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If you're making a good chunk of income from your Google Adsense account, the last thing you want is to get an email telling you you've been banned from Adsense.
And that's exactly what happened to me. What I'm about to share below happened to my Google Adsense account a few years ago and I hope my Google Adsense account ban experience will be helpful for you in getting your disabled account back.
When there's an issue with your Google Adsense account, you get an email letting you know that your Adsense account will either be temporarily suspended or permanently disabled. If you've only been temporarily suspended the steps you'll need to take to get your account back is different from if you've been permanently disabled.
Contents
- How I KNEW I WAS Banned from Google Adsense
- Banned From Adsense: What Happened?
- How Can You Make Money Now That Your Banned From AdSense
- Will I Ever Use Google Adsense Again?
- Should I Still Build Micro Niche Sites With a Disabled Adsense Account?
- My Google Adsense Account Has Been Terminated: Doesn't This Change Everything?
- Google Adsense Alternatives
How I KNEW I WAS Banned from Google Adsense
Unfortunately, I got a really depressing email stating that my Google Adsense personal account had been shut down for generating invalid activity.
I received the same message for all of my business accounts as well. So I no longer have any access to Google Adsense.
The news fell on me like a ton of bricks, and I'm still a bit dazed and trying to climb out of the rubble. Since I have always tried to be as open as possible here on my blog, I felt like I needed to share the news with you.
Update: After forming a new LLC, I was able to get a new Adsense account. Read about it here: Welcome Back to Google Adsense!
Now, I've been using Adsense since 2005 and I have been consistently averaging over $10k a month in Google Adsense income for the past year or so. The last REAL income report where I showed my full Google Adsense income was in August when I had earnings of $13,099.49. You can see from that figure that Adsense has been one of my more significant income streams.
Since that time I have only been sharing partial results about a group of small sites I built and my authority site.
Overall, my Adsense has continued to generate money in the six-figure annual range for me, until last week. Since I had my Adsense account disabled, my Google Adsense income has been $0.
To top it all off, the Adsense team has informed me my outstanding balance will not be paid out. Since I had my account suspended for generating invalid activity, Google's share and my share of any profits will “kindly” be fully refunded to the affected advertisers.
So, what happened to my sites and where do I go from here?
Banned From Adsense: What Happened?
I got the standard message from Google, which you can read here, but basically, it's an email stating: “we've determined that your AdSense account poses a risk of generating invalid activity”. These are the only details given, no specifics.
All I know is that my Google Adsense account has been disabled. Apparently invalid traffic or “invalid activity” is one of the more common reasons people get their accounts suspended. It basically means that Google suspects you're in breach of Google Adsense policy because you are clicking your own links or getting bots to click your links or you buy traffic.
Here is the email I received:
This message was sent from a notification-only email address that does not accept incoming email. Please do not reply to this message. --------------------------------------------------------------- Hello, After reviewing our records, we've determined that your AdSense account poses a risk of generating invalid activity. Because we have a responsibility to protect our AdWords advertisers from inflated costs due to invalid activity, we've found it necessary to disable your AdSense account. Your outstanding balance and Google's share of the revenue will both be fully refunded back to the affected advertisers. Please understand that we need to take such steps to maintain the effectiveness of Google's advertising system, particularly the advertiser-publisher relationship. We understand the inconvenience that this may cause you, and we thank you in advance for your understanding and cooperation. If you have any questions or concerns about the actions we've taken, how you can appeal this decision, or invalid activity in general, you can find more information by visiting http://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?answer=57153. Sincerely, The Google AdSense Team
If you get this email, apparently there is a way to get your account back. You can fill out an appeal form and submit a reconsideration request if you think you've had your account banned for invalid traffic in error.
That said, I submitted a reconsideration request myself, but from what most people have said about that process, I don't have high expectations.
So Why Was I Banned from Adsense?
Clicking on your own ads or asking friends and family to do so is a quick way to get your Adsense account banned. But, the traffic sources for my sites are pretty much 100% organic traffic from search engines and I NEVER click on my own ads or ask others to do so. So, looking at things from my own end I'm confident I don't have fake traffic that's causing the AdSense team at Google to flag me up for invalid clicks.
I've actually been using Adsense now for over 15 years and have never had issues in the past. All I can say is that Google has obviously changed something on their end.
I'm not sure if it had to do with being too aggressive with my adsense layouts or other factors.
I probably could have picked a less aggressive WordPress theme with regard to ad placement but I didn't have too many ads and as far as I know, I wasn't making any policy violations. It seems like Google is just getting much more aggressive in closing accounts.
Here are just a few other AdSense users that have also recently had their Adsense accounts shut down:
In fact, I have received a few other private emails from Adsense users in the past couple of weeks that are suffering from banned Adsense accounts.
So, it appears I am not alone. It also tells me that likely this isn't something I did, ultimately I think it's just Google. There's been some kind of update to their Adsense policies or the way that the Adsense team are checking sites and Adsense users are unfortunately being given the raw end of the deal.
I would suspect that adsense users with a high number of domains are at higher risk.
That is the only thing that I can figure. Lots of domains probably raises a red flag.
How Can You Make Money Now That Your Banned From AdSense
Well, it could have been worse. Even though my primary monetization source is gone, the source of my traffic is not. All of my sites still rank exactly where they were before in search engines, including Google.
So, with some experimentation, I hope to find some other contextual ad network that gets me close to where I was with Google Adsense. Here's a list of several other ways to make money from a website besides Google Adsense.
It won't be easy, and to be honest I would be very surprised if my sites earn what they were earning with Google Adsense with any other network. However, hopefully, I'm wrong.
I already have a few other ad network and affiliate marketing options that are worth considering:
- Ezoic
- Mediavine
- Media.net
- Adthrive
- Kontera.com
- Infolinks.com
- eBay Partner Network
- Amazon Associates Program
I was also recently set up on Vibrant Media. Plus I just applied to the Media.net advertising program. In addition, I am approved by a ton of other affiliate programs, so I'm going to use some affiliate marketing to try to make up some of the money I'm losing.
[su_note]Update: I now use a free ad tester called Ezoic which makes testing different ad networks very simple. Click here to read my full review.
[/su_note]Many Good Alternatives to Adsense Now!
When I originally wrote this, there were plenty of options (and MANY more besides what I have listed), to make money from Adsense alternatives. The problem was that most of these didn't pay as well as Google Adsense. Google's advertising system was just… better, and as a result, there were more Adsense users than any other ad network.
Therefore, there was more money being pumped into Google Adsense as these companies competed for placement on your site.
This isn't true so much today. Now, there are a variety of different options you can use to make good money. You can probably still make more money with Adsense, but that might change too. Trying Ezoic as I mentioned above has been a huge success for my Niche Site Project 4.
I also have come to love Mediavine (read my Mediavine review here) and Media.net has become more and more viable in recent years.
So, I fully expect to get back some of the income, but it's going to take some time. After all, when I got banned from Adsense I had over 200 sites.
Now, it won't be an easy task finding the best advertising fit for each site. Some will do okay with Amazon, but most won't, and micro-niche sites are harder to find advertisers for.
Infolinks and Kontera are a quicker and easier general in-content ad solution for information sites – so I would have had to rely heavily on these if I hadn't been able to get a new Adsense account under my new LLC.
Nevertheless, I would have had a lot of testing to do in the months that followed…not fun.
Will I Ever Use Google Adsense Again?
I can personally never have a personal account on Adsense under my name according to Google.
But… I knew that technically, I could form a new legal entity with a different name and open a new business account and make sure there is no linking information to any of my banned personal accounts, and the new business entity can re-apply to Google Adsense.
At first, I was not sure I want to go down that road. When I first wrote this post, the wound was far too fresh. I definitely needed to take some time to think about getting a second account.
I also knew that even if I somehow got a new Adsense account, I would always be in fear of the same thing happening again.
You see, I have specialized in building more informational types of blogs and websites that are best monetized with Google Adsense. Because they have such a broad advertising network, I could (and I have) build sites on Worm Farms, Buffalo Nickels, or Oil Change Coupons, and made good money.
However, those keywords could NEVER be monetized well with Amazon Associates or many other networks.
So, while I was using Google Adsense I could really use my skill of finding low competition keywords – because there were SO MANY to choose from. If I don't use Adsense, my pool of keyword choices is limited greatly.
At least that's how I see it now. Who knows though, maybe some of these other ad networks will surprise me.
In the end, as you now know, I did end up getting a new Adsense account. So far so good, but fingers crossed I don't get banned from Adsense again… ever.
Should I Still Build Micro Niche Sites With a Disabled Adsense Account?
I don't know. It's too early to say where I am going to take my business. If any of these other ad networks are anywhere close to what Google Adsense was able to pay out, then I will likely still dabble in building small niche sites.
I'm not saying I'm giving up on niche sites by any stretch of the imagination. I'm just saying that I'm considering all options; including building larger sites, building lots of small affiliate sites, or other strategies.
However, as I wrote about a few months ago:
I've always known that a better strategy is to build a larger site that you are in love with and provide unique tools or other value to the end user.
So going forward, I am going to be considering additional ideas on large niche sites ( 1 or 2 maybe) that I can just keep and build for years to come. I already have one site that is only a few months old that I think has a lot of potential. It's only getting 150 uniques or so a day, but I think it has the potential for 100 times that easy and maybe more.
I don't know if I have the personality to do that honestly, but this is probably the best strategy for many of you out there. So, I will most likely continue to build small niche sites and grow the winners into something bigger.
I just might have to find other niches and other means of monetizing.
My Google Adsense Account Has Been Terminated: Doesn't This Change Everything?
Yes and no. As mentioned, as I try different revenue models, I may find something that works nearly as well as Google Adsense. However, the skill that I have been able to master is keyword research, and that has always been the core of this business.
There is no reason why I can use this same skill of keyword research and simply apply it to either a larger site strategy or use different ad/affiliate networks.
I wrote about the risks of building niche sites about 9 months ago. (Getting your Adsense account banned was #3). So, I have always been VERY aware of all the risks involved, but I stuck it out because I know ALL businesses have risks.
Luckily, for the most part, the things I have taught on this site remain unchanged. The keyword research tactics I teach are still valid as is nearly everything else on the Niche Websites Hub. The difference is that instead of using Google Adsense, I'll need to find something else.
However the basic process of: finding a good niche keyword, building a site, and ranking that site remains unchanged.
Of course, this also just makes me think longer term about the viability of micro niche sites (without Google Adsense) and the types of sites I should build in the future. This will be an ongoing consideration. Perhaps you should look twice at your own business as well.
Overall, I really like the attitude that Eric Gati had when his Adsense Account was disabled recently.
He feels like he will be able to look back on the experience as one of the best things that could happen to his online business. Perhaps I will feel same in the future.
UPDATE: I posted a part II of sorts to this post that covers a few more details – The Importance of Diversifying Your Online Income
Google Adsense Alternatives
Let's say that you do get your Adsense account banned. What can you do?
Google claims that you can never reinstate your account under the same name. I got around this by applying with an LLC and Google did give me a new account.
Niche site strategies have changed since I first started with them. Quality is a lot more important now than it has ever been. And I think that high quality content will be even more important in the future.
If I had to start all over, I would wait until I had about 10k visitors per month and apply to Adsense. Once I was approved, I would go to Ezoic without waiting.
Ezoic gives you an account manager and they are a Google Certified Partner. So they can help you make sure that your account isn't at risk.
Click here to read my full Ezoic review.
Another option is Mediavine. They're an ad management network that runs a few of my sites and I've been very pleased. Right now I'm undecided between them and Ezoic, but Mediavine requires that you have at least 25k monthly visitors before applying.
I'd start with Ezoic and then move to Mediavine if you aren't thrilled with ad revenue numbers.
Click here to read my Mediavine review.
The downside to these options are that they only work if you haven't been banned by Adsense. They work to keep you from getting banned, but what if you've already been kicked out?
What Are My Options If I've Been Banned From Google Adsense?
No worries, there are still a ton of options out there for you. And the majority of these display ads options can earn as much or more than Adsense.
First, I would try reapplying under a different name. I did this by applying through an LLC and that's still a valid tactic. If that doesn't work, here are some alternative ways to monetize your site.
Amazon Associates
This has become my bread and butter over recent years and it's the primary way of monetizing Niche Site Project 4. I've even made a full guide on how to increase your Amazon Associates earnings.
Affiliate Networks
If you aren't willing to deal with Amazon, there are tons of other affiliate offers out there. You could try CJ, VigLinks, or any number of offers on Clickbank.
Media.Net
Media.net is the Yahoo/Bing alternative to Google Adsense. In some niches, they work much better than Adsense. In others, they underperform. Media.net places in-content ads into your blog posts. They don't look spammy and seem very natural to the user.
Private Ads
If you have a few posts that are doing great at targeting a certain audience, you could reach out to someone who has a product for them. Right now, I'm drawing a ton of visitors who want to monetize their websites. That's why you're here reading about getting banned from Adsense, right?
So I reached out to Ezoic and while I'm writing this, I run private ads for them. It's win/win. I don't have to rely on obscure and hard-to-deal-with Google policies. I can recommend a product that I love and use. You could try doing something similar on your website.
CPA Networks
These types of networks pay you per lead. When companies recommend a credit card, a bank, an insurance company, etc. they are using a CPA network. I've never been in this space but I hear that ClickBooth is good for finding these types of offers.
Google Adsense & What You Do: Your Thoughts
I want to hear what you have to say. I know that some of you look to me for guidance when it comes to Google Adsense and Niche sites; so that's why I wanted to share this latest information.
However, I now look to you for any monetization strategies or other tactics that you have found outside of Google Adsense that have worked well for you!
What do you think, should I build small sites with affiliate products, cpa offers, or something else? Or should I move beyond small sites and move onto something that could become a long-term success?
I also expect that many of you have other questions regarding my ban from Google Adsense that I haven't covered. If you have had a Google Adsense account ban, it sucks, but it's not the end of the world. So, feel free to ask away.
I look forward to reading and responding to all of your comments!
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597 Comments
Conversation
Total Crap. What’s going on, Google?
huh,,, i want to know what the real publisher and google adsense problem here
Simon,
Here’s what I think is going on: google is discouraging mass production of websites. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NmiSDxR68Nk&feature=results_main&playnext=1&list=PLCBFC39CE2455DE19
And here’s what I think what will happen in the future:
A lot of internet marketers say that if you own a website, don’t allow too many punctured holes at the bottom of your bucket. In other words, don’t have too many outbound links because that will decrease your potential income.
Google, Inc. happens to own a website called google.com which not only GIVES AWAY enormous amounts of traffic (and consequently, potential income) by linking out to others, they also pay some of those websites for having had the privilege of being linked to by them! In fact, they let two thirds of the advertising revenue they work hard for go to these beneficiaries.
At the moment, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg has a higher net worth than Google’s Sergey Brin. Ever wonder why?
I’m thinking it’s because Facebook has fewer holes than Google. They’re able to monetize the website to the fullest.
And so I think that the future of Google is they’re going to expand their business such that they’ll put up high quality websites of their own to replace websites (with inferior content) that are ranking for lucrative keywords. If you can save 68% of your advertising revenues, why not? Business is pragmatic, and Google doesn’t owe others for owning google.com.
And why not? When you have the world’s greatest keyword tool – your own company’s data. It’s everyone’s dream.
Chris,
Funny that you mention holes in the bucket – I noticed something on a google search the other day that I’ve never seen before. I was doing a search on dachshund colors (i have 3 dachshunds), and google pulled out an answer based on what it gathered from several websites. It also asked me to rate the answer. It’s a as if they didn’t want me to go to any of the search results, but to stay on google. You may be onto something here.
Spenser,
I don’t comment a lot, but I’ve been following your blog for the last several months. Sorry this happened to you – it’s really quite disturbing that you can follow their terms to the letter, and still get the boot. I think we are seeing a shift in google’s strategy.
Best wishes to you Spenser.
I wasn’t aware there’s something called “search neutrality,” which is somehow covered by antitrust laws. Shannon talked about it (far below in the comments) and I now feel Google is indeed on the wrong end as it implements its current activities.
The Google Senate Antitrust Hearing video Shannon brought up (http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=BslAhJ5-C9g#!) has been enlightening.
Chris – You should have ended your post after the YouTube link. Your opinion of what will happen in the future is ridiculous.
You’re right.
Hi
It happen to me too and in a Friday also, so I guess google disable account on Friday since we were not the only ones that day. Different month same day.
I am very frustrated with this, and I tried right away chitika and other 10 but it doesn’t go well.
I get another adsense account but really I am afraid to use it and lose my money again. Not sure what I am going to do.
I am happy for you that you get your account open again.
Thanks guys for put alternatives to adsense, I didn’t know them.
Loly
Same thing happened to me a few months ago! I was making $5k a month from Adsense – not doing anything dodgy and they closed down my account…and pretty much stole my money!
I’ll NEVER use them again.
Google seems to be on a ban wave like Donald Trump and just firing everyone in their path.
It’s sad to see that so many well respected niche developers are being swatted off the program like they are some kind of nuisance.
It also got me to thinking what other alternatives existed out there besides some of the major players.
So instead of actually doing “work” stuff at my job I spent most of the day compiling an advertising alternatives list. I like to think of it as my contingency plan.
I would also consider looking into forming an LLC or something that separates you from your business and let’s you get back to doing what you do best.
Loosing an high performing Adsense account really sucks! And Google doesn’t even bother to actually check and consider.
Massa Google won’t let me access my files because I ain’t got no cellular! Don’t Boss Google know the song “You load sixteen tons, what do you get? Another day older and deeper in debt. St Peter don’t you call me cause I can’t go. I owe my soul to the company store” That’s why black folk ain’t got no checking account ot listed numbers. Dob Lobb and Carl Eigone need be envestigate by the FTC for tearing down Yahoo to benefit Google. Seems like they ain’t be wanting no Chinese svatzies in their blond Orly Tietz matzies.
Yup, I got the SAME, EXACT email (word for word). Chris d. hath struck yon nail squarely upon its square little head.
I made the vast tactical error of hosting my sites on google sites. I have been unable to insert any other ad code into google’s blasted html. I’m beginning to think that any ad code other than adsense is strictly VERBOTEN.
I have been using pulsepoint @ http://www.pulsepoint.com. Seems to work fine for me. They have nice inventory and pay per 1000 visits regardless of clicks.
I have tried Kontera, infolinks and some other smaller advertisers. They all pay much less than adsense.
I have also found that http://www.dailymotion.com to be a great monetizing platform for video advertizing. Even though they only pay like a cent per video pre-roll ad if u have several videos which are popular it works well.
It is time to promote other networks as well. One thing is for sure it is important for anyne to have multiple sources of advertising incomes dpart from adsense. So that when adsense in-promptu bans you, you have other options to turn to..
Hope facebook ldfg expected facesense takes off and Bing creates some bang with their pubcenter too!!, praing.
Good luck to you.
it the way how google make money -STEALING from advertisers and publishers
hey my name is shahid nadeem.I have listen about another company that post add on your facebook comments, posts
and there are not to strict and paying well it hard to get their account.I think if we both work togather we can get an account of that site for futhur contact me at my email.I promise you will love that site.That is better than google adsense
They banned my adsense account too ! Ok, its google , its their ad network , they want to block my account…I am fine with it google but you should atleast give my money on hold…That was the income before even u thought of banning me….And i never got any good reason or any sort of response on why they banned it…The only email i received says “No – reply”
I dont like Google anymore ! Sorry but a honest truth..
Hi, DO NOT WORRIES.. If you have the traffic you said you have go to: http://www.madadsmedia.com/ you’ll be glad, they pay as well as google and if any problems they will contact .. They are simple GREAT..
High Risk! Don’t use Adsense anymore, use affiliates!
Hey Spencer
Bold Move for sharing such a tragic story, I know I would have found it hard.
I’ve only started following your story, but seeing as you’ve come this far, I’m sure you’ll find a way to bounce back without putting all the eggs into one basket
Abs
Yes, it was indeed a hard decision, felt like I needed to share it though.
spencer
sorry for your loss
but you will get back in the game since you are a winner.
different strategy as I have 6 totally separate adsense accounts.. with less than 20 sites in each.
the high number of domains was the flag
steve
How do you get 6 separate Adsense accounts??
