Another AdSense canceled thread... now what?

[tjcocker]

I thought I was doing OK, and I was on the white hat side of the line...

Except, there's no clear lines, and apparently my content was not original or good enough, even though I have an English degree and wrote it myself.

So... now what? Neverblue ads? CPA offers on a bunch of product-centered websites? I did have Amazon links at one point, but being a resident of Colorado they kicked us all out after a new tax was voted in.

So I have about 30+ sites making me no money right now. A year of effort, 12-16 hours days all for nothing? Yes, I'm one of those people that got laid off and wanted to find a way to make a living and provide for my family. I still look for "regular" jobs, but it's so dead out there right now nobody can get anything.

Anyway, this is mostly just me venting. I'll have to come up with something. But if you're in my position, don't give yourself false hope through AdSense. It really won't be some magical money-making system like everyone seems to think it is. If you do even more than I did, and give your sites super-mega awesome content, then I'm sure you'll be fine... maybe.

Otherwise, what are some ideas I can try to implement on my sites? Thanks for the input.
Tim

[Mike Grant]

Your first mistake was relying 100% on Adsense.

Check out other similars, including Chitika.

[tjcocker]

Originally Posted by mgtarheels

Your first mistake was relying 100% on Adsense.

Check out other similars, including Chitika.

Indeed. But I was living in a dream world, thinking that Google was all I would ever need.

Really, I was just trying to get it to the point of making "some" money, not a lot, but maybe 1/3 of my bills/month.

Thanks for the tip, I'll definitely apply since I'm going to be testing out as many other affiliate programs as I can.

[Mike Grant]

Originally Posted by tjcocker

Indeed. But I was living in a dream world, thinking that Google was all I would ever need.

Really, I was just trying to get it to the point of making "some" money, not a lot, but maybe 1/3 of my bills/month.

Thanks for the tip, I'll definitely apply since I'm going to be testing out as many other affiliate programs as I can.

Right on.

If your got yourself adsense sites, I'd say Chitika would be your best bet. It's nearly identical to Adsense, just not as high of payouts.

[tjcocker]

Good to know. I'm prepared for lower payouts.

Thanks again. Solid advice is what I was hoping for.

[HCLee]

You could now focus on affiliate programs and replace your Google ads with affiliate links and if you have good trafffic that converts, it is still not so bad. Or you could also re-apply for another Google adsense account this time using a sibling's name. Then focus on the top 3 or 4 or these sites and revamp it and add more pages. Just my 2-cents.

[misterkailo]

"I thought I was doing OK, and I was on the white hat side of the line..."

Since your AdSense was already banned, you can PM me one of your site and I can probably figure out why it was banned.

If your content was crap, you would most likely get de-indexed off Google.

[SirAlex]

tjcocker - have you written to Google? I had a problem a while back and simply wrote them a letter stating my case. All sorted!

Please don't allow this setback to affect you too much...

I am not sure what you mean by "Except, there's no clear lines, and apparently my content was not original or good enough"

Of course there are clear lines! Writing quality posts and publishing them is very clear. Not clicking on your own ads is very clear too. Not having images lined up with ads implying that the ads and images are connected is clear.

I hope you take up the generous offer to get your sites looked at and sort this out.

Poor writing is not a reason to have your account canceled, Google clearly think there is click fraud or similar shenanigans going on.

For the future I'd suggest that when you do your niche research you identify at least 2 or 3 affiliate offers you could use as well as adsense.

All The Best!!

[Davioli]

Were these more of Xfactor type websites? I've heard that small websites with little comtent and adsense are frowned upon by Google.

It doesn't make sense.. but its what I've been hearing.

Can you elaborate more on what exactly you were doing? Your explanation might help others preserve their accounts.

[derekwong28]

Chitika is definitely not the solution, it is probably much harder now to get in there now than Adsense because they took over a lot of Yahoo Network Publishers recently.

The first thing you should do is to ask for the reason for the ban and appeal. In my experience, only cases of suspected click fraud are banned immediately. Googly usually sends out warning letters for other infractions before you are banned. I received several warning letters concerning the use of poor quality sites before I was banned. You did mention previously that someone tried to commit click fraud on your site.

