AdSense: How to do it right?

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At some level I want to at least try it for one or two websites and see what happens. Why?

Well, it certainly seems to be working for a lot of people. What I don't want is a repeat of what happened to me three years ago where Google killed my account in three days flat. I didn't do anything twisted, I think it was a matter of a low quality single-page site coupled with a bad product chosen out of Clickbank.

The other reason is that I just finished reading an article about Viral Nova. Wow!
  • Zero to one hundred million unique's in six months
  • Estimated $400K AdSense income in December
  • Just a couple of Google ads per page
  • All content is "borrowed" from other sources, no real original content
  • Site is for sale right now for over four million dollars

So here's a pure AdSense strategy that seems to be paying off in a huge way. If anything it means that it can be made to work. Lots of questions though. Let me take a stab at a few as I would like to learn from those with real experience battling it out in this domain.

Traffic
  • Using Facebook and primarily relying on outrageous content to drive viral sharing.

Content
  • None is original.
  • They certainly borrow all of the pictures from the original article's source. They seem to do a little creative writing around that.
  • They have a DMCA submission button.
  • Have to wonder how much they get dinged.
  • There have to be HUGE copyright infringement issues here
  • With copyright infringement coming in at $150K per infraction this seems like a serious risk to take
  • Is it fair use if you scale pictures down by 75% and maybe make some auto-changes (add a halo, whatever)
  • They do have a link to the original article under each picture and at the bottom of the article. Is this enough?

AdSense/Google
  • What the heck? Here's a site that arguably uses nearly 100% stolen content yet Google does not shut them down? Yet they shut down my crummy one-pager three years ago? Not complaining. Water under the bridge. Just trying to understand.
  • Does Google look the other way when a site like this is making everyone money?
  • At some level most news sites on the Internet regurgitate content from others. Not sure how Google can tell who was first and who actually owns the content (both words and images).
  • It's really tempting to try and reproduce what these guy are doing and see what happens. Apparently a number of people have done exactly that and generated results.

In general terms after my experience the whole Google / AdSense ecosystem has confused the living daylights out of me. In other words, I have no idea what the rules might actually be. If you read the TOS I think it might be clear that sites like Viral Nova ought not be able to make a single penny from AdSense ads. This is clearly not the case. How do you do AdSense right?

More general questions
  • It's been three years since my last contact with AdSense.
  • Can I just create a new account?
  • What would be the strategy in order to protect myself from collateral damage in case I get hit with another shutdown?
  • When they shut you down they shut down your Google account, not just your AdSense access. This means you loose everything: gmail, drive, adwords, webmaster, etc.
  • What do you guys do? Do you create multiple accounts to isolate exposure?

Thanks!
#adsense
  • Profile picture of the author salegurus
    Wrong forum
    The place for Adsense questions is - Adsense / PPC / SEO Discussion Forum
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