I think unlike most others, I never saw a drop in revenue. I had an immediate 10-20% adsense boost from mobile users, and no change for desktop users. I use a combination of 728x90 responsive units and 300x250 non-responsive units. The boost may be because I had a horrible bounce rate with mobile users (as opposed to a great bounce rate with desktops). Creating a mobile design definitely helped with that problem.

Do a lot of A/B testing. When I initially redesigned I had my menu tucked away off-screen identified only by an icon. After a few weeks I added the word "Menu" next to it and my bounce rate dropped by half.

Personally, I wouldn't have made the change if it hadn't been for my poor mobile bounce rate. However, you're in a high competition niche, and there are plenty of other sports sites who are going to benefit from Google's mobile-friendliness boost if you don't.

Good luck, I know it can be a huge undertaking!

My sites were not mobile friendly either. Back in April I started to receive messages in Google Webmaster along the lines of:

"We have detected your site as non mobile friendly. Your site will drop in rankings or be dropped completely from mobile search if you do not make your site mobile friendly"

I received this message for all of my sites. So I decided to redo all of my sites with a responsive layout one at a time. The results were basically for the first couple of days my earnings actually went way up. Then the next several days my earnings plummeted, to over 50%. Then a week or more later my earnings recovered and now some actually make more then before I updated the site. However I do want to point out I didnt just change the layout, I changed the url structure and content because I did a lot of research to see what I could improve SEO wise. So more then likely that delayed my recovery further as Google had to scrape my site and re-evaluate the new content. I also used the old adsense code as I too read that you earn more with the old code vs responsive ads. I also want to point out my traffic and earnings have gone up for mobile users since updating to a responsive layout.

Side note, any chance you can message me your website url? I am a big sports fan and would love to check out a new sports news source. If you dont want to I understand. Thanks!

I experienced no drop in revenue when I went all responsive, and my seasonal sites can serve as many as 2.5million pageviews in a day (peak) or as few as 5000 (off peak)

But plenty of people here have reported significant drops. I dunno why. The only thing I can think of offhand is that I've had mostly mobile traffic for years, so switching to all responsive ads was not accompanied by a significant change in user device or behavior.

Some of my friends are telling me to avoid responsive design and instead go with "dynamic serving" as most Wordpress websites are doing. Apparently that doesn't help tablet users as much, but it puts the site in compliance with Google's mobile standards and apparently they weren't hit as much financially. Not sure if that would make a difference eight way.

I went responsive in 2012. Worked out okay for me. I'm going for total redesign next year though, and I am on the prowl for fresh ideas for ad layout/placement. Redesigning for mobile is easy. Redesigning for mobile and monetizing with ads is more complicated.

Doesn't this depend on how you implement the responsive adsense code? From what I understand, there are two ways you can implement the responsive adsense code.

1) just the responsive ad code provided by Google

2) the ad code by Google + media queries

In the second option, you can use media queries to load the most common ad sizes, like 300x250, 728x90, etc..

So in my opinion, the best option is to use the responsive code with media queries to always load the traditional ad sizes.

Am I missing something?

The biggest differences seem to come when the change to RWD completely breaks the old version (that returning users expected). If your site is listed as "not mobile friendly" but actually works on mobile, then you won't see much change. If your site really is not mobile friendly, then you might see an increase in mobile, but as the expense of desktop. OR you might see no change if your site truly was mobile friendly (info type sites with top for bottom navs, no sidebars).

That said, code RWD these days. The viewports are so varied across many devices that you truly don't want to miss any of that via bounce.

I believe I'm going to do this in baby steps to avoid a huge plunge in revenue from all networks.

Instead of going RWD (for now), I'll go the way of dynamic serving (like most Wordpress websites).

I never have any complaints from tablet users, so I'll have my developers create a mobile version of the site and have them direct mobile users there while keeping desktop intact for full web and tablet users.

I'll keep a close eye on revenue and if everything holds up, then I'll redo the entire website with RWD. At least if revenue plunges like some of my friends, some as much as 50%, I can just cut off the mobile site. If I create a new site with RWD, there is no going back.

Safest bet is to take this in baby steps.

I would recommend you implement RWD on your top 5-10 traffic/earning pages as a test for placement and such, that's what I did. That gives you a good idea of how the changes will impact earnings before you roll it out to the rest of the site. Picking your top pages means you'll get enough traffic to see results faster.

Sure you don't have to go RWD, you can have a dedicated mobile site like you're talking. But, in the long run I think RWD is the winner because it adapts to all screen sizes if done properly. In fact, my RWD design looks the same for tablet and desktop users, and different for mobile, so I have the same as you but one URL and one template.

Keep in mind it is only natural to have some change in earnings when doing a redesign. I had basically said to myself I'd be willing to take a 10% drop in earnings if it meant a better user experience. In the long run I don't know the exact numbers but I'm making a little more now than I was before, so in the end it all worked out fine.

I use responsive ad code for ads near the header & footer. For inline ads I generally pick 300x250 or 336x280 standard ad code FYI. The responsive ad code works wonderfully now (not so much when it was first released).

Any drop in earnings would have a logical explanation.
For instance, I changed to a responsive layout and noticed a drop in earnings although I had kept (or at least I thought I had) the same design. The only change was an increase in page width which caused the sidebar ad to get pushed towards the left. I didn't think this would matter, but it sure did. Eventually I made some tweaks and replaced the vertical banner with an in content 250x300 and income has since gone up. Mobile income is also slightly up for a site receiving about 35% mobile traffic. Bounce rate for mobile visits is considerably lower.

Our revenue was about the same for the first few weeks, then it picked up. AdSense responsive ads worked well for us. The payoff comes once you get some data and can tweak your layout and ad networks.

That said, moving an established site that is performing well to responsive design is terrifying, but you have to do it. Be prepared for some bumps, but don't give up on it.

Has anyone tried the following?

A buddy of mine was getting killed after going mobile, so what he did was use the 300x250 as the leading top 'above the fold' banner and dropped his mobile leadboard to the midway point of his articles (usually after two paragraphs). His revenue jumped right back up. Not as much as using desktop on its one, but close enough.

so what he did was use the 300x250 as the leading top 'above the fold' banner and dropped his mobile leadboard to the midway point

I don't have time to go look it up, but I am 100% positive that a Google rep has stated that putting a 300x250 above the content on a smart phone is against TOS. It just pushes the content down too far. You might want to let your buddy know.