Although there are ways of getting another account, you will not be able to use your existing domains with it. Therefore I would think twice before applying. Finally don't get too discouraged, it only took me a few months to replace the lost income through affiliate marketing.


Derek

[ecoverbee20]

why not sell them through flippa.com I'm sure if there are good and have traffic they would sell

thanks
andy

[Dr.faizan]

Get over adsense there are many other opportunities available. Even I was whitelisted among them but then they disabled my account saying illegal click activity which I have never done.

[4morereferrals]

Damn this sucks outloud tjc ....

Id really like to learn more about what happened. The frequency at which we read these threads is quite alarming, and its what has prevented me from venturing into adsense. My thinking was if they can just slay your adsense account with a few clicks with good money in it with no warnings - imagine what they could do to all your sites in the serps.

Ive kept adsense out of my world - but have wanted to give it some efforts as of late.

Can you discuss what happened?

They gave you some notice no?

How much were you making?

[4morereferrals]

Originally Posted by derekwong28

Chitika is definitely not the solution, it is probably much harder now to get in there now than Adsense because they took over a lot of Yahoo Network Publishers recently.

The first thing you should do is to ask for the reason for the ban and appeal. In my experience, only cases of suspected click fraud are banned immediately. Googly usually sends out warning letters for other infractions before you are banned. I received several warning letters concerning the use of poor quality sites before I was banned. You did mention previously that someone tried to commit click fraud on your site.

Although there are ways of getting another account, you will not be able to use your existing domains with it. Therefore I would think twice before applying. Finally don't get too discouraged, it only took me a few months to replace the lost income through affiliate marketing.


Derek

Knowing what you know now about adsense - would you do it again if you had a clean slate?

[Jacob Martus]

What about setting up a corporation and re-applying under the company name? I'm not sure how feasible this is considering it sounds like your content was well written. Did they say what exactly the problem was?? Or just that the content didn't live up to their quality guidelines?

[DireStraits]

Originally Posted by derekwong28

Chitika is definitely not the solution, it is probably much harder now to get in there now than Adsense because they took over a lot of Yahoo Network Publishers recently.

The first thing you should do is to ask for the reason for the ban and appeal. In my experience, only cases of suspected click fraud are banned immediately. Googly usually sends out warning letters for other infractions before you are banned. I received several warning letters concerning the use of poor quality sites before I was banned. You did mention previously that someone tried to commit click fraud on your site.

Although there are ways of getting another account, you will not be able to use your existing domains with it. Therefore I would think twice before applying. Finally don't get too discouraged, it only took me a few months to replace the lost income through affiliate marketing.


Derek

On the contrary, I have found getting accepted into Chitika to be quite simple. I recently submitted 4-5 micro niche sites to Chitika, waited about 2-3 weeks (as stated on their site), half expecting to be rejected, and bingo. Was approved into their network on their Silver (middle) tier, and my sites are currently under review for Gold, although I don't know what the outcome will be of that.

I also don't know what my experience will be with remaining approved, maybe it depends on the performance of my websites or what not. But I did get accepted with no problems, so I wouldn't totally rule out applying for them. Even if you did, what do you have to lose?

You can only try and if it works out, see what the earnings are like. No sense in ruling anything out.

[Kay King]

You can apply through your wife or any relative name again.

Sure - you can. And before long that account will be banned, too. Google has ways of tracking. The moment he put adsense back on those sites - that account would be toast.

If you are certain nothing was done that is outside google's terms - you can apply for reinstatement but it doesn't happen often.

When people lose their adsense accounts they always say nothing wrong occurred - but usually something did. Either the site was clearly MFA, images poorly placed near adsense or many clicks came from the same geographical location (family and friends).

I'm sure some accounts do get disabled in error or by assumption - but those are rare.

kay

[misterkailo]

Originally Posted by Davioli

Were these more of Xfactor type websites? I've heard that small websites with little comtent and adsense are frowned upon by Google.

It doesn't make sense.. but its what I've been hearing.

Can you elaborate more on what exactly you were doing? Your explanation might help others preserve their accounts.

It has nothing to do with it being "Xfactor"-ish. Was the person buying poor quality traffic? Was the person clicking his or her own ads? Placing ads side by side to make it look like they have a relationship? Did the content HELP the user?

