Traffic Returning to Normal After September Slump?

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   eugbugposted 5 years ago

   
   I don't know whether the rumoured ongoing algorithm update over the last week has anything to do with it, but traffic on this article has returned to September levels.

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      Will Apseposted 5 years agoin reply to this

      That looks encouraging. But not seeing anything so dramatic myself yet,

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      hclpdposted 5 years agoin reply to this

      I can attest to that. Traffic is more or less back. Money, however, isn't.

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      dougwest1posted 5 years agoin reply to this

      I like your graph of traffic. Is that from some feature of Hubpages I haven't figured out yet or from something else?

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         eugbugposted 5 years agoin reply to this

         It's from Google Analytics Doug. There's a guide to setting it up here if you haven't done so already.
         https://hubpageshelp.com/money/Learning … -analytics

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            dougwest1posted 5 years agoin reply to this

            Thanks. I think I did set up a Google Analytics account years ago. I need to take a look at it and see what I can find out. The traffic to my articles is typically low but there might be something in Analytics that would help.

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      OldRosesposted 5 years agoin reply to this

      My traffic is steadily climbing but my earnings are not.  My traffic Jan 2019 is 5x what it was in Jan 2018 but my earnings have stayed the same.  It's very discouraging.

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         DrMark1961posted 5 years agoin reply to this

         It would be a good idea to check your traffic sources. If your new traffic is coming from social media the earnings are very poor.
         Has the number of impressions gone up 5X, or the number of page views? That is very impressive. As my impressions go up, my income also improves.

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            OldRosesposted 5 years agoin reply to this

            DrMark, most of my traffic is from organic search.  5x traffic increase sounds pretty epic, but I've worked hard for it, steadily writing new hubs while moving old hubs to the niche sites every two weeks.  It's so discouraging that I am not earning more than I did last year despite all of my hard work.

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               DrMark1961posted 5 years agoin reply to this

               I wish I could make suggestions that might help. I have enjoyed your work and, since I keep a large garden myself, have looked to your writing often over the past few years.
               My income from this site has been good about every month (although November 2018 was the best ever, by far) so the only thing I can think is that the advertisers for your subjects are paying less per impression. As far as I know we really have no control over that aspect and I hope your CPM goes up a lot come spring there in the US.

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            letstalkabouteducposted 5 years agoin reply to this

            Dr. Mark--Why do views from social media earn less than those from Google? Thanks!

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               DrMark1961posted 5 years agoin reply to this

               I am not sure but one reason may be page retention time. At least with Pinterest, the viewer may just load the page to look at a picture then click back. The ads do not even have time to load, and thus you have a page view with no associated impression.
               I have seen this with Facebook and Flipboard too. I may have several thousand more page views for the day but the number of impressions is about the same.
               (If anyone wants to correct me on this I would be glad to read some alternative theories.)

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      NateB11posted 5 years agoin reply to this

      Traffic still down at slump level, earnings pretty bad.

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   eugbugposted 5 years ago

   Just on one article though, which is unusual. Traffic to the others is improving, but very slowly.

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      Will Apseposted 5 years agoin reply to this

      I misread your OP and thought that was your entire account. I have had a few pages pop back up to previous levels, but not the ones that earn the money.

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      CYong74posted 5 years agoin reply to this

      Overall traffic is September-ish for me, more or less.
      
      I've also been getting these spikes on some of my better articles. However, they don't last. The last day, traffic drops to a tenth of the peak figure.

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      PaulGoodman67posted 5 years agoin reply to this

      "One swallow does not a summer make."
      
      Let's hope, as always, for a general boost to traffic across the board!

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   FatFreddysCatposted 5 years ago

   The last quarter of 2018 was my best ever in terms of views/earnings, but I hit a wall as soon as the holidays were over. Now I'm back to the usual January doldrums. Nature of the beast, I guess. (shrugs)

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   TessSchlesingerposted 5 years ago

   Still low, but always low this time of the year.

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   Natalie Frankposted 5 years ago

   My CPM is already down 46% from last month, and down 75% from same period last year. Contrary to what seems to be most other people's experience, my CPM last year from Dec. (which was through the roof) to January actually went up 10%. I am currently in the very low single digits and barely making over a dollar a day which is extremely concerning considering my views and ad impressions are up.
   
   Have others dropped that much since last year?  Does anyone know of a reason ads would be paying that much less with a continuing downward spiral over the past year (I published the percentages I dropped each month in CPM even as I continuously went up in views and ad impression each month a while ago and the trend was alarming).

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      eugbugposted 5 years agoin reply to this

      Yes, it takes about a month to recover from the lows at the start of a quarter.

