Traffic goes Up, CPM goes Down

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   melbelposted 11 years ago

   This has been a problem for years now, really since the induction of the HubPages ad program and it's pretty much what has made me give on on HubPages (I used to write a lot, now seldom.)
   
   I have a hub that occasionally gets huge bursts of traffic as it's popular in social media. On those days, I usually end up earning far less due to plummeting CPMs. Is there something I can do to keep my CPM high? It's really disappointing to see hubs do well, yet I continually earn the same... or even less.
   
   From my understanding, social media traffic is worth less than search engine traffic (am I correct in assuming this?) However, it's just disappointing that when people actually like my work so much so that they share it and those views earn peanuts.
   
   Just my thoughts/frustrations. I know HubPages isn't a charity or anything and this is likely falling on deaf ears, but I just thought I'd be earning more.

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      Writer Foxposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      Paul E. made this forum post two weeks ago about improvements to the ad program:
      http://hubpages.com/forum/topic/117968#post2488359
      
      So far this month, my CPM is up.  However, it's by no means consistent and has varied by as much as $2 in the past seven days.
      
      Like you, I am frustrated when traffic is up on a given day but the income is down due to a lower CPM.  Apparently, we are not allowed to discuss specific CPM amounts and I've never seen any advice from management on what Hubbers can do to improve CPM.  I presume that all we can do is look at AdSense costs for keywords and write about higher paying topics.

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      missoliveposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      Hi Mel, I'm following along to see what turns up. My earnings the last few days have been a bit higher than usual, YAY me. Most of my traffic is Pinterest first and then Google. Who knows - trends, sales and traffic will always be volatile. Maybe CPM stands for = Chocolate Peanuts Melt

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      Anurag2008posted 11 years agoin reply to this

      Same here. Earnings are higher than usual in the last few days. Maybe Christmas is near or the new ad layout. I hope it's the latter. That would really be great news for all of us.

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      relacheposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      It's dilution, which is hard to compensate for unless you've got a topic that advertisers are really hot-to-trot over, or (as was pointed out) your readers are too.

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         paradigmsearchposted 11 years agoin reply to this

         I'd meant to post something along these lines... There's only so much CPM to go around, so to speak. The good news? When overall HP traffic drops, CPM goes up (I think).

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            lobobrandonposted 11 years agoin reply to this

            I think that the CPM depends on the kind of traffic you're getting. In case of search engine traffic people would be actually searching for something and hence they'd probably click on ads etc which would result in higher CPM's. Social traffic would reduce the CPM rates. Just my once cent

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               paradigmsearchposted 11 years agoin reply to this

               As I understand it, CPM means cost per 1000. In other words, the advertiser says, "I will pay X dollars per thousand views/clicks, but my budget says I will only do so for so long." As traffic increases, advertisers drop out as their budget limit is reached. I really don't think source of traffic matters in this scenario... If advertisers do indeed differentiate page-arrival sources, can you state an info source for that?

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                  lobobrandonposted 11 years agoin reply to this

                  I'm not saying there's a source that says clicks pay more etc. What I was saying is that HP could be getting paid per click and not just plain CPM and then they divide it among hubs in those categories etc? Not sure, was just wondering because the CPM's go haywire sometimes. For the past few weeks it's pretty stagnant.

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                     paradigmsearchposted 11 years agoin reply to this

                     For the past few whatever, I think HP has been doing a bang up job.
                     
                     As to distribution, I think each hub lives or dies on its own merits.
                     
                     Tough town, actually... Pick a high CPM topic, buried in competition and all that.

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            2. STAFF

               pauldeedsposted 11 years agoin reply to this

               Correct.  The advertising value of traffic from different sources can vary significantly.
               
               I'm not sure if it's still available in Google Analytics, but you used to be able to see the AdSense CPM by traffic source and other visitor characteristics (such as browsers, country, etc).  From what I recall (circa 2008), social traffic (facebook, etc) was worth something like 30% of what search traffic was, people that used Internet Explorer were 60% more valuable than Firefox, etc.   Pretty interesting stuff.
               
               The ultimate value of an advertisement is almost always eventually tied back to conversions, which can mean people clicking on an ad and buying something or signing up for some service, or a conversion can be "brand lift" (which is what those little things that you see scroll into the page asking you to answer a few quick questions are trying to determine).  Smart advertisers measure their results in order to know they are getting value for the dollars they spend.
               
               And, it doesn't take a great leap to realize that someone casually coming in from Pinterest, Facebook, or Reddit staying on the page for 12 seconds and going back, may be a lot less likely to "convert" than someone that comes in from search.   As a result, advertisers won't pay as much to advertise to those visitors.  Of course, the way advertisers decide how much they are willing to pay considers a ton of other factors, not just the source of the traffic.

