Where Has The Time Gone?

My first post in almost four years. Yes, years.

My main website, PopStarsPlus.com has gone from consistently over 1 million Unique users a months to only 100,000 in that time span. Sad, I know. However, because of the good content and well-designed site (I know the aesthetics were never much to look at), I am lucky that I am still getting so many visitors even after almost no updates during the past one and a half, almost two years.

Two months ago, the number of uniques slipped to under 100,000 (according to my Traffic Facts), and that got me worried. Also doing a little research, looks like the Panda updates by Google really killed me (I still had almost 300,000 uniques in January 2011). Last week I have begun to update the site, and it needs a lot of TLC between updating info on old celebrities, adding new ones, and dealing with the destruction of FrontPage extensions by the latest browsers (you can go to a page, but not see any content there).

So, a lot of work ahead of me, but I am up for the task. I will try to keep you abreast of how I am doing, and give some hints to those of you that read this blog (I doubt that any of you are still there -- unless you happen to come to this page through a search for something else.

So, until next time . . . .

Traffic Up, CPM Down

Traffic Up -- Google Adsense eCPM is Down

First, the traffic to www.popstarsplus.com is back up to pre-950 levels and I hope it is going to stay that way.

On the other hand, the eCPM levels for Google Adsense have been reduced to more than half of my "normal" average. It may be partly due to "smart pricing" since the numbers were up in March, but it may also be due to the time of year. March had a number of Award ceremonies - which meanth that celebrity related stuff was hot. Nothing is happening in April, so advertisers are not spending as much on celebritiy related advertising.

It hurts me in the pocket book, but overall, it if something is going to be down, I would rather it be the CPM. With the higher traffic my other revenue streams compensate somewhat. It is also nicer to give prospective advertisers higher monthly numbers.