You'll be surprised to find that many of these sites do not offer any help to users who view them. For example, if I am looking for yellow rain boots, I EXPECT to find yellow rain boots. Don't write about your obsession of yellow rain boots and that you wear them to sleep. The reader DOES NOT care about your obsession. The person wants to buy and read up reviews of the best yellow rain boots, and link to those sites that sell it. Most of these newbies don't have external links, and the only thing you can do is hit back button or hit on AdSense Ads (Made For AdSense sites, which are a violation to AdSense policy).

[jasonmorgan]

Otherwise, what are some ideas I can try to implement on my sites? Thanks for the input.

as was stated before, check out some of the similar programs available.

Ive kept adsense out of my world - but have wanted to give it some efforts as of late.

Can you discuss what happened?

They gave you some notice no?

How much were you making?

Same here. Working on a new 100% legit honest to goodness great content and information entertainment based website myself. No pitches, no hype, no naked girls... how's it gonna make money?

[underthegun]

Copeac, Neverblue (look I didn't even include my affiliate links ha), Adbrite, CJ.com, CPALead, there are tons of possibilities and for all you know could equal to more revenue than you were making before.

[tjcocker]

Wow, thanks everyone for all the ideas and input.

I'll try to answer everyone's questions, maybe others can learn from my mistakes or figure out what I did wrong.

Ok, so I'll fess up. Yes, they were probably looked upon as MFA sites, but I did write original content. The problem is I didn't write a lot, some sites were less than 500 words... Also, I put "samples" of product reviews on the site from Amazon or elsewhere, but clearly indicated them as such and attributed them properly. I've seen that many other places.

No images of any kind, or few images in my content nowhere near the ads on most of the sites.

They all had good navigation.

All my sites are still indexed and ranked exactly the same.

Some of my sites have a PR4, a few PR3s, and a bunch of 2s and 1s.

I tried CPA offers, but they converted so bad I had to take them off, they were killing my ad clicks...lol Most of my sites were product-centered and didn't go well with 99% of the CPA offers out there. Even on my big screen TV websites I couldn't get a single conversion for the "win a free big screen TV" offers.

Xfactor type sites, yes. They had one ad box, text around it, a simple title bar, navigation bar, and that's about it. All hand-coded HTML.

A few months ago I thought I had some click fraud going on, but it was only one day, I sent off an email to Google asking them what was up, but never heard anything.

I don't tell anyone which sites are mine, so no family members or friends are clicking on my ads. I've heard about that, so I was careful.

[tjcocker]

Also, never got a warning message from AdSense. Unless this is the warning. I'll email them back for clarification and if they give me the time of day I'll try to get reinstated, but I'm not holding my breath.

I won't be using anyone else's name to sign up. I wouldn't be able to use my sites, and then would be starting over just to maybe get the boot yet again.

So, maybe the problem is that even though I thought the content was useful, it wasn't. I talked about yellow rain boots on my yellow rain boots site, reviewed them, provided other information, but once Amazon was closed for me the only thing visitors could do was click the back button, or on an ad. However, the problem with saying my content sucks is that I'm still ranked, and still have 1-4PR sites, so what's up with that?

You'd think Google would enjoy me creating a site that hooked up the people who are looking for yellow rain boots to their advertisers selling yellow rain boots. Otherwise if I made my site super awesome with 100% of what surfers were looking for, then why would anyone click away on an ad? Kind of defeats their purpose. If the company making yellow rain boots can't SEO their site to capture interested traffic, then why not allow me to do it for them?

Ok, since I'm no longer in AdSense, I'll spill the beans. I made around $100-$150/month after 10 months. First 6 months was less than $40/month. I was slowly increasing CTR from >1% to around 10%. Very little traffic per site even on page 1, maybe around 1-15 visits per day per site. These were low competition and low searches, but still took a while to get ranked due to my inexperience.

[JK Nyerere]

Originally Posted by tjcocker

A few months ago I thought I had some click fraud going on, but it was only one day, I sent off an email to Google asking them what was up, but never heard anything.
.

I think that was what caused you to get banned.

NEVER contact Google if you think there are fraudulent clicks. They have their own security systems. Contacting them is really just asking for a manual review, closer inspection and who knows what else.

