AdSense pennies

[mrizos]

I have a site that used to get about .20 to .60 cents a click, however now I am averaging less than 1 penny (.01) a click?!?!? How is this even possible?

 

[netmeg]

Is it a developed site or a parked site?

Sounds like you have been smartpriced.

 

[mrizos]

Is it a developed site or a parked site?

Sounds like you have been smartpriced.

It's developed with all MY OWN content. The site is virusinfection.info

 

[netmeg]

Well, you're in a sector that I wouldn't expect very high EPCs, but you say you have gotten good clicks before. Possibly you are being site-targeted, which means you are showing CPM ads instead of CPC. Unless you have a lot of traffic, that can drag your earnings down (although theoretically, it's an auction for placement on your site and the highest paying ads are the ones that show) You can contact Google and tell them you want to opt out of site targeting (CPM ads). They'll try to talk you out of it, but if you persist, they'll take it off your site.

If you're being smart priced, I don't know that there's a lot you can do. Smart Pricing is Google's way of evaluating your click traffic to determine its quality. It's something that's supposed to work in favor of the advertiser - in short, they recognize that traffic/clicks from one site are not necessarily equivalent to traffic/clicks from another, and after the ads have run for a while, they are 'smartpriced' accordingly. Probably use statistical data on conversions gleaned from AdWords and Google Analytics.

There's some debate as to whether or not one site that's being severely smart priced can affect the other sites in that account. I certainly wouldn't rule out the possibility. That means, the poorly converting traffic isn't necessarily on your virus site, but some other site in your portfolio.

If you do a search on "Google Smart Pricing" you will find lots of blog and forum discussions about it.

 

[Varon]

I may be wrong here, but this is an indication of red flags flying fast at Google. If you are running adwords to adsense campaigns, I would quickly pause them and write to the adsense team about the low CPC issue. Google (for reasons we will never know)may currently be categorizing clicks as invalid and thats why the 1 cent payouts.

 

[mrizos]

I may be wrong here, but this is an indication of red flags flying fast at Google. If you are running adwords to adsense campaigns, I would quickly pause them and write to the adsense team about the low CPC issue. Google (for reasons we will never know)may currently be categorizing clicks as invalid and thats why the 1 cent payouts.

The only PPC campaigns I'm using are Microsoft Adcenter campaigns. I'm not using adwords at all.

I just fired off an email to them. I should mention that my other sites are doing great. I just had a 3.00 click on one of my financial sites.

 

[mrizos]

this will make you sick (or laugh)

92 clicks = $1.48

no response from adsense support yet

 

[loko123]

lately something is getting wrong with adsense, some of my pages gets 5000 visitors by day but adsense just shows less than a fifth of its impression pages, i know most visitors are real and not bots. right now changing from adsense to one of his competitors is crossing my mind. does anyone knows another company better than adsense?

 

[philski]

Nice ad site design

Hi,
one thing you should do is channel your ads, so you can see at a glance where there clicking,,

The index was showing katrina ads! so perhaps a sprinkling in of new targeted words, Vista Scan? that sort of thing, new emerging markets, with limited competition and hopefully expensive offerings,

Nice site too,

Phillip

 

[netmeg]

92 clicks = $1.48

That sure looks to me like they're counting some of those clicks as invalid.

 

[Varon]

That sure looks to me like they're counting some of those clicks as invalid.

Yeah... Just what I was thinking. Dash them another email.

 

[NPKJB]

One of my sites made .1 cent today without the Adsense channel recording any clicks. How is this possible?

 

[bluearrow]

One of my sites made .1 cent today without the Adsense channel recording any clicks. How is this possible?

that might be for Impressions.

 

[mrizos]

Yeah... Just what I was thinking. Dash them another email.

I did just now. I usually get a quick response, but nothing so far.

 

[netmeg]

One of my sites made .1 cent today without the Adsense channel recording any clicks. How is this possible?

Site Targeting. Some advertiser is running a CPM campaign rather than a CPC campaign, and you're showing their ads. In theory, AdSense is supposed to only show the highest paying ads for each of your ad blocks. In actuality, many people report that they get better earnings once they have opted out of being site targeted. The only way to opt out is to contact Adsense support and ask them to turn off site targeting for your account. They'll try to talk you out of it, but they'll do it if you insist.

If you get mega-traffic, site targeting can work pretty well.

 

[mrizos]

Site Targeting. Some advertiser is running a CPM campaign rather than a CPC campaign, and you're showing their ads. In theory, AdSense is supposed to only show the highest paying ads for each of your ad blocks. In actuality, many people report that they get better earnings once they have opted out of being site targeted. The only way to opt out is to contact Adsense support and ask them to turn off site targeting for your account. They'll try to talk you out of it, but they'll do it if you insist.

If you get mega-traffic, site targeting can work pretty well.

Thanks for the advice netmeg. I sent them an email asking to opt out of site targeting.

I've redirected my adcenter ppc campaign to remove-malware.com until I can get a response from the adsense team.

 

[NPKJB]

Site Targeting. Some advertiser is running a CPM campaign rather than a CPC campaign, and you're showing their ads. In theory, AdSense is supposed to only show the highest paying ads for each of your ad blocks. In actuality, many people report that they get better earnings once they have opted out of being site targeted. The only way to opt out is to contact Adsense support and ask them to turn off site targeting for your account. They'll try to talk you out of it, but they'll do it if you insist.

If you get mega-traffic, site targeting can work pretty well.

Great info.... Thanks Netmeg!

So they can take site targeting off of all my sites? I only see it happening with one domian. But if its better to be on CPC, I want to make sure all of my sites are like that.

 

[kokbaw]

It depends on the contnent of your site.

 

[netmeg]

I took site targeting off for a while, but then when my traffic started to pick up, I put it back.

The thing is, it's all about getting good, targeted ads that will appeal to whatever your demographic is. Once that happens, people will actually start to convert off your ads, and your earnings-per-click go up. The thing is, it took Google over a year - closer to 18mos, actually - to get me really good ads targeted the way I thought they should be. I think Google's process "learns" from patterns of user behavior, what works and what doesn't. In my case, my main earner was a two word domain - michiganfireworks. They were sending me ads all about putting on fireworks shows from that, but my target audience didn't care about putting on commercial displays, they wanted to WATCH them, and as far as ads, they were interested in goods and services available in Michigan. So I changed some of the ads around, and edited some of the text on the site to put a little more emphasis on the Michigan. Once Google learned that, and started targeting the "Michigan" aspect of the site instead of the "Fireworks" aspect, the money started rolling in. I still have Fireworks ads, but I have a lot more better paying ones. My average earning per click on that site is over thirty cents, even in the off-season, and I frequently get two and three dollar clicks.

So what I'm trying to get at is, if you want to keep your EPC up and attract good ads, you have to make sure they're very targeted to your audience (use the targeting comments that AdSense provides to tell Google what they should be looking at, and possibly move the location and tweak the keywords to get what you want) and be patient. It may take a while before it really starts taking off, but if you take some care with it, it'll be worth it.

 

[NPKJB]

More great info.... Your detailed and informative posts will increase my chances of success in this challenging business. THANKS!!!