The only way he can have 6 adsense accounts is to register them under 6 different identities, which is a major infraction against adsense policies. Only one adsense/adwords account is alllowed per individual.
That is if you are a sole proprietor. If you form a LLC or a Corp, then that company is an individual. You either become a member of the LLC or a shareholder of the corp. Of course you have to follow the rules of designating yourself a salary and not treating it as your own personal piggy bank.
I had the exact same email about a month ago. The only difference is that I was on track to earn a whopping $100 that month, rather than the +$10K that you were making. The appeal was shot down in less than a day.
Thanks for providing the alternative choices! I hadn’t gotten around to investigating my options yet, was just waiting for my time to free up a little more so I could figure out what to do.
Thanks for letting me know I’m not the only one!
Thanks for sharing this Spencer, I can imagine it is very difficult when AdSense was such a big part of your income.
I just read a blog post today from another IM’ers that had their account banned but they found media.net gave them almost equivalent earnings. I’m sure you will find new ways to monetize your existing traffic.
This serves as a lesson to all that no one is immune to the Google ban hammer and we should all diversify our income streams as much as possible.
Good luck in the future,
Matt
I’ve heard a few others recommending Media.net as well – I applied for an account there.
I hope you can write an article later on about your success with the various Adsense alternatives you’ve tried and if you were able to find one that pays as much. I’m sure a lot of people are now considering finding alternatives to Adsense!
I’m making $500 on adsense from 10 sites. I couldn’t imagine getting banned but it’s always possible!
If you don’t hear from media.net within their 1-2 week time frame send them a follow-up email.
A rep contacted me back and apologized for a delay they had as their system didn’t send them my registration form properly.
I can’t say much on the earnings yet but their ads seem even more relevant than the adsense ones did.
Sorry to hear that ! That really sucks, I hope in the near future that they reopen your account, were your sites extremley thin?
Some of my sites were thin. However, I had some very meaty sites as well.
Hi Spencer,
So sorry to hear about this. It looks as if the AdSense game is turning into a total gong show over at Google. This is a sick joke for legitimate niche marketers.
I’ve heard that CPA offers are more lucrative than AdSense could ever hope to be. I’m not too familiar with them yet, but it looks like it’s time to start learning.
With big vs. small sites I don’t really think it matters. Build whatever converts.
Some questions:
Are you going to try for an appeal(s)?
Are you going to sell some of your sites? I know that no one can put AdSense on them, but they can be used for other monetization methods since they have traffic.
Andre
HI Andre
You can put adsnse onto a site that was in a portfolio of sites that have had the adsense account shut down on.
However you’d need to be very clear as to the cause of the adsense slap.
Ive done it with sites in the past that ive bought and they have gone on to be strong performers.
I think of it as high risk but the returns can be spectacular.
Ofcourse they dont go in my portfolio but a brothers that only used for those high risk ventures (yep everthing is seperated from my sites etc I get a fee for manging his portfolio of sites (95%))
regards
names withheld to avoid a ban or snooping
Yes, I have submitted an appeal – and actually just got a response that it was denied. So, its about what I expected, no love from Google Adsense.
Also, adsense CAN be placed on these accounts in the future – Google support actually mentions this specifically. Don’t have a link at the moment – but it can be done. But yes, I may look to sell some sites down the road.
Man…. I’m shocked to hear the news… I’m a follower of your blog and techniques… it’s gotta be a huge blow. I feel for you. Hope the other networks pan out … I make nowhere near your figures, been with Adsense since 2007 and I’m worried now! If someone as whitehat as you gets banned for no reason, it makes me wonder why anyone would or should join the program in the first place.
Hey Carl, thanks for the kind words – it is a huge gut check.
Sorry to hear about that Spencer. I’m sure you’ll rise from the ashes. Hang tough.
Huh. Thanks for sharing, Spencer! Hopefully, this will be a good thing in a long-run. I mean, it will force you to diverzify your portfolio. Good luck with your near-future efforts and keep going!
That is really rubbish news especially as they’re not giving you the money already earned 🙁
I think we all dread that happening to our accounts and I know it could happen at anytime but whilst I’m still earning then I’ll stick with it.
I am looking to create bigger sites though rather than micro niche sites as I want to make a site I love, a site I want to write about, and a site that I feel proud of. These take time though and a lot more work than a 5 page site, but the bigger picture is better.
I hope you get this sorted and find another profitable way for your sites. Good luck 🙂
OMG! This are terrible news! Do you think it may be related to the fact that you, Zac Johnson and the others share your earnings and strategies publicly?
Javier:
I don’t know, this is very possible I suppose.
I’ve always thought this level of income transparency was (to put it lightly) a VERY bad idea myself–on many fronts. I think there is some serious merit to this theory.
Hi Spencer,
Monetize with infoclicks and chitka the revenue is less but at least it should keep you going for awhile
The revenue is not as much
Wishing you luck.
Wow, very sorry to hear that man…I personally do not make much money from Adsense or other similar advertising, so I can’t give any advice. What I can say is that you are right, I think this WILL be a good thing for your business, because diversifying is something we ALL have to do at one point or another.
Any time you are dependent on something so much out of your control like this, it’s like a ticking time bomb. Keep your head up and know that it might take at least 3 months but you will be back in action.
I sure hope so Bill…thanks!
Use media.net. They pay better than adsense in some niches.
Yes, I’ve applied to Media.net – we’ll see how it goes.
Oh my, Sorry to hear this terrible news. Its a bit worrying for small fish such as myself!
🙁
Why not just split up your portfolio of domains over several separate Tax ID numbers or LLC’s? You can incorporate a new LLC on legal zoom or something similar for a fraction of what you were pulling in every month.
I would at least get another account going so that I had income coming in while I tested other monetization methods.
Its definitely crossed my mind. Its still early to say…
Hi
Can you please tell me if I open an account again but as a business name can I put my payee name as the same that the previous banned account was ?
I don’t know how that works/
Thanks 🙂
Sorry to hear your Adsense account got hammered Spencer.
I also received the SAME message from Google roughly 4 weeks ago and was shocked to say the least. All those earnings were gone. Just like that, I went from hitting close to $60 to $80+ per day to ZERO. I had my account since around 2007 as well with no issues.
I’ll be watching to see what you make of the sites you have. At least they haven’t got slammed in the SERP’s, so you at least have a chance to recover some of your monthly earnings by making a few adjustments.
Again, sorry to hear about this man. It’s definitely a HUGE blow for anyone, especially when you’re earning as much as you had been.
Bryan
Sorry to hear that you lost your adsense account as well.
I lost my adsense account too on 17 April, 2012.
For five years I’ve been getting monthly payments and haven’t done anything against the TOS.
Never would have thought that they will just disable my account just like that. No emails at all.
I believe they will begin to close down even more Adsense Publisher accounts by the day.
Sad…
Google don’t care with Publishers at all! They only care with Advertisers!
This blows me away Spencer. Can’t believe they banned them all at once!
It happened to me as well about a month ago, but to be honest, it’s a refreshing feeling to no longer be living in fear of Google. In fact, I feel so much stronger now then I did when I had my Adsense account. You’ll find different ways to monetize each site like you’ve already listed above. While the wound is fresh now, once the cobwebs disappear, you’ll know the right path to take. I wish you the best of luck.
Kevin
Thanks for the encouraging words Kevin!
@Spencer… I am sorry to hear about what has happened 🙁 I see that media.net is getting better day by day and I am sure you will try them out… I am sure that you will come back strongly with a much bigger plan and more revenue… We are all with you… Just think that everything is happening for a reason… (I know it’s hard, but it’s just how we shud process it)
That really sucks man. Same thing happened to me about 6 yrs ago now. I must say, I was new to adsense at the time and did some things that I now feel were just dumb. That said, I did form a business entity and get a new account. New sites get another network at first. If I see they are becoming high earners ($500+month)I switch them to adsense. If they are never going to get that kind of traction they never see adsense. I guess it’s kind of testing before I throw my self out there. At lease I know my sites with adsense are high quality, all unique content, that I update often.
Great input dustin, thanks for sharing!
Hello Dustin,
What is the first network you use to see if they are high earners?
It’s never just A or B. Sometimes the advertising pool isn’t strong enough in certain niches so you have to find a network that many competing advertisers. That’s what makes adsense great, there is so many advertisers….you don’t have to do the research and testing. But you may find in a certain niche that adsense isn’t the right network. Adsense isn’t always the number 1 network, it’s just the easiest solution without as much work.
Woww.. im gutted for you spencer.. i wonder why google like to disable accounts..
the only thing in common i can see with other people who have posted about this on forums and blogs etc etc with adsense accounts getting disabled is they have quite a few sites so it might be due to that but i guess no one will ever know.. (apart from google)
I wonder recommend chitika obv not as good as adsense but not too bad..
anyways hope you havnt been hit too hard and come back fighting 🙂
Paul
Wow, Spencer, I am truly sorry for what happened to you, although I still have both of my adsense accounts I am slowing transitioning away and using media.net, I actually just spoke to a family member of who works for Google, and as of course he could not disclose the reasons why adsense accounts were being shut down he did tell me that accounts with hundreds of domains are definitely red flags as sites that are small and hold no weight when it comes down to it. He also said accounts with those many sites are also red flags because Google knows that one person or entity cannot maintain hundreds of sites. Again I am sorry, this affiliate marketing game can be so good at times and then things can go to hell at the drop of a dime. Best of luck, but from my experience, you can never go wrong with selling physical products.
Des: I think what your family member pretty much sums it up. This is probably indeed the red flags they saw in my account.
You might want to post a link to this on the Warrior Forum.
Joe Mobley
Look at this from googles perspective. You’re exploiting googles search results to shift advertising dollars away from google, and into your pocket. They are not going to stand by and let a bunch of internet marketers take money out of their pockets with thin, highly ranking websites. At the end of the day, they make a LOT more when a user clicks a link directly from the google search result. It sure beats having to pay all of that money out to you.
Sorry for your bad luck, but this was bound to happen.
How can you be so wrong?
Google MAKES money through ADSENSE !! DUH
Every time a punt click on an ad in YOUR adsense site they get 30%+ of the cut for doing nothing….
Heck I’d take that Multimillion dollar daily pay out!!!
If there were no adsense ADVERTISRES (thats us BTW) they would make LESS money!!
Google blast people for tons of reason and dont tell us why so we cant game the yste,.
Sadly with hgh profile people like spencer they are not going to reconsider im sure…
sad but true
I think you are confused. If a google user searches google and clicks on an adsense ad from the results, google makes ALL of the money. If instead they click on your thin, useless niche site and THEN click on the ad, google has to pay YOU!
Seeing the trend here now…. genius? Now why would they continue to do that?
Ya, I guess that’s why Google has that Content Network thingy. Great job.
Actually you are mistaken here. This ADDS to their revenue. If a user doesn’t click on the search ads, adsense gives them a second revenue opportunity. They paid out over 8Billion $ in adsense last year, of which they pocket about 32% of. We as publishers get about 68%.
This also happened with me, google disabled my Adsense Account in April 14, 2012, I’dont why google do this, whereas I never do invalid click in my blog, or ask people to do click. I have tried to appeal but google refused me. Not only google adsense, Google Affiliate with work with adsense also shut down. Thank for your sharing.
What a nightmare. Does that mean that you can never use adsense on those sites again?
No, adsense from a different account can be used on the sites.
Hi Spencer,
Not good news. I think you should hear ASAP Trent Dyrsmid’s podcast with Nate Rivers. Nate is very good at researching keywords but he monetizes them by creating video courses that are more valuable than an eBook and are not difficult to create.
Basically, instead of monetizing via AdSense, he finds low competition keywords that can be monetized with a Powerpoint video course. For example, the keyword buffalo nickels or worm farms can’t be good for a video course but there are others with a potential market.
Best,
Fede.
Year go listen to Trent.. LOL all he knows he learnt from spnecer.. and others..
now now…we all learn from each other 🙂
I guess the moral of the story is dont advertise how you make money on adsense, and dont put out lame content, plus dont have hundreds of sites on an account.
Man, sorry to hear about that. You said…
“In fact I have received a few other private emails from people in the past couple of weeks that had their Adsense accounts shut down.”
I hope over the past couple of weeks you were already thinking about a plan B because accounts are being shut down everywhere. I’ve been with AdSense since 2006 and do fairly well with it across many niche sites. Some micro-niche, others large authority sites that get over 3K unique visitors a day.
There’s really only one completely 100% safe type of AdSense site that you can build now-a-days… and that’s the direction I’m moving in… (sorry, will not share) while slowing monetizing all my old niche sites in other ways on top of AdSense so if/when my account gets band it won’t hurt as bad.
But yeah, it’ll still hurt.
Hope you bounce back big and hard!
Thanks Rob…and yes I definitely have a few different plans.
First off, sorry to hear that Spencer. I feel your pain and your hurt! I have been following your blog for the past few months and I love your newsletters.
This happened to me and my partner few months ago. We have been using adsense for 2 years and suddenly we got the typical letter like the one you got and it felt like the world came down on us. We had close to £3000 in the account. For the first few days I struggled to eat because that was our main income.
I submitted an appeal and they rejected and sent back the generic appeal reply.
The worst thing was that, not only did Google disabled the accounts, but they also penalized all the sites that was in the account. Our ranking after they disabled the account went from page one to page 6 for all keywords. These were sites that were generating 4-5 figure sum every month, we lost everything. Luckily for you, your ranking were not affected.
The main reason I got banned I think was some coupons sites I had and I suspect the same thing happened to you because you said you had some oil change coupon sites and I had some of that as well.
I feel Google doesn’t like “Coupon sites” because most of them do not really offer the real coupons but instead just give info about where to get them. If you look in Flippa, you will see what I mean. Almost all the coupon sites being listed had their account disable. I know friends as well that had coupon sites and their accounts were disabled.
I am not saying this is the reason Google disabled your account but could be one of the reasons.
I have completely left adsense and I went back to affiilate marketing I was doing before adsense. Luckily for me, I found some good product keywords I was able to rank for and I am now making the same money like I did with adsense with rest of mind! The affiliate managers care about you and they specifically answer your question unlike adsense that just sent generic message to everyone!
Other good alternative to Google adsense are infolinks and medianet which you said you have already applied. They are the top 2. Like you said you won’t get close to what you were getting with adsense which is the downfall.
The truth is Google only care about making money and they don’t give a f. About their affiliate.
I had my Google adword account suspended last week. I got in contact with them and I had this customer service assistant sending and replying to my e-mails every minute of the day. Within a few days, they reinstated my account. Why? Because they know you are spending money and they lose out if they close your account. Even after they reinstated my account she was still sending me e-mails to make sure I was happy. You will never get that with adsense!
Good luck and I hope you come out of this stronger. Cheers
Interesting theory about the coupon sites causing the issues. I did have a few coupon sites.
The main problem with coupon websites is that they usually use trademarked names in the domains.
Plus, most of the time they are extremely thin MFA sites.
The One of the most potential reason is that you just put ads to too many site, i have a friend with a lot of adsense ban experience, he told that you should never put ads on more than 10 sites(mns), and when you reach 15-20 a day, you should consider to launch a new one, normally google will never watch you if you get a little amount daily but it will trigger something when you reach a litter bigger, so nver put all eggs in one basket.
I highly doubt coupon sites are the cause here. Did everyone in the past 4 weeks who have been banned from Adsense have coupon sites in their portfolio? Doubt it. And why would Google specifically hate coupon sites? Seemingly there’s worse types of sites to hate besides those. Doesn’t add up.
It was a technical mistake. I mentioned to them that by mistake i put “LINK” at wrong place. And I had taken off too. They dimply did nt provide any satisfactory answer and blocked my account. I really did not like this kind of behaviour from a big internet giant like google. Well, I can not do anything much if they even do not consider an appeal and just stubborn to banned the account without giving a second chance.
I tried other ad networks but they do not pay good. To my knowledge 60% revenue of google comes form advertisements. What it means? If a third party can target to advertisements and make a platform like Adsense (with second chance in case of something wrong before banning and a customer support), I guess fortune can be made. I am sure many other people might have thought about it. If not then its time to think and attack google business. I do not find what google did to me and other publishers is ethical.
Time will tell what happens to google. But I am pretty sure this kind of unethical treatment can lead towards bottom. Time can make a King a Beggar and a Beggar a King !!
Thank you for paying attention to my post. I hope some ad netowrk companies are paying attention to it and will come with attractive platform against Adsense.
Sincerely,
hr
Damn that sucks! I am so sorry to hear that 🙁
I hope you can find a suitable replacement for the lost earnings. I cant believe that they’ve banned you after being with Adsense that long.
I have a few adsense sites and was looking to get more bbut I guess I am going to mix it up a bit. mainly with CPA and high ticket Amazon offers.
As for the sites you cant monetize another way, you could flip them for a great price since they’ll still perform well as adsense sites. Of coruse you’d have to be honest to the buyer as to why you;’re selling them :p
All the best and please keep us in the loop about your next monetization methods’ results. 200 sites eh? That’s going to be a lot of work…
Good luck 🙂
Hey Susan,
He could sell the site, but I think it would be a bit difficult to do that and get a decent multiple…especially since he can’t be sure as to why the ban came in the first place. It would be a pretty risky purchase, I think…although I saw somewhere that someone had mentioned he purchases sites like this on a regular basis and uses a different AdSense account on the purchased sites…
I agree Justin, I don’t plan on selling any sites unless I can build up the revenue again and get a history to show.
I will definitely keep everyone posted Susan…thanks!
I’m so sorry to hear that Spencer! I know it’s so tough now but I am sure you will bounce back bigger and better than before!
This is such a shame bud, im sorry to be reading this story. I have been reading this blog for a while but have never implemented just an Adsense site, i usually use it to top up CPA sites.
The risks involved in relying on just Google Adsense income always appeared to outweigh other options of monetization for me. Especially when they can just shut you down like this. The fact that you can only have one Adsense ID made this route far more risky to me because they can shut down 100s of sites at once, rather than one or two.
I have a number of authority sites, ones where im interested in adding new content and offers on a daily basis. This way the site is always fresh and you get returning customers rather than the ones who just come and go once via a search term.
Playing Devil’s Advocate, do you think that by having this blog with the ways to game Google and create an Adsense empire has led to a manual review of your sites and Adsense ID?
I hope you get back on track Spencer and look forward to seeing how you get on with the other ad networks.
I really don’t know if this blog contributed to it. Although I know many others that DONT have public blogs have also recently been banned.
Wow that’s crap. It says you can appeal this – why don’t you try that? Gotta be worth a try.
Good luck in the future 😉
Spencer, you should get into the paid traffic side of things.
So much more predictable and quicker. Cause you can scale so much more quickly.
But if I were you, I’d try monetizing via Clickbank, CJ, ShareASale, etc. either by building lists on your websites like parrotsecrets.com
Thank you for being brave enough to share this. I think it will help a lot of people be able to build their businesses. I also have full confidence that you will recover, and come back with even more great lessons to share! 🙂
Sorry for the double post Spencer. I was using my mobile and didn’t know I posted it twice. you can delete one of them. Thanks
WOW
The day that even Spencer gets banned from Google Adsense is a bad day for niche marketers.
And to top it of regardless of account size (6 figures+ annually) and history (7 year old account) all they are capable of generating is some generic bullshit response. To not feel any obligation to give a better explanation when the figures are that high is outrageous.
I think that this is nothing less than pure theft and I am very surprised there is not a bigger public outcry other than o well its Google they do what they want.
Not that you need it since you will surely bounce back Spencer, but keep it up man.
Oy Spence! Bad news. Maybe the appeal will be successful. One thing seems to be for sure – niche sites are dying out. Google doesn’t want people clicking on crappy thin sites that are just there to get some clicks. You gotta put out something original and authoritative that nobody else has, which is easier said than done.
it’s really unfortunate that Google isn’t transparent on your decision. Honestly all offending parties want to be on the good side of google, therefore if they are open to what is wrong with an account being closed, then we’ll all know what not to do wrong. We’re earning an honest living and helping google in the process to improve on their revenue…therefore simply shutting everyone out is not the solution, rather let me communicate exactly what they don’t want publishers to do.
Hi Spencer,
Been following your blog almost from its beginning. I imagine is hard but also admire your enterprenurial approach to find a solution to a problem. I believe you will find one!
