Over the last year or two, I’ve moved a lot of my efforts and focus to my more passive income type earnings online, versus just concentrating on my online freelance writing business. One of the facets of making money writing online is advertising. The simplest online ad system is Google AdSense.
AdSense Earnings Adjusted Same Day
Google’s AdSense program has a lot of moving parts. However, recently, I’ve noticed an uptick in a certain quirk related to earnings.
First, Google adjusts your earnings as an AdSense publisher all the time. The most noticeable adjustment occurs every month when your “Estimated Earnings” is converted into the actual earnings they are going to pay out to you. On the second or third day of a new month, Google will post the actual amount you are getting paid. This number is almost always smaller than the estimated earnings you have been shown all month long. For me, it’s usually a pretty insignificant amount, a rounding error, really.
During the month, if your ad clicks are
particularly worthless not converting well, you may be “smart priced” which is a fancy way of saying that the amount you are getting paid per click will be lowered. This keeps advertisers from trying to cut off certain publishers and potentially costing Google revenue. There is no notification that you have been smart priced, nor is this really something talked about on the publisher (AdSense) side. It’s actually something more readily mentioned on the advertiser side (AdWords). Either way, it’s real and it happens, but it usually requires comparing time frames to see it happen.
Honestly, I don’t really have a lot of experience with Smart Pricing. Either it’s been happening to me from the very beginning, or it just doesn’t happen to me enough for me to notice.
AdSense Earnings Dropping Intraday
What I haven’t seen a whole lot of, in my experience, has been Google adjusting your earnings in real-time, or within the same day. However, lately, I’ve started to notice downward earnings adjustments on some of my accounts.
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To begin, let me just admit that I check my AdSense account a lot. Honestly, I probably check it too much. On the other hand, it’s so easy to just make a quick click in between projects, phone calls, or meetings. I don’t take the time to necessarily drill down into the data, but I do like watching the amount of money I’m earning online go up and up. I also use channels, ad groups, and site by site reports to keep a rather detailed eye on which sites are making what money, and when.
Which brings me to today’s issue.
Recently, I’ve noticed that sometimes a particular website will report something like $67 for the day so far. Then, 30 minutes later, when I check the same channel on the same website, the earnings will have dropped to something like $53. The RPM will have dropped too. Again, I haven’t drilled into this phenomenon a lot (yet), because this is when I’m supposed to be earning money online by doing other stuff, but it would appear that the CPC has been revised downward, not the number of clicks.
What is odd about this is the time frame. I’ve never seen these almost real-time adjustments before. Typically, you either get a lower CPC and you never really notice it unless it is less than previous days, or they adjust your earnings down at the end of the month. I’ve never known Google to lower your earnings midday like this.
I’ll have to do some more digging, I guess.
Has this happened to anyone else? Am I finally being smart-priced, and this is just how it looks? Has Google updated the way AdSense works so that it make quicker, smaller adjustments during the day rather than bigger. all at once adjustments at the end of the month?
Leave a comment if you have thoughts.