I've noticed a big up tic in AdSense CPMs in the last month. Anybody else seeing the same thing?

Over the last two weeks, my WiFi connectivity hasn't been all that great while I was on vacation. As such, I didn't blog enough (at all). On my return, I had two paid blog entries to write and another 2-3 dozen entries stuck in my head. I'm gonna push myself to write a half dozen to a dozen entries per day for the next week. Catch up time.

According to StatCounter, Bing has overtaken Yahoo! on two days of the last month and some.

http://gs.statcounter.com/#search_engine-US-daily-20090601-20090709

I checked my own referrer logs to see how Bing is doing relative to Google and Yahoo!. Here's a list of my top 7 search referrers from the last month. Numbers are in thousands of referrers in the trailing 30 days.

1. Google (678)
2. Google Images (30)
3. Bing (23)
4. AOL (13)
5. Search (6)
6. Yahoo! (6)
7. Ask (3)

Yahoo! truly is struggling and Bing has made some big strides. Google remains in the 90% of my search referrers. In fact, Google Image Search, my 2nd highest search referrer, provides me more referrers than Bing.

I just found out that I have a lot of new code to write across my 44 websites. I've always used the Amazon Associates Web Services to monetize my websites. I've never really made a lot of money from it, but I make enough to keep using it. I've even developed some sites (www.hellosanta.org) that depend entirely on the Associates API. Amazon decided to rename this API to Product Advertising API and has changed it to require some form of authentication. Yikes to me. Who made this ridiculous decision? Arggggg!

http://affiliate-blog.amazon.com/2009/05/attention-amazon-associates-web-service-developers.html

A question I ask myself is how much do I make on that Nth ad unit. Is it worth the user frustration? Some blog units have so many ad units (Chris Pirillo) that after a minute the window continues to shift as new sections of the screen get incorporated. How much money did Chris make with that 10th ad unit that caused the textarea to disappear off my mobile screen. Thus frustrating me and causing me to write this instead of reading his blog and leaving a comment. I hardly doubt it was worth it to him. On the other hand, he's likely richer than I from this same strategy.

Question for any Googlemites out there that read this blog. How come Google can add Bing support to Analytics overnight and we are still waiting for Google Images support after years of asking? Personally, I've growing very weary of BigCos that buy valuable websites and put them into maintenance mode a year later. Analytics has to keep moving forward. Google has to respond to their user's feature requests.

More...

• http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Google+Analytics/thread?tid=436382861afa19b5&hl=en
• http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/019599.html

Today, while comparing rates between PayPal and Google Checkout, I noticed that PayPal wasn't charging me the advertised rates for the volume I was pulling. I dug into the details to find that you had to apply for the lower rates. I did and immediately was given the lower rates. I think it's very deceptive of PayPal that I wasn't being warned of this obvious issue. I figure it cost me a few hundred dollars over the last year. That's a few hundred dollars that I'm closer to selecting Google Checkout.

If Google Checkout simply had Subscription/Recurring payments, then I'd already be there. I did see they have an XML-based subscription payments service in Beta. I read it and it's total crap. You have to wonder if anybody actually uses that. Further, Google Checkout still doesn't appear to want Canadian vendors.

Today, I read the following in the Advertising.com terms.

Upon a determination by Advertising.com, in its sole discretion, that Publisher has violated any of the foregoing conditions of this Section 4, Publisher agrees that Advertising.com may, in addition to other legal remedies, assess liquidated damages of up to $1,000.00 per occurrence of each such violation, and that such liquidated damages are reasonable.

Let's just say I was stunned. Who would agree to that? It's one thing to fine someone who is in the wrong, but Advertising.com does not even have to prove anything (their discretion) and you are specifically agreeing that this is reasonable. I'm no lawyer, but I can read. I wonder how many $500/hr lawyers have advised their clients that this is reasonable?

http://www.platform-a.com/contact-us/publisher-info-request/publisher-terms-and-conditions

Has anybody else noticed that the PayPal website has gotten very slow since their redesign last week?

You don't hear much about AdSense anymore. Even I've moved most of my impressions to other ad networks. While my AdSense CPMs have declined other networks have promised higher and higher CPMs. In the next month, I'm looking at cutting my AdSense impressions in half, as I re-balance towards networks that ae paying better. If things don't change with AdSense, then I'll solely be using AdSense on sites that receive a trivial amount of hits. All my top sites could be AdSense free by the end of summer. It still gives me good CPMs for my smaller sites, but the CPMs on my larger sites is no longer significant enough to justify impressions.

I finally got around to moving Besting AdWords off of www.kbcafe.com/adwords and putting it on it's own domain www.webvertization.com. Hopefully this will get me off my ass and do some more blogging/writing.

http://www.webvertization.com/

Today, I got an email and call from advertising.com. I was rejected prior, but they are finally interested in ads on Talk-Sports. I love this recession thingy. It's great for my business. I'll report back with CPMs.

http://www.talk-sports.com/
http://www.platform-a.com/

Writing lengthy article once week is not the only part of blogging. I have one friend who does this. Every once in a while, I post a comment on his website, agreeing or disagreeing with what he says. The comments go to his moderation queue, which I assume he doesn't even know exists, because he's never approved any of my comments. In fact, he only approves about one comment per quarter and usually they don't even make sense or are blatant spam. Nobody links to his blog and I never see his comments posted on other blogs. Being a blogger is more than just writing (unless you are Cory Doctorow). If you don't participate in the blogosphere, then your blog is likely not gonna get read. You have to comment on other blogs, accept comments on your blog and reply to the comments. It's a conversation, not one-way publication.