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         Millionaire Tipsposted 11 years agoin reply to this

         Can you please explain what dilution means in terms of CPM? I really would like to understand this.

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            lobobrandonposted 11 years agoin reply to this

            I guess she meant that each category would have a certain set of advertisers who have a limited budget per day. If we all have hubs in the finance section and the total budget of all the advertisers is $X and say there are just a handful of finance hubs that receive traffic on a particular day, then they would get a bigger cut from the $X. But if a huge percentage of hubs get good traffic and more views, the same budget needs to be shared by a larger crowd.

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               NateB11posted 11 years agoin reply to this

               Good explanation. My understanding of this then is, if too many people are writing a lot on a subject and they're all getting heavy traffic, then they get paid less.

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            psycheskinnerposted 11 years agoin reply to this

            When you have low traffic a high proportion of those people have a strong interest in the exact subject of your site.
            
            When you have high traffic more of those people are not interested in the subject and came from blind stumble, irrelevant keywords and otherwise "by accident".
            
            Small tends to correlate with focused and coming deliberately to your site for a valid reason (proportionately speaking).

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               NateB11posted 11 years agoin reply to this

               Makes sense and exactly what I suspected for some time.

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               Will Apseposted 11 years agoin reply to this

               The most valuable visitor you can have is someone who is determined to buy something that day. They are longing to find an ad to click and a product to buy.
               
               And the easiest way to make money is to provide the kinds of page that motivated buyers of this kind are interested in visiting.
               
               The problem is that these kinds of page need to be very, very helpful to visitors, or they will earn you any one of a range of penalties from Google.
               
               Therein lies the dilemma of the affiliate marketer.

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   WryLiltposted 11 years ago

   I've experienced this too.

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3. 91

   mactaversposted 11 years ago

   I've kept up with updates, and I did write one new Hub last month.  Since several of my Hubs had to do with antiques and collectibles I could count on some income from Ebay.  Now unless there is a sale, they are not paying.  When I get time next week, I will delete Ebay from all my Hubs and I'm urging other Hubbers to do this too.  Why advertise for Ebay for free?

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      wildernessposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      Already done, a few days ago.  And entire month with zero earnings and I gave up on it.  Hoping I can make the $10 or so per month up on Amazon.

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      missoliveposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      I personally wouldn't delete my Ebay, I made over $2 in one day on Ebay this week. Not a goldmine but earning $2 in one day for Ebay on one hub is worth keeping. All sales are hit or miss...that's just business. I dont think it is worth the trouble of deleting a capsule in all my hubs if it might bring me a buck. Why close the window on an opportunity to make a sale? Perhaps I'm not understanding.

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   Writer Foxposted 11 years ago

   Not a whole lot of posts on this thread.  You'd think this would be a major concern for most Hubbers!

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      Millionaire Tipsposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      This topic has been brought up several times in the last couple of years.  Someone (I think Izzy) tried to explain it, but I didn't get it then either.  If you get a lot of readers who come by but don't click on any ads, your CPM will go down.

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   lovebuglenaposted 11 years ago

   CPM may be lower due to the content of those hubs...

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   susi10posted 11 years ago

   I have experienced this too but I read somewhere that you can raise your CPM by using keywords with a high CPM. If you go input some words on the Google Keyword Tool, and you press on the CPM column (which will show the highest CPM first) and write articles surrounding those high CPM keywords that your CPM should go up as a result. Is that true or just a load of nonsense?

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      relacheposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      And by writing about a topic which you know nothing about, but picked for high CPM keywords (for which there is an amazing load of competition), you're going to somehow get more readers/traffic than all those other articles....how?

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         susi10posted 11 years agoin reply to this

         Well, I only write on topics that I am highly knowledgeable about including science and technology. Usually when I am selecting topics to write about in those niches, I may pick keywords that have decent value (not ones with no CPC at all) and make sure that there is point in writing about them. When I am deciding on what hubs in my niche to write about, I verify that they have a pretty decent value. I would never ever write about topics that I don't know anything about just for the high CPC keywords; my hubs would not be high quality.
         
         When picking keywords with the Keyword Tool I :
         1. Type the words that I may want to write about (usually in my niche).
         2. Pick words from the list that have low competition on SERPS, enough traffic and have a CPC of over 20 cent.

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7. 91

   Will Apseposted 11 years ago

   My HP ads income yesterday was one of the highest of the year and two to three times the sad amounts I was seeing in October.
   
   Generally, I'm pretty happy with the program this month.

