Melissa-
I'd be interested to hear what you think about their on-page
SEO (I
assume that's the angle from which your comments are coming). I
don't know what that situation is like, but I think it might be an
exaggeration to say that they are not getting enough traffic--even if
they could be getting a lot more (which is quite possible).
After all, they have cracked the top 20K in terms of their Alexa
traffic ranking (a flawed tool, but when we lack
alternatives...). Add that to the fact the site is owned/operated
by former Googleites and the fact that they have found a way to
convince tons of content producers to push traffic directly via
non-reciprocal links (oh, that ain't hurting SERPs either, I bet), I
would guess they are still getting an adequate flow.
On top of that, just last month (maybe early this month), they let the
media know that they plan on pushing content sales to third parties
harder. It's hard to tell how important the Adsense aspect of the
site is going to be in the long run if that's going to be a big part of
their model down the road.
I don't think the offer decreases that appear to be happening are an
outgrowth of under-performance with respect to traffic. I tend to
believe they stem from the site's success in getting the word out about
being able to write articles for easy cash. I'm guessing their
potential supply is so vast that they can nab sufficient content
cheaper. And probably are.
Side note: If Adsense earnings are going to be their primary
moneymaker, they might want to be concerned with the 9% drop in avg.
page views over the last 3 mos. That could bode well for talented
producers, as it may be a reflection of an overall reduction in content
quality as more learned of the AC option and prices paid dropped.
That's pure conjecture, though.
Anyway, I'd like to know what you spotted! Should be interesting!
Carson