Do you have all the niche sites under one Google account (Analytics/Webmaster)? I’m wondering what to do to prevent G from knowig that all my sites and AdSense account are mine… Ideas?
Didn’t use the same analytics accounts. Used different hosting/IPs, etc.
Exactly what I was going to ask – I remember when Brian Johnson got a ton of sites deindexed that were all on the same IP (he had also made a tutorial about them prior to that I think). I think he was doing some sort of autoblogging though. From what I understand, you weren’t doing autoblogging/PLR – it was all hand done content?
You can have multiple Analytics accounts?
Oloo a lot of it comes down to where you log in to the Adsense accounts.
If you log in to the same accounts from the same compute,r Google knows about it.
Certainly bad news in the short term. I’m usually cautious about making overly optimistic statements like this may be the best thing to happen to me. It may, but it may not. Or it may be irrelevant and just one of the many challenges you’ll face while running your own business. It definitely gives me pause about continuing to build niche sites. I have been thinking about an authority site for some time and maybe I should shift that way sooner than later. I’ll search around some, but does anyone know of a case where someone with an authority site had their adsense account banned?
BTW, you’re new wordpress plugin Welcome Splash does look great though. I’ll be sure to fully utilize it on my authority site.
Hey Ryan,
We had an authority site that was deindexed in Google. We wrote about it in our February Income Report on our site. Pretty terrible…it was a nice site that I put quite a bit of time into personally…really frustrating it was deindexed. If they deindexed THAT site, I’d imagine they could deindex niche sites, authority sites, etc…really frustrating.
I hope this indeed does turn out to be a good thing down the road Ryan.
I hope so too man. My wife actually just walked in and looked at me and said, “whats wrong with you? did something happen today?” I said no, but then realized I was still playing out your scenario over and over again. It’s one thing when you don’t play by the rules but when you do and get cut for no real reason, that is a slap in the face. I was depressed for you and for myself earlier but now I’m getting to the fired up feeling and I’m eager to explore other ways to succeed in spite of google.
Really shocked to hear that Google disabled your Adsense account, Spencer.
I got an email from Google on Saturday morning with the same message saying I was suspended due to invalid clicks. I accidentally clicked on one of my own links last week (after 3 years of being careful!) so I’ve owned up and put in my appeal, though, like you, I’m not hopeful.
It does look like Google’s had a major purge :o(
Ali
I wouldn’t think the one click on your ads would do it (lots of clicks for sure), but maybe I’m wrong! What do I know about keeping adsense accounts open 🙁
I’ve never done anything wrong apart from that one click 🙁
This morning came the standard “appeal turned down” email:
“Hello,
Thank you for your appeal. We appreciate the additional information you’ve
provided, as well as your continued interest in the AdSense programme.
However, after thoroughly re-reviewing your account data and taking your
feedback into consideration, our specialists have confirmed that we’re
unable to reinstate your AdSense account.
Please understand that, once we’ve reached a decision on your appeal,
further appeals may not be considered, and you might not receive any
further communication from us. Note that AdSense publishers whose accounts
are disabled for violations of our Terms and Conditions are not eligible
for further participation in AdSense. For this reason, you may not open
new accounts.
Also, accounts disabled for invalid click activity will receive no further
payment nor any reissue of previous payment. Your outstanding balance and
Google’s share of the revenue will both be fully refunded back to the
affected advertisers. Thank you for your understanding in this matter.
We understand that you may want more information about your account
activity. However, because we have a need to protect our proprietary
detection systems, we’re unable to provide our publishers with any details
about their account activity.
Sincerely,
The Google AdSense Team”
So sorry to hear this, Spencer! I’m especially surprised that they smacked ALL of your accounts, as I know you had diversified in the hopes of only losing one at a time, should something like this happen.
One easy-to-set-up monetization method I can recommend for your product-related sites is Shopzilla. I like them for a few reasons, but mostly because it’s quick and easy to plop in one or two of their ad units and have it bring up related items. It might not be the best-paying long term solution, but as a stopgap it’s probably better (and faster) than most.
Good luck, whatever direction you decide to take!
-Michelle
Thanks for the shopzilla suggestion…will look into that!
Wow! Worst news ever. I was so sure that this will never happen to you because you play by the books. No one has hope then.
But you must fight back. I mean get to the bottom of this and get your account back. Let Google tell you exactly why that happened and what you can do to fix that. You were a premium publisher, why wouldn’t they want to help you out?
Don’t give up yet man! Be strong!
Hey Spencer,
Sorry to hear about this as I have been following your success with Adsense for some time now. It seems to me that Google has forgotten about the people who got them where they are in the first place and that is it’s affiliates.
Now that they are so large and very profitable they can now push the little guys to the side and not pay out commissions due to affiliates who have work their butts of to build sites around their network.
I feel for you as this is a very sad situation for all affiliates who have an Adsense account. I am personally looking into other options as we speak myself because I feel that it will only be a matter of time before I can’t login to my own account.
However, I know that you being the professional that you are will come back stronger and more profitable in the long run as this is just a bump in the road. Don’t let all of that hard work go down the drain.
Probably the closest thing to Adsense is Chitika which is second best revenue wise but if you could at least use them to get your income back up to half of what you were making prior to Adsense being cut off you at least have something.
Think about it and keep your head up.
Sean W
That’s terrible, Spencer. I think you will quickly bounce back. You have the entrepreneur mindset now so you’ll figure something out.
Google built an industry and is now trying to destroy it. It is in the best interest of most publishers to ensure that they are strictly following Google’s guidelines if that is their only revenue stream.
For most, it’s probably a good idea to build a business that moves away from the niche marketing and instead has a vertical structure where you market what you sell. That way you can build a lasting business that isn’t as subject to Google interventions. Of course you’ll still have to deal with that whole messy macro-economy thing, but at this point the European debt crisis makes more sense that Google’s policies!
Spencer, as many others have expressed I’m so sorry for you. I’ve been following this blog for over a year and I’m kinda shaking in my boots right now. I’m only making $200-$300/month right now but I’m going to rethink some things with my business partners.
I’ve thought this a every time I read one of these banned notifications from other IMers. I would probably drive directly to Google Adsense headquarters and demand to talk to someone to try to learn why exactly your accounts were banned. If only to get some closure on the situation.
Good luck with your future endevors and I’ll be watching.
Hey Spencer
Sorry to hear this and welcome to the club. I had my Adsense account disabled on on March 16 and my appeal was turned down in the same generic fashion as the first email they sent me banning me so I know the feeling. The things that I object to regarding their policies and the reasons I believe it will come back to haunt Google are:
1. How (as you mention) they unilaterally decide to withhold previous month’s earnings and not pay for the previous full month even though these earnings were accumulated when you were an approved and active account holder. This is unfair at a minimum and immoral or illegal at worst, depending on your local laws (more on that in a moment).
2. The fact that they hide behind the illusion that they’re protecting their business by not telling you exactly what it is that you did wrong and providing no actual proof of your wrongdoing. Again, unfair at best.
They get away with this because they’re an online company with few physical locations. Also, the average person who doesn’t take part in Internet marketing doesn’t know how they work and doesn’t care about the plight of people like us who get their accounts banned. This subject is only discussed amongst people like us who earn money online.
I’ve already approached the offices of my local federal member of Parliament and provincial member of Parliament (I live in Canada) to find a fair trade group or other government group that investigates things like this and advocates on behalf of people like me. I found an Adsense user in Australia whose account was banned but got his account turned back on when a local government Fair Trade group contacted Google on his behalf and made a big stink. They basically took Google to task for their lack of transparency and lack of details and Google relented as a result. I haven’t found a Canadian version of this Fair Trade group yet but I’m still looking.
Carl…very interesting. Im really surprised how many people are getting their accounts banned. It really is poor business practice the way google treats affiliates. If you have any success in your efforts, let me know.
hey
i dont think it is our right to get adsense accounts. when we sign up google clearly tells us that they have the right to ban accounts even with out any mistakes! but is it ethical to do this? no i dont think so. so how can we stop this poor buisness practise? may be by protesting, sign petititon etc…
and we have to know that google has other problems too in the search departement too. i dont think they doing it ethicallly. i dont think there is search results neutrality. google places product search results of its own on third position.
this video describes it all. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=BslAhJ5-C9g# so may be if we ever protest against google…. we could get some help from the searchers(googlers). thanks bye
tha
I’m so sorry to know that Google banned your accnt. To be honest I earned twice as much on my Infolinks than Adsense and more bloggers are aiming to get a Google Adsense Premium Publisher accnt for the reason thay once you become an Adsense Premium pub you will be immune in Adsense ToS. So if you will be a Premium pub there is no way of getting your adsense accnt banned.
Good luck!
Spencer,
I am really sorry to hear this. I’ve followed your blog for a LONG time. This is terrible. As far as monetization, you should definitely do consulting. I would also look at domain flipping as well. You have a great nose for keywords and ranking sites well, build them, rank them and sell them. It’s not long term income but it is income.
Thanks Ryan…all great suggestions.
The bad thing about that is that the websites do not accept / show adsense whatsoever anymore. So if you would sell a site, the buyer cannot monetize with adsense either…I tried that already 🙁
Google Adsense account banned is a common thing sir. That’s why do not rely on one account. I had about 11 Adsense accounts, whenever one account get banned I just switch to another. Now there are 7-8 accounts left. 🙂
I had multiple accounts. All shut down at once, but I wasn’t as careful as I could have been when I set them up. Do you really have 7 or 8 adsense accounts?
I dunno, but creating 1 Adsense account per month has been my VA monthly task since December last year. Hey waiting for your next move! Either sell the site on Flippa or continue monetize it. We’re sure you’ll do more than great..
Could having multiple Adsense accounts have finally caught up with you? There is all this talk about being “good IMers” yet everyone here uses black/grey hat methods on some level.
The main issue is that diversification is key. Without it, most buisinesses fail. You were smart to branch out into different areas. Hopefully one of those can become your passion.
On another note, what does that do for those of us who paid $50 for the Niche Website Theme. Not so sure how I feel about it at the moment…
Please Spencer tell me how to set up multiple adsese account under what payee name do you set them up? under the same payee name? or for example you open the account a name of Fortunato and put your payee name? how that work? or open them on the name of a business and then put the same payee name?
thanks 🙂
sorry for so many questions, I am frustrate and worry for the close of my adsense account 🙁
The name of the business is the payee name.
I’m really sorry for Spencer. But knowing the great content he’s putting out here, I’m sure he’ll come back from this better and stronger.
I read this blog I don’t even use Adsense. Why don’t I use Adsense? Because I have my account banned and I haven’t even put 1 Adsense ad on a website. Why was I banned? Don’t know.
It’s frustrating. I’ve appealed and appealed. But, maybe it’s not the worse thing that could have happened.
Really? Never even used the ads and got banned…ouch!
Yup! We’re not dealing with fairness or logic here! Although I can see why Google doesn’t allow communication or support on specific Adsense account problems due to the sheer weight of numbers of account holders, I wish they would make this whole process more transparent – so we don’t have to scramble around in the dark all the time.
Thanks for replying to me during this difficult time for you. 🙂
Yes i got the same experience with Rob Cubbon
just success registered GA with dockstock on sept 2011 then not use the ads because i was not ready create good site
then without even have any email notification my account is disabled at march 2012
i even not use or put the ads on any web
well it is all about Google power speaks, or I would say arrogant of subjective personal reviewer covered by company policy
First, I’m sorry about what happened. Second I just want to share that creating tons of Niche blogs or sites reqlly end up getting banned your adsense accnt, most publisher nowadays are aiming for an adsense premium publisher accnt to get immunity in getting their adsense accnt on being close. Concentrate on one site alone
Sorry to hear this. Some suggestions for you:
1) As you mentioned in the post, your websites are still ranking good in the search engines. You can sell those websites on Flippa. Websites making money on adsense sell like chocolates there. As you said you were making about $10000 per month, you can sell a website for 24-36 times of this value. That should be enough to start any new business.
2) Second option is to use the adsense code of any other family member. I know a publisher (earning $15000 per month), got banned and is doing this for past one year.
I may do both…kinda. We’ll see.
The sites likely won’t rank well for much longer!. After my own unwarranted banning my sites quickly dropped in the Serps with a number of high-ranking and #1 rank sites being banned, allegedly since they had links from or to the site which was the one site with alleged fraudulent clicks. It took a few weeks before the sites were banned or dropped from search.
A few sites were earning $10 to $30 a day for many years with Adsense and later from the parking firm I moved them to when I shut-down the websites after the ban. They soon dropped 90% plus as both their page rank and traffic went away. Some went from PR-4 or PR-5 to PR-0 soon after the Adsense banning.
Hey Spencer,
Simply put “That Sucks”
I know as a Father of three kids myself to lose your main source of income really sucks. I feel for you at this time man.
There is some useful info above and you have two products which I hope are doing well.
I hope you continue to provide an insight to niche marketing as I have just started to pursue this area myself and bought your nichewebsitetheme last evening and all this as a result of finding your blog and the information you provide.
You mentioned recently that you have changed some of websites over to your new theme, I hope that had nothing to do with the ban.
Can you disclose how many sites you had per business and where all these on one adsense account as mentioned by one reader above.
Can you have more than one adsense account to your name?
Do you think keeping related niche websites to one account would be a good way to proceed(if more than one account is allowed)?
Sorry about the long post and I look forward to seeing how you overcome this dilemma.
ps: run a good offer on long tail pro soon.
All The Best,
Noel.
Thanks Noel. No you cannot have more than 1 adsense account under your personal name. But business entities can have their own adsense account. I had 3 business entities. All shut down at once.
You said,” I had 3 business entities. All shut down at once.”
At one time i had 2 adsense accounts and 1 got shut down and the other didn’t. Did you have privacy on your domains? Google is a domain registrar and checks that. Maybe that’s how you got your 3 accounts shut down at once?
That answers my question above. I see…
Hi Spencer,
I’ve only just come across this old topic but have heard about others being burned in this way. Can you tell us, were the websites of the 3 business entities listed on common analytics accounts or any other common google services to link them to one another?
Different analytics accounts, etc.
Hi Spencer!
I really hate to read about this happening to your sites…
I would focus on product creation and the other networks you’ve listed. I’ve been looking into CPA networks here lately.
I thought about using Google Adsense, but there is too much going on with their program right right now. I do not think it is wise to jump into something without actually knowing what is going on, you know?
I hope you do not let this situation get to you. You an intelligent dude with the strength to get up when you are knocked down!
Good Luck Bud!
Nope, I won’t let it “get” to me. Should be an interesting journey over the next few months.
I’m sorry man, hope you will find some other ways to monetize your traffic, Try chitika, they are good, or maybe some ther companies out there, adsense is not only one, it’s the one of the best but still.
Hope you will forget about all this, just don’t give up.
Ahh i hate this news… i really feel sorry for you.. why does Google ban accounts for apparently no reason? What can they do if you have many visitors?
Wow – man, I really hate to hear this. I really do wish Google had provided more information as to what the issue was. I know that I had read in their terms when I first started with Adsense that if the clicks were low quality clicks that they could ban you. I’ve never looked, but is there any way to determine what your click success rate actually is? Might it be that many of the niche sites you had were providing clicks that were such low quality targeted buyers that they were being tricked into clicking a link? Man, that really does suck. I would love to know more about what actually happened – that’s a scary proposition to see your monthly income drop to nothing – I will say this though, at least you took your money you were making and reinvested it into making your own product in Long Tail Pro. I know that doesn’t make anything better, but at least you had another source of income. Please do keep us informed.
I don’t think there is any way to determine click success rate. Although if its from natural search engine traffic (which is all was) its supposed to be higher value.
It seems like the old 80’s business buzzword is in order here: diversification.
Im more diversified than you think :). This was only part of my business.
Spencer I have been a big fan of your site since I found it last year. You have always come across as total straight-shooter. I cant imagine losing that much income based on work you must be proud of, but I agree with your statement that “this might be the best thing that ever happened to your career.”
Google revenue sucks you in because of the ease of entry but they hold all the cards. The spell has been broken and you can move on.
A)This blog is going to be way more interesting exploring AdSense alternatives. How many IMers are going to looking for somebody focusing on that!
B)Even informational sites can sell products that focus on multiple aspects of your niches “sales cycle”. You already have product development experience.
I wish you the best and look forward to reading your blog for a long time to come.
Bob
Thanks for the positive comments! I guess this blog WILL become more interesting as I explore other alternatives; thanks for finding the silver lining!
OMG! Spencer, I’ve been following you from Warrior forum when you were thinking to leave your job. You’ve been my mentor and I’ve loved your articles and products. I’ve built sites based on your techniques which are reasonably successful.
This is very disappointing news mate. However, when one door closes, two more open. I’m sure you’ll find something profitable sooner than later.
Do you think building the links by unnatural methods may have resulted in the Adsense ban? Since many top IMers lost their Adsense account, this seems like more of a probability than having numerous niche sites.
Regardless I hope that you’ll find new methods and share with us again. You may start selling some of your purely info sites to keep the cash coming in and (I hope not) before they may lose rankings in Google as well.
I don’t think linking methods have anything to do with it, at least that’s how I feel.
Mohit,
I’ve been reading through all of these comments to see if anyone else is thinking what I am and I think you hit the nail on the head when you said:
“Do you think building the links by unnatural methods may have resulted in the Adsense ban? Since many top IMers lost their Adsense account, this seems like more of a probability than having numerous niche sites.”
There has got to be a pattern here somewhere, Google is basically a big robot, there has to be some common traits or flags that Google is picking up on .
I can’t remember if Spencer said he is using BMR or not, but I know many guys out there that were. Wouldn’t that be a simple way to find all the “Internet Marketer Websites” out there, guys/gals that had links coming in from Private Blog Networks like BMR.
What do you guys think?
Am with Spencer here. The red flags are almost definitely somewhere else such as if you have a large quantity of URLs in your Adsense account.
I’m with you here Larry and Mohit. I think backlinking methods are being taken into consideration now when we’re seeing more Adsense accounts banned. And seemingly they are being banned in mass and not just one at a time (although that probably does exist too).
It is such a sad news Spencer. Looks like google is making rapid changes to it’s policies. In reality, it is losing so much money by disabling your account.
Given your confidence in online entrepreneurship , I am sure you will come up with another winning strategy.
It’s al matter of time.
Hi Spencer
Of course im really sorry to hear about this. what a major pain in the backside for you.
Youve contributed hugely to the Niche site model and for that Google should be grateful not penalize you. You’ve effectively made them loads of money.
The coupon site comment from the guy earlier in the thread is interesting and kinda makes some sense. I’ve got some of those and they make good money .. Hum maybe Ill make the move to alternative monetisation earlier than i planned.
The best thing is to shake yourself off and move forward. Im sure you will and grow a bigger and stronger business
regards
Thanks Steve – onward and upward for sure.
Along with everyone else, I’m sorry to hear about this development, Spencer. I never found your business model terribly appealing as a primary income source, personally…but I think we all would like to believe it’s possible to have at least a little passive income happening with a niche site or a few, just to help fill in the cracks.
It does frustrate the hell out of me that Google isn’t more transparent about this stuff. But, they are the 800-lb gorilla in the room, and everyone has to play by their rules, as long as they are allowed.
I have been making money with AdSense since the summer of 2003…and there were times when it was pretty good. But I’m in the midst of my worst month in many years…and for no discernable reason.
I have come to the conclusion that Google is much less noble in its pursuits than it would like to believe it is. There are good reasons why they need to protect their brand…and then there are the times where they are just overly-devoted to doing everything via algorithm…rather than involving human beings, who can certainly tell the difference in the quality of web sites, and whether or not someone is primarily spammy.
I understand that they need to discourage spam in all its many forms. And I think MFA web sites…however one defines that term…are somewhat spammy in nature, as they are more about skimming money than truly engaging and serving the information-seeker. However, they have gone too far…and their once-valuable property (AdSense) has become somewhat of a joke. I still use it, and will continue to do so for as long as I can. But your post today has pushed me to apply as well for media.net…as a backup funding source, at the very least.
