Darren Rowse has an interesting article on one adsense user’s experience with Multiple AdSense Accounts, never mind that I thought multiple accounts were against the TOS.
It’s interesting, though, that your hobby site with low CTR can negatively impact on your optimised site with high CTR. Either the click is worth something, or it’s not?!!
There’s a discussion thread at DigitalPoint on this and I suspect some people are going to be very disenchanted. As for Smart Pricing – that was new to me but you can find out more. I did find this:
Maximum cost-per-click – The maximum cost-per-click (CPC) an advertiser is willing to pay. Our Discounter automatically reduces this amount so that the actual CPC the advertiser is charged is just one cent more than the minimum necessary to keep his/her ad’s position on the page.
but this doesn’t say anything about one site affecting another.
I’ll keep checking, but right now I have a daughter and homework to oversee 🙂
see also: One poorly converting site can “smart price” an entire AdSense account
Multiple accounts by the same individual/company are against the TOS. But seperate companies can have seperate accounts. This is what was reffered to in the post at Problogger. As an example if you as an individul run a couple of sites and you have a partnership with other webmasters under seperate company entity it makes sense to have a seperate account.
I’m sure that Google are aware that many people have more than one Adsense Account for a variety of different reasons, and that they have organised their business activities in a variety of different legitimate ways.
After all, earning a living online is a business, and you should be prepared to treat it as such.
Why risk the reputation of your online business? just play by the rules, offer good product value and original content and you will be fine. You can make good money with adsense if you follow its simple rules.