After 2 weeks my desktop CTR is back to normal today, hope it stays that way. How are things going for y'all?

Adsense used to pay my mortgage, car, electricity, gas, etc. Now, it can only manage to pay my monthly electricity and gas. Heartbreaking. What comforts me is my mortgage is almost over and My car was paid off last year. I'm grateful for Adsense for that. But it's time to move on.

I already started looking for a job last Monday. No luck yet but I'm staying positive.

I wish you all the best.

@jbayabas

I hear you. For me the TribalFusion "well" has gone dry all of a sudden. Adsense took care of our first house and car too but that source has been in decline since 2014. Doesn't seem like any changes (technology/strategy) do any good.

Here's hoping there's a silver lining to 2017 at some point. At least MediaNet is providing some slight comfort.

Good luck with the job search. Might be joining you later this year : /

@CommandDork

Thanks! I needed that. I need all the luck I can get. :(

MediaNet ads are so much better targeted than adsense ads. Right now adsense just seems to be in a downward spiral.

RPM rised in the past couple of days, nearing peak of the year.

At 75% boost from my low on 3/16.

Anytime adsense changes the color of my link ad units my CTR drops. They need to stop this.

[edited by: Halaspike at 7:34 pm (utc) on Mar 19, 2017]

Sunday the payment has hit the bottom! This is crazy!

Adsense used to be the icing on the cake - now it's the crumbs on the plate.

I still have several other revenue sources that more than pay the bills. But I do miss that icing.

Adsense has improved this month, but still way down from the glory days.

Yesterday was a particularly impressive day, today is not looking anywhere near as good. Media.net closures going to be slightly above average again this month.

Mind you, it's going to be interesting to see what happens after today's news about lots of the big companies removing their ads from Google because they are being displayed next to less than desirable videos on YouTube and other websites. To be honest with you, I think they are really rather hypocritical. Google removed one of my websites because of a few rude jokes, yet they are letting their ads being shown next to really rather distasteful material that involves some really horrific content.

Come on guys, I've heard language that suggests to me that many of you are getting very little traffic and are seeing..what is in your eyes as crazy numbers. Until you get 8-15k page views per day (5-10k unique visitors according to analytics) you won't find any type of stability. The lower the traffic goes, the larger the percentage gets. this isn't an insult to your websites. I've been 'in business' with Google and I have a very good idea on what an adsense ad will earn...and I don't even make their top 10,000. Yes, it has changed...slightly...overtime, but the changes aren't as drastic as most make them out to be. I've run a number of small-ish sites (1,000 visits/day for my smallest) and large-ish sites (7 figures baby!) and you would be surprised at how much of the traffic comes down to stupid #*$!...like indian holidays. Don't get discouraged, just remember that the USA is relatively small compared to most countries in Asia...and treat your sites as such. Also #2, The USA is my highest paying country...but do you know who my top 5 are? Hint: They get a higher CPC than the US, and they are all european countries...

@eek2121

You run 5~10 millions of pageviews per day in your network?

The lower the traffic goes, the larger the percentage gets. this isn't an insult to your websites.

Yes, it is an insult!

Obviously you have never run any highly-focused, niche website preferring to use the scattergun approach publishing many, possibly thin pages, probably with the hope that volume will create earnings from all types of adverts whereas specialist sites with their much deeper and relevant knowledge can create communities of interested, like-minded groups of people who are seeking genuine information and subsequently a focused audience for their advertisers.

I have absolutely no doubt, thanks to you admitting it, that you have no idea just how stable these many niches can be, that's good, you keep out of mine and I'll keep out of yours.

Redbar, I think the point was that if volumes are small there is less consistency in daily adsense results - which is easy to prove as well as easy to demonstrate. It doesn't mean sites with lots of visitors are 'better', just that the adsense income will be consistent over shorter periods for sites with more visitors.

