Thanks @allhearts - I thought it would be. Had really good months in November and December (although Dec marginally down on 2019) with quite small % clawback. Possibly 1%.

@Lisa

My traffic is pretty much the same as last year. No change. That’s good I guess, because my traffic had been decreasing for the previous three years. My traffic is half of what it was in 2017.

That's sad, but at least your revenue is improving. What happened to the traffic? Was it hit by algo update?

@Lisa01

I was hit by that huge update in December of 2017. It killed about 35% of my traffic. I was hit, to a lesser degree, by another update in 2018. Also, my industry is a lot more competitive than my heydays of 2013-2017.

I'm down 30-40% compared with December with all NA traffic. About on par with any other year. As someone above me already mentioned, around the middle of January is when RPM tends to pick up for me as well.

Wow!
Since Jan 1st Page RPM is coming down down down
I'm at $0.27 on the 5th vs $0.55 on Dec 31st.
50% down!

@SweetPotato

That’s normal.

RPM 50% down in January 2021. RPM of December 2020 was around $10/12. Now in January 2021 only $5.

@gatormark, sad to know that. Google just doesn't think before destroying businesses. It's so unreliable now.
Adsense has been performing terribly for me for quite sometime now. Traffic is increasing but revenue is nowhere near to what it was in 2018 and even 2019. Earlier, my average RPM was $12 to 15. Now it's $4 to 5 and will get worse with Google removing link ad units.

@Lisa01

I’m sorry to hear that. This is a tough way to try to make a living since we are so dependent upon Google and things can change overnight.

I had to come up with other revenue streams to supplement my Adsense income.

Can you suggest a few? @gatormark

Lisa01, you're probably not going to want to hear this (it is not a popular position), but Google doesn't owe any of us a living. My Adsense revenue is nowhere what it once was, either. Back in the day, it was my main source of income and I used it to buy a house.

Now it is part of a menu of revenue streams, not all having to do with advertising. For example, I do some writing on the side. I do some tutoring. I've helped small local businesses put up websites. I have a couple of direct advertisers. Until the pandemic, I ran a homework club at a local school. All of which keeps me from worrying so much about what Adsense is doing.

@Lisa01

It depends on your industry. I added new features to my main website but required a paid membership to access those features. That added income equivalent to about 1/3 of my Adsense revenue. I use Exponential as another Advertising revenue stream. I also started publishing books. It just depends on your niche, but you need to be creative and to diversify.

@ember, I understand what you're saying. Google doesn't owe us anything. But it's quite disappointing since everything happened within a few months. @gatormark, thank you for your suggestion.

But it's quite disappointing since everything happened within a few months.

Yes, I agree. It's frustrating to watch the revenue created by hard work dwindle, especially when so much of why it is dwindling is out of your control.

As the month goes on RPM and CPC is getting worse, anyone else notice that?

Some of the visitors to my food website are complaining about how to remove wax from your ears ads and such similar higiene ads, how can I remove these from my website since I can't find them?

Thanks

@allhearts use January as an opportunity to test ad sizes and ad positions.

@Niresh12495

thank you for the idea, but I'm using responsive ads throughout the site.

@allhearts responsive ads doesn’t bring much revenue, This data is from my 6 years experience.
Try to test fixed size ads 728x90,300x250,300x600 These adsizes has good rpm. Also contact support by email if you can use floating ads, they give additional privileges to some users. Better to do something than doing nothing this month.

@allhearts

I agree with @Niresh12495 based on my experience. The fixed size ads tend to perform better. However, I will use one responsive ad per page to help with fill-rate.

@allhearts - CPC is in the pits. Mine has been in the lower (and I mean LOWER) two digits since the beginning of the year.

@allhearts - You can block unwanted ads by domain.

Can somebody please explain this? Got it while creating matched ad unit for the primary site.
"Low-quality matches
Although you can place Matched content units on these sites, recent changes to traffic numbers or the content itself means the units won't work as well as intended, resulting in lower-quality content recommendations."

@Lisa01 Matched contents are shown based on pageviews the urls. Even if low quality content generate more pageviews, there is a possibility that the low quality content may get shown in the matched content recommendations.

In my opinion avoid matched content.

This is weird, Niresh. Because one of my sites which doesn't get even 10 percent of my primary site is considered more eligible than this one.
Yes, this site was hit by May core update and hasn't recovered completely, but it it has considerably good number of daily visitors, better than the second one, at least.

I have to try something new, my top responsive ad (above the fold) has the lowest CPC of all ads, that doesn't make sense.

@Niresh12495 and @gatormark

The majority of my traffic is mobile, but I still get good traffic from desktop, how can I make it work for both if I use fixed ad sizes?

If I use something like this:

<style>
.example_responsive_1 { width: 320px; height: 100px; }
@media(min-width: 500px) { .example_responsive_1 { width: 468px; height: 60px; } }
@media(min-width: 800px) { .example_responsive_1 { width: 728px; height: 90px; } }
</style>
<script async src="https://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/js/adsbygoogle.js"></script>
<!-- example_responsive_1 -->
<ins class="adsbygoogle example_responsive_1"
style="display:inline-block"
data-ad-client="ca-pub-XXXXXXX11XXX9"
data-ad-slot="8XXXXX1"></ins>
<script>
(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});
</script>

Should it improve or still be considered responsive?

Thanks for your help.