Recovery?

Well, it looks like I have a nice recovery underway!

I am talking about my AdSense earnings.  I have reported over the past year or so that my AdSense earnings have really been seriously on the decline.  Under AdSense terms of service, I can’t really give numbers, but I will say that over the past year my AdSense earnings have decreased by about 75%.  Not good!  I was at the point where I was really considering just taking all AdSense advertising off of my websites, because I just did not feel it was worth the time I was spending on it, given the small number of earnings.  Also, I felt that I could make more money by replacing the AdSense advertising with ads for my own products and services.

One last try

Back in January, my wife and I had a discussion about the changes that we wanted to make in our business in 2014.  Goals and how we would reach those goals during the year.  One decision that we made was to keep running AdSense until the end of June, half of the year, and see how it did.  We decided, though, that if we did not see a significant increase in our ad revenue during that period, we would eliminate AdSense at the end of June.

Last weekend, I decided to make some advertising changes on my most popular website.  The changes basically were to move the AdSense ads around a bit and make some changes in the ad formats.  I figured that this being the end of April already, that these changes would have 2 months to perform before our end-of-June drop-dead date for AdSense.

Well, I was quite happy and surprised when I started seeing how the new ad layout was doing.  On the first full day that the new ads were in place, I had a 300% increase in ad revenue compared to the same day of last week!  I have now had these new ads in place for 4 days, and each day has had a triple-digit increase compared to last week!  Yesterday was my best day so far with a 500% increase compared to last week.

So are the new ads working?

The answer is easy.  YES!  

In fact, my ad revenue over the past few days is back to what it was a year or more ago, after losing 75% of that revenue over the past year.  I am very happy.

If things continue at this level, or even near this level, AdSense will be on my sites to stay.  I really feel good about the performance that I have achieved with only about an hour worth of work and a few changes to the ad setup on one of my sites.

So, what exactly did I do?

What specific changes did I make?

1. I placed a 336 x 280 ad at the top of each of my articles, inside the article (in other words with the article wrapped around the ad).  I used to have an ad set up like this and it performed very well, but it really dropped off a lot last year, so I removed it.  Based on the fact that this new placement is performing great again, I can only assume that my readers became too accustomed to seeing this ad, and became blind to it.  Having it gone for 6 months or so and now back again, people are seeing it again, and the ad is performing.
2. I placed a 720 x 90 ad inside my articles, about halfway into each article.  A lot of people tend to read my entire articles, and thus they are still paying attention well into the article where these ads are placed. So far, this ad is performing very well, and I am happy with it.  It is bringing me revenue that I was previously leaving on the table.
3. My top ad on my sidebar used to be a 250 x 250 ad, but I changed it to a 336 x 280, and it has nearly tripled in performance since I made the change.
4. I removed some ads that were simply not performing for me.

What will I do next?

Well, these changes are doing great for me, so am I done now, or do I have some other changes up my sleeve still to be implemented?

I have more changes coming.  To be honest, though, they will be these same changes, or very similar, but on different sites now.  Since I have proven to myself that these changes have done quite well for me, I will roll these same changes out to some of my other websites and see if I can duplicate the success.  Coming soon!

How about you?

How is AdSense doing for you?  If you have seen a decline in earnings, maybe it is time for you to shake up your site a bit and see if you can’t get your earnings back to where they used to be.  I can’t say for sure if my earnings are back to stay, it will take more time to know for sure on that.  But, things are looking promising!  I’m keeping my fingers (and toes) crossed! 🙂