Is this the end of Yahoo!? More layoffs. They are losing money. Losing market to Google. Losing users to Facebook. I suspect Yahoo! execs regret not taking that Microsoft buyout now. I wonder how much Microsoft is willing to offer now?

My own web stats are a good view into just what happened. My referrers from Yahoo! search peaked above 120,000 per month and recently are hanging out around 5,000 per month. In the same period, my referrers from Google have picked up about 100,000 per month. I'm not getting many more search referrers, but the Yahoo! search users are clearly moving to Google.

Today, I got the following email requeset a blogads invitation.

I saw an old post where you were asking for a blogads invitation.  It seems people sent you invitations.  Could you send an invitation to me?  If you need specs for my site let me know.

I responded.

Sorry, I haven't used blogads in a long time. After I got the invitation, my advertisers kept complaining that it didn't work. I gave up on it. Not worth your time.

This is why customer service is important. Blogads was too pompous to get their shit working. Not only am I not using it, but I'm telling others not to use it as well.

Last night, I noticed by daily page impressions on URL channels were twice normal. Custom channels appear to be OK. The problem persists this morning and might be thrice normal.

More...

• http://www.webmasterworld.com/google_adsense/3878953.htm
• http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/019706.html

Just how bad is ask.com? Even their advertising produces undesired results. For instance, they have a deal with NASCAR where they are major promoter with commercials on TV and their website. On the nascar.com website it suggests the top NASCAR related search is NASCAR Driver Standings. The result of this search on NASCAR is a 6 month old standings page on nascar.com. Obviously, the intent of such a user seach would be the current standings, not a historical one.

Google on the other hand, produces exactly the same first result, but if you turn to the secondary results, Google wins producing the correct result on the second item. Ask.com on the other hand doesn't provide the proper result page at all.

Result: Even ask.com's own advertising provides better results on Google than Ask.

I'm looking to sell one of my websites. The site is profitable, but I'm want to get more site sales in my reportoire. I'm looking for 1000 dollars. First bid wins, assuming the terms are reasonable.

http://www.myspacelayoutstore.com

Six months ago, AdSense made up more than half of the revenues on my websites. In February, AdSense made up less than 10% of my revenues. While my websites have grown 10-20% per month, AdSense CPMs have been shrinking just as fast. Now, my direct and network ad sales are 10 times higher than AdSense and other revenues are 5 times higher than AdSense.

Two weeks ago, an AdSense representation approached me about optimizing my ads. They recommended that I make my AdSense ad units more promenant and that I add more units. Wow! Great advice. I would've never figured that out on my own. Maybe I should just remove all my content to the small right sidebar and put ads in the larger content area. My users will just love that.

I wonder about GOOG's revenues in the next quarter or two. I suspect the short-term outlook is not good.

Today, I notice my PayPal reputation is (69) Verified Buyers. I remember it being this several months ago and possibly more than a year. Lately (for months), I've had more than one buyer per day. My reputation should be in the hundreds. I wonder if the PayPal reputation feature has been broken for months and maybe even a year or more.

Update: I received an email from PayPal confirming their reputation index is broken.

One of my most profitable ways of making money online is offering monthly subscription plans for my websites that provide premium services. The money is automatically withdrawn via PayPal every month. The amounts are usually so small that it's barely worth the effort for someone to cancel. As such, the number of subscriptions has been steadily increasing for years.

For the last few weeks, I've been getting multiple payment failures everyday. This bad economy has finally caught up to me.

Of late, I've noticed a sharp decline in my AdSense CPMs. My CPMs all last year fluctuated between $0.50 and $1.00 across all my websites.  Rarely it would dip below $0.50 and rarely would it go above $1.00 for a day. Starting January 4th of this year, my CPMs have been mostly below $0.50. Starting February 5th, my CPMs have been mostly below $0.40. Today, my CPM is below $0.30. Fortunate that my pageviews are up 20% month-over-month.

Anybody else notice this? Might be time to short the GOOG.

I received an email from Grab Networks today, previously known as TheNewsRoom, previously known as Voxant. It states....

Therefore your current contracted terms, including CPM rates for ad impressions and other payment terms, will remain as they are currently stipulated in your active agreement with us.

Hmmm! Yet I'm now earning a CPM of exactly $0 according to their stats. Doubt that was my terms. Avoid these guys. They paid well for a few months, but the faucet has been turned off.

http://www.grabnetworks.com/

Today was the first day that I had 100,000 ad impressions on one website. I've been in the 80k-90k range for quite some time, but the Super Bowl put me thru the top. My average CPM has been down about 20% lately, but my hits are up 20% in the last month.