5 years. Try out the calculation using a compound interest calculator.

I just tried it out on Excel and, if I've done it correctly, those £500 monthly earnings would have increased to £138,400 per month or £1,660,808 per year! Not bad for a "slow" increase.

Apologies if I have mucked up the calculation.

Biggest day of the year for me.

Yeah, but by days end it all blows up and then fizzles out.