Ups and downs….
Fair to say adsense has treated me well over the last 6 months and I've progressed steadily up to around the $650 per month. However, the last few days have seen a downturn of around $4 per day as MSN has seriously downgraded one of my sites that had been sat in prime position for some time.
Google has been less kind to this particular site (new domain name issue I suspect) with some improvement more recently, but MSN was churning in consistently every day - well at least up until a few days ago 
I can't really explain it - good set of back-links from similar sites on different ip ranges, well coded etc but something suddenly changed for the worse. So what to do?
First thing is wait a couple of weeks to see if this is a temporary blip - it wouldn't be the first time! I'll be on hols shortly so I won't have chance to meddle. If things don't revert, I'll refocus on Google optimisation as this should be a better long term prospect - I was reluctant to compromise the previously excellent MSN position by tweaking but now its down the toilet I can have another pop at it.
Just when I thought I was cracking it, MSN trips me up :( - just me or anyone else suffered recently?
For sure I'll just be trying harder :)
Dave
Comment by Dominic — July 12, 2006 @ 10:49 pm
Hi Burt,
What happens to me is that I set up a site and add regular content. I get heaps of SE traffic for a couple of months, then it dissapears.
Then a few months later it comes back. I think it is called the sandbox effect - and you just have to put up with it.
I think I remember you said that some of you adsense sites are 1 pagers. Have you thought about adding some more content to them?
Comment by Dominic — July 13, 2006 @ 12:07 am
continued…
I have a website that has fairly large click values that has recently got back onto page 1 of google and my revenues have been increasing..
Comment by Andrew Peacock — July 13, 2006 @ 2:22 pm
Up, down, up, down. It's the nature of the game, I think.
But… you got into MSN? How? I have more problems with them than I do with Google!
Andy
Comment by Will — July 13, 2006 @ 6:07 pm
I too usually find MSN relatively easy to rank well for and yet one of my highest ranking sites also dropped a few positions recently. It's still on the first page on MSN and top 2 positions on Google and Yahoo for targeted terms so I'm not overly concerned.
Saying that, much of my AdSense traffic comes from MSN and yesterday saw an increase in daily earnings.
As long as I stay in the 4-figure range and above each month for AdSense then I'm happy with that.
I haven't touched my AdSense sites since around February so I really can't complain
Comment by Oli Allen — July 13, 2006 @ 6:40 pm
Dominic: People other than Burt post on this blog now, an example being this post
Comment by burt — July 13, 2006 @ 6:53 pm
Probably didn't help that we still haven't gotten around to changing the name of the Blog. Which I've now done (albeit a temporary name!)..
Anyway, I don't really suffer the "sandbox" as I tend to use older domains, or set up sites that don't rely on search engine traffic…
I've got to say that MSN seems to love Wordpress…
Comment by Will — July 13, 2006 @ 10:17 pm
Photos or other avatars would help to distinguish between blog authors.
C'mon guys, say "Cheese!"
Comment by Affiliate Moneymaking — July 14, 2006 @ 5:40 pm
MSN seems to like sites that regularly add new content - like blogs. I noticed a couple of my blogs do really well in MSN when I keep them updated frequently, but when I stop updating, the ranking goes down quickly.