Last year was scary, I was seriously looking at alternatives. Which, I've been doing this for 15 years, so I was NOT looking forward to that!

But this year has been a massive improvement. March started out pretty low (not scary low, but still low), but then yesterday was a huge improvement!

Comparing March 1-8 to Feb 1-8, ad impressions are down by 3%, but revenue is up by 8%.

@Cyril TechWebsites Things used to be good for me back in 2017. January the earning dropped, February - the earnings dropped again, and March is now looking better than Feb but it's nowhere close to January.

I doubt this is because of quarter.

I am earning nothing, the ads are still delayed when I publish a new article and it hurts my income because everyone knows if you post fresh content the first 30 minutes is when you start earning the most thru adsense, and all old articles from years ago are not showing ads until I visit them then they pop up 30 to 40 minutes laters.

Im feeling hopeless, I cant work due to bad knees, I had to quit blogging in 2013 because no money came in anymore, I worked a manual labor job for a few years got wear and tear and decided to try again with a hope that maybe I could again earn a decent 25 to 40 dollars a day on average blogging again just to pay off some bills
no luck, I barely make 30 cents, if im lucky ill get 3 thousand visits and maybe 1.50 to 2 dollars

I used to earn 15 dollars with only 3 to 4 thousand visits. now I barely get 50 views tops a day, and my website has been around since 2008 and in G news since 2010.

I was told to just focus on increasing traffic, and try and sell adspace on my website because Adsense is no longer what it was, someone told me just focus on trying to sell ad space with a rotating banner at a bid price on your website and at least you are guaranteed monthly income

he told me to try other ad networks like media.net but I have no clue if they require a certain amount of monthly traffic to be approved.

Today is up 58% over the same day last week, and the last 7 days are up 9% over the previous week. The numbers could be completely different tomorrow or next week, of course. Worrying about daily or even weekly ups and downs is a waste of time, IMO.

"Worrying about daily or even weekly ups and downs is a waste of time, IMO."

Agreed. I'm also finding that even comparing to last year is becoming a waste of time as there is much to consider: changing audience habits, changing advertiser habits, changing Google habits - I've stopped expecting this industry to be doing what it was doing one, two, five or ten years ago - so much has changed and will continue to change. You either roll with it or get rolled over.

U put up 4 articles in google news, received 77 visits to my blog, and made 0.03 cents with one click.

A strange thing happened with one of my site. This site is into very competitive niche, it is worlds most competitive niche and I was getting only 30 visitors on an average daily.
I have good push notification subscribers on my other main site.
From past 2 days I was sending push notification linking to this competitive site. To surprise CPC was around .7$ but today CPC is at .05$

Google does play with earnings and caps earnings for an account?

@capulkit Because those push notification subscribers would be from Asian countries.

Google does not cap earnings. I've earned $100, $500 next day, and $200 another day, a lot of times - it's just a myth.

This month is definitely better than February. CPC is definitely up and earnings each day seem to be improving.

A strange thing happened with one of my site. This site is into very competitive niche, it is worlds most competitive niche and I was getting only 30 visitors on an average daily.
I have good push notification subscribers on my other main site.
From past 2 days I was sending push notification linking to this competitive site. To surprise CPC was around .7$ but today CPC is at .05$

Google does play with earnings and caps earnings for an account?

Don't know if they throttle Adsense but traffic is definitely throttled by moving few posts up and down in SERPs to make sure you get average daily traffic. With that earnings might get up or down.

Agree with @NeapTide, traffic is really all that matters in adsense. Work on the traffic, and money will naturally flow in. Almost every other weakness can be "fixed" with more traffic.

I am seeing RPM recovery. So far march is weaker than february by roughly -20%.

@frankleeceo, up until recently I would have agreed with you, but my January experience disproved that. In January due to Brand-Safety, my earnings dropped to the lowest level in years while my traffic reached new record highs and even doubling my record traffic level would not have made up for the sharp drop in earnings. Thankfully, the issue was resolved. But none the less, since I have begun doing this I have seen my traffic grow steadily, by many multiples. Unfortunately, my earnings have grown but at nowhere close to the same rate as my traffic. There has been a steady decline in RPM over the past few years and it is at the point where growing traffic, although very important, alone cannot make up for that drop. Falling RPM is strong headwind.

