Entrecard and Adsense Are The Oil and Vinegar of the Web
I always come up with a lot of weird theories. I am not sure if these come from paranoia or from the alcohol. More than likely it is a combination of the two. I really don’t mind that it get delusional and come up with odd theories. It works fine for me because sometimes my theories are correct.
This is where we move onto my latest theory. Since I decided to make a blog and try to live on Adsense I have been complaining about how little money I make on Adsense. During the past few months things have gotten progressively worse, and as such I have created more theories.
My latest theory is that a group of people only referring to themselves as the “Army of the 12 Monkeys” have taken over Google Adsense and have been royally f#&king everybody’s earning per click.
No wait, that’s not it.
No my theory is that Entrecard and Adsense are like Oil and Vinegar (duh, didn’t you read the title?). Now remember this is just the ramblings of a guy who drinks and blogs so don’t take this advice too much to heart. Although I do not make things up just to blog about it, my ramblings posts are based on my personal Adsense experiences combined with what I have read from the “experts.” Again, take my advice with a grain of salt.
I have done a lot of reading about how Google allegedly calculates how much it pays out in Adsense earnings. Of course no one really knows how this is calculated except for the 12 monkeys. A lot of people are saying that the amount of traffic you get combined with CTR is how your clicks are calculated (which is also how Google determines whether to smart price you or not). Although people are up in the air about this, from my personal experience I believe it to be somewhat accurate. I have noticed a steady decline in my total CTR for all of my Adsense sites, which was followed by a decline in my earnings per click.
So, the more traffic you get, and the less people that click on your Adsense ads, the lower your CTR will be and of course then your earnings per click will lowered
This is why Entrecard is the bane of Google Adsense. Entrecard will increase your traffic, but as we all know, most people that come from Entrecard spend less than 5 seconds on your site. This means that Google will count this visit from the Entrecarder as a page impression for your Adsense, which effectively drives down your CTR, and in turn will affect your earnings. I do not know about your blog, but my Adsense earnings dropped when I added Entrecard.
Remember this is all just my assumption based on past experience, none of this is set in stone fact.
My advice to those that are using both Adsense or Entrecard, drop one or the other, or get creative and not have the Adsense ads on your main page. You cold even try dropping Entrecard for a week and work on driving some actual targeted traffic to your site and see if your CTR and earnings go up. Remember to keep testing and try to keep your CTR for your entire Adsense account above 3%. I have opted to keep all of my Adsense ads off the main page of course I really shouldn’t have Adsense on this site at all. Maybe one day I will drop it, I just like to go down fighting. I am stubborn that way.
I have gone to the extreme to test this theory and have removed Adsense from all of my sites except for 2 in order to bring my entire Adsense account above 3%. This is going to be a challenge considering when I started with Adsense I didn’t use the channels to track my ads and I cannot remember where I put them all! Anyways, I plan on nurturing each of these sites until they consistently have a CTR of 3% or higher which should get my account unSmart Priced and then should put my earnings per click back on track.
Who would have though that blogging required so much thinking? I sure didn’t. It hurts it really hurts.
I urge you to check out your previous few months CTR average for all of your sites and see if your CTR has gone, and if your earnings per click have gone down as well. Help me prove the theories of a rambling madman.
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So what about using Entrecard AND Proj. Wonderful? I guess it’s better, since PW only shows your unique/pageviews rates. Just another try…
=]
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Oops, I didn’t read your reply on the other post. You said: “It doesn’t bring in a whole lot, then neither does Google. I haven’t really put forth that much effort in monetizing this blog, as I have mainly focused on traffic building”. Well, that’s the good thing for Project Wonderful, I guess! Just build it up and I think that your earnings will grow accordingly.
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Hey Chris, this is interesting, never thought that my CTR may be affected by this. I’m glad you wrote it though because I just decided to use Google exclusively on all my blogs. I’ve seen it go up pennies a day since I did that (Last Saturday)…so the jury is still out for me. I’ll let you know in another 30 days or so.
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I see what you mean, Chris. Guess we’re in the same boat. Maybe I need to create another 98 blogs to make it a hundred, then only the ctr will increase (hopefully).
During one of my journey with Entrecard, I managed to advertise on John Chow. Yeah, that John Chow. I thought maybe traffic to my blog will increase, but unfortunately they came just to drop their cards and leave. No comments and NO money when I looked on my AdSEnse’s account. I guess my blog SUCKS!
Anyway, like you do I’m going to do a bit of brainstorming.
O ya, I came here by coz I want to say thank you for dropping by on my blog. Do come again.
Greetings and lots of love from Malaysia.
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@Ren B: As traffic increases, so should the PW earnings, but at the same time I see a lot of big blogs with a huge readership only getting a few dollars a day from PW. We shall see if it stands the test of time.
@Teasa: Please keep me informed. Google has made us into a little gossip sewing circle. We never know exactly what’s what so we have so guess and gossip about it. In 30 days I expect a good gossip session [maybe we could knit a toque whilst gossiping]
@ArahMan7: I wouldn’t say that your blog sucks, I would say that anyone that would visit your blog from John Chow would probably be expecting to see a John Chow type blog and click away.
Don’t sweat it!
In fact I do not even read John Chow or Shoemoney or any of the big names any more. Those guys are in a whole different level of blogging that us smaller bloggers cannot even fathom. I stick to reading blogs from rookie bloggers; people that blog about their trial and error experiences.
In my opinion that is where the knowledge is.
…oh and welcome to Living on Adsense!
Found you through BlogCatalog - what a fresh and entertaining blog - luv it!
I just recently ran into the whole ECard and Google Adsense CTR problem as well.
Here’s what I did, since I run a couple other websites:
First, I removed Adsense from my personal blog (madWAHM.com). Then, I applied for a 2nd Adsense account. Yes, this is perfectly legal and approved by Google. I wrote about how to do it here: http://www.madwahm.com/webmaster-stuff/multiple-google-adsense-accounts/.
Another thing you can do if a 2nd Adsense Account isn’t an option is to just remove your Adsense ads from your index, sidebar, header and/or the ones that appear on your blog home page. Instead, place Adsense ads on your blog’s pages and single posts. This really controls the low CTR caused by Entrecard. Besides, those that click into your site are the ones who are most interested in your content and likely to be responsive to your ads.
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Thanks Chris for your kind words. Really appreciate it.
Can’t help it overhearing madWAHM’s comments and I left a couple of questions for him/her but I guess his/her askimet eaten up my comments. I don’t know what happened. I guess it’s waiting to be moderated.
Anyway, I wondered about AdSense and EntreCard. Will it cause public service ads being shown coz I noticed all AdSense on my blogs are public service ads? What should I do to keep public service ads from showing?
I thank you in advance Chris.
Greetings and lots of love from Malaysia.
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ArahMan7: I don’t think that EC would be causing the public service ads on your blog. I believe that something else is casing this, of course I am not really an expert. I would send a message to google and see if they can shed some light.
Sorry I couldn’t be of more help.
A buddy of mine just dropped me a comment asking if I’d seen a decline in Adsense revenue since using Entrecard. I joked about it and said I don’t think anything could make my adsense revenue any worse, but as I actually started thinking about it, yeh I do believe my earnings have plummeted even more.
With that in mind I set out to do a little Googling to see if I could find others talking about it, which is how I landed here. Your theory is very interesting. I just may do a little testing and see what I come up with.
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