Best of luck in figuring out a solution. I will watch with interest, and I have a feeling that whatever you learn will end up having more direct impact on me than all the info about building niche sites has had so far. Maybe you need to start a new Banned from AdSense site…and make it your mission to do interviews with others who have been banned…to seek (in a non-personal way) more enlightenment from Google on the subject, maybe…and mostly to bring to light helpful info for the tons of other folks who are living with this “new reality”.
best,
c-
Thanks for sharing your thoughts Chuck! I guess I never thought about what the future path of this blog would be after my adsense account got shut down, but you ARE right…it could become even more valuable indeed (at least I hope so) as I explore alternatives to adsense and more.
Hey Spencer,
Not much more we could say except this is absolutely horrible and we really do feel for you. Both Joe and I are wishing you and your family the best. I know that you are a bit diversified in your income, but this is quite the blow to your up-and-coming business and raises some questions for us about our strategy.
There’s no way we’ll know for sure, of course…but to speculate a bit:
Do you think it could be because you have a personal AdSense account, you have another business AdSense account, etc? I could see that as being a potential reason, but it still wouldn’t explain some of the other long-time publishers having their accounts disabled.
By the way, I TOTALLY agree with one of the other commenters, saying this blog is about to get MUCH more interesting as we follow you through your path to alternative monetization! We’ve been following you closely anyway, but now I’ll probably find myself hanging around until the next NP post comes out! lol
You’ve got a diversified income, a great audience, and a really interesting path ahead of you. I’m sure you’ll end up just fine…but I do wish you the best and hope you don’t pull too much hair out of your head in frustration!
Hang in there, man…
Thanks Justin, I appreciate the kind words. I will be around for a long time, this is just a set back for now. Anything that makes me explore new business opportunities can’t be a bad thing.
I don’t think having a business and a personal account was what did it; otherwise, why did they approve it in the first place? I really don’t know exactly what it was (thanks to the generic email from Google).
Anyway, you guys have been very supportive, and I think your post today is great for anyone interested in a back-up plan: http://adsenseflippers.com/internet-marketing/adsense-alternatives
I think this is just the tip of the iceberg. Any business built on Google as it’s main source of income *could* lose it all.
…and that’s MY business too 8-(
Definitely give media.net a good shot Spencer. Media.net contacted me about 6 months ago to see if wanted to use their ads, and I thought well why not, lets give them a shot, so I swapped out adsense on them for my main earner. At that point my main earner was earning $3000 a month with adsense, for the same amount of traffic a month later i earned $4200 with media.net and haven’t looked back since.
If your sites still have their rankings then all is good, you still have options.
Those are encouraging words Darren. Thanks for sharing.
Wow…thanks for the success story with Media.net! I applied a couple of days ago and hope to hear some good news from them this week. Will keep everyone updated for sure.
I think that it depends on the niche with media.net. My sites are in the natural health niche, and they do great. I have a friend in the finance niche who earns more with media.net than adsense also.
Hey Spencer,
I feel the pain. In 2007 I lost all 8 of my ebay accounts with over 50,000+ feedbacks combined. All were closed within 10 minutes by a push of a button by some unemployed pimp from Bangladesh (an outsourced ebay worker).
I learned as you will that nowadays you MUST compartmentalize ALL YOUR ACCOUNTS! Just like the Titanic (but do a better job 🙂 )
Make each account 100% separated from all your other accounts. If one goes down, you still have 19 left.
I never realized the same thing happened to ebay accounts – a different world, but makes sense. I agree with your thoughts.
That’s awful… Same here 🙁
But the show must go on…
Be strong!
–
Every cloud has a silver lining.
–
Sud.Lamiran
Amazon also can be viable alternative. I think this guy makes around $100,000 per year from amazon with less than 100 websites maybe around 40 or 50.
http://www.warriorforum.com/adsense-ppc-seo-discussion-forum/351440-my-first-4-figure-day-5-figure-month-6-figure-year-now-2-years-upadted.html
Also, as I recall you are experimenting with iPhone application. In that case, you might want to build your own tech startup likes Instagram.
Recently, Instagram has been acquired by Google for $1 billion. That’s way more money than Google Adsense can ever give in your entire lifetime!
Instagram was acquired by Facebook, not google 😉
Saw it in the newspaper (telegraph) the other day in the business section. It was about the ‘social media bubble’ or something.
Danii
I am really sorry to hear this. I had the same thing happen to me a few weeks ago. Google is just a mess right now. It is nearly impossible to get any specifics from them, so finding out what they don’t like about your site, backlinks, optimization, clicks, etc. is really a crap shoot. Google Adnonsense is like a stripper, great while it lasts but after the dance is done they want your money….You have been really successful with monetizing with Google so I have no doubt that you’ll be killing it with other affiliates soon. I believe that once you have a basic strategy and have done well, you will find a way to replicate it somewhere else. Good luck Spencer and please keep us posted on your journey.
Thanks Clayton 🙂
Sorry to hear, Spencer.
I’l doing all I can to not be dependent upon Google for traffic and monetization.
I am sure you will be able to devise a strategy to overcome this, and take your income to levels higher than it was last week.
Best of luck.
Hey Spencer,
I am really sorry to hear about your Adsense account. Though I can’t relate to losing my Adsense account, I can, however, feel the pain since I lost my Facebook ads account last year.
I was spending upwards of $1,000 per day when I got an email from Facebook giving me an ambiguous reason to shutting my account down. Pretty much the same type of email you got from Google. I think my heart stopped for a few seconds since this was a big source of my income.
Yes, I did open up another account, but I too have been fearful of it happening again. What pisses me off the most about these large companies is that they just don’t care enough to tell you exactly ‘why’. How are we to learn from our mistakes?
Here’s my lesson and advice: Don’t EVER place all your eggs in one basket! It’s as simple as that. Diversify your portfolio so that when something like this happens, your business is still profitable and still able to pay the bills.
As far as my suggestion Spencer on building small niche sites or larger authority type sites, I would build the latter. Google has been really cracking down on smaller niche sites and rewarding the more authority based ones. I have shifted to this model and am working on my first authority site. Actually I have 2, but the second one is in planning.
The one problem with authority sites, however, is that they require more time and more investment, especially up front. But in the end, they are more likely to sustain themselves and be better protected from these sorts of issues.
I still believe in Adsense, but only on authority based sites. Good luck with your sites and restructuring. I know that you will figure it out and get your income back up. It will require some ‘thinking outside the box’, but I know you have what it takes.
Brandon – Interesting experience with Facebook. I have definitely been working on diversifying my income over the past year, and luckily all my eggs weren’t in the adsense basket… but it was for all my niche sites.
Definitely something to think about with the authority sites as well.
Count me in for being saddened as well Spencer – has really bummed me out all day so my main comment to you is just a general prayer of good vibes and peace to you.
Having said that, let me make a couple of observations that I am convinced of having seen this happen to multiple people over the past 3 years.
1) You cannot make a nice juicy Adsense income and train others to do the same. Sorry, I’m convinced of it. I can rattle off 10 names of folks making $5,000k/month and have actively trained others on high traffic sites, and 100% of them have had this happened.
To me the exceptions are those that make less money on adsense themselves such as Pat Flynn or those that stay quiet except to a members only type group. Wish this were not the case but it is.
2) Any training videos on You tube that even remotely suggest at gaming the site are subject to trouble. While I obviously don’t think Spencer was knowingly doing this – it appears You Tube videos are game for all types of subjective slaps.
3) This action to me suggests there is some additional algorthyms for big time Adwords spenders when they complain. Not sure how this might work, but clearly to me this happens.
Google feels they must protect their big time spenders at all costs – and obvously someone like Spencer or the ASF guys are making higher profile money and, thus, maybe they can gleen some type of reverse algo. they don’t like.
Sorry again – and I’m not trying to be un-compassionate here, just making some observations.
Thanks Kent for the well-wishes. I think your observations are pretty good. I guess nothing can be confirmed, but your points are not unreasonable.
Hi Spencer
That’s really bad news. I’ve always lived in fear of Google doing this to me as well. Not anywhere near your earnings, but would still hurt.
I dont know if anyone has made the link, but have you ever used “Build my Rank” to build any links to you adsense sites.
Creating these artificial paid links, (as Google would deem them) may represent that ‘risk to their advertisers’
Just a thought, as many people I see that have been banned were using Build my rank, and probably other private blog ‘link building’ services
I did use Build My Rank, but only a very little. I took down all those links about a month ago (when they were deindexed).
Spencer
Sorry to hear about this, thank god you have not been penalised on the SERPs, I have had a couple of my sites nuked by Google, not my account just a couple of site where they were found to be in breach of TOS due to some haphazard autobloging 😉
My earnings are minuscule in comparison to yours but it would still be a major pain to loose my whole account.
Whilst I think I am in no position to give you advice from experience I think we can extrapolate on a few possible scenarios.
You mentioned the possibility of setting up other adsense accounts under different LLC’s.As you feel hurt and vulnerable right now , you don’t want to go that route, but I think eventually you are going to get ANGRY at Google and with the fact that you are not poor (I hope you saved some of that cash you were making) you may want to get your own back. Think of it as setting up an underground network of agents (LLC’s) all operated ultimately by you but never connected to you in anyway shape of form (it is a bit of a major logistic endeavor but with 10K a month at stake , possibly worth it ) . 200 Hundreds site split amongst several LLc in many different states or even abroad. No Google products to be used in connection with these apart from the new adsense accounts (no G+, no analytics, gmail…etc), different hosting providers, privacy on, NEVER accessing any of these sites from your IP address, basically, making them , if not as anonymous as possible but as disconnected from you as you can…It’s a lot more complicated than just running one account openly but maybe the end justify the means.
it’s up to you if you want to wage asymetrical warfare on Google, remember you thought you were big and powerful with 200 sites and 6 figures a month, you also provided a great target footprint, maybe it’s time to go small and be stealthy, you can still be the sum of all of your many parts.
As we say in France ,Vive la resistance 😉
Hey Spencer,
I’m sorry about what happened to you. I can only imagine how difficult it was and probably still is to receive that email from the Google Adsense team.
Google Webmaster Help uploaded a video on YouTube last year that I think may be one of the reasons why you were banned. Here is the link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NmiSDxR68Nk&list=PL9EED12AC2DF85251&index=19&feature=plpp_video
I thank you for making your situation public because I think it, again, reveals how important it is for internet marketers to diversify and not rely on one thing too much. I also think it’s very wise for internet marketers to create their own e-products, and rent ad space within their quality websites from advertisers directly.
Best of luck to you, and don’t give up! Just improve!
Thanks for the video Tasha. Maybe you are right, but even Matt Cutts says you can build microsites if you want. He just said he doesn’t think its always a good idea. But lots of these sites likely did set off a redflag for adsense. (my guess).
Spencer, I guess its possible that it could have been the number of sites in your account but I think its an unfair ruling if thats the case. Whats to say you don’t have a team of 20 people helping you manage the sites. I think Matt Cutts video where he talks about not being able to support a large number of sites is right to a point, but at the end of the day how do they know how many people you have working for you in your business? What if you had one person per site (outsourced or within your company). They have no sight into that. So, how can they just make a blanket ruling and say you have to many. I think that is ridiculous.
hey Spencer sorry to hear the bad news. What i would like to know is how will this affect the use of your long tail pro business. i understand that you have it so it churns out google adsense cpc. will this still be relevant and would you be considering inserting other cpc from other ad networks to broaden the use of it. i wasnt far from purchasing it myself so would be keen to know how this changes that side of things as you have mentioned something about it will change your keyword research a bit
Paul:
I don’t know that this changes how Long Tail Pro works. The reason is that the CPC is really just a value to help you know if there is money in the niche. This will still apply whether or not you are using Adsense. Generally speaking, if a niche pays well in Google Adsense it will also pay well using other monetization methods.
Hey Spencer,
I was just wondering regarding Googles TOS as to whether you have linked to any of your adsense earning websites through this website. I know that you have posted your average cpc for a few websites but as well as that you might have linked to them as well. I don’t think Google is fond of that and might have had someone personally check the validity of the links.
I’ve heard there are ways to hide your hosting account and have your domains on multiple ip addresses. However, I’m not too sure if that would fully protect you in the future as all Google has to do is find one website they’re not happy with and just ban the adsense account that’s linked to it (regardless of how many websites you have on your account).
Sorry to hear about this as your blog was one of my inspirations to start niche websites. I’m still going to try it as I have a solid strategy but hope nothing like this happens to me. Best of luck for the future man!
I never linked to any of my sites.
Sucks dude. Happen to me 3 times! Everything I’ve done since has been affiliate based. I’ve considered adsense again based on a new business account – as you mentioned, but I have to tell you, it not only sucks big time in terms of lost money and revenue, but the part that really get’s me – and I would imagine you as well – is that not only did I (and you) do nothing ‘wrong’ whatsoever, but Google doesn’t care either way and they won’t communicate with you after they do this to you. Can you imagine a personal relationship like this? It’s so righteous and cold. I don’t like that feeling. And yet, it’s the reality of the situation so one must adapt. Best to you my friend. I’ve cited your as the adsense niche expert for anyone who asks and this is still true in spite of G ~
Spencer, sorry to hear it, but thanks for sharing. We can all learn from what has happened to you, and hopefully avoid the same by diversifying along the way.
I know that you can find a way to recover from this, and become even more profitable. I am sure it will take a considerable amount of work, but don’t give up.
You have a loyal audience, and from the comments, it appears that you are not alone. Iwhile this is a big inconvenience, it could be an opportunity for you.
I read this news today as I was looking to purchase your long tail pro. I will still make that purchase, as I see value there for finding niches that can still be monetized through avenues other than Adsense.
I wish you the best and will continue to follow your situation. When the going gets tough, the tough finds another monetization method. 😉
Thanks Greg, yes Long Tail Pro is not for building adsense sites – it has many other uses for sure. Its an overall keyword tool – whether for bloggers, authority site builders, ppc advertisers, or others.
I think Google is making it very difficult. So many rules. I make such little money with Adsense I don’t know why I keep on. Do you think PPV is a better way?
Jim
Never looked into PPV.
Spencer, By any chance were you using an advertiser ‘Block List’?
No.
That really sucks! You should give Prosperent a try for your product related sites.
Hi Spencer,
I followed you for a while and am blown by this dictatorial treatment by Google. I heard from RD that Google is positioning itself to be an affiliate for product sellers directly as well (don’t know whether this is the Content Network mentioned earlier). If so, then it behooves them to hog as much traffic as possible so to grab the affiliate commission to themselves (as opposed to just getting “puny” proceeds from the publishing of the ads.)
Having said that, GOOG just announced a spectacular earnings, yet their stock (unusually) dropped 50 points in 2 days. No deed goes unpunished! Karma is there. Although the stock is going to split, we can pay back GOOG’s “kindness” by buying put options and profiting from its demise.
I have confidence a professsional of your stature and connection will bounce back to a new height in income. Please do keep us in the know so we can learn from the process too 🙂
I deeply sorry to hear and feel for you.
I know exactly how you feel now my man. I recently lost my residual income from an offline business as well.
I felt so bumped out, depressed, can’t eat and wanted to give up everything.
and i came to realize: Life is too short to live.
THEY CAN TAKE EVERYTHING AWAY FROM ME, BUT JUST “DO NOT TAKE MY BRAIN AWAY”.
STAY POSITIVE, THINK BIG, ACT BIG AND GET BIG…..
There is always a way out buddy.
Now with enough said:
Google has not been very transparency of why all the accounts got banned. How Can We Proceed With a Lawsuit?
Do we have a case here? any lawyer out there?
Very best Regards
Andrew
Total shit. They are seriously evil if they think they can just up and take away someone’s main source of income without any forewarning. “Hey you’re screwing up, stop doing this..” is a simple thing that could have saved you from all the bother and enabled you to continue on improving your business.
I feel for you, hope everything ends well, as you said, there’s many other networks out there…
I agree totally! I mean how hard is it to say hey we noticed this going on, how come is happening? We suggest you fix it. Here are some ways you can fix.
SIMPLE CUSTOMER SERVICE!
For such a big company to be like that is shameful, someone put a nice line below:
“If they bit the hand that feeds them to much, people will revolt”
Very well said indeed. Don’t worry guys their time will come…Their time will come.
hey Spencer,
Sorry to hear about this situation. Just this morning as I was out on a walk I was reflecting on how many obstacles that I’ve encountered in my sixty years on this journey. I’m a newbie to this internet marketing world , only joined the fray in the past eight months and your blog is one of the best sites I’ve followed . I’ve been fortunate that I’ve worked as a general laborer in the 60’s , in the Music bizz in the 70’s , Television production during the 80’s – and for the past twenty years I’ve enjoyed a wonderful life as a tennis coach – now, working my way thru the internet maze and although I’ve had tons of frustration my mindset always pulls me thru and I know that everything is a step by step process and not to panic . Just want to tell you that from reading your work and getting to know you thru it , I predict that your work ethic and mindset that you have developed will be rewarded in ways you can’t even predict at present – keep your spirits up , your heart open and watch what happens…..
Thanks Ron!
Google needs to check itself. They feel big and powerful and to many people relay on them and they know it. If they bit the hand that feeds them to much, people will revolt. They are not the only game in town soon yahoo and bing will capture other people. Soon they will deindex everyone and then all they will have is worthless sites and wikpida
Completely agree. After the new Panda update the SERP’s are all screwed up. There are tons of horribly spun 2.0 sites and bookmarks outranking authority sites. I don’t know what Google is trying to accomplish. They are providing a terrible user experience and now banning/penalizing publishers with absolutely NO REASON PROVIDED and ZERO customer support. What kind of legitimate company does that and expects to survive?
If they continue like this it won’t take long before people move on to more user friendly search engines and advertising companies that actually give a d@mn about their publishers.
Hey Spencer,
I just read an interesting article about some “internet famous” people who got their AdSense accounts reinstated:
http://marketingland.com/recent-bans-surface-adsense-publishers-complaints-about-google-5569
In both instances, though, the publishers owned quite large sites and were pretty well connected. Still, worth taking a look…maybe some kind of “Fair Trade” group can help you out?
To be honest guys Google randomly disabled my account on the 13th of last month and I found out many people got disabled between that date and the 16th.
Now the same thing happening again this month. I also found out that payments for previous month’s earnings are processed after the 16th.
Isn’t that a bit suspicious? I think so, I feel they randomly disable accounts and make a killing on all that money. If we hear about the same thing happening next month then it is official.
After I read a post by some guy who was making 125k a month and got banned after always receiving certificates from adsense I knew no one was and is safe from getting banned.
What makes it worse is the fact that there is no customer service.
I have an honest question, will this be the downfall in the long run of google? I mean if they start banning left and right and provide no customer service then if there are no publishers to advertise or they all get fed up I really believe what they are doing will really bit them in the A%^$ big time in the future.
Reading through the comments the common trend seems to be coupon sites – I had quite a few coupon sites and while I never went against the AdSense TOS my account was banned recently…
Interesting observation – although I still see lots of coupon sites out there with adsense on them. Maybe not for long though…I don’t know.
Ugh…sorry Spencer. I know enough about you to know that you’ll not only recover from this, but also end up with something even better at the end of the day.
If I were in your position, I’d probably take a look at the top 20% (in terms of traffic) of my portfolio of sites and categorize them based on what types of monetization strategies could work based on the niche (list building/affiliate marketing, CPA offers, Amazon, ad networks) and then start off with the monetization strategy that seems to work best with the majority of sites….at least as a starting point.
Thanks Shae!
Spencer, man, this sucks!! I know exactly how you feel!! Although G “only” took about 4500$ from me by banning me…
For us niche websites builders, I am sure we will find other great resources for monetization. As you may have noticed on my blog, I have pretty good results with a combination of media.net and infolinks at this moment and it definitely has some pros NOT to use G anymore.
However, still at this moment, it really sucks big time and I feel for you. Let’s join forces in how to create a beautiful way around G and laugh at them in the near future…!
Keep up your faith!
Best regards,
Mark
Hey Mark – sorry to hear about you getting your account banned as well. However, I’m encouraged with the success you are having with Infolinks and Media.net.
Thanks for sharing!
but, why exactly did those mother f&/($#s closed your account? it was really because of having too much domains or they implemented earnings limits?
I wish I knew. If google doesn’t like something they could get less of it if they just let us all know what they don’t like.
