Google Adsense Revenues Dropping?

Many publishers online have experienced drops in their online revenue. This drop can be attributed to a number of factors such as changes in the amount and quality of visitors to a site, changes in ad positioning, website design and format and a slew of other unknown factors that can cause a drop in revenue.

Although Google Adsense has been a great additional revenue stream for thousands of publishers, it’s a well known fact that CTRs (click through rates) and CPCs (cost per clicks) have been dropping across the board even in traditionally high paying niches. In the nutshell the U.S. and Global recession has impacted advertising spends for businesses all over the world.

I’ve never been a “power publisher” or “power blogger”. In my personal experience when I first started with Google Adsense with a small website I made at the most around $20 a day from Adsense ads. The highest click I ever earned was over $20 and the second highest was over $7 on a trading and investing site that I was developing at the time. I thought it was fantastic. Of course this was in the early 90′s and I’m not sure if we will ever see those types of CTRs and commissions per click again.

I think Google Adsense still has some good potential, but there are some points to consider if anyone is thinking about making thousands of dollars per month with Adsense.

1. Many sites that have broken the $4000 and $10,000 a month income level with Adsense have gone on to diversify their ad listings or even take off Adsense completely. One can only assume that it was because of declining revenues.

2. The biggest problem in my opinion with Adsense is that there is no transparency of commission rates per click. In other words, you get what you get. They don’t tell you a percentage and if they change the payout rate and make your percentage of earnings lower, you’ll never know.

In most traditional major business relationships, there is an open agreement as to what level of compensation one receives for a desired result. The advertiser is paying a known CPC cost per click, yet Google pays the publisher that delivered the click and unknown percentage based on unknown factors and an unknown accounting algorithom.

The good thing about Adsense is that Google pays on time and regularly if your income exceeds $100 for the pay period. So any money you earn with Google is pretty much guaranteed to “be in the bank”. Since Google’s major revenue stream is ad dollars from their publishers, they will never fuck with your money once you’ve earned it and they will pay you.

One suggested that I recently browsed upon was that by not having a privacy policy on your website, you would be potentially earning a lower percentage with Google. I’m not sure if this is 100% accurate but adding a privacy policy is not a bad idea, an easy thing to do and by doing a search online you can find a few simple templates to choose to add to your site.

All in all I am still hopeful and dream of a day when I can see an Adsense check that pays for my rent and more each month and grows. I would love to see Google become more transparent in their commission split and I would love for them to continue to develop the ability to customize ads even more. I think it’s great for Google and great for the economy and online business trends when website publishers are able to earn significant commission dollars and benefit advertisers as well as themselves.