Confused About Adsense Income

Jazzy · #1 (**permalink**) 04-13-2009, 05:46 AM

Traffic to my website almost tripled in the beginning of 2009, but my Adsense income has not gone up. I'm really having trouble understanding why.

Also, I've heard that if you have Adsense on a lower number of pages, your income goes up. How do you decide what pages to put Adsense on?

I'm thinking about changing things up and putting in some channels, but first I need to figure out an overall strategy.

lisa · #2 (**permalink**) 04-13-2009, 12:43 PM

Hi Jazzy

If it makes you feel any better, my traffic is up by a LOT compared to last year (about 30%) but my AdSense income has only increased by a little (some months it's the same as last year). A lot of it has to do with how much people are spending on ads in your niche. If that goes down, then your earnings are going to follow. Plus, people are becoming more familiar with the ads now and ignore them. These are just a couple of factors.

I just got some help from the AdSense Optimization Team who voluntarily gave me some suggestions. For example, I have a lot of videos on my site and they suggested placing ads alongside the videos, using more link units (which I don't really care for but I'm testing them). Since doing some testing, my CTR has gone up by a percent and my earnings have increased slightly.

I don't know anything about limiting the number of pages you have ads on. Never heard of this. I just think you have to experiment with different sizes, placement, etc. and track your results.

Jazzy · #3 (**permalink**) 04-14-2009, 05:02 AM

I was thinking about adding some link units as well.

I will play around with it a bit. Thank you for chiming in!

alana r · #4 (**permalink**) 04-14-2009, 02:22 PM

It depends on where your traffic is coming from? social traffic (or untargeted traffic) rarely click on adsense ads neither do other bloggers and webmasters, for the best click through rate search engine traffic is best.

If most of your new traffic is organic search traffic then maybe you ads are not targeted well to your content? if so you can try editing your content, a lot of the ads are based on your page/post titles so you could try changing them around a bit? if you are getting ads that are not performing well you could also try the compeditive ad filter to filter out the ads that you feel are not relavent

James · #5 (**permalink**) 04-14-2009, 04:06 PM

Lisa's observation about much higher traffic but not as much income increase is telling. There is an underlying business principle here and she identifies the heart of it in noting that prices being paid for the ads is no doubt lower.

A lot of people cut back on advertising when times are slow, often the opposite of what they need to do. It is sort of like people selling their stock when the market is down. Smart people buy when it is down and sell when high. Unfortunately (for them) most people aren't smart!

The good news for Lisa, really good news in fact, is that if traffic is up 30 percent when the economy gets back to normal and bidding on ads gets back up to normal prices income should really pick up in a big way.

It is important to keep your eye on the ball, as they say. In any business the exact dollars at any given time is not reflective of the progress of the business. Indeed, if you remember, Amazon lost money for something like eight years before turning into a real money machine.

Jazzy · #6 (**permalink**) 04-15-2009, 05:52 AM

That's a good point, James.

I didn't know that about Amazon.

Jazzy · #7 (**permalink**) 04-15-2009, 05:54 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by alana r

It depends on where your traffic is coming from? social traffic (or untargeted traffic) rarely click on adsense ads neither do other bloggers and webmasters, for the best click through rate search engine traffic is best.

If most of your new traffic is organic search traffic then maybe you ads are not targeted well to your content? if so you can try editing your content, a lot of the ads are based on your page/post titles so you could try changing them around a bit? if you are getting ads that are not performing well you could also try the compeditive ad filter to filter out the ads that you feel are not relavent

I have a little bit of social traffic, but most of it is from search engines, and it is from related keywords.

I'm going to take a look at some pages to see if there are any irrelevant ads. Thanks for the tips!

mohammad · #8 (**permalink**) 04-16-2009, 07:27 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by lisa

Hi Jazzy

If it makes you feel any better, my traffic is up by a LOT compared to last year (about 30%) but my AdSense income has only increased by a little (some months it's the same as last year). A lot of it has to do with how much people are spending on ads in your niche. If that goes down, then your earnings are going to follow. Plus, people are becoming more familiar with the ads now and ignore them. These are just a couple of factors.

I just got some help from the AdSense Optimization Team who voluntarily gave me some suggestions. For example, I have a lot of videos on my site and they suggested placing ads alongside the videos, using more link units (which I don't really care for but I'm testing them). Since doing some testing, my CTR has gone up by a percent and my earnings have increased slightly.

I don't know anything about limiting the number of pages you have ads on. Never heard of this. I just think you have to experiment with different sizes, placement, etc. and track your results.

Thanks Lisa, I had the same confusion. You Rock

Jordy3738 · #9 (**permalink**) 04-16-2009, 08:51 PM

My traffic increased in the beginning of the year also. Just Google giving us a pat on the back I guess for doing some things right. Along with the increase in traffic, I have experienced an up-swing with adsense revenue.

mohammad · #10 (**permalink**) 04-16-2009, 10:11 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jordy3738

My traffic increased in the beginning of the year also. Just Google giving us a pat on the back I guess for doing some things right. Along with the increase in traffic, I have experienced an up-swing with adsense revenue.

Congratulations Jordy3738, I am happy you are successful. I hope that I increase my earnings too.

cantik · #11 (**permalink**) 05-12-2009, 01:01 AM

There are 2 point to increase your adsense income:

- promote way
- lay out ads

I have an experience that with my YSM campaign my revenue is good enough. However the problem is YSM need some fund to spend.
And, lay out of your ads will also affect to your CTR. Good lay out is put your ads in the middle of between articles.

Niche · #12 (**permalink**) 05-12-2009, 04:55 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by lisa

I just got some help from the AdSense Optimization Team who voluntarily gave me some suggestions. For example, I have a lot of videos on my site and they suggested placing ads alongside the videos, ...

This is interesting news. I was under the impression that Google does NOT like us to put our adsense ads beside images or videos because it causes the false impression that the adsense ads have something to do with the images and artificially put up you CTR

irock97 · #13 (**permalink**) 05-27-2009, 12:43 PM

Does Adword help to gain money from adsense?

TechieGuy · #14 (**permalink**) 05-27-2009, 01:09 PM

I'm not sure if it helps or not.

Adwords is what advertisers use to display their ads, while adsense are those ads.

You pay for each click your adwords ads receive, while those that display your ads on adsense receive a percentage of what you paid.

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