Sudden drop in RPM (a lot!)
Answered
I have two sites on Journey by Mediavine. (Both are very new to Journey)
https://thepoolanddeck.com/ is doing well (current RPM around $28).
The other site https://garagemadesimple.com/ was on a growth trajectory but the RPM has fallen off the cliff since 3rd Aug. The average RPM the week before that was around $20 but now it is down to around $2
Please Help!
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Hey Tulika! I'm happy to help.
Comparing RPMs between your two sites is tricky. Each site's RPM is impacted by a ton of different factors like audience makeup, CPM, and even the formatting. Two identical sites could have vastly different RPMs and earn very very differently.
Looking specifically at Garage Made Simple, I see that drop happened around the start of August. Ad spend normally dips at the start of the month but I believe one of the biggest contributors to that RPM drop is that impressions dropped around the 4th.
RPM is comparing your earnings to your traffic and your impressions contribute directly to your earnings. So if those drop then earnings drop and RPM can follow. You can read more about how Impressions Per Pageview works here. Your traffic has remained steady and I'm seeing ads serve as expected on every post that I view so from a technical perspective - everything looks good.
I'd recommend looking at which posts are trending among your readers and making sure they are as optimized as possible.
This is just a small suggestion but I'd recommend bumping up your font a bit. It's at 16px right now and it's very small on my computer and my phone. I recommend bumping your font up to at least 18px (and maybe moving the line height up between 1.6-1.8.) Font size is an easy change to apply, and it gives your entire site a bump in length, and makes it easier to read for people like me who have to wear glasses! 😂
This is off-topic but I also noticed there were a few duplicate accounts for Garage Made Simple in your Grow Publisher Portal that aren't active - did you want me to delete those for you?
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Hey Mary
I am so glad for such great analysis and advice. I am super relieved that there are no technical issues! (I was worried I may have accidentally messed up some code somewhere.)
As an immediate action, I have increased the font size from 16 to 20 and line height from 1.2 to 1.8. (Most of my readers are probably in the 40-60 age range!)
Please delete the inactive duplicate accounts for Garage Made Simple in the Grow Publisher Portal. These must have crept in by mistake.
Thanks to your clear explanation, I am now going to double down on
1. Analyzing posts with high page views but relatively low impressions and trying to increase impressions per page view. (Any advice on how to do that?)
2. Revisiting my high-traffic old posts and updating them with more information. This should improve reader engagement while increasing the article's length.
3. Writing new posts which are medium to long in word count (1200-2000)
I deeply appreciate your kind help!
Best Regards
Tulika
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Hey Tulika,
I'm happy I could help! I just took another look at your site and the larger font looks great. That alone increases the potential scroll distance for your readers (which helps with impressions), but also can provide an additional ad slot or two, depending on the length of the content.
At the bottom of that Impressions Per Pageview article is a list of questions that are just good to keep in the back of your mind anytime you're reviewing the data in your Top Pages. It's basically the TL;DR of best practices and what I keep in mind whenever I'm looking a site over!
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