It is perfectly reasonable to point out that if people often refer to 'income today is awesome' or 'income today is rubbish', both of which we see very often, there is a good chance the comments are based on a sample too small to be statistically valid rather than reflecting actual changes in adsense.

Sick to death of having to block download this, investments, mortgages, PPI and various other crap that has nothing to do with any of my sites and that no one in their right mind would click on. Why is the targeting so poor these days? Must be no inventory due to those lousy YouTubers.

The way I see it there are a couple of ways to earn money from AdSense. You can earn money just by somebody visiting the page with that AdSense units on it. If you are getting many thousands of hits on these pages every day then there is a good possibility that you will make a lot of money from ads that are never clicked on (even if you're only getting a few p for each view). On the other hand, you probably make more money from ads that are being clicked on. Wouldn't it be feasible that a very large site with page views into the millions will and more money from on page ads (ads that are not clicked on) than ads that are being clicked on?

One of the top AdSense earning websites in the world is called wikihow. If you go to their website you will notice that they utilise what seems to be a 728 x 90 ad unit under relevant information. Actually, I would imagine it's probably a responsive ad. However, for me, the advertisements that are displaying are of absolutely no interest to me whatsoever. Wiki how is a massive website with millions of page views every day. However, even this website doesn't seem to be displaying adverts that are of any interest to me, or have any relationship to the subjects of the subject being talked about. So if this is the case, most of us who run fairly small websites haven't got a chance to make big money.

@RyuUK
I was able to block all that crap by using the ad-balance feature to remove worthless ads in combination with blocking categories. The categories now have more granular sub categories that allow you to target the problem area without impact those sub-cat that provide revenue.
Net result, no more spam ads, increased or equal earnings.

Cheers Nick.

I've noticed more extremes in daily revenue totals over the last couple of weeks, but the overall trend has been positive. (Example of an extreme: Yesterday's revenues were 291 percent higher than the same day last week, on traffic that was up only slightly.)

Traffic, traffic, more traffic. Or to be more specific - HIGH QUALITY traffic. If you have that, you are likely smiling all the way to the bank.

I own one website. One. It gets a significant amount of high quality, repeat traffic, millions of page views per month. The CTR is horribly low, the ads are irrelevant, but the income from AdSense is the best it's ever been. Without getting into specifics, we're talking five figures monthly. I use DFP and run other partners/networks and AdSense is half my total revenue.

I scratch my head when so many people here complain about AdSense being dead. It is alive and kicking for me and I presume hundreds of thousands of others.

@Child please

How long has this website been running for? Are you saying that the revenue from AdSense is more now than it was two or three years ago? Is the traffic the same now as it was back then?

Two or three years ago my monthly income was anywhere between £500 and £700. Then it dropped horribly to less than half. Now it's risen slightly more and fluctuates each month. But typically I can expect to earn into the second sector of £xxx. I've had a couple of months in the last six months where I've gone into the mid-third section of £xxx but it's dropped slightly since.

In the last few months I suppose my daily hit rate ranges from between 2700 & 3500. I can only imagine that your website is receiving tens of thousands of hits each day for you to be able to earn that much AdSense revenue each month. Just as a matter of interest, what is your best earning ad and where is it placed? A few years ago my earnings were more than it is now, I had a 336 x 280 placed at the very end of the consent on each article, this ad unit was one of the best earners. I also had the same ad unit above the consent below the heading if I remember rightly, this is also superb and. I've now replaced the bottom ad unit will a 600 x 250 media.net ad unit which is my best performer for that particular revenue earning network. The best earners I have at the moment are a couple of 600 x 300 ad units, one of which is placed in the left-hand column above the menu, the other one is embedded with in paragraphs of text on several articles.

I have several other ad units including some link units that bring in a small amount. I've got a couple of responsive ads, but these are very low performing indeed. If it wasn't for the 300 x 600 ads I'll be earning less than £100 every month.

Hi. Yes my revenue from Adsense is higher now than it was 2-3 years ago. Not to mention revenue from other sources is way higher...so overall I'm making about double what i made in 3 yrs ago.