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      jansharesposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      +1 I haven't taken the time to understand the ABCs of CPMs and what hub is making what but all I know is that yesterday was an all-time high for me, too, for views and earnings since I started at HP last year. I hope it continues for the rest of the year, Will.

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         Suzanne Dayposted 11 years agoin reply to this

         And here I thought my writing was getting a massive audience!!!

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8. STAFF

   Paul Edmondsonposted 11 years ago

   It is true that search traffic earns more than social traffic.  We have been doing a number of things to increase yields for authors.  We've switched out ad types from Google in the last month.  This has been a nice increase.  We are also doing some fixed CPM deals that help put a bit of pressure on Google's auction (In the ad server, adsense bids against fixed cpm deals).
   
   We are also working on mobile and hope to improve the yields there as well!

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      paradigmsearchposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      I learned a lot from these two posts.

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   DzyMsLizzyposted 11 years ago

   I'm certainly no authority, and I don't even understand all I know about it, but it seems to me that people will click only on ads relevant to what they are reading.
   
   Of late, I've noticed ads dropping in that are way out in left field with nothing whatever to do with the topic of the article.
   
   Perhaps that could be the problem??

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    psycheskinnerposted 11 years ago

    Unless you have turn off the default setting, the ads will be based on your browsing history rather than the page content.

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       DzyMsLizzyposted 11 years agoin reply to this

       That doesn't even make any kind of good sense!  If we are not supposed to click on our own ads, then why in blazes should they have anything at all to do with OUR browsing history, rather than the page content???

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          Len Cannonposted 11 years agoin reply to this

          They are based on your browser history for all Google ads. It does not base use your browsing history to generate ads and then display them to every visitor in the world. Every single person will get a tailored ad experience when they visit your page.

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             DzyMsLizzyposted 11 years agoin reply to this

             oh--based on the READER's history, not "ours."  Ok, that makes marginally more sense, but it still is designed to make them click off our article...and go to the ad, ergo, it would still make more sense to be relevant to the topic.

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                psycheskinnerposted 11 years agoin reply to this

                Apparently Google's data shows otherwise.

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                   DzyMsLizzyposted 11 years agoin reply to this

                   OK...so... in other words, "The Big G" doesn't give a fig about anyone but themselves,and their whole INTENT is to draw people away from what they're doing to look at an ad. 
                   Yeah..more corporate greed at work.  Ok....THAT's the angle their data is taking, then. 
                   So, in other words, everyone's carefully crafted, informative articles are essentially getting nowhere with informing anyone from those "organic" searches, because those who would click on ads are more interested in reading ads than in becoming educated. 
                   So sad, really.  I guess that's "good" for us in a way, if it's making us some pocket change, but I still find it sad that "G" can't place ads relevant to the topic, so people would BOTH read the article, learn something and THEN go look at the relevant ad...seems that would be more of a win-win.
                   But, I've always had trouble with getting the world to check with me before deciding how things should operate...   

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                      psycheskinnerposted 11 years agoin reply to this

                      Presumably what people click on more is what they want. So: win/win?
                      If I want them to see a specific product I link than within the hub.

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                      Writer Foxposted 11 years agoin reply to this

                      One way to look at it is that if the ads displayed are not about the subject of your Hub, then they are not in competition with your viewpoints and/or your information.  If your Hub is about how to grow turnips, maybe it is better that the viewer doesn't see ads for other websites touting similar information about how to grow turnips.
                      
                      I am amazed at what people buy from my Hubs – things I've never even heard of!  I know that wouldn't happen without the personalized ads they are shown.

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                         HollieTposted 11 years agoin reply to this

                         Depends where you're writing and whether the Adsense click is worth more that the cents you earn from Adsense.

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                            Writer Foxposted 11 years agoin reply to this

                            I understand what you're saying.  I think many people turn off personalization for Google search, so we probably get a CPM which is based on both kinds of searchers.

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    Kain 360posted 11 years ago

    CPM can make a huge difference in amount earned.
    
    If I was making 3.50-5.00+ per thousand views I would have made much more in 2011-2012 and that stuff I been working on lately.
    
    Is there anything HubPages can do in particular to increase CPM for all users? Or is this really matter of how much advertisers pay and the type of topics and time of year etc.?

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       paradigmsearchposted 11 years agoin reply to this

       You betcha! Check out HP staff's earlier posts on this thread.

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12. 0

    Tilecleaninghubposted 11 years ago

    Hubpages implemented the scrolling related search adds.  Probably done some other stuff too.  The game is rigged in their favor.  If they really cared about hubbers they would not of gone and done this to us.  I am sure everything they do is related to trying to make THEM money and not really caring about us.

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