转载自老外文章：
From $1000 dollar a month to $1500
Quote Originally Posted by Qbar View Post
Hurrah!
For the first time I break my target of 1000 dollar in a month with Adsense!
I reached $1,028.62)
Well was lucky in January.
But will be difficult to match this performance -for me it's one- next month:
- google isn't fair on click pricing
- and the fact if that February is shorter than Juanuary by two days
Let's work harder then!
Quote Originally Posted by Qbar View Post
I've got a network of entertainment blogs (80 hosted on blogger) that accounts for 70% of my monthly revenue and a TV site -not a blog- that accounts for the remaining 30%.
80 blogs may seem a lot at first: but actually it is not.
I'm competing on niches and having one site per topic allow "to overperform" in Google serps despite my sites being modest. My blogs have only 10 pages max, 4 in average (but they are meaningful, not made for adsense spam pages) so they are easy to set up.
I read alot on digitalpoint and what i won't forget is that your url name does influence your ranking in google: so i just use my keywords to make my urls.
Besides for each page/post i make i systematically list them in 10 selected social bookmarking sites.
And because i have more than 80 sites now, i do have some -limited in general but real in my niches- influence on serps by my own: with my network I can give a serp boost to the new pages i may make.
As a result I don't make use of advertising yet.
Still a lot of work to do though before i reach 1500 dollars (my next target is indeed 1000 euros, around 1500 dollars as of today).
My strategy has a big weakness though: i rely entirely on Adsense, but there isn't any real alternative so far for me.
Damned, every night i pray to find a real competiter to Adsense!
I went close to 3000 dollars end of August but then I was heavily smart priced by Adsense... All stats were roughly the same but because my Earnings per clik (EPC = revenue / number of clicks) decreased (it means that a click is getting less valuable) and my revenue just went down the drain: from 3000 to 1200 --> -60% !!!
I read that many people were affected by a general decrease in September and end of October: well I was damn hit! Even more hit than others actually...
Have a look to this EPC graph over the year 2009 (it's not against the TOS, I just show the curve without any number):
The red circle is when I took a stance against smart pricing and tried to get out of it.
About smart pricing first:
- I confirm that smart pricing can affect you whole account (so one bad site can weaken the revenue of the others)
- if you do what is needed to get out of it: one week can be enough to recover a bit
How to get out of smart pricing: (from my experience)
- check your sites that generate impressions but no click, and take ads out of them!
- I had too many ads on my sites (before I had a square, 2 banners and a link unit), all was fine until Adsense considered it was too much in September... So I decided to show only one or two ads per page now, and I stopped using link units (link units had a good ctr, but low epc, hence negatively impacting my whole account...)
Quite soon, my EPC went up and even outperformed my previous average. But because I'm showing less ads, ctr is much lower (ads area has been reduced indeed, so people are less likely to click on ads ) so my revenue is just back at $2000.
To sum up, if you want to get out of smart pricing:
- export your data in an excel file and calculate your EPC every day (also, make a colum, variation of EPC), EPC is probably the most important indicator (but google does not make it easy for your to check... isn't that strange?...)! You have to check your EPC every day!
- cut the bad apples (sites with impressions but no clicks)
- less ads brings more money (use a skyscraper, a leaderboard or a big square)
- avoid links units!
Comment:
What I did to get out of Smart Pricing makes me think that Adsense is categorizing sites: if your ctr is too high or too low compared to your niche market then you may get smart-priced... Be better than average, but not by too much!
Diversification
I was using only Adsense int he past, but following the epc decrease, I turned to some other networks. I strongly suggest to use kontera (inline text advertising) and tribal fusion (CPM)
My new revenue for december
Adsense: around 2100
Kontera: 400
Tribal Fusion: 350
Total around $2850
I was really depressed when my EPC went down... If you're victim of smart pricing: you know there is a way out by now!