Adsense Income Nose Dives

[random]

What's up with adsense these days? Has anyone noticed a nose dive in profits this month? Comments from people in other forums seem to concur that income for November is down. I know someone's always up, but what about a concensus? Is it up or down for you?

[wyvern]

Hi Random,

So far in November, I'm running about the same as October both in clicks and money. Of course, I wish I were making more...but I can't blame it on AdSense.

Ken MacKenzie

[MommyEnterprises]

My income has decreased this month and last month compared to all months I have used it.

[stephfoster]

My CTR rate has plummeted just in this last week and a half. Going to have to figure out if there's anything I can do. Might be time to change which ad format I'm using and see if that helps.

[Hock Ng]

I've always been a proponent of diversification. Don't rely on just AdSense. Start testing out other programs such as YPN, Chitika and Kontera. You don't want to be solely dependent on AdSense as something like this could happen.

There are a couple of scenarios that could account for the drop in CPM.

First, advertisers may have better tools now to track ROI and realize that their ad spend on the content network is giving them lower returns than the search network.

Recently, Google also introduced separate bidding for content networks. This could also result in lower payouts for webmasters who display AdSense.

Also, since Google doesn't tell you what the revenue share is, they can easily adjust the revenue share without having to inform the publishers. Imagine this scenario (which is not too far out). Google is now a public company which has to show profit/revenue growth to their investors. What if...

What if towards the end of the quarter, they realize that the numbers aren't going to be quite as spectacular... what's stopping them from adjusting the revenue share for AdSense so that they collect more of the revenue from the ads?

Thoughts anyone?

Hock

[johndilbeck]

[Lynn Terry]

I've actually been doing so well with Amazon on one of my affiliate sites... that I replaced the Adsense in the sidebar with a Amazon tower that shows six related products (related to the pages content). It's practically the same size as the Adsense block... so I am testing that to see what kind of results I get vs Adsense clicks.

It's going to vary from site to site, of course - what works best, etc. The idea is to keep testing until you come up with the perfect mix... and then always have something ready to go up in its place should things change

[johndilbeck]

Exactly, Lynn.

Things change all the time.

I used to make lots of sales through Amazon and that was the base for my affiliate marketing for a couple of years.

So far, this quarter, I've only sold 8 products. Can't build a business on that!

Thank goodness, as my Amazon income dropped, my Adsense revenue increased.

One day, probably, when the Adsense income drops, it will be time to replace it with something else.

Nothing remains the same on the web for very long.

All the best,

JD

[Hock Ng]

Amazon always picks up for me in the 4th quarter.

As for AdSense, my observations are from having sites in dozens of niches. Sure, some are up and some are down but the overall numbers are lower.

Hock