Hey bloggers, this isn't just another "my earnings dropped" post - I'm genuinely freaking out here.
I run a programming tutorial site that I started in my freshman year. Five years of writing tutorials, building code examples, and helping CS students like myself. It was bringing in around $1.5K consistently, which covered my student loan payments and some living expenses.
Today, I logged in to find my earnings have nosedived to $218. My traffic is exactly the same (about 120K monthly visits), bounce rate unchanged, and I haven't made any changes to the site. The real gut punch? My loan payment of $890 is due next week.
What makes this more confusing:
No manual actions in Search Console
No crazy traffic spikes or drops
All content is original (literally my study notes turned into tutorials)
Been running ads in the same positions for years
Analytics shows traffic source percentages are identical to last month. RPM went from $12-14 to barely $2. Either I'm missing something obvious, or something's seriously wrong with ad serving.
Anyone else seeing massive RPM drops recently? Really need some insights here because instant noodles aren't going to cover this loan payment.
Edit: Should mention - no AI content, no autogenerated stuff. Just pure, hand-written tutorials and code examples from my actual study experience.