Subject: Re: Failed to make monthly minimum for AdSense
Hi Damon,
I don't think the Goog would hold a grudge over the blocked hotlinking, you seem to pinpoint it as a sign of less traffic, I never follow those serps algo changes discussions, even now when I am actually missing a huge chunk of my traffic, I'd rather put my energy into building more content.
Speaking of "energy" & "content", could those be related to what you're observing? Meaning, you're drifting away from growing your online assets as your offline energy projects grow? Our beast needs constant feeding.
I attribute my drop in traffic to many things, the biggest being that I'm becoming the most copied site in my niche, there isn't a day without at least 4 or 5 heavy copy attempts, + constant non-stop slow scraping in the tens daily. I've dedicated the last month to teaching myself coding and am slowly moving towards automating the thief busting, at the price of course of less content development. But even as my earning fall, I am doing this for my own sanity, you have no idea how it feels to be constantly under attack (or perhaps you do), it wakes me up at night.
The usual fixes apply, but knowing your site, I can give more specific 10c worth of advice, while your content payload (picture) is totally original, you could use a lot more appealing "styles" to entice the damn visitors to bookmark, recommend to friends & come back, also the Goog could use more on topic text to feed on, and links inbound & outbound, I know this consumes more time, but hey, you already know time = money, give it some more time if you can.