Hey Spencer,
I have been noticing a lot of the blogs I follow and have learned from are starting to get their adsense accounts banned, but another thing I have noticed is all of these people who are getting their adsense accounts banned are also using Blog Networks to boost their site rankings.
I believe google just recently decided to crack down on these blog networks and I have heard of a lot of them even shutting down. Maybe google didn’t just try to shut down these blog networks, but also decided to check out the content of their blogs and ban users who were using blog networks to boost their adsense sites.
What other reason could they possibly ban you for? I have followed you and many others that got banned and none of them have a detailed explanation of WHY they got banned and now I am afraid I should be worried as well. I don’t see anything wrong with the types of sites you were making and your sites were only helping google make money, so whats the deal?!
I hope you figure everything out and I’m sorry to hear about the large loss.
-Tony
Tony – definitely another interesting theory…your guess is as good as mine though.
It is quite disappointing to hear this Spencer, but i am sure you will get back to action. Current situation only shows us how dependent we are on Google and have to worry not only about our AdSense account/s but staying in the SERPs’ placement.
I have a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach that UAW and other like it will be de-indexed. Google can easily discount all blogs that have their plugin. In a blink of an eye.
This happening to you makes me thing long and hard about the whole making money online thing. Google owns you. They can do what they want.
A friend of mine who had multiple sites in different neighborhoods with EMD had most of his sites plummet over night. The only ones spared were listed in local. I also had all my local sites go down. They all had different templates, different content. Gone, overnight.
Sarah – Google does control alot unfortunately. Good idea to diversify. Lots of different ways to make money online.
Hey Spence
Very Sorry to hear that. I’m probably going to re-think my site stratergy due to this.
You have a load of sites up so do a split test between several ad networks. That would make an interesting article as well.
This will take time to set up, how many did you say you had?
Looks like a drop in salary by a couple of thousand but if you act quickly you will still be earning a decent and more than liveable wage.
Quality sites, which I believe you have from what you have said will always rank so while we still depend on google for most of the traffic we dont have to depend on them for adsense earnings anymore, how liberating.
So chin up, you know what youv’e gotta do for now. Yeah, take a holiday for a week first, and then come back and do it.
Best
Mark
Thanks Mark…great advice!
Spencer,
Sorry to hear about this. However, I’ve always felt that relying solely on Adsense is too high a risk. This will allow you to rebuild your income in a way that will leave you less vulnerable to the decisions of one company or entity.
Google (IMO) has taken too many bold actions in the last few years and while I’m sure there are many accounts that deserve this kind of shutting down, having to worry about this happening to me, makes me want to rebuild the same way.
You’ll come back stronger than before…Mike
Spencer..sickening. I could not help myself..had to repost what I posted YESTERDAY before receiving your announcement about your shut down.. Now I guess I can just put it in bold type.
Do anything you can do disconnect from Google. Leverage what you can, but don’t become tethered. Google is now the enemy to be watched/avoided, etc. Ad sense niche sites are dead (at least with google monitization ) . Now all the other models and channels are much clearer to evaluate.
My prediction is that there will be a growing back lash against google.
Everyone needs to take deep breath …regroup..and good ideas will flow. Somewhere in the blogs there will be postings titled “Remember The Adsense Days and BMR ? ”
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
My Post To You Yesterday
Google is the new evil empire. Right before our eyes they now control the net. As a small business owner I have seen my cost of pay per click dramatically increase. Worst yet, as a small business owner I have tried to compete by working hard at ranking my web site organically…only to have google repeatedly de rank my web sites because they changed their practices and algorithms. they have effectively wiped out my investment of the last year or so. For those that don’t know, googles actions have wiped out tens of thousands of small businesses trying to operate in the on line ecosystem.
Well I used to think google was cool company, do no wrong etc. But both businesses and consumers should fear both google and facebook. They are in your underpants counting your pubic hairs. Don’t laugh…its for real. Between the two, EVERYTHING you do is tracked, monitored, and packaged. Your privacy is history, and we are all being played like sheep. What do do ? Well I just turned off my PPC google account..I refuse to give them any more of money (geee did my 2k per month contribute to their revenue decrease ? ). I am changing out google analytics on all my web sites to a private system where big brother can’t look in my underpants every time they want and approve or disapprove where I was last night. I am optimizing my web sites for the OTHER search engines BING, YAHOO, etc. I have changed my search engine bar..removing google. And I have backed way off posting on facebook..and considering turning it off..as are thousands of others.
These beasts have risen from nothing, but their arrogance and control the earth attitudes is about as Orwellian as you can get. Defend your self, these guys are going to fall from grace. Manage them, don’t let them manage you.
Others can give you pages of horror stories of what goes on with these companies tracking every footprint. Beware… And for business owners, diversify everything you have away from google and facebook, while leveraging what you can from these guys…and way that minimizes your exposure.
Didn’t you have separate llc’s for each account? If so how did they link them together?
Yes, I did. Unfortunately, they shared the same address and same contact person. But if this was really WHY the accounts were shut down, why did they let me open the accounts? But this certainly was a link between them all.
Hey mate that sucks, but get back on the horse and slap its arse and ride it like it’s stolen, GOOGLE isn’t the only game in town.
Hey Spencer,
Google are like Paypal they only protect the customers not the vendors. I understand why they do this because the money comes from the customers (advertisers) not the vendors. I’ve been working on adsense for few months and it’s hard yakka, I dread the day they might shut my account and if they can do it to you or other big players then there’s no hope or real appeal process. Google do what they want.
With that said I’ve been spreading my risk, I’ve been doing Kindle, 2 months ago I reached $100 in profit already, in the same time it’s taken me 4-5 months with adsense. I wrote 5 books uploaded them and done absolutely no promotion. I still got no ratings on my ebooks and selling a couple per day lol. Seriously look at Kindle bro there’s no SEO or building sites, no continuous article updates, no backlinks, none of that. Just pick a money niche, write the book, upload it, and Booya you get paid.
Sorry to hear your loss but bigger things are to come bro
Nigel
Thanks Nigel – I’ve heard about some people doing well with Kindle books – interesting idea.
Spencer, very sorry to hear about the AdSense demise!
A while back it was all about eBay and how so many folks were getting their eBay accounts dumped, regardless how much they were making from eBay affiliation. But I’m also hearing more Amazon accounts are being banned now too, and its the same old story – Amazon do not provide any reasons for banning an account – they just dump it, end of story.
Media.net sounds interesting. Makes you wonder though – how long before Media.net get so strong that they too decide to start dumping. Wise to keep this in mind and ensure we follow their T’s & C’s very closely from the get-go.
Wish you the best, Spencer!
Joseph
Hey Joseph, thanks for stopping by! It does seem like once a company becomes large enough they start shutting down the little guys.
Thanks for the well wishes!
Hey Spencer & Joseph,
I had my adsense disabled about 6 weeks ago, since then i’ve transitioned about 50 sites over to media.net
At this point I have a lot of confidence in them because they actually assigned me an account manager who I can email with any questions and who told me that if they have any problems with my sites he will tell me first.
He also encouraged me to set up separate ad codes for each site so that he can manually tweak the ads for the best performance on a per-site basis.
I’ve only been in this since December so I can’t really tell if my revenue is equal to what adsense would have been by now but I’m very happy with media.net compared to all the others i tried (chitika was giving CPM of less than $1 on average… and bidvertiser! LOL like $0.10c CPM!)
For customer service and just having a feeling that everything will be ok, I’d recommend everyone just move over to media.net right now regardless of having their adsense disabled.
Cheers,
Steve, great to hear! I look forward to checking them out.
Wow, I was really hoping this was a joke when I clicked on the link in my email.. Sorry man. The part about “we understand the inconvenience this may cause, thanks for your understanding” makes you just want to walk straight in there and deck whoever wrote that.
I’m removing all the adsense on my sites until I figure out someway to handle this strategically, it’s just a matter of time anyway, I don’t make much but that doesn’t seem to bother them at all, just too many people have been shut down for no reason lately. I’m starting to think it’s just a team of picked on rejects sitting around in an office hitting the ban button on people and getting off on it. There is no protection for the advertisers, that is a blatant flat out lie. All the big time players are definitely smart enough to play by the rules and not do anything stupid/unethical. These Niche sites get highly targeted traffic and the ads are relevant, if they aren’t relevant then that’s google’s fault not the site owners. Maybe they should ban themselves for not providing an effective service for their advertisers?? This kind of highly targeted traffic from niche sites is EXACTLY what the advertisers want. Saying they are protecting the advertisers is just a bunch of baloney. I would REALLY like to know if the money is ACTUALLY returned to the advertisers or not. I wouldn’t doubt it if it isn’t. and google just pockets it. With so much money flowing around Google everyday nobody would even notice if they just quietly kept it.
Can you say what you think was the connecting links between your 4 different separate accounts? I thought this would keep you somewhat insulated in case of a ban. I was looking into that as ell but maybe it’s just a waste of time and money?? I’m pretty shocked they simultaneously shut down all 4 separate accounts.
I would bundle up all your lower earners that can’t be easily marketed in other ways effectively, get another account set up for those far away from whatever you had before, get 3 months of earnings and sell them for a cash infusion. Put the high earners on another separate new account and get as many months of income as you can out of them while you focus on re-monetizing all the big earners. At least this would ease the transition period. How to do this safely for new accounts? I don’t know enough about proxy’s, IP’s and privacy stuff but there are certainly other people in your network of friends/users that do know these tactics.
I would LOVE to see the thousands of banned users join together and pursue this in court. There has to be a way to force more transparency in these matters. You and all the other banned members are/were providing a service for google providing them content to put their ads on and earning them revenue. This can’t possibly be 100% legal the way they are handling it. I would think thousands of people combined could easily afford a sufficient legal team. If OJ can win.. anyone can. lol. Honestly, even if the lawsuit had no chance of winning. It WOULD provide some great media exposure and get this issue out in the public spotlight. It may force some much needed policy changes indirectly just through the negative publicity. You could set up a sue google website but they would probably just de-index it lol. Everyone would have to find it through bing/yahoo haha.
Good Luck and keep us posted. I know from older posts you are at least smart enough to have some money put aside to hold you over.
Nope, not a joke unfortunately. I thought having different LLCs/accounts would isolate me from something like this as well – that’s why I created additional LLCs. But my contact name was on the account (an individual name is required) – that must have done it. If I ever do this again (new LLC) there will be no linking information at all.
A lawsuit would be interesting, I’d LOVE to read about something like that in the media! Boo for Google!
I am with you 🙂
what is annoying is the fact that google never comes up with explanations, detailes…of course they can afford that as long as they have plenty of offers from advertisers. Now they complain that Facebook and Apple threaten internet or…its adsense maybe:). anyway 5 days ago Ggl banned my adsense on one of my blogs however they left the adsense account active at the moment
Wow…
I feel terrible for you man. You are the reason why I got into Adsense and set up my nichewebsites blog.
CPA is probably the way to go don’t you think?
Why not try to change the entity as at least this gives you an income and if they ban it again well so be it.
I hope you and your family are going to be ok.
Keep going Spencer!
Yep, strong possibility of that happening. I’m giving myself a few days before I do too much…too cool off. 🙂
Hey Spencer,
Really sorry to hear this….I know you will find another way. You have far too much knowledge in this arena not to.
As I finished reading through all of the comments I went to check my email and found that I too have been banned from Adsense! I am a complete newbie – started researching this in January following your blog and a few others (you’ve been great by the way!). I have about 15 very thin sites finally set up….none ranking BTW. I had total Adsense earnings of $1.01! And banned! The $10K per month guy and the $1.00 per month guy! I feel fortunate that it happened now so I can adjust my game plan.
I look forward to following along and seeing how you adjust. I’ll be looking into media.net and some others as well.
Good luck to all of us!
There is a lot of disdain for Google, and some of it is justified. On the other hand I am focusing my energy and efforts on things I can control. As Nate, Chris and other marketers have done they eventually created their own product of which they totally control. I know some people who were making pretty good affiliate money with BMR, they got zeroed out too because of Googles actions.
I know for the MFA business free traffic is tops, but maybe it’s time to reevaluate the whole business model. Personally, finding a few good residual affiliate products is where my energy is going until I can create a few quality products of my own. The more control you have the more stable your long term online income will be.
Regards..
Spencer if I may be your light in this darkness. I have not suffered that in which you speak but I have a couple of sites that are authority sites that I would not dare put adsense on I would just lose too much money. So I am sharing with you the same solution. OIO publisher. You can set up your own ad network. I literally make a killing just from a couple sites I have it on.
I tried adsense on these sites and if memory serves me correct I would definitely hate to comb over the data but just a rough estimate made me on these two sites about 2.5k a month. With selling my own ad inventory I was able to increase each websites profit margin 7 fold. I am making 15k roughly a month from these two sites. My little niche sites I still use adsense. As it is too much hassle to set each one up independently. I am also sure there are better solutions out there as well. I am just saying when you are in control and you cut out the middle man you would be surprised how much you can make.
There you go in a nutshell. If you need help or ideas let me know I am always up for a brainstorming session.
Smeltzer,
I would LOVE to hear more about this, if you would be willing to share the info.
I have an account over on the warrior forum with the same user name as my name I’ve left here in my comment.
Smeltzer:
Great tip on OIO Publisher! I would love to hear more about your sites and how you use OIO publisher. Feel free to send me an email privately if you would like.
I know how you feel Spencer. I got my account banned a couple of years ago but I guess I did violate their terms then.
But having your account banned without any reason is really unfair.
I am now using my wife’s account and trying my best not to pissed off G.
One particular comment caught my attention as I am doing this as well –
“accounts with hundreds of domains are definitely red flags as sites that are small and hold no weight when it comes down to it. He also said accounts with those many sites are also red flags because Google knows that one person or entity cannot maintain hundreds of sites. ”
I guess we have to put in at least 20 or so content to keep the site off google’s radar.
My heart goes out to you, Spence. Dang. It’s good that you’re trying to stay positive.
When I read the bad news this morning and tried to hit the site to read this post the site was non responsive! I figured a ton of traffic was to blame. That much traffic is a good thing, right?
Your getting cancelled along with the other commenters here that told about losing their accounts has encouraged me to not use Adsense at all. (I’m about to launch my first blog with plans for a couple more in the works.)
There’s just too much at stake to risk getting dumped.
I’m going the Pat Flynn route. Screw google.
I don’t think Pat ever said that. He’s made the majority of his revenue without using Adsense. That’s what I meant.
Well said ive been holding content I ordered over the last while. Will be rewritten for NON adsense sites. They arnt the only game on the net they just think they are. Some start up right now is preparing to eat their lunch =).
Your large number of domains might not have been the problem. Perhaps you were click-bombed. This is what happened to my account.
I received the same e-mail that you did, appealed, and three weeks later I got my account back (and all of the money they said they were going to give back to the advertisers). I’ve had my account for a year and a half since then.
And you had a large number of domains?
“invalid activity” was their reason. Maybe Matt is right. I hope so. Good luck with your appeal!
This is a scary now that you’ve got banned as well. Enough is enough and now I’ve changed my business model. No more relying on Google and Google Adsense for me. I’ve taken Adsense off majority of my sites that are thin and will beef them all up. Will make sure I have no coupon websites and focus 100% on building high quality authority sites only from now on.
Thanks for being honest Spencer and sharing your experience with us. Hopefully you can jump back on your feet and make money other ways. I am sure you can as your websites are still ranking well. That is definitely a plus. Keep up the good work and keep us posted on your progress and if you can bounce back from this big setback.
I will keep sharing and letting everyone know how it goes.
Their time will come indeed. Ex Google search employees have been hired to fix Facebook search. Does not mean that they will succeed but I just want to point out people with money are working to get market share.
Other than that. It’s a large sum of money Spencer but you’ll be fine. You have the experience, resource and network. People will be happy to help you whether its by promoting your future products or simply giving you a helping hand. Think of it as a breakup. You feel hurt but you KNOW you’re better off without that b!@?h! Ok maybe I’m saying too much.
Haha – love how you finished that comment bo. That’s pretty funny :). Spencer will definitely bounce back with something bigger and stronger for sure.
Thanks for the support…during my “breakup”!
Good, you and all deserve it. You are doing nothing but spamming the web with crap websites, nothing else. sure you give some info on the EM keyword that’s being searched.
Here’s a tip:
Stop spamming the web, create useful and resourceful websites, think of the people that will visit your site instead of earning an extra click on the ads.
A new big G era has begun, the era of NO JUNK SITES.
Hey Spencer,
Thanks for the mention, although I’m sorry it couldn’t come under better circumstances.
I know it’s probably difficult for you to have the same kind of optimism that I had after my account was banned, given how substantial your AdSense niche site portfolio had become.
People will constantly preach “diversify” (and I’m sure many have in these comments, though I haven’t read them all). The thing you have going for you is that you are very well diversified. Maybe not as much with niche sites specifically, but you have several products out that I’m sure are doing well (and I’m a satisfied customer of them).
Here’s what you have to remind yourself – at every bump in the road, you’ve come back stronger. I remember when a bunch of your sites were deindexed, and you emerged with a new set of sites that earned even more.
This AdSense account banning sucks badly, and there’s no question it will negatively impact your income this month, and probably this year as a whole. But as I wrote in my post, I think you will look back one day and realize that this was a good thing for your business.
My initial reaction was panic, fear, and some type of depression, and I can imagine yours was at least as intense. But after I slept on it for a few days, it was almost liberating. When AdSense was working well, there was no reason to explore anything else. Now, you can try a bunch of different things and see what else works well, or maybe better. Granted, many “informational site” niches are difficult to monetize outside of AdSense. Cut out the sites that no longer work well, and focus on those that do. Where there’s traffic, there’s money, and you know this better than anyone.
I’m excited now that I’m going to focus most of my time on authority sites. Instead of hoping to make $10,000/month on a bunch of mini-sites that may not be viable months or years from now, it’s time to focus on a small handful of sites that could earn just as much, AND be viable indefinitely.
Side note about my post-AdSense experience so far: I’m liking Media.net a lot. On one of my niche sites that wasn’t even earning $0.50/day on AdSense has been averaging over $1/day on Media.net for the past week and a half. Yes, small sample size, but it’s a promising result.
Anyway, this comment is long enough. Best of luck Spencer – I’m genuinely excited to see what you do next, because it’ll give hope to the rest of us who are in the same boat.
– Eric
Thanks for “getting it” Eric. You understand my diversification, as you are an accountant. Also, I LOVE hearing that your Media.net earnings are actually better than Adsense! Thanks for staying positive, reading your post actually has helped me keep a better attitude as well. Time will tell how it turns out…
Spencer, I feel your pain! I wrote about it just last week. I lost my personal adsense account a month ago, filed my appeal, and was denied 2 days later. Then exactly one month later my corporate adsense account was disabled.
Like everyone else who has been disabled by google, I received no details on what the problem was, and of course, no chance to rectify the problem.
Luckily (all relative) I was hurt badly by Panda last year (went from $15k per month to $4-5k per month) and at that time I diversified my income sources. Still hurts, but not as much now, and I can carry on full time. It will always be hard to replace Google adsense for some time into the future.
But based on how google is screwing publishers, and my belief in karma, Google will soon go the way of the blackberry and become obsolete. They will not survive if they continue to treat their customers and publishers this way. I just hope it happens sooner than later!
Ouch, I’m sorry to hear they got you as well. We need a disruptive search engine…anyone?
Hey spencer, do you mind sharing the list of your other sites? As you said niche sites are risky these days. Were these sites authority sites? I’m assuming no but just want to know for sure. Thanks
It was all my sites, some authority sites and some not.
Spencer,
Just wanted to say thanks so much for all the information you have provided and how transparent and honest you have been. As someone just getting into the internet business scene it is disheartening to see someone like you getting this kind of treatment from google. I wish you all the best going forward and am excited to see how you come back from this as we all know you will. Keep Rocking.
Taylor
Google is a dinosaur, between what they are doing with search and adsense their days are numbered. I wouldn’t worry Spencer you know how to fish (get traffic) that is something they can never take from you.
This is opportunity not defeat.
Hey Spencer, for what it is worth..you have been the best internet marketer I have met online. Last year I even sent you a thank you during the annual thanksgiving. You have helped me a great deal..even though I have not made that much money, I have been following your methods and I have looked up to you as someone..one person who is honest in this online man eat man world.