I always thought that once one reaches a certain critical mass of users that one would shift gears in terms of RPM, that advertisers would be attracted to your site and seek you out and push up RPM. But I have not seen that, my current experience is that traffic and RPM are negatively correlated. Correlation != causation, and the drop in RPM is most likely due to market conditions more than traffic levels. So either there is no critical mass, or I have still not yet reached. I must add, that I have noticed an increase in the number of steady, repeat advertisers so I am benefiting somewhat, but the improvements are gradual.

There is no doubt that traffic level are important and arguably the most important metric but traffic alone will not drive success. Despite all this, I work tirelessly to improve my site in an attempt to improve traffic.

@Cyril... it does seem like several niches were "hit" by a big drop between end of last year and January. Things were great for us last couple years - and then Jan. 22 - our earnings tanked. I know we have to re-develop for mobile.... but even so, it's a huge hit.

The good side: It's obvious now that it's critical to develop other streams of income. Adsense (as thousands of you tube creators found out..) can end any time for anyone. Sooo... back to work.

Yup.. my traffic continues to grow and grow.. im at just over 2X the traffic from last year.. yet one day in Sept.. the RPM dropped to about 30-50%... this was overnight across 4 sites with a lot of traffic. If that isn't some form of manipulation then i don't know what is. I don't know if its manual or algorithmic, brand safety or a penalty but i didn't even recover at all during the holiday season when my rpm usually goes up 30%+.

It has been this way for over a decade.. and even if the rpm was going to go down due to other reasons... i doubt it would suddenly drop the last week in Sept and just never recover. I'm still making a lot of money from them due to the high traffic.. but if they can just remove 50-70% of my income over night.. i guess they can remove another 50% later on.. after these new lows become the norm.

Another funny thing.. all site are in the same niche.. same type of traffic.. even the same theme. With half the sites, the CTR dropped and caused a low RPM.. the other half the CPC dropped to cause the low RPM.. does that make sense.. I don't think there is a grand conspiracy where evil google is swooping in to squish the little guy.. but i do think a big company will try to protect its investments and make as much profit as possible.

Today is going very well, CPC is at 19p and rpm is something like £3.20. Earnings are already higher than they have been all month.

My CTR is all of a sudden up, so RPM is recovering but CPC is still down :/

My overall earnings is still 40% down vs last year (any month).

This Saturday is Bad, very bad.
All figures are down.
The payment is the lowest this month!

@NickMNS

Imagine if you did not grow the traffic and you suffer the same RPM drop :). From your experience if you did not grow the traffic you would suffer a 50~80% drop that several people report on here. Several people on this forum did not focus on the traffic and we hear from them pretty often :). I think it's awesome that you have grown your traffic in many multiples, that's what it takes in this business in our current environment, and exactly what I am hoping to get across.

You have proven that critical mass => RPM increase does not happen. I have always both theorized and experienced first hand that additional traffic will almost always result in further drop of average RPM across the board. (Outside of a few selected lucky ones that actually gets direct brand placements, but those are few and rare, and I am not one of them), and that effect is going to be more and more rare, it's the market trend. Direct brand placements are shifting to other networks instead of banners (it is what it is). We serve the remnant ad spend.

The overall environment is not doing so swell for us with many challenges, I totally agree, but that is outside of our control for the most part. We can't control what technology people use (adblock), the advertiser's bids, or Google's upcoming new changes, The only variable that is actually within our control is traffic. It's not about correlation nor causation of earning figures (there are lots), it's about doing whatever to keep us afloat or even growing.

RPM will fall even further. That's the trend. Only a few still in denial at this stage, while many saw it at an early stage. If the traffic does not keep up with the RPM decline, the overall business will be in decline. That's my observation and opinion. I am not going to "hope" for RPM recoveries, nor people's change of heart to stop using adblockers, but I'd rather double down on my content / traffic generation as my execution.

