I’ve noticed a worrying dip in AdSense revenue on my sites over the last couple of days. The eCPM has gone down noticably from about $4.60-ish to ~$2.
After reading about the massive termination of AdSense accounts, does this imply that the bidding space is less competitive and people are snapping up adverts for less?
Pardon the slight paranoia, but I just thought I’d check with others to see if they’d experienced something similar.
24 thoughts on “Big Dip In AdSense Earnings”
Ahmed: remember the “guest writer” service I suggested?
Ryan: how’s that coming?
ifranky: I’ll have to explore that advice, though I’m trying to stay out of creating new blogs for myself. I am trying mini affiliate sites using static pages. So far, I haven’t built up much traffic.
Who spoke about writing ourselves? 😉
why not just go on a f’n break in the summer? 😛 Sometimes it’s like the world’s trying to tell us something but we just don’t take the hint.
The smart pricing thing does piss me off though. Read this old article by Jen Slegg, might help.
And I’ll report here once / if I find a solution.
Raj, if you have the possibility to do so, I’d say go for! Find some topics which are hot in summer and build them up.
When it are blogs, make sure to cover enough of affiliate book sales over time, they will help in winter, when people love to read books. Authority and ranking will make sure affiliate book sales cover partially the winter dip in ‘summer seasoned’ blogs.
ifranky: I guess that maybe we need to think about a suite of blogs that cover different seasons. That is, if we’re serious about having publishing networks.
It mainly is niche related. Cars, IT and other stuff aren’t that interesting in summer. Of course, like in Doug’s case, gardening is a hot topic, as this is the time when people work and sit in there garden. And buy garden furniture. 😉
No need to panic, and the summer isn’t the best period to earn online. My former alternative inkt cartridge shop, who ranked in Germany on first page for any printer model also had a drop of almost 20% in summer. Offices are emptier too, people travel.
Summer is a period to prepare for if you earn your bucks online. Only experience can help you there IMNSHO.
nope, already did that some while back.
might be one of my sites that’s dragging the whole thing down. will continue to investigate.
When Gerard first posted this, my CPM had gone done, but since getting rid of the URLs in the AdSense competitive filter (thanks to a message from their team, in my Adsense panel), a few days later my CPM went back to normal. So if you have competitive filtering on, consider that someone may be testing a few long tail keywords before they go with more expensive ones. If you filter them out, you may miss out on higher-paying clicks.
Gerard – incidentally, the same thing happened to me today. I’ll see for a day or two if this improves, but if your case is any clue then it’s probably going to stay the same.
@Ahmed: Yeah, I know it seems like a bit of a knee-jerk reaction, but it’s been very sudden and severe, so naturally I’m worried!
Funnily enough, some of the ads running on the site are the same as they were last week, so that doesn’t help much! I’ll drop you the URL in a PM and you can take a look if you like.
Gerard – just 2 days? I might get worried if it’s been like that for a week, but 2 days, come on
MM is right, as usual (welcome back mate) – for future reference I’d recommend that you keep in mind new ads that show up and drive down CTR, etc.
I think it should pick itself up again. Yes, summer earnings may take a hit as advertisers switch off, but I think we’ve discussed that here at Perf before and it comes down to two solutions – pick a niche that’s hot all season (difficult, but football (soccer) is one of them), or pick niches so you’re covered for all seasons.
eCPM could be down because of a lower CTR, or it could be because of lower EPC (earnings per click). In both cases, check the ads showing on your site and wait for a couple of days.
Oh, and if you need someone to look over your site, PM me.
My earnings are actually going up, even though my traffic is down. (Not up by a lot, but considering that my traffic is down 20% and my earnings are up 5% I shouldn’t complain.)
I’m thinking that my regular readers are still around and clicking through because they’re interested in what my advertisers are selling. But my disinterested googlers are going down … which I’m guessing wasn’t real readership.
Nope, things are fine in the gardening world. Trucking right along.
@Raj Dash
Indeed at this time of the year a slight drop can be expected
I’m sure it will pick up in autumn.
With the cold gone, people also have more time to go outside and play in the real world.
Excellent time to stop looking at Adsense and diversify!!
eCPM dropping might be a sign of cheap ads on your pages. Control the ad links and put suspicious domains into the URL filter. Usually when I maintain my URL filters eCPM is going up two dollars…
Gerard: did you have a PR drop?
No, it’s more recent than all that guys. The site’s been taking ~40.00 per day for the last month, usually much more than that. Steadily declining over the last four days, but the last two have been horrific in terms of earnings.
Pageviews are still pretty good, but eCPM and click-through rates are poor. Think I’ll monitor for the next week or so. If things don’t improve, I’ll have to consider some kind of alternative plan. Possibly direct ad sales.
There is without question a seasonal drop in the summer. That issue, to my knowledge, is not up for debate. Whether this year’s dip is worse than usual, however, is another matter.
I’ve been a webmaster since 1996 and traffic ALWAYS drops in the summer, but obviously not for every site. However, my point is that if advertisers believe this to be true, then they are bidding lower, or not at all. Hence, lower CPM. I’m actually seeing slightly higher CTR but junk CPC earnings (despite adding a giant list of URLs to the AdSense filter). Regardless, we’re all down 😛
I’m down too! Someone suggested less clicking during the summer months, but I’m no buying it.
I noticed a big drop also. But, I’ve noticed a drop in “circulation” too. Usually, when one of my posts is picked up by Lifehack.org I get a big boost in all numbers. I posted on EBooks yesterday AND included a free EBook but there was no accompanying jump in either hits or Ad Sense revenue.
I’ve noticed a slight dip, but I think Raj is right, the summer tends to be one big dip for most niches.
Gerard: My CPM has gone down to, but on the other hand, my monthly revenue is so small that it makes no difference. What’ll hurt me is probably the aftereffects of G cracking TLA.
But also consider the time of year. A lot of people go on vacation now, in the Northern Hemisphere. I think there’s a correlation there somewhere, though I’m not sure what it is.
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