Google Taketh Away
I've had Google AdSense advertisements on two of my web sites' pages for several months now (first post, second post). It started off pretty slow. In August I was getting 54 page views a day and made $2.72. In September 48 views a day but $3.42 in revenue. But in October things really started taking off and I averaged 125 views a day and $9.99 in revenue. By using my Site Meter web page counter I realized that what happened was Google had started referring people to my web site whereas before I was getting most referrals from the less popular Ask Jeeves.
November continued the trend and I made $10.23 on 176 views a day. At this rate the two pages with ads were paying for my monthly internet access ($8.33/month) and then some! But page views dropped off starting in December and Site Meter indicated that I was no longer getting *any* referrals from Google for my Dejumbler page which gets about 75% of the traffic on my web site (most of the rest is for my pages on my iPod battery pack which also has ads). When I did a search for dejumblers on Google my blog entries showed up, but for some reason, the actual dejumbler page was nowhere to be seen. I even tried re-wording some of the page and the title of the page in an effort to get it listed again.
Lately I have started getting referrals from Yahoo and MSN so my traffic is still pretty high, but my advertisement clicks are still down and I probably won't make $4 this month. Maybe because it is Christmas. Also I don't know how many ad clicks come from people I know trying to help me out (hopefully none).
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Comments (10)
I wonder if Google put a cheat in their page rank that would move up pages that contained Google advertising. Perhaps they removed that cheat. Perhaps if we all put links to your word jumble page under the links section on our main indexes, that would help improve your ranking.
Posted by Jeb | December 19, 2004 8:28 AM
I think Google will come crawling back to me eventually. They are still indexing some of my other pages. It's just interesting to watch the ebb and flow. Nearly all of my hits come from search engines, not links on static web pages. The only exception is occasional references from the blog, like last night at 10:00 when Eric followed a link from my Mega Bucks post and visited 13 pages.
Posted by UT | December 19, 2004 10:24 AM
uh..hehe. I thought that might help your, um, yeah.
Posted by Eric | December 19, 2004 11:05 AM
I don't mind you visiting my web site any time you want. But it isn't really right to click on ads you're not interested in just to generate revenue. Yesterday 8 ad clicks gave me $2.08 which is suspicious given I only had that many in the previous two weeks. And Google tracks stuff like that too and might kick me out of the ad program before paying me. It isn't really fair to the advertisers either, who have to pay Google at least twice what I get and aren't getting any business.
Posted by UT | December 19, 2004 11:29 AM
re: "But it isn't really right to click on ads you're not interested in just to generate revenue."
Not true. You are exposing yourself to an ad in doing so that you would not have otherwise. As a marketer, I would *love* people to click on ads for any reason. Personally, I'm interested in zero of the ads in the AJC and Newsweek, and I don't think I've ever acted on any of them. Is it wrong for me to accept the discounted subscription price advertising allows knowing I avoid the ads? No, it isn't, because the advertisers are all hoping they are at least getting a crack at influencing me.
I do like the Mac and iPod ads in Newsweek. Must confess that.
Please click frequently on Google ads found on mac.fiveforks.com. I'm up to $26 which will pay one quarter of the MovableType license I just bought.
Posted by jeb | December 19, 2004 12:10 PM
Maybe so, but Eric and Kelly don't even have credit cards. And I doubt the websites that advertise are thinking 10 years into the future when they get them. I don't think it would be hard for Google to determine that 80% of the 300 clicks on my web pages come from 2 domains and decide that they won't pay me. Or maybe that they won't list my pages in their search engines which may be what happened too.
I think there are some shades of gray with advertising. Ted Turner said that people who use Tivo and skip commercials are violating their contract and that the commercials are like the admission price of television. While I agree that if everyone skips commercials TV will go out of business (or use product placement, ticker ads, etc. to show you ads), I don't think anyone is bound to watch ads because they watch TV. But I don't think it is right to click on ads just to generate revenue. Some of the ads pay 50 cents per click instead of 3 cents. That's a lot of money coming from someone.
Posted by UT | December 19, 2004 2:19 PM
I beg to differ. I have 2 fake credit cards I go in the mail. I'll give you a picture of them when I can find the camera.. One is a capital one, the other is a really cool delta skymiles credit card.
Posted by Eric | December 19, 2004 3:37 PM
I finally lost patience with Google and submitted the Dejumbler site to them. I started getting referrals from them almost immediately. In fact they are about half of my referrals. But it is interesting because my daily hits haven't risen that much. However I am getting more clicks per week than I was during the drought.
Posted by UT | January 14, 2005 11:41 PM
I'm continuing to watch Google drop the Dejumbler and add it again with no action from me. I'm not sure what is going on, but traffic will drop off to barely over 100 hits a day and then suddenly go up to almost 300 just based on Google adding my page or not. They dropped me last week and put me back today.
My Ad Sense clicks are doing really well now. I thought Kelly and Eric might have been visiting, but now I see that the iPod battery pack web page has ads about commercial iPod battery packs and battery replacements (rather than websites that sell batteries) which my readers are probably interested in. After getting $4.63 in February, I got to $10.58 in March and April should be just as good or better.
Posted by UT | April 18, 2005 8:59 PM
Today I got one ad click, but it was a doozy: it was worth $1.95.
Posted by UT | May 11, 2005 7:49 PM