As a website owner that uses to PPC as the main source of income, it can be quite worringly when you start to see the RPM (revenue per mill) decrease or, for me, the EPMV (earnings per thousand visitors). There are many reasons why you might start to make less from the likes of Adsense and PPC, with the majority of them related to you and the decisions you make for your website – this is the cause of the worry. However, not all revenue drops are consequently your fault, as it always seems to be the case. In actual fact, a revenue drop over summer is quite a normal procedure for websites. Here is why.

To start things off, I thought I would like to share a screenshot of just how summer has effected the revenue (EPMV) for one of my high-traffic content mills:

Before you ask, the rise in EPMV during January 2018 – May 2018 was not ‘representative’ by any means. By this, Ezoic and myself changed the scripts for adverts on the website, so that they read more accurate EPMV. All other values on this chart are true except for that time frame.

The two yellow arrows indicate the EPMV drop during the summer months. This tends to be from June onwards, ending around the end of August. During September, EPMV will start to pick up again in preparation for the holiday season (which we all know to be a super busy time for PPC advertising). So what are the reasons that there are these drops during the summer months?

Budget Cycles

Advertising campaigns tend to work by budgeting per quarter. This tends to cause the start of each quarter to have a drop in traffic, of a max of around a week, whilst the end of each quarter will have a spike in EPMV, since the advertising campaign is trying to get rid of its remaining budget, in preparation for the next quarter and its new budget.

Season Changes

There are four seasons for advertisers to run campaigns. There are thee:

1. Holiday season – mid-November to just before Christmas
2. After-Holiday season – after Christmas to February
3. Summer season – June to August
4. Back to School season – mid-August to late-September

The summer season is notorious for being the season that has the lowest traffic and EPMV. This is because more people are outside enjoying the weather and going on holiday.

For this reason, if you see a constant decline in your RPM, EPMV or any other related statistic, do not worry! This is perfectly normal where it should start to pick up the closer you get to September.

If you find that it does not pick up during September, that is when the worry should start to happen. Analyse your website and use Google webmaster search console to see if your website is healthy organically speaking.