Let me say this; because of that..honest, willingness to help, you will overcome this. You will rise up and you will be even better in the months and years to come. You find a way or a way will manifest whichever comes first.
I am praying for you and I am wishing you all the very very best.
Thank you Grace for the extremely kind words!!
Spencer, it’s tough to realize right now but this may end up being one of the best things that’s ever happened to you. Granted I’d rather take a hit when the income wasn’t so good, but history is proving that Google is just not a dependable partner any more. They have their reasoning of course but how they deal with accounts seems so fickle and they don’t even give you the opportunity to correct the error. Fair or not, it’s the way it is.
I don’t have a problem in using adsense as an income source but sites today really need to be designed around multiple streams of income from the start. There was a discussion on your site about how many sites makes sense…one or ten…and that somehow there’s more security in the larger number.
But I think true security could be be derived from focusing on one or several key sites that you can put a lot of energy into an build those up, not just in search but with list building, co-op marketing, social campaigns, viral campaigns, offline marketing if it fits, and just about any other promotional method. Use some adsense if it’s good.
But in the end, the traffic sources and the monetization must go well beyond Google simply because their so damn unstable in many ways. The only way to sleep at night is to create some good and dependable traffic from many sources, retain that traffic in a list, and sell your own products, affiliate offers, or other contextual ads and quit relying on “G” for anything. Yes it’s true they cover a lot of search and adsense is an easy money maker, but the world is bigger and potentially better than both of them.
That’s the simple truth, but you have to be willing to break away long enough to see it.
The moral of the story….use Google for all it’s worth to build your business, but don’t rely on them for anything in the end.
I wish you the very best going forward! The best is yet to come!
Great comment and great advice!
Sorry to hear about this, hope you will get back up soon.
Spencer,
I really feel for your loss but I am sure you will get back up very soon using other adsense alternatives.
Not sure if this is the reason but you are obviously not protecting your sites very well. I just did a search (based on some of your public information) and I could already dig out most of your sites. I can also see that you are linking to many of your sites in the footer on some of your sites which again could be another red flag by itself.
Of those who got their account banned so far, one common trend is that they are not careful enough in protecting their sites and people with a little skill could easily seek out all their sites and niches. I see that successful publishers like that all popular “Xfactor” guy (John) are forever doing things (forums, ebooks, discussion etc) on the most prudent side of things. He never ever reveal any of this sites and I believe that is why he is still one of those surviving champions of Adsense to date.
Just my 2 cents here.
Tom
Any sites linking to each other are very old and are all on one adsense account. This doesn’t explain my other adsense accounts – if that is an explanation in and of itself.
As another poster said, Amazon is the same way. I wouldn’t put any faith in them either.
My Amazon account was shut down with a BS email claiming “potential” fraud. I did ABSOLUTELY nothing wrong. I was selling legitimate approved products through their site. Had 100% perfect feedback, shipped everything same day then bam!
I know exactly what happened, competition sent a fake complaint, Amazon didn’t bother to verify anything and they shut me down no chance for appeal.
They said it’s permanent with no recourse, so don’t bother reapplying basically. What a joke. These big corporations have ZERO care for regular vendors.
Spencer, I am sorry to hear the news! I look forward to the opportunities you will create for yourself.
One thought I had (and I am sorry if someone already mentioned this, as I did not real ALL of the comments):
You should sell your info sites on flippa! This could give someone the opportunity to put adsense on high-traffic sites and make some money..AND you could re-coup some income from these sites in the short term. I would recommend being honest as to the reason you are selling them (but I would expect no less from you).
Keep up the hard work and keep sharing your stories with us dreamers!
Not cool. I imagine its just a matter of time until all of us get the boot.
My colleague and I were just talking about your recent post (he saw it before I did), and all I could think was “At least he has Long Tail Pro”
Seriously. That software is awesome.
Keep us posted. You’ve been our inspiration.
This is really frustrating…worse than the ban of adwords account because it is actually the bread and butter. Google is notorious for banning the account, Adwords, Adsense, Youtube, etc…And they are not in the position and do not have any interest to help you to get them back or at least rectify, etc…All they do it to refer you to their terms and condition, which basically stated that they can do anything to your account as long as they are happy and think what is right.
Enough about the rant…Can’t say too much as it is their web property anyway and they have the right to do anything they like. There is no harm to use another business entity to get an adsense account just to see if you can continue with your previous income. However, at the mean time, I think it is a good idea not to rely on Adsense too much and to develop other monetization method via affiliate marketing or list building. Just to diversify the portfolio a bit.
I got banned years ago, too. Have you thought about contacting the advertisers whose ads you displayed and cut out the middle man Google? It will be a win win for both of you.
I wonder if Google singled you out for being so public and having such a large following. Trying to cut the head off and send the IM community a message. If some of the other more vocal members of the IM community start getting banned as well, it may be the case.
Spencer,
Really sorry to hear about your account =[, I’ve been following your stuff since last year when I first got started in studying internet marketing/keyword research. Does Microsoft/Bing have anything close to Google Adsense, or have they not gone down that road yet?. I also agree with Ming, I’d definitely look into affiliate marketing with the leftover traffic..or, better yet, depending on how much traffic you have, you could use BuySellAds and charge money for banner ads/impressions.
This is a good thing. Now you can replace those adsense spots with CPA offers instead and make about 3 to 5 times your monthly income.
Adsense is garbage. It pays as little as possible and they can do b.s. like kick you out for no good reason.
Seriously go replace those spots with CPA offers and you’ll be doing far better. This ban is a blessing in disguise for you.
Hit me up if you want any help.
🙂
Will – I like your optimism about CPA offers. I really doubt I will get anywhere close to 3 to 5 times. But the thought is good – that there are other games in town.
Do you have any suggestions on where to look for CPA offers? I’ve seen some come across on blogsvertise and shareasale but none of those have ever converted for me.
Spencer
You should hear Trent Dyrsmid podcast with Nate Rivers. He creates the same niche sites as you but monetize them by creating video courses that are highly valuable and easy to create.
Take a look.
My suggestion is not going with other ad networks.
Follow Nate Rivers model.
Nate Rivers’ model is not fair to the consumers. Although he said no one or only a few try to get a refund, it doesn’t necessarily mean they’re satisfied with the value they got.
Have you seen one of Nate’s videos? Dude wake up! That business model is not sustainable! There’ll come a time consumers will get tired reading words on slides.
Now, Trent Dyrsmid is having his own dangerous idea — he’s into making separate websites targeting the same high earning keyword you are ranking high for with a different extension, not knowing that Google disapproves of that (e.g. building a new website called echeapcruisestoalaska.com when you noticed your cheapcruisestoalaska.org is earning a lot of money). That’s what the Adsense rep told the Adsense Flippers in their coffee shop meeting.
Until people learn that crap and spam are things of the old days, they’ll not move forward.
Yes, I’m familiar with Nate’s approach.
I too would be very interested in hearing what other monatization methods end up working for you.
Man, that stinks, but this may well be a blessing in disguise for you and everyone who reads your blog.
You may end up making more for yourself and saving hundreds of others at the same time.
The well ranking sites likely won’t rank well for much longer!. After my own unwarranted banning my sites quickly dropped in the Serps with a number of high-ranking and #1 rank sites being banned, allegedly since they had links from or to the site which was the one site with alleged fraudulent clicks. It took a few weeks before the sites were banned or dropped from search.
A few sites were earning $10 to $30 a day for many years with Adsense and later from the parking firm I moved them to when I shut-down the websites after the ban. They soon dropped 90% plus as both their page rank and traffic went away. Some went from PR-4 or PR-5 to PR-0 soon after the Adsense banning.
Chances are you lost your traffic when you shut down the sites and parked the domains. If I was linking to your site and you parked the domain somewhere, I’d take down the link. Loss of links = loss of traffic and rankings.
Hey Spencer,
I’ve been a long time follower of your blog (as well as a buyer of your products, you know it ;)) and I just found out what happened to you this morning! Was eating breakfast, had a hard time finishing it.
I feel for you man. Yet with your talent and knowledge in IM I’m sure you’ll get back on the deck and who knows maybe twice stronger.. certainly way more equipped to face what will be the post niche site era. In a few years from now, when we’re making money through various ads mediums other than google we’ll remember the time when google stood for nearly 100% of our revenue.. well hopefully it’ll turn out this way.
In the meantime, not sure if that will help but I’m using a VPN enabling me to choose from various IP. I can thus pretend I connect myself from Australia, England, Norway etc…Just makes it harder for google to keep track of what I do and I where I connect myself from.
All the best for the next few months
Thanks for the encouragement Alain!
Spencer,
My heart goes out to you. You are one of the most inspiration, ethical internet marketers that I know. I appreciate your ideas and you have always tried to show people how to make things better.
You know I read above that someone said niche websites deserved what’s coming to them because of the lack of quality content.
I might suggest that there are plenty of mom and pop websites that do not have the budget (or time – especially if they are busy running the day-to-day operations of their business) to build content rich websites. However, I am sure that they feel their message, product or service warrants an audience.
The same goes for niche websites. While they may not be wikipedia on a particular subject, they do serve a purpose. They provide targeted information on a particular subject. Whether it is relevant or not is controlled by the bounce rate. If it isn’t relevant, people wouldn’t stay very long.
I realize that search engines have a difficult task of serving what’s relevant. However, I feel that with all of the changes, it’s about the money – not about the quality of search results.
Why is it that Google’s Universal Search Links always rank in the top 3 and at the very most 10? This has been tested for over 650 different niche websites.
Google Senate Antitrust Hearing – http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=BslAhJ5-C9g#!
The Senate felt that this is a violation of “search neutrality” – they felt that Google was stacking the odds to be in the top 3 rankings.
Ultimately, it’s about Google (instead of niche websites) can serve consumers
1. search results (with ads)
that go to
2. universal links with pictures! (with ads)
that go to
3. Google product page reviews (with ads)
and if that didn’t convince the consumer –
4. how about checking out a Youtube video explaining the product (with ads).
Noticing a trend here? It’s all about keeping the money internal. Ya, niche websites are dead but it’s not because they don’t serve a purpose. Niche websites don’t serve Google’s purpose. Panda weeds out the bad guys (people making a living from online marketing) and who is taking their place? Google
Oh and don’t forget Google + and Personalized search results.
For those of you interested in the scene, check out what this guy has to say about “filter bubbles”:
http://www.ted.com/talks/eli_pariser_beware_online_filter_bubbles.html
As Pariser put it – Google and other search providers are creating a space where we are surrounded by a bubble of information that we (and the search providers think we want/need to see) instead of the rich idea of sharing Global ideas.
So, to the person who said they were excited with Google – I say, “Heil, mein Führer, Google”.
Class Action Lawsuit Anyone?
Time to Diversify
Great comment Shannon…its worthy of a post all in and of itself. A lot of information to digest, but very well said.
Thank you for the reply on my comment, by the way – applied for Media.net yesterday – approved today AND I have an REAL Person as an account rep? They emailed me already. No idea where this will go but at the very least, they have the right business model for me.
Wishing you lots of luck.
Oh and there was a guy who mentioned contacting advertisers directly. For obscure websites like buffalo nickles, isn’t it possible that directly marketing to the people using search engine advertising may end up in being mutually beneficial? What do you think?
I know that you’re highly capable of creating wordpress plugins / software to track and process advertising and sales. (I’ve bought both LTP and Welcome Splash) Great products.
Hi Spender:
It is a black day for IMers out here…I am really sorry to hear about this ban!
But I am sure with your experience and skills you will
figure a better business plan and will find other monitization methods, and hopefully with better ROI!
May be focus on some physical products and there are tons
of private/individual affiliate programs to try.
If you are into wedding niche, try bridaluxe.com.
All the best!
Hey Spencer, sorry for not leaving a comment sooner, I’ve been letting this soak in and reading all of the comments.
Just wanted to show my support and that I’m here for ya bro.
Just terrible. If you did something to raise a red flag, than that’s one thing, but when you say you didn’t do anything against the rules, and even if click-bombing were real you’d think Google would be sophisticated enough to figure that out and detract those clicks (they are), that’s just wrong.
I think media.net is a good, immediate solution, at least for the short term. I have been making up to $15 a day with it.
Real entrepreneurs bounce back from any setback, and you’re a real entrepreneur so I know everything’s going to turn out okay. Cheers dude.
Hey Pat – thanks for stopping by, and for your support! I definitely feel like I will be able to bounce back…also great to hear that you are doing well with Media.net. Can wait to give them a try!
Totally sucks sorry to hear the news! we all need a real competitor so they will stop treating everyone this way….lets face it all other competitors are no where near at the level Google is at. I have started using affiliates now instead of adsense as my account was closed after just making 20 sites thank god it wasnt any more. Being that controlled by another business just does not make sense long term. living in fear they can cut you off at any second for no reason. Anyway your a smart guy you can work it out.
This also happened with me, Google disable my account, in April 14, 2012, the reason is invalid click, I have tried to appeal but Google refused me. Previously I just tried to connect my adsense account with HubPages but suddenly I got email from adsense that my adsense was disable. oh no…thank for sharing..so what next
Ah, welcome to the club.
Adsense banned me after 4 years of being with them.
Never had any holds, any warnings, nothing. Made payout every time.
Then one day I went to check my earnings, and I was banned.
Checked my email, and I had that same exact email that you posted.
I sent my appeal, it was denied LITERALLY within minutes. I doubt they even read the first sentence.
Anyway, switch your ad spots over to CPA & affiliate banners.
Much better $ to be made, and with much faster payouts.
I was one of their early publishers starting with them a few weeks after they opened up which I think was in 2003.
Had more sites running Adsense then most anyone with real consistent earnings of roughly 3k to 5k plus per month for many years. In fact, even in the early stages about 2003-2004 I was already earning 2 to 4k-month almost from the start.
Very few and rare issues with them over the years before the banning other than relatively minor things. Was earning $5,000 month for several years, even after the big PPC declines which started about 2007.
As far as the options go as listed early in this thread I tried most all of them and they all SUCK BIG TIME with very small EPC and incredibly poor CTRs too. Often the ads are completely non-targeted. having nothing to do with the domain or site content. Affiliates programs are just as bad and not worth the.time.
Apparently if you have a big enough name.. like the owner of ACME.com, and you make a stink on your website even after the appeal was denied, you still can get your account personally reviewed by the higher ups and get it re-instated.
Complete BS how some people can get special treatment when everyone else is just SOL.. but absolutely typical.
https://plus.google.com/109412257237874861202/posts/RpNNBRr61Hp
Spenser:
I too, am upset over your misfortune You have been a big help and inspiration to me. I had visions of building enough sites to give me a comfortable retirement income – nothing as much as you were earning though.
I would explore the possibility of a class action law suite. Through some forum or other, like the Warriors Forum perhaps, you could probably gather lots of support, people who would be very willing to spend a few bucks to poke a stick in Google’s eye. Imagine the negative publicity such a law suite would bring to their advertisers, and stock holders. It could go viral on Facebook or Twitter or both. I don’t understand why they would ban all your sites. Okay if some particular sites were offensive and beyond repair – ban them, but to ban them all seems draconian and perhaps violates your civil rights in some way
I wish you good luck. I believe you will bounce back from this in a few months.
I hope you will continue to advise us on your site. We look to you for for valuable advice and your friendship.
Spencer, 8 months ago, i woke up from my bed. The previous day, i remember looking at a 270 dollar day in the adsense interface. I woke up, happily turned on my pc to look at another 200 dollar day. Guess what? Account got disabled. The 4000 dollar check i got prev month bounced and another 10000 dollars in my account was not paid to me. Very uplifting story, aint it?
Sorry to hear you lost your account. I can feel the insecurity and pain in you. Prepare yourself for the next phases of grief. But remember that you should not even think of using some other ad networks. They pay nothing but peanuts. Here is what you should do:
1. You should get another account. If you do, make sure that you only use that in top 5 best performing sites. No more 100’s of domains.
2. You use someone else’s adsense account. This way, if you arrange for partnership with 10 or so people, you can have 5 sites in each account. So that means lower risk. And you also get to have 50 sites with adsense on them. But of course, partnership means you will not get 100 percent of what you make. maybe 70-30. That is what i am doing with my 3000 dollar authority site. And i have another site, as i already mentioned in another comment in your site, which has potential to make 10000 dollars or so. I am working on it. If you need advice on this let me know. comment here and we will talk.
Do not lose hope. A little dose of adversity helps. It always does. You will come out stronger from this very soon. Hang in there.
Feel free to hit me up Ram.
So, they bounced a check on you? Are they aware that is criminal activity?
Hello,
It was impossible to read this blog yesterday. It made such a buzz.Bad buzz of course 🙁
You have the skills to climb the market again.
Perhaps you could use all the advertisers at the same time to not loose all your business at once.
Or use mailing lists to sell affiliates products.
One of the french bloggers had the same problems some years ago but has been saved by his mailing lists so that noone was aware he was banned.
Hey Spencer,
I’m sure it’s been a long day for you answering about eleventy billion comments. I figured I’d add one more 🙂
This really sucks – I’ve been in a bad mood all day because of this, and I’ve seen other similar comments. I think that it’s a great tribute to the quality of this blog and the value you’ve given here that it has affected so many people.
Your readers actually CARE about you and what happens to your business. That’s the reason why I’m sure you’ll have another successful income stream soon – you’re a bright guy who knows how to create things of worth. There’s always money to be made in providing value…
Also, I think you should definitely be proud of the fact that you’ve basically become the interwebz’ AUTHORITY on building niche sites. I don’t know if that’s what you set out to do, but you did it man. This blog post has sent shock waves through the blogosphere, with a lot of people questioning their whole business model because even SPENCER got banned. Like Ron Burgundy, you’re kind of a big deal. Now this site is going to get even more traffic as people wait for you to let us know which adsense alternative is best.
Thanks for your hard work on this site and good luck in your journey to replace that adsense income.
Ben
Thanks Ben – there have been alot of comments/emails, etc but I read every one and am impressed with how much people actually care about my situation. My bad day is causing others to have a bad day. Never thought that would happen…Thanks for the support!
Hi, Spencer.
I’m sorry for your loss. I want to share my experience with my partners. Our adsense account banned by Google in the same time. Then we try to find what alternatives provide the best payment such as Adsense. But we got trouble. Finally, we tried to get back to Adsense account. Use a different computer, and a different ID with different address (example you can borrow your friend etc). Once you get a new adsense account. Do not be installed them directly on your site, check first whether your site banned by google. (ex: isbanned.com). And write more articles on your site (ex: 15 or more articles with different keyword each). This purpose is to avoid being seen as “micro niche sites”. Me and my friends get our adsense account safe after trying things like that for more than 6 months. But we are not sure whether this will be able to survive in the future or not. Because Google & Adsense is so unpredictable! But I’m just sharing experience. Sorry for my bad english btw. 😀
Thanks for sharing Shendy! Definitely gives me something to think about!
This is happen to me. Google he take no longer control all affiliates and works with robots not with humans. I never will work with adsense and media.net.
Watch the media.net because they are scams. I apply to them, he validate my account and after i get $100 they ban my account because he say my traffic is not relevant (LOL) and 98% of my traffic is/was from US, organic traffic from search engine.
Also when send me the email that my account was suspended was send to “undisclosed recipients” 😐
Sorry for you man, i encourage you to use infolinks.
Good luck!
May be a valuable experience for all..
As a fellow entrepreneur with about a dozen or so sites monetized with Adsense, I’m getting scared I will get that letter sometime soon. I have already started moving towards other monetization methods though. I started adding more Amazon ads for specific products, and these seem to be doing well for health related sites, not as good as Adsense, but not bad. I experimented with Chitika, and it does ok in a few niches, but is wasted space for most others. Infolinks was a nice surprise, doing better than Adsense for some sites. CPA was a bust for me, some clicks but no actions, ie, wasted space. Best of luck to you in your experiments, keep us informed.
Leave adsense now. They are just banning people left and right for nothing. I’ve been a member for years and just lost 80% of my monthly income. I am completely screwed now, business is so slow.
I am absolutely disgusted with this. Just been robbed for $2,000 so the billionaires at Google can put it in their pockets.
Class action lawsuit folks. It needs to be done.
Hey,
What was your CTR on adsense? How many websites did you have on your account? Did you notice a certain site that has a really high CTR?