[tjcocker]

Originally Posted by JK Nyerere

I think that was what caused you to get banned.

NEVER contact Google if you think there are fraudulent clicks. They have their own security systems. Contacting them is really just asking for a manual review, closer inspection and who knows what else.

I thought about that, but sort of doubt it since it was a while ago. I also really didn't have anything to hide at the time because I still had Amazon links. Then after Amazon went away I had CPA offers, but those sucked and I took them off leaving nothing but AdSense very recently. Then after about a week of that I suddenly get a letter telling me that my PR1-4 websites don't provide enough content of value.

So I think I have my answer. No other choices = MFA.

Even if the other choices are cruddy CPA offers or Amazon products, at least there's something else. Anyone else buying my logic here?

Seems simplistic, but we'll see if it's true. I sent them a letter politely asking for clarification and promising to expand content and add other outgoing links. Their letter said my account was suspended, not canceled, but I'm not sure there's a difference. I'll keep everyone posted, but still open to other theories.

[cashcow]

I'm sorry to hear about your loss. It stinks because it seems like you tried to do the right thing.

I'm wondering though, were your sites only 1 page?

I know it is in vogue now to make these 1 page websites that are based on a product and then put adsense on them. I'm sure Google knows about this and might be on the lookout for these types of sites as they are definately MFA no matter how unique the content is. Just wondering if that could be the reason?

As far as them being ranked and having PR, I'm willing to be that the adsense department and the search engine ranking department don't talk to each other.

Lee

[verbose]

On your site did you have a privacy statement,TOS, and a about you page. These days you really need a privacy statement on your sites. You need to explain that you might not be storing their Data but the google use a tracking cookie. It was in your adsense control panel

[verbose]

On any site with Adsense you need 6-10 pages of content. Vary the length try add a generic niche video. Make look like a web site not a MFA. As you make money expand your best sites with new content.

[inter123]

I'd say they cancelled the account because the sites were one page thin websites. And emailing them just brought the situation to their attention.

[JMartin]

Well, if this "french" and "coffee" site I'm looking at is his (matches name and geographical location), yes, there's a privacy statement.

But seriously?

There's about 2 paragraphs of "real" text and then some Amazon review recaps on the homepage and that's it.

If all your sites are like this, that's why you're toast. No value, not even close.

As for the writing, it's acceptable—better than the $1 per article guy. You had a decent start, but you failed to finish. Had you put say 4 more pages of real content on these sites, you'd probably be ok.

You could have easily expanded to 5-6 pages, each about a different make/model and had "value."

You see, the problem with all these threads isn't AdSense, it's the people. It sucks that you had to learn the hard way. I hope more people pay attention. AdSense is wonderful. Heck, they don't even ask you to build a huge site. They just want *some* value.

I hope you turn things around.

[tjcocker]

Originally Posted by verbose

On your site did you have a privacy statement,TOS, and a about you page. These days you really need a privacy statement on your sites. You need to explain that you might not be storing their Data but the google use a tracking cookie. It was in your adsense control panel

Forgot to mention that, yes always had a privacy policy loaded the same minute I uploaded my sites.

[jordan08]

Originally Posted by tjcocker

... but still open to other theories.

Hi Tjc,

Don't get discouraged. It SUCKS, yes, but what about all the other product sites you could have used to replace the Amazon links?

The first one that comes to mind is Walmart.

Hope this helps,

Ayesha

[l23bc]

tjcocker

I remember helping me out when Google do the same thing to me,Seems google is on the war path for site Because i seem to see in there forum alot of people being banned for alot of reason weather there ligit or not.

The best thing to do is move on to cpa,At least thats i did and its the best decision i have ever made.The only time now i bother with Google is by checking the stats and keywording, like the good old search engine is worth using for.

cheers

[tjcocker]

Originally Posted by JMartin

Well, if this "french" and "coffee" site I'm looking at is his (matches name and geographical location), yes, there's a privacy statement.

But seriously?

There's about 2 paragraphs of "real" text and then some Amazon review recaps on the homepage and that's it.

If all your sites are like this, that's why you're toast. No value, not even close.

As for the writing, it's acceptable—better than the $1 per article guy. You had a decent start, but you failed to finish. Had you put say 4 more pages of real content on these sites, you'd probably be ok.