You asked about traffic, here's the funny thing...my traffic has gone down! Almost 25%.
So the reason traffic is down yet revenue up? Competition. Running multiple partners through DFP puts pressure on Adsense to bid higher on every available impression.

Also 300x250s are best paying ad units for me. And my site has been around a very long time...15+ yrs.

What is your best position for the 300 x 250 ad units?

You've obviously got a niche that favours competition. When you browse your website, what AdSense units are you seeing yourself? Does your website target just the one country, or is it worldwide? Obviously if you are getting several million page views every month then people are going to want their ads showing on your website. It's not very often that I earned more than £1 from just the one click. Typically, a 300 x 600 ad unit pays anywhere between 10p and 75p per click. Some of my ad units are paying me one or 2p per click, it's pretty pathetic really. Have you worked out whether more money comes from clicks, or just people looking at the add-on page?

To be honest with you, even though my website subject falls into a very narrow niche, I doubt whether any company is going to pay a lot of money per click because there really isn't any really expensive products that they are going to advertise on my website.

Is your website article based, or are you blogging? I know a lot of bloggers and an awful lot of money from regular blogs that get a lot of traffic. It's quite interesting when you look at some of the top earning AdSense websites. One of them is called something like mash.com. It's interesting to actually look at their AdSense layout. They seem to just put a few rectangular ads down the page, nothing really that special or clever. However they obviously get millions of hits every day which is why they are so much. It's all about how many people you get on that one page as to how much money you are going to earn.

I reckon you could probably create a very mediocre website with just a splattering of ads. However if for some reason the site was very popular and was bringing in millions of hits and page views then it's inevitable that you are going to earn money. I get bombarded with websites from these companies telling me that they can improve my earnings through AdSense. I'm not willing to part with several hundred pounds to find out. But it would be quite interesting to see what a professional could do and how much more revenue he could produce for me. Anyway, unhappy as I am, the money pays to run my car and several other of my hobbies.

A number of large brands are pausing all non-search ads, recently AT&T and Verizon in the US while in the UK 250 brands. This wildfire was started by ads on YouTube next to extremism content. If this continues, it will impact sites using adsense by causing a wave of low RPM

Ironside, my site is all article based, basically several new articles go up per day and people visit to check them out. The website targets worldwide, but the huge majority of traffic and revenue is from USA and Canada.

I find the 300x250 within the actual content/article pays the absolute best.

Is Google experimenting with different shapes of link units? My link units seem to change on a daily basis. Normally they are sort of cylindrical in shape, today they are rectangular in shape. Other times they have a white background, then they changed to a blue background.

I think this shape changes goes to avoid invalid clicks. Many lists sites used the same designed navigation button for paging. Blue arrow 'Visit site' on mobile is the next step.

A site that only earns less than a dollar a day, for a long time now...... Usually $0.50 - $0.70 from several clicks.

Got one click worth $4.50 EARLY in the day...

And for the rest of the day, ZERO clicks. That lone $4 click is all I get.

To be precise, that is all I have been given by Google. The rest of the clicks? Well, they vanished in the Bermuda Triangle.

This has happened to me countless times, and I am sure it happens to most of you.

Very, very, very annoying.........

@Ebuzz - That's why adsense has provided ad balancer to filter out poor ads. For most of us, 90% of the revenue come from just 35% of the ads or even lower. Also, the site which earns less than a dollar a day can't be an indicator of adsense performance and also analysing its revenue is simply waste of your time. You should rather focus on building more traffic on it.

@ magician

This site used to make $100s of dollars a month. Now reduced to less than a dollar a day.

I know what I am talking about.

The issue in case, it has not occurred to you, is throttling. It is not a coincidence that when you get a big click, the rest of the day is going to be bad. There is a "ceiling" in place at all times, and in the broad picture, all earnings are actually very fluid, subject to change. It could be in hours, daily, or end of the month.