Has the Economy and Poverty Perception Affected Your AdSense and Other Blog Revenue?
One of the biggest problem in a downward or stalled economy is the perception. For most people nothing has changed, They have the same job and same mortgage and gas and food prices have been high for a while now.. but all the news and media play to our fears and we “feel” poor. When people feel poor they stop spending and this makes situation worse.
Some say the answer is get people to spend more. It is ironic that CNN and CNBC pundits go on ad nauseum about the horrible worsening economy yet run constant commercials to buy buy buy.
I am actually and advocate of spending less and living simply and think we have become as a society victims of our own success.
Yuppies and DINKS had kids and wanted to keep all their toys and jobs. Parents a work means money for daycare and low paying day care jobs and parent guilt which lead to parents spending $500.00 on video consoles and yearly trips is Disney World.
I suppose that is a whole other post but now we have ended up in a crappy economy and are starting to pick up the cheque for the free lunches of the past 10 years or so.
At any rate- what does this mean to ME?
Why Have My AdSense Earning Gone Down?
My AdSense earnings are not meeting my projected targets. My CTR seems a little low and EPC also down.
AdSense is so tricky and hard to figure what exactly is the actual problem. Are my blog boring and readership down? More people know how to implement SEO on their bogs and websites and more people going after the same pie?
I can use analytics to figure most of it out and from my numbers nothing much has changed and my conclusion is that ADWords ads are costing less because people are spending less on advertising. For some reason in any kind of a cash crisis small businesses will slash their advertising budgets first.
This is the time of year when my AdSense ads will start to go though the roof with all those Christmas dollars waiting to be spent. I think Advertisers are frightened no on is buying or will buy and are hedging their bets and waiting to see what happens in the coming weeks.
I’ve also witnessed a slow-down in AdSense revenue. Bummer. I agree with you, though, as a society we need to spend less and get back to basics.
Fortunately not making much money will help us to do that, right?
I have also noticed a slow down in revenue, by about 15%. It is an education blog, and based of past trends, this is typically a down season, so I’m not sure that I can blame it on the economy because education is a sector that typically does well in a bad economy because everyone is looking for more education to get the higher end jobs out there.
There is definitely slow down in AsSense revenue. Some people are afraiding to do advertise coz they are worried about the forthcoming days.
SEO - getting traffic and marketing does seem to be a very populated area of blog and forum activity.
I am surprised earnings are stable enough that you can reliably speak of them “going down”. Or is it that you were used to a steady increase and when the increase stops and you see your first decrease which is actually a normal variation around a steady level. Except for really enormous traffic levels I would have thought you would see variation of 20-30% around a mean anyway.
Do google still not publish what part of the revenue the publisher gets? I know that used to be how it was.
If there is still google-secrecy, they could be changing that behind the scenes to meet short term corporate and their own financial-reporting objectives. Or have they explicitly said they don’t do that?
[ All My Comments at http://blodcast.com/download-blog ]
It kind of feels like we’re in a giant game of musical chairs. The music has stopped, and we’re all waiting to see who doesn’t have a chair. Everyone I talk to is in a wait and see mode. When that happens, nothing good happens. I’m just hoping something will break this logjam.
My limited experience with Google ads was from the advertiser side. The company I placed Google ads for had cable TV ads, magazine ads and a newsletter on their website. Most important to them and their dealer network was lead generation and conversion of those leads, of course. Unsponsored Google ranking on the first page was essential. No lower than fourth on the paid ads ranking. Their relatively small niche industry depended on one keyword phrase. That phrase cost them anywhere from 35 cents to $1.85 per clickthrough. November and December saw consistent expenditures of $8,000 to $15,000 per month. During the holiday season there are bidding wars for position on certain weeks and days and times of day for this industry. It got as high as $4.00 per click through. It was insane.
It was and still is essential advertising for them. Their products retail from $250 to $1600 each. They still maintain high unsponsored Google ranking and pay to stay no lower than fourth. The bidding is lower for placement because ad budgets are being squeezed like no other time in the last 25 years.