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      DrMark1961posted 5 years agoin reply to this

      As far as I know there is no way that we can check the CPM of individual articles. (I think this would help a lot in your case.) I cannot figure out why your CPM is so low, and I think the only thing to do would be to compare the CPM for wehavekids articles to Owlcation articles, Delishably articles, etc. Maybe some of the sites have terrible CPMs, and since you write in several niches the low CPMs on those sites are affecting your overall income.
      My CPMs are down a little from last month but are still okay. A drop in January is normal but it should not be as dramatic as you are describing.

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         Natalie Frankposted 5 years agoin reply to this

         Thanks for the suggestion.  I'll see if I can figure out a way to compare sites.  I didn't think of that.  Have a great weekend!

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      Bethieannieposted 5 years agoin reply to this

      You asked for a spesific reason ads would be paying less. There are a lot of reasons. In July-ish of 2018 Google began redefining the market funnel based off increased insight into user intent, machine learning, and the use of AIs. With sites already being moved to mobile first indexing, and the push to mobile, those insights have grown. A new metric that is used as in indicator is touchpoints. This means that Google, and other marketers are  changing how they formulate value within each individual market funnel.
      
      The value placed on ads is in a transition state. Yes it is the first quarter, a natural time to see a drop in CPM, it coincides with a change in marketing behavior. User journeys are being analyzed deeper than ever, and each person's marketing funnel narrows and widens. The value of your readers eyes on the ads, and how much that ad is worth, depends where in the marketing funnel your readers are positioned.
      
      The sky isn't falling, there is just a huge change in how things are done. I would expect to see advertising rates rise through the year on content that still does well in search engines. The better your article matches the user intent of the keywords you rank for the more likely you are to see higher CPMs.
      
      A lot of people are reporting massive swings on single articles from Google. In some of those cases, we are watching Google experiment with user intent and search results. They need to collect a lot of data about user behavior in different situations. If your really work at it, your contents metrics will reflect well during these experiments,  and as things settle out you will see your content rise back to the top.
      
      User intent has never been more important than it is right now. High CPMs tend to align themselves where user intent is hit spot on. This is in a general sense. You can also use Google keyword tool to search for the highest paying keywords, just filter them so you can try to figure out which keywords the advertisers pay for. By June, I would imagine the values will be more accurate than they are now, but you can start now.

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         DrMark1961posted 5 years agoin reply to this

         Thanks for that very detailed comment.

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   theraggededgeposted 5 years ago

   CPMs: Mine's roughly the same as Jan last year. It picked up a lot by the end of the month, so fingers crossed.
   
   Earnings, though, are doubled because of the extra traffic (lots of new hubs last year).

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   Shesabutterflyposted 5 years ago

   My traffic is still all over the place. All my Delishably articles took a huge hit this week and I'm still seeing blue arrows on some of them. One I kind of expected as that one does really really well during the holidays, but it was finally staying steady at a higher number than I'm seeing currently so I wasn't expecting quite a drop this month. Right now, I'm seeing a drop in traffic across the board the farther into January we get. I'm still about 2k less overall than what I was seeing in September and December.
   
   Like Natalie though my cpm's are not doing well. Guess I must be use to the end of year cpm's though as I've made 8 dollars more compared to this time last year. Although I have around 2k more views this year compared to last January and I would have thought that would have added up to more than an 8 dollar difference.

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   PaulGoodman67posted 5 years ago

   I would be wary of using the word: "normal", I don't think there is ever really a normal level of traffic in this game, it may stay relatively stable for a few months, but it's always in constant flux in my experience, as Google and HP constantly tweak and change things.
   
   As for going back to the levels before the October hit, I'm not convinced that there has been a recovery. Certainly, traffic is definitely up as people go back to college, school, work, but it still seems somewhat feeble to me.

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   eugbugposted 5 years ago

   I'm curious about this also. If ads are served on a page, what difference does it make where the readers came from that view those ads? Could I redirect readers from social media to an intermediate site, and then views wouldn't be classed as having a social media source?

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      DrMark1961posted 5 years agoin reply to this

      Are you sure that the ads are the same? I know that they are regional, and I that the stores where I live are not paying the same rate as the car manufacturers (or whatever) that most viewers in the US are seeing when they look at one of my articles.
      No idea about the intermediate site. I am not even sure you could do that.

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         eugbugposted 5 years agoin reply to this

         I don't know. Maybe details about the source of traffic is used in the algorithm / bidding process that serves ads to readers.

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            DrMark1961posted 5 years agoin reply to this

            What kind of ads are you seeing in Ireland? Here in Brazil the ads are from things I have bought from the online store (grass seed, supplies for my ranch, etc). For about a month I was flooded with Brazilian ads for washing machines after I did a price search for my mother-in-law.

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               eugbugposted 5 years agoin reply to this

               Similar, but general stuff also about air travel, banks, savings etc.

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    eugbugposted 5 years ago

    ...and two simultaneous ad placements for cough syrups. How did they come up with that? Must be flu season.

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       DrMark1961posted 5 years agoin reply to this

       That is kind of strange. Did you cough onto your screen by any chance?

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