Why Let Google Adsense Hold You Down and Tickle You?
Follow up to: Google Just Kicked Me Right in the Junk
From my perspective it started off bad, but it seems that it was actually pretty good. I am referring to my first month’s earnings with adsense . When I decided to make a blog that would make money from google adsense I really had no idea as to what the out come would be.
The first month when compared to some other blogger’s income was really good, but really it wasn’t enough to pay the rent. Month number two was about the same as the first, but heading into month 3 I see that I may have some problems. My adsense clicks are worth way less than what they used to be worth.
I had read through forums and communities to try and see what the problem was (aside from the fact that I have adsense on a blog that has net savvy readers). Everyone had complaints, and no one had any solutions.
Damn, I had to think for myself. I hate that.
I don’t know if this is considered ironic or not, but I went to Google.com to search out an answer as to why Google is paying me less per click. After much searching, reading, and loss of hair, I came across a concept that I had never heard before: Google Smart Pricing. The short version is that Google has some unknown system that determines what that type of traffic your site gets and how valuable your traffic is to the advertisers and pays for the clicks accordingly. If you see that your clicks are getting devalued it is most likely you have been smart priced. Even if you have bee “Smart Priced” there is still hope for you.
Using Google Adsense to earn a living is like getting held down and tickled: You can’t do anything about it, so you give up and submit to their will, all the while laughing uncontrollably. It makes sense to me. If it doesn’t make any sense to you try finding someone to tickle you.
Now I am not going to explain how Google Smart Pricing works, nor am I going to point you to a page that covers Google’s explanation of Smart Pricing because it will mostly be filled with Google propaganda. I will however suggest that you read How To Get Worthless Adsense Clicks which will is a great article that covers Google Smart Pricing and how to avoid it.I am pretty sure that my Adsense account has been Smart Priced. So what am I going to do?
1. My first step is to remove all my adsense ads that are not getting a CTR of 3% or higher. This is going to be tough seeing as how I have spread my adsense seeds all over the place. I hate cleaning up!
2. Next up I am going to really work with a blog before moving onto the next blog. I like to spazz out with blogs. I get an idea, I make a blog, rinse, repeat. From here on in I am going focus on a blog until it achieves a strong 3% CTR.
3. Now this may seem crazy, because it goes against everything that we have learned about getting traffic. I am going to avoid using social media to drive a ton of traffic to my site. Over the last week it was my goal to increase Living on Adsense’s traffic from 20 uniques per day to 40. Well I managed to move it up to around 100 uniques per day. The problem is that when my traffic count went up, my CTR went waaaaaaaaaaay down. I am going to try and get my main traffic from search engines as this will bring in much better targeted traffic, and more people willing to click on my ads.
So what does this mean for Living on Adsense?
It means that for now I am keeping the adsense on my site, but if the statistics do not match my goals, then I will get rid of the adsense. I will keep you informed as I progress, and if you have been Smart Priced pleas share your thoughts and strategies as to how you will get ‘Unsmart’
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Comments
They do make it tough for us to make money from Adsense with all the “trade secrets” but for some reason we keep using it despite the fact that we get paid so little.
I have convinced my self that the higher clicks are saved for those with more traffic and a higher CTR. I am just running on instinct here, but really I think instinct is the bes way to go when they leave you in the dark.
I have gone through and removed most of the adsense from some other sites and already my average CTR has gone from around 0.75% to around 4.5$
We’ll just have to wait and see how it goes.
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This happened to me a few months ago. We were averaging about $200/day with Adsense for well over 10 months. Then all of a sudden the numbers started to drop — now we’re averaging about $75/day with the same number of impressions and clicks as the $200 days.
I recently had a call with a Google supervisor and brought up this issue. He doesn’t work for the Adsense department, so he couldn’t shed any light — he did mention that it’s the nature of the beast, unfortunately.
And as such, we’ll be ditching Adsense in the coming months. Google offered us their enterprise advertising solution, so we’re going that route where we set our own pricing, get our own advertisers, etc.
mike’s last blog post..Sunny, YouTube Star
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And what about Project Wonderful? Is it worth it? Are you getting good results from it?
I’ve seen that you raised the minimum price, which is good. Still, it’s not enough to substitute AdSense is it? (not that you want to substitute it, anyway)
Ren B’s last blog post..Books, books.
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I have a site that is ranked pretty well in google for a good term up here in Canada (usually #1 or #2) and I’ve actually seen my per click Adsense rise over the past couple of months. I guess it depends on what the site content, keywords and page rank/importance are when it comes to the new formula.
Kman’s last blog post..Website Startup
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@mike: That is a huge drop, it just goes to show that Google really is evil. Do you think using Google Enterprise will allow you to recoup your losses, or is this just another way for Google to kick us while we are down?
@Ren B: P.W. is a nice little source of income that will not slap me in the face and then come back and say sorry like Google. I actually did not raise the price, that changes as people bid higher amounts. It doesn’t bring in a whole lot, then neither does Google. I haven’t really put forth that much effort in monetizing this blog, as I have mainly focused on traffic building (which is going well) and RSS building (which is going horribly).
@Kman: Congrats on actually doing well in the Adsense market! Perhaps you would like to do a guest post here and share some of yor thoughts and ideas on Adsense? I am sure peopel wold love to read about someones earnings going up instead of down.
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I think we might be at a point where we should be in control of our own advertising space, instead of letting Google, TribalFusion, etc, set our prices and what not (and then taking a cut).
As of right now, Google Enterprise is free for us to use (free as in no monthly payments, yearly fees, etc), but I’m sure Google will be taking their cut, as always, of what we make.
Eventually I’d like to be totally self sufficient with selling our own ad space on SongMeanings instead of relying on Google, or any other type of foreign software. I’d write my own, but I simply do not have the time.
mike’s last blog post..Sunny, YouTube Star
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Hey Blogger , I like a lot your blog post expecially the article for pay per click adsense and your post regarding , it looks very interesting. Nice to share it with us. I found you on Ask Jeeves while searching for pay per click adsense . I just Digged it on Friday so will notice also an increase of blog traffic in exchange.
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Google has all these sneaky ways to keep ad revenue (at least for us bloggers) down. It’s interesting, especially since so much of their “trade secrets” can’t and won’t be revealed. Best of luck to you!
Click.
Stefan’s last blog post..Welcome! Pull up a chair and stay awhile!
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