Very few part time bloggers make full time income with Adsense. AdSense revenues can bring jump of happiness, but in little time sudden spikes of depression, on base of revenues people get. That’s a fact. Sure, you know that the factors that are causes of these variations, are different.
Page Impression, CPC, eCPM, CTR are the most popular variables can affect revenue. The first thing I reccomend you to do is to learn how they work and tracking data coming from your site.
Photo credit: Keso
Below are some of things I’ve learned from the Official Google AdSense blog who has recently posted a two-part report on this very topic which I found useful and complete.
Diagnosing And Treating Revenue Fluctuations
The aim of this article is to provide useful advice for the AdSense revenue model so you can diagnose and treat revenue fluctuations like an experienced MD.
Study Up
What is eCPM, CPC, CTR, and page impressions?
eCPM(Effective Cost per thousand impressions): Is the max sum that advertiser pay per 1000 Ad impressions. In little words, gives you a chance to know how much you can earn for every 1000 page impressions.
eCPM = (Total earnings / Impressions) X 1000
For Example: Now, you have $20.00 in your AdSense Account and you have total of 6000 impressions which make it 6 thousand impressions.
So, eCPM will be: ($10.00/7000)*1000= $3.33
Note: While advertisers can pay for placement-targeted ads by impression (CPM), contextually targeted ads always pay per click or CPC.
CPC(Cost Per Click): The cost of one click on a listing, keyword, banner, or advertisement for which you would pay each time the user selects/clicks on the hyperlink.
CTR(Click-Through Rate): The average number of click-throughs per hundred ad impressions, expressed as a percentage.
CTR = IMP/C
So What Is A Good CTR!?
So after all this, what is a good CTR? As you can see above, there are so many factors that there’s no way to predict a good CTR for your individual case, however here are some rules of thumb that we have observed:
- A CTR under 1% is considered bad.
- A CTR of 1-2% is fair to middling.
- A CTR greater than 2% is what you are looking for.
- A CTR greater than 4% is great.
Page Impressions: Is the number of times a web sites has been viewed by a user.
Identify The Symptoms
Once you know the most important factor that influence your revenue, you can start to diagnose any revenue fluctuation. Compare trends in both page impressions and eCPM using the Advanced Reports in your account. Here, there are two things to check:
- If your page Impression is down, check up whether the traffic to your entire site is declining as well.
- Whether your eCPM is down, you’ll need to check if your contextual or placement targeted ad performance has dropped.
Choose The Right Treatment
Once you have monitored the revenue fluctuations, It’s time to start finding one of the symptoms identified below, for resolve the possible problems.
Page Impression Changes
- Check for AdSense technical issues or public service ads (PSAs).
- Use Webmaster Tools to make sure that Google have indexed your site.
- Check up Blogger that Linked to You .
CTR Changes
- Interface (UI) that’s not optimized.
- Check up whether Google system can crawl your page through their webmaster tools.
- Try Google optimization guidelines to optimize your pages.
- Testing new ad formats, placements, or colors(*).
(*) The better way to finding the right AdSense Ad Design for your blog is to test different options and see what works best for you. One way to do this is to try Split Testing (sometimes called A/B testing).
CPC Changes
- Improve your CPCs by choosing ad formats that support all ad types: text, image, video, flash, and gadget ads. More competition means higher advertiser bids.
Placement Targeting Revenue Changes
- Determine whether your revenue drop are part of a trend or a short-term earnings fluctuation.
- Publishers can have spikes in placement-targeted revenue when advertisers run limited-time campaigns.
- If you want to increase placement targeting over the long term, set up ad placements.
Adwords Adsense Formulas Summary
eCPM(Effective Cost per thousand impressions) = (Total earnings / Impressions) X 1000
CTR(Click Through Rate) = IMP/C
C(Click Total For Period) = IMPxCTR
IMP(impressions) = fpop x (1/SERP#) x Inventory
fpop(Popularty factor of Search term) = Determined by: Geolocation, Branding, Season, Gender, Age, Inherent Demand, Cultural Trends.
SERP# = Search engine result position.