If someone is performing click bombing, maybe there is a way to create a WP plugin that will protect you from click bombing?
Actually, I got banned several years ago and managed to get my account back after few emails.
wish you luck and if you need ideas on diversification, hit me with a mail.
Cheers.
I’m still pondering what I’d like to say in public lol, but here it goes:
Who knows if Google is specifically targeting bloggers that discuss a certain method of making money when they don’t necessarily care for as much?
In that case it could be an instance of Google doing the “make an example out of someone” game which has been their strategy for years.
Last month it was Google slapping Build My Rank down to make all the SEO’s go screaming for the hills that the sky was falling and and this time it’s all of the niche site people that might read this blog post and now think it’s not possible to make money with niche websites (which could be exactly what Google wants)
It’s one of those things that makes you think and then (and I know this all too well) makes you think perhaps it would have been better had I not had a public blog explaining how to make money with method xyz.
“..it’s all of the niche site people that might read this blog post and now think it’s not possible to make money with niche websites (which could be exactly what Google wants)” You mean the ultra micro niche web sites, i guess. I really do not see Google having problems with niche web sites with solid content and an appealing design.
I’m kind of wondering the same thing. The only thing is that people on forums have been getting banned as well, so I doubt they’re targeting bloggers specifically…interesting thought, though.
Great thoughts Chris. It definitely makes me wonder what my business would be like if it wasn’t conducted in such a public fashion. However, I also receive a lot of value from the readers on my blog and certainly makes life more interesting to have a forum to discuss what’s going on.
Expected.. expected. My 3 adsense account were banned last 3 months and by that time I was thinking is Google going to ban Spencer account sooner or later…
Really expected. now even Spencer are banned. Holy shit! I’ve abandoned the microniche business and moving towards physical business with social media marketing.
Now if anyone still making a living with adsense. Good luck! Get another source of income and Google just gone crazy banning adsense account no matter how well you did it or not.
Spencer, so sorry to read this and if you could go back to my last comment on your last blog post, I advised you to start looking for alternative to google adsense; not that i was praying for your acct to be banned but big G is going ‘gaga’ and I am seeing a bad future for them.
Sheyi
this case same like me….but i just got warning from adsense team…thanks for sharing mr.spencer….i hope you got new adsense and great earning…..
I’m sorry to hear of your loss of income!
What we can learn from this that one shouldn’t base one’s income on something that one has no control of, in this case Google is the owner of the business and we are at the total whim of Google.
I highly recommend reading MJ deMarcos book “The millionaire fastlane” (sounds cheesy, I know, but it is not!), where he talks among other things about not having control over one’s business (and yes, he mentions AdWords millionaires also).
I hope you are able to find some other way to monetize your sites, and remember: A business must always be based on providing real value (which I’m sure your niche-sites do), otherwise it will not last for long.
I read and love the book too! Kinda funny i though of the book after reading the first sentence and than you quoted exactly this book. ^^
It’s really important to start ab business that is independent of other businesses!
Luckily with Long Tail Pro Spence already did exactly this. 🙂
I might have to check out the book. But for the record most of my income is not from adsense anymore. I also own my own products which are not reliant on Google.
Sorry for this news Spencer…Google has been undergoing some major changes as we speak and they will be on the losing end pretty soon…I think they are doing this banning and closing accounts just to set an example and they really don’t care if you are using white hat, grey hat, black hat techniques or even red hat techniques…they don’t care…just imagine what it is doing on the IM community now…it started with the blog networks being deindexed and now a lot more people have their Adsense accounts closed…
What I don’t like is that they will not pay you for the month that you already earned..it is the same analogy like if you are working with an employer (commission based or hourly or salaried) and they fire you…are they legally be able to withhold your paycheck for the work you have done? I don’t think so..Class action lawsuit guys! This high almighty google needs to be kept in check…
@Chris Guthrie
I was thinking the same thing, but there seems to be a pretty wide variety of sites being banned. The two sites that were pulling 95% of my adsense revenue weren’t niche blogs, they weren’t even blogs. One was a large general tech forum community, pretty much the opposite.
This just makes my stomach turn. I got no sleep last night thinking about this. I really feel for you.
I do agree with Chris that they used you as an example. It clearly sends a message to all who follow in your footsteps. I wonder if it had anything to do with their new “too much Adsense above the fold” criteria? Seems to me like the pendulum is swinging and will eventually chop us all.
You are the Guru and we all admire you and look up to you. I’m very sad this happened to you and your income. Stay strong! Stay positive!
Hey Richard, thanks for the thoughts. In six months, I hope to look back on this post as a positive experience.
Sorry to hear the bad news Spencer. Unbelievable.
My thoughts are that Google are trying to make an example of you, cause they know that you have such a wider readership in the IM community.
Well they’ve won on that count with me. I don’t want to sit around waiting for G to come knocking on my door. Today after reading your post, I went through my ~60 websites, and removed ALL reference to Google – ie. Adsense and Google Analytics. I also renamed all my old Adsense ads to something generic (you can’t delete them?), and deleted all my Analytics accounts in the back end as well.
(actually, I removed them from all my sites except for a few aged authority sites I have.).
And you what… I feel like a weight has been lifted!!!. Goodbye to Google. No more looking over my shoulder. I’m taking my business elsewhere. As of today, I’m going to migrate my niche sites over to CPA and other CPC networks.
Life after google – I’m sure it does exist.
Wow JayDee – extreme action…but I like your determination!
well … not such a hard decision really.
The domains that I removed all Google references from were not high earning sites. The way I see it, better to sacrifice the small earnings from these sites than to jeopardise the larger earnings of a few.
I tend to agree with what I’m hearing a few others say here – niche is dead. Maybe I can offload my coupon sites over on Flippa …
My account got banned too recently. I submitted a review and that was denied too.
From further research, I found that the reason why my account got banned was because I was using link building sites such as BMR & Authority Link Network. Per Google’s TOS, using link networks to drive traffic to your sites is against their rules. They also state that if they see an increase in earnings month over month which coincides with the use of these link networks, you’re account is ripe for invalid clicks.
Do you have proof about that ” I found that the reason why my account got banned was because I was using link building sites such as BMR & Authority Link Network.” ?
thanks
Hello from Spokane. I was banned from Amazon once, so understand that horrible – empty gut – feeling. Not fun.
The writing was on the wall last year as I saw some high ranking adsense sites on flippa for sale. This business model is dead. Google does not want publishers creating a ton of these mini sites. They really aren’t a valuable experience for the user. You’ll notice Amazon and eBay have taken top spots now in many obscure to popular niches.
Time to produce your own list and create value for loyal fans. Build it and they will come.
You are not alone.
I think niche adsense is dead.
now it’s time to make authority website.
I hope you will be sharing knowledge to other Internet business.
and I will buy your product.
Cheers..
I wonder if adsense team using a filtering to track if accounts are getting poor CTR or keep track of specific URL that advertisers exclude in their adwords accounts for poor conversions on the content network.
This is the lifecycle of all ad networks. In the beginning, they are too happy to have guys like Spencer testifying how much money they make from their program to get referrals and when the money starts to get too big for their pockets, they kick out the small guys who are responsible for most of their referrals to “clean” their image and go “premium”. The key to keep these ad networks level headed is to pretend they don’t pay as much.
Anyway, Spencer is a wallstreet genius and I am sure that like other geniuses he will pull out something from his sleeves. Instead of feeling sorry for him, we should be glad that he is about to give us an epic case study of how to rebound from great disappointment. Steve Jobs was fired from the company he created and we all know what happened next.
Google is running amok, they want to be everything to us from Google TV to social networking.Woe to those who depend on the search engines.It is about time to shift to non-SE dependent means of making money online.Create your own ecosystem on social networks where you can have over 1 million users who keep coming back to play your game or app.
Hey Spencer,
Like everyone else, I feel so bad for you. Gave me an empty feeling all day yesterday and last night.
The one thing that I can’t wrap my hear around is why they don’t tell us what we are doing wrong. If Google came out and said your account was about to be shut down because of x, then we would stop doing it, everyone would be happy and making more money.
Why not give you a week or so to clean up your account and then let them review again, I just don’t understand why they drop the hammer with zero warning. Guess they feel that the time (dollars) spent trying to communicate is not worth the expense. Cheaper for them to just shut down the account.
dude this sucks big time man. We just did an interview the other day and was talking about how great google adsense has been for you. I just can’t believe it.
But as you say, your core skill is in keyword research. So there’s no reason why you can’t build amazon focused type sites or other similar ones.
Bro I feel for ya. But I know you’ll come out of this ok. Keep it going brotha 😉
Thanks Joey!
I’m gonna tell you pretty much the same thing I told Eric from My4HrWorkweek:
One idea for you going forward: get another Google Adsense account and ONLY put ads on your top 3-5 performing sites. Seriously, you have to be reasonable and logical here going forward…you need to feed yourself and your family. Bite the bullet and get another Adsense account. In the mean time, use Media.net and other forms of advertising on your sites. As for your smaller niche sites…switch the monetization methods – try Media.net, infolinks, etc. If they don’t bring in the income you need, sell them and reinvest the money into affiliate-based sites (like I mention below).
Another idea: Try and build sites that are affiliate/offer-based. For example: https://flippa.com/2707767-nearly-20k-profit-since-september-powerful-affiliate-site —- that site made quite a bit of money last year from just one offer, not bad.
I look forward to reading about what you’ve done and how your earnings have changed, and how you’ve shifted the income.
Good luck!
Leslie Rodhe of SEOBraintrust says that if you rely on Google for your income, you don’t really “own your business” – you are only “renting it” from Google. He was referring to Google’s ability to take away all your search traffic. Having your adsense accounts shut down is an even more extreme version of this.
Spencer, I’m sorry this happened to you and I think you are very courageous to admit it to your readers. Most of us have been hit in some way, but few of us have been hit that severely.
I’m sure that you will recoop and look back at this as a great learning experience that launched you on to even better things!
Deanne: thanks! However, losing my adsense account is much MUCH less severe than losing the search engine traffic. As it is now, I still have all my sites and will be back up and running with new revenue sources in no time. However, if they took away the search traffic, that’s much worse. And in fact, I’ve written about these risks many time (linked to above). I have other sources of income not reliant on search engines.
In all likelihood your SE traffic will go away very soon. I believe G does that automatically as additional punishment to those banned!
It’s hard to believe how you can put almost anyone out of business by click-bombing their Adsense. You can even hire a 2nd tier search engine to send lots of traffic from varying IPs with non-performing visits to a competitors site to click on their ads. Software installed on your PC can also click-bomb or custom designed programs which will auto-click on a percentage of ads that appear on a page, or do it yourself. So easy it’s surprising not being done more…. hmmmmm…..
It’s shocking that anyone can do this and the person you don’t like gets their account closed forever and other nasty stuff google does (like their once high PR sites either banned or becoming PR-0), and google will also confiscates your back-earnings which were not even under scrutiny but they will steal the money anyway.
You can do this to anyone at anytime and for any reason. Maybe from being critical, hurt or insulted, maybe saying something negative online or on a forum, bragging too much, internet competitors, possibly from litigation, etc. hmmmmm…… so very easy!!!!!!
In my opinion, click-bombing is the most flawed part of the system. Anybody who has competition that is running Adsense can destroy their competition in a matter of minutes. Terrible.
Hey Spencer,
I feel for ya man…that stinks, but Google is an evil wrecking ball that is judge, jury and executioner with people’s income and lives.
With no arbitration, there is nothing that can be done except move on unfortunately.
Good luck,
Rod
I wonder if it has something to do with how you mention how much you make with Adsense on this blog combined with your numerous sites
This is crazy, Google Adwords is the Google model flagship why are they persecuting Adsense sites that are not obviously flaunting their T&C ?
Ive just had my main KW ranking Adsense pages de-indexed by big G bang goes my main source of income
Wow man,
I’m so sorry to hear that you just got banned from Google.
As you said, they are being more aggressive towards closing accounts lately and nobody seems to know what is the actual problem.
Also with these kind of online businesses you just never know how much can it last.
Hope you recover from this soon and maybe considering building courses that you can sell might be a more secure (and safer) income source.
Sergio
Spencer, I know you’ll be fine.
Google just took your money…not your sites and MOST importantly not your skills & knowledge on how to rank a website in the top few spots.
That is likely not too accurate. After I was banned I lost about 90% of my google traffic too! Hard to recover from the adsense loss without traffic even if a good adsense replacement can be found (unlikely).
Ok fine, even if he looses his sites my point is he still has the skills to rank a site…just pick a different niche geared toward physical products or something other then adsense and he’s back in the game (after a bit of time).
I just got my appeal denied message yesterday, which results in a loss of $4k. All started with the February finalized amount having a discrepancy of over $1k from the estimated amount. In the 7-years that I had been with Google Adsense (or as I refer to them now as Google HasNoSense) we never had a problem.
After sending several emails to [email protected] (an email that I had to dig up from the earlier years as they try to make it hard on contacting them now) and only receiving preempted responses, I receive a message at the top of the overview page telling me that my payments are on hold on March 15th. Now, not only was I crushed about the discrepancy, they add a little salt to the wounds and place the payments on hold, while the account continues to see revenue.
April comes and a new finalized report comes out – a negative $18.88. I am like – No. 1) How can an estimated amount of $1997.00 for the month of March end up with a finalized amount of a negative $18.88? How can there be nothing but invalid activity for an entire month (this doesn’t even make mathematical, logical or common sense!)?
No. 2) Furthermore, how can an estimated total for the months of Feb. & March in the amount of $3578.87 ($1581.87 + $1997.00) end up being a finalized amount of $517.13 (a discrepancy of over $3000.00 and far from their own company’s statement: “Finalized earnings may be SLIGHTLY lower than estimated earnings”)?
I asked these questions and a few more that, of course, went unanswered, and by April 14 the account ended up being disabled.
Google needs to change their slogan from: “Don’t Be Evil” to Don’t Be Assholes!”
Mark – thanks for digging up the old adsense email address…could come in handy 🙂 . I was denied my appeal as well. Another canned response.
Spencer, unfortunately I know what this feels like. I’ve been doing a lot of experimenting though and so far I’ve gained about 80% of my AdSense income back in a littler under a month.
I know all niches will react differently but if you’re curious about my results with some different ad networks feel free to check out my latest post.
Can’t wait to see what you come up with in place of AdSense, good luck!
Hey Wesley – just read your post. Great article on adsense alternatives. My findings are about the same as yours so far – infolinks is looking good, chitika is junk, but I have yet to be approved to media.net yet. Never would have known about them if this hadn’t happened. Thanks for sharing!
Well…wow….I guess this really IS happening. So, so sorry, really. I was thinking just the other day that maybe I DID break a Google Commandment after all since the fallout had apparently left you and several others that I look to for wisdom untouched. But here you are. And that, unfortunately, makes it very very real for the rest of us.
On March 16th, I woke up to that very same lame email from the Big Boys and it was all over – my 50 niche site Adsense Acct disabled for invalid clicks. I, too, had taken painstaking measures to follow the Google TOS but it’s all what it is and they’ve done what they’ve done so the “why” of it now – although getting clearer (i.e. too many sites in the acct, blah blah blah…) – doesn’t really matter. I have Appealed not once but TWICE. They turned me down flat on the first, haven’t even bothered to respond to the second. So be it.
After skulking around in a weird “google coma” for a week, I set forth to find other ways to pick up the slack (Kontera, Infolinks, Chitika, Bidvertiser, Adbrite, CJ…). Here it is one month to the day since the bomb fell and, to be quite honest, it ain’t really happenin’ money-wise at all. Now, that being said, I DO see potential in a few places and, for what it’s worth, here’s my take on the alternatives:
BidVertiser: Forget it – and, actually, it’s a shame because this WOULD be the best alternative as far as the ad format because, in some cases, the ads look even BETTER than Adsense. However (and I even wrote them begging for them to change something, anything!), the problem here (I think) is that they have a lame pool of advertisers and not much to offer, re: search-targeted. I would set the ad up to look great and then check back later to find some ridiculous (and I mean RIDICULOUS) looking image in it’s place (e.g. an 80’s cartoon-like dating hook-up image ad on my wedding niche site…I kid you not). I gave up.
Chitika: The dashboard is complicated for no reason and, although the ad format is similar to Adsense, the ads are still slightly “off” in a weird way and they never seem to change (ever). I even tried adding a “secret code” to the html with my keyword in it and this kinda worked but….and the pay out is lousy. That being said, I’ve still got a few ads up on some of the sites and I’m hangin in there to see if it gets better.
Kontera: So far, so good. They have a cool WP plug-in that makes it super easy to implement/format and it all happens fast. I think I made around $5.00 the first week from just one or two sites (and, trust me, I got excited…) so this has potential.
Infolinks: Takes a few days to get “approved” – which is very annoying – so I can’t tell yet what’s going on. I plan to test against Kontera on separate sites and compare.
Commission Junction: Well, this takes WORK but oh well..I guess it’s all part of the healing process (and the punishment). You have to apply for the affiliate accounts and there are literally thousands. WARNING: many of the accounts will instantly reject you (and I mean within seconds) which is a shocker and feels reeealllly close to getting kicked while you’re down considering the circumstances….but it’s not…just keep trying. I’ve been approved for around six accounts now and I am busy at work setting up the sites with some really nice affiliate ads, banners, etc. that pertain to my niches. We’ll see what happens.
Authority Sites: Yes, I have finally pulled up my Home Business site that I have so neglected throughout my niche addiction….and I’m giving it some much needed love.
Well, let what has happened to Spencer be a lesson to all of us. Time to get to work everybody! Good luck to everyone!!!!
Zari – Thanks for the well thought out and valuable comment! I agree with your take on most of the ad networks – Infolinks is better than Kontera from what I can tell at this point…at least they pay more.
And yes, authority sites is always a good way to go!
I’m really sorry to hear this Spencer. Even though I know you will bounce back, it still sucks big time and you have a lot of work ahead of you to fix it.
I commend you for coming forward. This will help a lot of people, incl me, from some of the tips here, about what to potentially be careful of. So, thanks for this.
I hope your financial situation will be ok for a few weeks/months until you have new revenue coming in.
I’ve read about half the post, my goodness there’s a lot. I’ll have to finish the rest later as I’m off to the chiro…
Thanks again,
Sandra
Hey Spencer – thanks for being so open and sharing this shocking and depressing news. You’re a hardworking guy making an honest living, not to mention making lots of money for Google in the process! How cold and rude to just send a form letter with no warning and no explanation! Luckily you’ve got lots of smart followers on here (not just dumb ones like me lol) with great advice. Between that and your brains it won’t be long till you’re doing better than before!
I had a similar experience where I received an email saying our adsense account is disabled and no money will be paid. It was $9,963.47 from previous month. I tried to reach to Adsense but virtually impossible to do so.
Here is a reply I go from a friend who oversees the Adsense Compliance team..
—
Unfortunately the Spam team cannot be reached directly.
You can appeal any decision of reinstating your Adsense account via the online form but from my own experience this is not going to have an echo. You can still try.
Regards,
—–
We serve more than 15Million ads per day and Adsense was only taking 20% of our inventory. I had, still have, no problem with the other ad networks we work with.
Holy Crap! that sucks man, im just getting started in IM and i hope that doesnt happen to me, i mean you can recover because you know you can make money other ways, i cant imagine how dis-heartening it would be if i got an adsense account banned when just starting out. I hope they re-consider. Best of luck to you
If I earned 5 figures a month and Google Adsense banned me, AND decided to keep the last month’s earnings, I definitely would contact a lawyer and have the lawyer request the EXACT reasons and terms you have broken that has lead to your account(s) being banned.
It is one thing banning your account because they do not think your site(s) are “good enough” yet still pay you the last month’s earnings.
However it is criminal to ban your account(s) without a precise and indepth explanation and keeping your last month’s earnings. It would be worth the cost of the lawyer as well as peace of mind (IMO).
Andy, the legal option is very expensive and you can only do it in Santa Clara County. Here is an relevant read too.
http://blog.hatchlings.com/post/20171171127/dont-be-evil-how-google-screwed-a-startup
Thank You for the info. I didn’t realize about that.
Too bad now….
This is part of live and unfair.
Bad thing usually happen to Good People……
So it looks like Google has stolen tens of thousands of dollars from publishers just from the comments on this single article. This is probably in the millions.