Although I don’t participate in AdSense, I want to. I have total respect for those little text ads. I also appreciate the sharing of information among competitors on this blog. I have learned a lot. It was time for me to share a little myself.
I have Adsense on one of my blogs. Haven’t noticed an appreciable downturn lately, since I earn so little from it anyway.
However I do market affiliate programs on other sites and I have noticed that while I’ve been getting the same number of free signups as usual, fewer of these are paying to upgrade. People are holding onto their cash, that’s for sure.
As you say I think it’s the perception of doom, rather than the reality. Every one at my office job (including myself!) is nervous about what the future holds yet there has been no downturn there. This might change, but the sky certainly hasn’t fallen in yet …
As said, Adsense is such a tricky animals that its bidding mechanism will always pushes the profit into an optimum level. When everyone’s bidding low - the top merchants still remain at the top. They just got served with a cheaper ads that don’t convert as good as it used to be.
By the way, my major Adsense websites are financial/trading related and to my surprise my earnings are NOT showing sign of decrease at all.
Google is just not paying out as much in order to increase their year end profits. People are going to assume it’s economic, but that’s googles plan.
My Adsense revenue is almost the same (expect for some variations based on the season).
Maybe people still want to dream even though they can not afford the products
There could be many reasons why your earnings could have fallen. It could be due fall in SEO ranking of your website. Or it could be due to falling of avarage cost per click. This could be due to changes to content or keyword structure. It is also possible that the fall is temporary and could rise again.
I think the media did bad job freaking the public, I made no serious money since November but this is probably due to December effect
I noticed a difference when they changed the clickable areas of the ads themselves. If anything, internet usage will increase as people look for work, more avenues to make money, it should remain around the same level.
I must be lucky. So far i haven’t noticed the economy affecting my Adsense earnings.
My sites are mostly about cosmetics and other products for younger women and perhaps they are still as willing to spend money, regardsless of any recession?
m having a watch on my Google Analytics for betterment of $$
and yes i too think people are spending less on advertising nowadays but still can get good from adsense for sure
i haven’t tried other advertising networks … wat about u ?
No wonder our adsense revenue dropped 30% in the last quarter of 2008. It was surprising to see some ad blocks displaying no ads at all. Some other survey indicates that the TV and Print media ads are decreasing and more companies move to online ads..
Let us keep our fingers crossed and see whatzup for us in 2009
I’ve also witnessed a slow-down in AdSense revenue. I haven’t tried any other advertising networks yet.
My adsense never did that great anyway. I mean 6 dollars in 5 months isn’t very good. I am truly confused how some people can make a living off of it. Either way, I enjoyed your article and keep up the good work.
I think you’re right on the mark with the point about perception being so much of what is driving the economy.
However I’m seeing a slightly different response with regards to adsense. I’ve seen increases month to month for the last six months. Of course, I’ve also been working at it to see that increase.
I think when it comes to businesses spending money on advertising…. most businesses will change their focus in an economic downturn so that they review what the most EFFECTIVE of their spending is and prune out less effective methods. Yellow page ads for example I’ve seen a few local businesses cut because they’re not paying for themselves. Adwords on the otherhand gives some great targetting and tracking capabilities so that it’s very possible to make sure the money spent is effective at customer acquisition.
Of course, it also depends on which market you’re in - if you have a site that was making money off of mortgage/construction advertising things may be bleak.
As for CTR being lower - I think that may be more a factor of the type of site visitors you get and that makeup of visitors changing. Search traffic is the best for CTR, return visitors and social traffic the worst for CTR…. lot’s of factors involved.
Because of the Global Economic Financial Crisis all are affected. Even the advertising industry because people nowadays are trying to spend money wisely. But that doesn’t help the economy according to the government people should spend, spend, spend money to be able to help the economy but how it going to happen when there are no money….