I've been running google adsense banners in my side bar and in my forum descriptions (only on some forums).

I have banner ads for other companies up so the ads can't be in my main banner spots...

Anyway, It's been exactly 96 hours and I've made 111.76.

Impressions: 4,257
Clicks: 55
Clicktrough: 1.3%

I don't have a problem with that, but it seems as though one day I can have the same amount of clicks as another, but get less money. I'm thinking that the higher your click through rate the more they pay...on a per day basis?

Also, you see 4,257 impressions, but my site has waaaay more page views than that. For instance, it's Saturday at 4:19 and I've had 1000 already. And Fri/Sat/Sun I get about 30% of the traffic that I get Tues/Wed/Thurs...

It just isn't making sense to me.

And how often do they update the reports?

Anyone who's had experience with Adwords please feel free to share your knowledge. Thanks.

I believe the amount you get paid per click depends on the link that gets clicked. Since I think advertisers pay to lock in keywords, usually the bigger companies will pay more per click, whereas the obscure links will pay less.

I can't verify this 100%, but as an advertiser and working with an ad/banner company, that is how it worked. You would bid on keywords by how much you were willing to pay when someone clicked on your link.

So for example, I may have bid .50 on the word "webhost" and .75 cents on the word "mysql", etc. Then, the higher you are in the bidding, the more often your banner would be shown.

So it was my experience, that the companies that could afford to do so, would bid highly on the important keywords to ensure their banners were displayed more frequently than others, but at a higher cost per click.

Hope that helps!

since I was curious, I had to go look it up

And Google AdWords do operate this way. Advertisers use cost-per-click (CPC) pricing, so you pay only for the clicks you've received at a price you've set (choose a maximum CPC from 5 cents USD to US$50). Rank is determined by combination of CPC and clickthrough rate. If an ad is irrelevant to users, they won't click on it and it will move down the page. Your relevant ads will rise, at no extra cost to you.

Yeah, different ads pay different amounts. It's totally dependant on the advertiser agreements.

I wonder who uses ad prices of 10-50 dollars, I would like to find them, and find a way to get their ads to show up on my site

My brothers site: http://www.dpconstructionservices.com - he's a contractor and sometimes has ads of "dry basement" companies etc... those tend to pay really well. So do the ads for the amish built gazabos.

Jeremy,

I know how much it costs per click. As a google advertiser, you can see what the other companies are bidding (pretty much) same with epilot and overture...

You don't even have to be logged in with overture to see bid prices.

I know that some nursing PPC's pay a TON. That's why after five clicks I had made 30 some dollars today.

What I don't understand, however, is how the next two clicks only got me about 10 cents each...

I clicked on one of them from my home computer. I clicked the University of Phoenix one and even filled out the damn information form on their site.

I know from personal dealings with them, that they pay some of their affiliates up to 20 dollars per lead.

Knowing that, I'd think they are paying more than 10 cents per click and since their ad is showing up and not their competitors, I know that they are paying for it.

That is why I wonder how in the hell they figure these dang payouts...

Besides, it only shows that I have had 700 and some impressions today. I've had more visitors than that...

It's just confusing the hell out of me.

btw Josh,

did you get my pm?

Probably - haven't read all my PMs here yet. Still working through them.

okay. I would suggest junking any PM's you have that aren't from me. They aren't nearly as important