My Google AdSense earnings dropped 80% in one month. What happened?
I run a niche blog about home gardening and I was making about $800/month from AdSense for the past 6 months. Last month it dropped to $150. I didn't change anything on my site. My traffic is actually up by 20% according to Google Analytics. I didn't get any policy violations. What could cause this?
1 Answer(s)
This is actually a really common issue, and there are a few likely culprits when traffic is up but earnings are down:
1. Seasonal CPM drop: Gardening content has massive seasonal swings. If it's winter in your audience's region, advertisers pay much less for gardening-related ads. CPMs can drop 50-70% in off-seasons. This is probably your #1 issue.
2. Ad placement changes: Google sometimes auto-optimizes your ad placements, and they might have moved ads to less visible spots. Check your AdSense setup and try manually placing ads above the fold.
3. RPM vs CPM confusion: Your traffic increase might be from low-value sources (social media, etc.) that have terrible RPM. Check your traffic sources in Analytics. If most of the new traffic is from Facebook or Pinterest, that explains it.
4. Ad blocker usage: If more of your audience is using ad blockers now, you'll see traffic but not revenue.
The fix? Diversify income with affiliate marketing (Amazon gardening products pay well) and don't rely on AdSense alone.