My concerns about the turbulent advertising market for publishers are again showing legitimacy, with Google AdSense tanking in a big way. January was absolutely horrid, and starting last Thursday, the number of ads it's serving appears to have dropped by two-thirds, even though traffic hasn't changed. It's one of those things where I can't explain the discrepancy, and Google has no humans available to look into it. I mean literally, there's no one to call or e-mail. That's a shitty way to do business.
After 14 years of doing this on the side, I have to say that I've grown tired of the swings. On one hand you see ad spending online as a whole continue to increase, yet as a publisher, you're constantly screwing around and trying to balance different ad networks that come or go. At least with Google, the mechanized nature of it, seemed to make it generally better. That is, until you actually need to contact them to find out what's going on.
Not sure what I'll do next. Right now, it's covering expenses, but not by much. I suppose I can make a plea to the members, but I feel like I'm always asking for money. Right now, I'm investing a lot of time into the sites through improvement of the forums and other stuff. It won't do much good if I'm not recovering the cost to keep the lights on. I'm sure it will swing the other way eventually, but it's annoying in the mean time.
I need a better business that runs on paid product instead of seemingly random ad spending.
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