With that said...it is still disheartening to work as hard as possible, but tiny bit of early or even negative comparative earning. I am facing more competitions too. It's for sure not getting easier but harder.

but i do think a big company will try to protect its investments and make as much profit as possible.

This has always been the case and always will be.

Hi everyone, I've been reading this board for years and have never posted. Since 2011 I have been making a full time living from the big G, Adsense only, all without paying for any traffic, organic search traffic only.

I would like to thank everyone on this board for their great insights about earning a living online from AS. I have learned a lot from you guys and gals.

Through the years as I have watched the Mozcast chart rise and fall and I have tried to figure out and understand the fluctuations as most of you have. I always had the determination to rise above any challenge that was presented, I'm not sure it's viable anymore.

I am not a novice in AS, and by no means am I a pro compared to many on this board. I have made nearly 700K from AS, most of it since 2011 and have had 6 figure years.

I have been lucky enough to spend my days working in my sweats in the winter and shorts during summer at whatever hours I wanted for the past 8 years. There's no one to thank for that than the big G, as much as I hate to admit it.

I've had the honor of watching my grandchildren every Monday without having to worry about losing income, at the same time watching my wife having to get up early and get ready to go to work and not having the same opportunity for interaction with them.

Since 2011 this has been my full time employment. Sometimes I feel guilty, but I fear I will be joining her soon in the every day grind of working for someone else. I have already applied for some jobs.

Will I keep trying? Absolutely. But I think the time has come to consider it additional income source instead of only income source. Stats and data simply confirm this for me.

isitbtyet

that is amazing you were making six figures a year from adsense, what type of website do you run? and all organic so you never linked your stuff on social media just put out content and people backlinked to you?

Just a couple of six figure years, but did really well on other years. No social media whatsoever, I actually don't like social media at all. Have seen lots of people having a hard time with the new "G answer boxes" but my content is not affected by that. To this day I have not received a link from an .edu or high authority backlink but several competitors in my niche have some.

I consider myself lucky and fortunate, I have racked my brain the last couple of months trying to figure out what the heck is going on with G and their search results, but this time I'm clueless.

@isitbtyet

Thats amazing that you went untouched, I have a feeling you were one of the lucky ones who didn't get randomly human reviewed and marked down, also your competitors didn't do negative SEO on you by dishing spam back links

Is your website a blog or is it some type of affiliate marketing site it would be interesting to understand you truly are lucky.

Are you from USA or some other country?

I have tested latest UC Browser (Android version) built-in ad blocker and it is now not blocking AdSense ads. It seems like Google forced them to stop blocking their ads since UC Browser was twice removed from Play Store. I knew it from the beginning that it was all about ads blocking.
Instead I have seen Instagram and other ads running on UC Browser app. These mofos were previously displaying their own ads randomly at the very bottom of sites but were blocking AdSense ads and hurting publishers and G. Such ads appear when you scroll down to very bottom of page but still push it further and then UC's own ads appear.

They've stopped blocking AdSense before Google removed them from Store, but not all sites are whitelisted, one of my site is still blocked on UC. Google Play Store and AdSense works independently tho.

My 300x600 sidebar ad is all of a sudden showing native ads like taboola in New York (via Pingdom). The first ad is Hillary Clinton disappear on election night, second is how to fix dark spots.

Is this a new feature, A/B testing? It looks just like native ad, it's not the matched content type ads. Strange!

Adsense is not not blocked in latest UC Browser ( with default settings ) for all sites.
If ads are still not displaying try changing div id or something...

Yesterday was the best day of the month with quite a lot of clicks and good CPC as well as good page RPM. Looks like they might be a good one as well. CPC is at 15p at the moment and page RPM £3.23. I really don't want to tempt fate but things seem to be on the up for me

Seems like there's an ad slowing down the sites. All of the sites which I monitor for speed is slower than ever on Pingdom, GTMetrix or my browser.