How to avoid 1 cents clicks

Peter,

Here is my understanding. Foremost, your targeted niche will determine the CPC of your ads. An alien abduction site is going to earn much less than a mesothelioma site.

Another factor is how many ad blocks you are displaying. If you run three blocks with three ads each, you have the potential to show the 10th, 11th, and 12th least expensive ads for your site. So people may click those as much as they may click the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd most expensive. You can reduce the number of blocks to only show higher CPC ads (but this is also determined by your niche!)

Lastly, Google has "smart pricing" now, basically where your CTR and eCPM affect your CPC. If you have low CTR and then those that click have low conversions on the sites they clicked over to, then you may find yourself smart priced. It seems exponential though. I've been smart priced from sites I had 4 years ago, and I've just stepped back into Adsense recently. I got a couple of 1c clicks one day, and immediately my CTR and eCPM went up, and I began being shown higher cost ads. I imagine if those get clicked on, I'll continue to climb out of the smart-pricing hole.

Oh, and it also matters what country your traffic is from. Some are worth less than others.

Best of luck to you.

Well, the hobbster has basically got everything, but I just wanted to add some comments.

If the website that you're talking about is the "high blood sugar levels" (which gets $1.48 Google CPC) website in your sig then the most feasible thing is that you got smart-priced which the hobbster already mentioned.

Try using a different template or switching up your Adsense positioning. Also, I don't see your current website ranking for any targeted keywords (correct me if I'm wrong) but that might be what's decreasing your CTR.

-Matt