Re: The Elsmar Cove Web Site Visitor Statistics
I wonder if your site got reviewed or posted somewhere that is suddenly bringing in a wave of people from another significant forum or blog? Once again, I'm glad that others are seeing the same refreshing trend.
I'm not looking at raw traffic per se, but most traffic comes from Google. I of course watch raw traffic (which is what I post here, so you can see the flux from month to month in this thread), but the cents per click (which I'm not allowed to reveal) is what went way down. Why it did is a matter of guessing because Google's algorithms are not public. I don't even know what any specific ad pays. All I get is an average. All I know is it involves bidding in AdWords. But, there are things like 'smart pricing' that I don't fully understand.
I do know in June Google killed off thousands of 'MFA' (made for adsense) sites and arbitrage sites (just Google "adsense arbitrage site") because all they were were 'non-information' sites people made (such as you do a search and come up with a page/site which has little or no significant content, or is just a site with a listing sorta like another search page). One guy who did arbitrage put up a photo in a forum last winter of a 1 month check from adsense for over US$150,000! I'm sure the guy has a lot of sites and has a fair amount of overhead, but that's a lot of cash. There has been a lot of speculation on what would happen, one of which was payout would rise for 'legitimate' sites as 'garbage' sites would be significantly (supposedly) reduced. But again, it's all speculation. The best I can say is that on 2 July something changed. But again - This is a very short term observation, the change is not terribly large (gained back about 15 to 20% of the 40% down trend) so what appears to be a change might just be a short term aberration. The decline started last December - January and seemed to stabilize at the low by April.
Having a site which for all intents and purposes depends upon advertising as the Cove does is risky, and it's totally a guessing game. To be honest I don't monitor what's happening much any more in the web site owner/admin forums I sometimes visit because it's almost like going to a precious metals forum. I own a lot of gold coins. Right now the dollar is dropping significantly but gold is not going up 'as expected', so you have a lot of people guessing why it isn't. No one knows, but everyone has a theory.
Same with Google. Even when they redo search ranking algorithms everyone throws in their 2 cents about what changed and why, but it's all guesses. Some sites drop out of Google's index completely. Other sites get a big gain in rankings. Some sites rankings don't change at all. So everyone sits around and guesses why. There is some flux, but usually Elsmar.com stays about the same, probably in part because it's been on the internet for so long.
Pay per click is a weird game. Some say AdSense (and other online advertising in general) is doomed to eventual failure. Some say companies are becoming 'discouraged' by poor follow through (people click but don't buy) and bidding less. Some say companies are becoming discouraged by click fraud and dropping out or bidding less or dropping their internet advertising budget.
So - Who knows.
I do want to put in my standard disclaimer - Please, No one should click on an advertisement unless they really are interested in the product. Clicking ads to 'help me out' could get my account canceled for click fraud, and if that happens it is rare that a company (or in my case a person) is reinstated. If I loose AdSense, there is no way I could keep the site online. A few people do donate every month, and there are a couple of extra ads by companies (right now only 2), but there just isn't the revenue there to pay to keep it online.