You could have easily expanded to 5-6 pages, each about a different make/model and had "value."

You see, the problem with all these threads isn't AdSense, it's the people. It sucks that you had to learn the hard way. I hope more people pay attention. AdSense is wonderful. Heck, they don't even ask you to build a huge site. They just want *some* value.

I hope you turn things around.

Completely agreed, and properly shamed, no matter how led astray I was looking at all the other MFA sites out there that seem to be around for years with no original content at all. Every time I took a site into the 5-6 page range, which I have a few they didn't seem to perform any better than 1 page sites. This was probably due to not ranking those inner pages hard enough, which was a fatal flaw, but nevertheless it led me down the wrong road.

Also, you're looking at the aftermath of my sites after stripping away products, product descriptions I wrote, other offers, etc. Not that it was much better, but they did have more content at one point. The problem I think is that I took everything away and left adsense, mostly due to greed, before adding articles and all the other things I was going to try.

I'll put in the time and effort to expand and things will probably be better, even without adsense if need be. Unfortunately I don't have the luxury of quitting. I knew this would be a multi-year process, and just about every other setback I've had led to a breakthrough of some kind. Lesson learned.

[inter123]

I am wondering if the appearence of the sites play a part too, perhaps they want sites that are 'professional' and corporate like.

[JMartin]

Originally Posted by tjcocker

Completely agreed, and properly shamed, no matter how led astray I was looking at all the other MFA sites out there that seem to be around for years with no original content at all. Every time I took a site into the 5-6 page range, which I have a few they didn't seem to perform any better than 1 page sites. This was probably due to not ranking those inner pages hard enough, which was a fatal flaw, but nevertheless it led me down the wrong road.

Also, you're looking at the aftermath of my sites after stripping away products, product descriptions I wrote, other offers, etc. Not that it was much better, but they did have more content at one point. The problem I think is that I took everything away and left adsense, mostly due to greed, before adding articles and all the other things I was going to try.

I'll put in the time and effort to expand and things will probably be better, even without adsense if need be. Unfortunately I don't have the luxury of quitting. I knew this would be a multi-year process, and just about every other setback I've had led to a breakthrough of some kind. Lesson learned.

True. I actually knew about the site I mentioned before today.

My point was that sometimes we have to do things that don't really seem to add to dollars and cents directly, but they add to the longevity of what we're doing.

I've looked at your other sites as well and don't think the issue was the writing. I've seen far worse do just fine.

Good luck with everything.

[terryd]

Unless the person contacts Google and actually asks them why they were booted from adsense then all we are doing is just wasting thread space by speculating.

I mean really, what is MFA? As far as I'm concerned EZA is the biggest MFA site on the internet and Google quite happily let them make their money...

[Clyde]

I saw your sites too, only two problems:

The theme.
The amount of content.

[derekwong28]

I am think that your account was most likely disabled because of invalid clicks. This was probably done automatically by robots and that is why you were given no warning. I would check whether you had an abnormal surge in traffic on that day. I would appeal to Google telling them you would cooperate in any way you can.

If you have problems in getting a reply from Google, I would suggest that you go to the Adsense forum at Webmasterworld and contact the Google representative by pm there. The screename of the Google rep is AdsenseAdvisor

When mine was disabled, they did mention a particular site in the letter. That particular site was a minisite made from a Wikipedia article.

I think it is quite important for you to find out the exact reason and let us know. A lot of people are onto Xfactor and Clickbump sites here and it would be of great interest here.

I had two large well known and well maintained forums with lots of user contributed content that was deemed by Chitika to be not up to their standards. One of these sites was accepted into Burst Media and Casale Media and if that is not high standard, then I don't know what is.

Derek

[tjcocker]

I'll let you all know if I hear anything back from them. But it was my understanding that in the letter they would have either told me it was from invalid clicks or some other vague problem. All they talked about was content and said nothing about clicks. Also, my traffic was pretty low and steady, no surge of traffic or clicks lately.

[Briansstocks]

Would a links page or maybe info links solve the problem of no other place to go in everyones opinion? Or is it nessisary to build all your websites up to 6-10 pages of content. I see alot of the 1 page sites but they are mostly blogs or word press type of sites.

Thanks
Brian