… and just another thing…
In my view, if you want to encourage google to come snooping around your micro/niche site(s), then go ahead and install the CTR Theme, ClickBump, DoshDosh theme or similar. Really, imagine how easy it would be for Google to track down micro / niche sites with very thin content just using the footprints from these themes.
A big red flag for Google IMO …
Right! That is most probably true.. a big red flag for Google to check out – an adsense site with an Adsense optimized theme.
Thanks!
I dont know what else to say. Google changing their mind often, biggest problem is there is no real competitor to google at this moment, so its always victors justice
this is painful….you’ve got other options…move on.
Only that they don’t pay much. try cpa offers
San G is taking steps coldly calculated to increase its great power, however, this is a clear case of discrimination, and is not legal in any way, but Proceeding from St G does one do you do?
The measures against the IM part of this great monster of 3 heads are obvious and ruthlessly, but at least you did you take a good slice of the adsense’s cake… also, is very clear to me that you have the ability to turn this into a learning process that will take you to get other great achievements…
Cheers up Spencer!!
PS: I never imagined that someone could earn as much as you with adsense. I took it away from my domains because after a year it had generated only 40 bucks!! Obviusly that the ads revenue in the Spanish market is not comparable to the Anglophone market.
Hi Spencer…
I’ve just been reading a few comments and it’s really not that surprising or shocking… It’s happened to us all!! My opinion (for what its worth) and at the risk of sounding like I’m teaching my Granny how to suck eggs is this:
I’ve been following you for a while now and from what I’ve read, there are a few points that spring straight to mind:
Your backlinking process
Your regular ‘financial reports’
Your ad plugins
Finance reports and similar for website earnings (Adsense or not) are a ‘No-No’ in Googles internet plan. I think your regular ‘financial reports’ are intrinsic to your ban, as are your backlinking methods.
Many years ago, I got a ban and managed to reinstate my account (only because of the click tracking apps I used) which proved no links, but that was years ago and things are very different now so I don’t hold out much hope of reinstatement, but look on the positives. You didn’t get a search ban, so traffic will still come and there’s always the ‘new address/bank account option’. (But don’t use the same sites for new account ads – this will not work!!!)
Yes, there are loads of alternatives (and I’ve tried just about all), it’s just that none are quite as effective, and well paying as Adsense.
There’s lots more, but maybe for another day.
Daniel.
So sorry about what happened to your account. However, from what I see in this site, you actually did violate their terms. If you study their terms very well, there is a part that says “You must not disclose your adsense income to anyone whosoever” and from what I see, you are actually doing that by telling your readers what your blog earns. I think this makes your blog at risk of generating invalid activity. You are not supposed to mention anything about Adsense as regards to your site as this could make your readers definitely want to click the adsense ads on your site.
I am also a victim of being banned by Google and I registered another account with my brother’s details. My brother actually owns the account but has placed the ads on my site. I am still watching though to see if Google would disable the adsense account and if they do, then its good riddance to Google Adsense.
Stephen, i just read the Adsense terms and it says this, and i quote: “You may accurately disclose the amount of Google’s gross payments to You pursuant to the Program”. Kinda goes directly against what you claim. Just thought you might want to know.
This is really a crime.
should any legal action on google.
Google is not transparent to the publisher, this is a crime.
after reading this article a lot of publishers who did not sleep well, including me.
Google Adnonse! They are evil!
Whew! Spencer I am SO sorry! It’s taken me a couple of days to take all this in. I’m a newbie to IM and proud to say that you and Pat Flynn alone have been responsible for helping me to build my site and get it to #1 in Google, and I thank you for that. But right now I’m worried…luckily I’m making more in affiliate $ than Adsense right now.
I think that all the speculation about why your account was disabled is just that–speculation. Too many sites, link building practices, click bombing, coupons on the sites, sites linking to one another, the amount of money you’re pulling in, thin sites, posting publicly about making money with adsense… WHO KNOWS?!
My college aged daughter has a popular blog and her adsense account was banned after she had one profitable month. She was crushed–but none of these factors were involved (except perhaps click-bombing). I’ve read instances of people being banned in all sorts of situations. Leads you to think that it is purely random or some sort of financial algorithm. I just think their practices are shady–from the banning to the daily rise and fall of the CPC.
Definitely thinking about dis-associating from the big G.
To those who posted about filing a lawsuit the G TOS says it can only be filed ion Santa Clara County.which for most of us rules out a low cost pro-se case. And as far a hiring an attorney good luck with that. I contacted many attorneys and they all refused to do it because they did not want to fight an 800 pound gorilla with an unlimited legal budget. Even if you can find a lawyer they will quote from 25k to 50 retainer fee to start the case in federal court, with final cost being greater.
In my case after being with them since 2003 and earning mid 4 figures month after month and trying hard to not violate their TOS it appears a click-bomber got me banned with Adsense stealing almost 10k which was in my account at time of the ban, not including the month where they said there was invalid activity.
Google adsense bot was error lately.
Many adsense account banned.
Just today my blogger/blogspot account is banned by google.
Evil!
I can’t imagine how you’re feeling, reading that has made me depressed!!!
I’m confident you will bounce back and end up earning even more, any successful entrepreneur goes through these things.
About monetization, have you heard of skimlinks? It’s a much easier affiliate process to implement and generally pays more commissions than signing up to each affiliate program individually.
I recommend you look into it! It’s actually much less obtrusive than having adsense on your sites too so the users may prefer it.
Ramy
Hello Spencer
I felt Sad Sad Sad…
When I’ve got your email on Monday I couldn’t even eat, man.
But do you know what?
After read all the comments I just arrived in 1 conclusion:
Don’t give up on adsense!!!
Open another account, find more profit keywords,by the end of the year, you will be on the top again.
100% sure you will make money with your 200+ sites.
Amazon, clickbank, CPA and especially infolinks and media.net .
I think until by the end of next week you will be back here to tell us you already making some money with adsense alternatives.
We are with you,mate.
And I’d like to thank you for everything you are doing for us.
I wish you all the best.
Thanks for the vote of confidence Federico!
Spencer, have followed you for some time and appreciate the solid, useful information you share regularly on your blog. Keep your head up. The adsense door has closed, but the “other door” is already open, you just may not know where its heading yet.
Fred
I became acquainted with you from the webinar you gave last week. I was so impressed and encouraged by you. So sad to hear what happened, but be aware that lots of thoughts and prayers are with you as you take your next steps.
Chris,
I really feel for you. But maybe you can take heart in this, about a year ago I received that same exact email from google. At the time i had only one site and it wasnt doing more than $10 a day at the time. About the time I had figured out what I was going to do to monetize the site again magically my adsense was turned back on and I was reinstated. At no time did I say anything to google I just planned to move on in another direction. Hopefully the same thing wil happen for you as well.
At the time I was not the only one that it happened too and everyone I know that had this happen were all reinstated after about 4 or 5 weeks.
Again I am sorry that this happened to you as you are one of the true genuine people that I have grown to appreciate in this online world.
Take care my friend and I will keep following your progress.
Dan
Interesting – would love to see my account automatically reopened 🙂
This is really depressing. It has happened to me before and what a nightmare ! Your advice about Adsense alternatives is something to really consider. For people making their earnings solely through Adsense, it is advisable to diversify.
Hello Spencer,
I know you must feel absolutely gutted…..I’ve had my website up for just over a year and it just started to make a bit of coffee money and I received the same message as you yesterday. I don’t click my own adds, I have know idea what I did wrong ….I really feel for you as it is a big part of your income. GOOGLE don’t play fair it sounds Scammy and nobody has any idea about their rules they change them at will!
Sorry for the long mail…I wish you all the best and everyone else who has been scammed by Google. Anthony
Sorry to hear Anthony – a little explanation from Google sure would be nice. Any Google employees reading and care to shed some light???
Hey Spencer,
I was supposed to suggest you to try Vibrant Media but you’re already on to it. I’ve read good things about this network. They seem to perform better compared to other intext ads according to this site here.http://www.dailyblogmoney.com/another-month-october-2011-blog-income-report-slight-drop
Looking forward to see you recover and share it with us. It could help alot of other banned publishers.
Wish you all the best.
Yes, I am approved on Vibrant Media and am using their ads on a couple of my sites. I plan on reporting on all of these around May 1st once I have some data.
I honestly don’t think they are targeting web sites per se. They are more targeting “accounts” or owners they know use adsense to really make money or build sites to make money.
This is a total crap! If I’m following the TOS then let me run my business. We did not invent adsense, they did it, they are getting a cut to, so let me keep my cut and run my business.
I do not have too many adsense sites but now I’ll stop building them all together. I don’t want to invest any of my time to one day find out big G just simply killed my account. There are many, many other companies out there who will let you do it and won’t do crap like this.
BS!!!!
I agree! I think they are targeting accounts and not sites. In other words, 2 or 3 of my sites were in someone elses account, the sites would be approved. But because they are in my account which has 100 sites – they are considered “bad” – even though they are the exact same sites. That’s what I think anyway.
I’m sure someone will find a way how to split adsense income and “host” adsense sites for other people.
Not a perfect solution but might be worth the time 🙂
I just started to read your blog and after a while i got to this entry. Even your Adsense Account is banned you still have the potential to come back. “Just” use your knowledge about keyword researches to create niche-affiliate-sites. This is what a bunch of german bloggers do 😉 Affiliate-Marketing is where the money in germany is. Adsense is just a sideline 😉
To put it in a nutshell: You will go your way, all i read in your blog (~1 hour) is fantastic. A lot of information and new point of views.
Greatings from Germany
To all the commenters who posted “I wasn’t doing anything against the TOS”. Do you think if your account was banned that you just might have violated the TOS?
Google hasn’t changed anything. They’re just enforcing their policies much more aggresively now. If you’re having to justify why your site is NOT an MFA site then it’s probably an MFA site.
I think we need to keep the bugger picture in mind – Google doesn’t owe anyone anything. They have provided an amazing platform that is still light years ahead of Bing/Yahoo.
How does Google “steal” our money when it’s their platform, their rules? I just really don’t understand that thought process.
This debate has raged since Adsense came out. It doesn’t matter how we interpret Google’s policies. So why try to fight it? Why not just stop doing what we know is risky?
Why we somehow think we can fool Google (and ourselves) is crazy.
you talk like that, because you have not felt the frustration when your account is disabled.
yesterday my google account suddenly disabled, I can not access gmail, blogger, adwords, adsense, etc., without any reason.
Can you imagine losing your email account which is so important to your life.
I can not sleep until now.
I contacted google but no reply.
This is not just about money but also ethics.
No. Trust me, dude. I was a heavy Adsense Arbitrage guy. I lost about 30k in earnings and about 15k due on my credit card. I got my Adsense and Adwords account closed the same day. How’s that for frustration and sheer panic? 🙂
Hello Sir,
My annual income is less than US$5,000 so it would be very unfair to say anything. No website ever I’ve had and no experience in Internet Marketing.
But something that rings a bell in my mind is “Kim Roach”…
There is this lady whose e-mails I read every week without fail.
She does not rely on Google for traffic but instead has many other strageties to produce traffic to the optimum/maximum… She keeps saying that stop relying totally on Google and build other networks to increase traffic and be unique in your own way.
Sorry if it sound too harsh to anyone here but without any internet marketing experience I am a complete outsider and neutral in my opinion.
Losing 10,000$ of monthly income would have resulted in a cardiac arrest for me… (Seriously no LOL here)…
May be you should look at what she has to say on http://www.buzzblogger.com. A suggestion to a 10,000$ pm earner from a 5000$ pa earner is ridiculuous but please take a look at what she has to say and offer…
I hope instead of just reading her mails, I also take some action soon…
Had to reply because I also felt concerned and also liked the fact that you have not abused Google anywhere out of frustration.
Regards,
Mukund Kolhatkar
India
The best alternate i have seen bloggers like us…is
http://orbitopenadserver.com/
Have a look here.
I have find out another tool, through which taking data like products…(Ex:-Mobiles) in an excel file, you can create some thousands of posts with single click with different post dates…the main advantage of this tool is you can create automated comments also…which looks in a very natural way.
Finally an xml file creates which we have to import to blogger/wordpress….do i get caught if i do so….
Here my point is there is no way that google can find out that the xml file is created with tool. Cause i may have imported that xml from any of my blooger accounts or may have it imported from wordpress and converted to blogger interface.
That’s the worst part of adsense .we publishers should not be held responsible for those invalid clicks .The users (visitors) are responsible for this 😛 .
Try Technorati or other eCPM ad networks .
God bless
Spencer i’m sorry to hear that..i got banned 3 times..and i got depressed when i reach $300 / month and i got depressed.. how about you which get $13.000 ??? .. you are still my idol spencer couse i always read your newsletter.. i buy your long tail keyword.. and i still trust you that if i learn from you i can make money as you did…
This is a damn good PR opportunity for another major provider to come in and build some “social” cred and make some friends.
Never used them for years but that other mob… Yahoo and do they offer a PPC program.
Bing etc.
People should be yelling loud and clear at these other guys even joining forces to mount a campaign against GG PPC.. ie. a bing, yahoo etc designed PPC network.
I agree! I wish Bing or Yahoo had a better content network opportunity!
Hi Spencer,
I can understand how you must be feeling.. But I’m sure you have already bounced back and moving on to the next thing.. I have a couple of questions:
1) Were all your sites running on your personal Adsense or Business Adsense account?
2) If more than one sites are powered by ads from one personal account, will Adsense ban that account?
3) What do you think is advisable while working with Adsense? Personal account or business account?
Spencer, have you seen any shifts in your rankings after the Adsense debacle? I am curious to see whether or not both shoes fall when an Adsense account gets banned. Usually, it’s the spam team that will deindex a network or sites, or the Adsense team banning an account. I haven’t heard of both happening at the same time.
Hi Guys…
Lets look at the realities of what Google is doing. Everyone is crying victim but technically we have a smart customer who has outwitted us “the business”.
I give my example as follows as an analogy.
You have a house. You want to rent the house. A tenant comes along, and in return for occupying your space pays you a rent.
In this case, everyone involved that has been banned by Google has had a seriously fkn rude tenant.
I mean, you sought occupation on your site of a major tenant and in return sought reward, clicks revenue. You wanted to monetise your property.
This tenant has just crapped all over everyone without giving any explaination and talking as if YOU owe it to them ie. that YOU the landlord who let Google onto the site did something wrong.
I think Google needs to be held to account.
1. It needs to show respect to the property (website owners)
2. It needs to give notice to leave
3. If there is immediate dismissal then it needs to explain how the breach of contract came about. Essentially you entered into an agreement that you would allow google to place adverts on your property (your site). I would therefore think it fit for Google to explain why it left and what sound reasons it had to break this agreement.
Google is running rings around everyone and in some ways what i read engaging in unethical conduct and unfair business dealings.
Spencer as an old time reader of your blog it is sad to hear this. My adsense account also got banned about 4 months back. No feedback…. nothing even after appealing. Worst part is that they keep the months earning which I think is criminal. They do not have the right to hold the payments if there is no fraud on publishers side.
There is one major reason that g is doing this. They need lot of people to pay for adwords… period. Have you observed the search results. Most of the sites in major niches who are in top 10 are big players who are paying millions in adwords. It is all about business.
I do think that within few years there will be some law coming up in US regarding google. Right now they are acting as if they are the god and have way to much power to monopolize this game.
Anyways I have tried diff ways to monetize my sites but nothing come close to adsense that is the sad part. Yes media.net is good for few niches but then they are also paying high in hard to rank niches. I really wish msn/yahoo come up with there adsense equivalent soon on a full scale.
Also just to let u know even amazon has banned lot of accounts in the last few months. I know few guys earning in access of 10K who got their account banned for similar reasons that adsense team is giving.
Wishing you good luck. Yes we all have learned some valuable lessons…. and will move forward stronger.
I also got the same… Last January, I just got banned from Google Ads. On February, I change my blog to dot com. Now, I join again, but it’s all refused… Tomorrw, I have no plan…
Hello Guys and Spencer,
I had my account blocked and tried to reach to the Adsense team… Its impossible. After reading your post, I was inspired to write mine.
http://www.pickanitem.com
Robel
thanks for post. i’ve banned acc GA. LOL
I got banned a year ago right about when i earned 80 $ the only thing i did wrong was to put ads on a redirect page , anyways i wasn`t planing to make a living with google`s bs system and by the way google is not looking to pay every people especially small bloggers
Got booted today also for no reason….Thanks for the info and alternative choices-luck for me i still have a great job! Have a great day on purpose…
We should all submit question to mat cuts asking why their adsense team wont even respond to messages and why they dont even warn you before just banning an account.
Why? I think it’s because google adsense team hates publisher that has a large income from adsense ads.
I had an account closed and the sites were getting really good traffic. In my situation I bought a site from someone and they were buying traffic, a definite no-no, as I later found out. After about 6 months I opened a new account under my parents name, and added all those sites and even a few more. Wallah! It worked and they now get a nice check each month.
I would encourage you to try it.
Thanks for sharing Dave!
Good thing is you have options. In addition to using different networks you could flip those sites. You have shown them to be profitable and you could do that.
Also since you are very good at finding good adsense niches and getting them ranked you can flip websites as your business model. Some items such as the one on worm farms is a great one for physical products/ ebooks. You could either A. use an affiliate program and then rewrite the book with more information and retain all the profit. You can also recommend different tanks or accessories for worm farm.. like food or whatever they take. I have have some sites on composting, aquaponics, etc. I use clickbank books and then I then rewrite what becomes profitable. Good luck.
i am totally agree with your article, but i think you should mention one point and that is type of ads, i don’t mean banner-text-and rich media, i am telling about types like, “adsense for content and adsense for parking domain, when ever i know this both ad types are working diffrently, and if we do mistake to get right code, we can’t earn any money if we got lots of click. i would like to know more about this matter. please post about this matter. it will be interesting.
My adsense account was banned 10 months ago.Till now i didn’t try for adsense. I don’t know whether I use it in future or not.But onething is sure that I’m satisfied with what I have 🙂
In most cases of banned Google Adsense account, the reason has to do with invalid traffic (to much bought traffic) and another red flag is when traffic remains flat but clicks seem to rise higher and higher.
Our only hope is Facebook will launch an ad network that will counter balance Google Adsense.
I tried with media.net, and I pasted their ads in a couple of sites. I made $180 the first month and I got the first payment without problems. So I decided to paste their ads in all my sites (80 aprox.) and the revenue was $ 1197 the next month. and when I was waiting the next payment, guess what? They banned my account. I wrote many times asking for the reason without response. So for me is SCAM. 🙁
Hi Spencer,
just wanted to ask you a question you might think I’m a bad person, but it is not like this.
Did you have among your websites also good websites (this means new content added, good quality content, etc.), or websites were so to say made for adsense specially? Of course you can notice with free eyes when it is a good website, valuable, and a website only with copied content, made just to follow some keywords.
Pls. be honest, as you always do…
thank you
dixie
Dixie, great question. I had multiple adsense accounts (as explained in the post – 1 personal and a few business accounts). Some of the adsense accounts had sites that were as you explain “made for adsense” – however, at least one of my adsense account only had 3 sites total and they were of high quality. This was my “high quality” adsense account with new, relevant, and good content. However, in one fail swoop Google banned ALL of my accounts at once.
I assume there was a connection between your accounts, address should not have been only one.
Maybe you put your good websites into somebody else account for a while (your mother, your wife or so)… at let us know if good websites will still be in the system.
I wouldn’t say Google doesn’t have right when punishing a made for adsense website… but still maybe you had a link between your accounts (your name, your e-mail or so)…
bloody google are cheaters when i reached 1k $ .. they banned me .. huh google u r only good in search engine 😡
I feel your pain. I too have been slapped, battered, kicked and mugged by Google and for what? I cannot see any reason why and they won’t tell me either. 🙁
i too was kicked by google in this month (may, 2012), i recv’d a check of $1.3K in the first month after that in the next month i earned $1.4K (Next payment), also this month i earned upto $1K, but suddenly i recv’d a “Bad” mail from google ….:((
Its really hurts guys!!!
But whether i will get $1.4K(Next payment), i dont know which is outstanding amount ($1K..? $1.4…? OR both)…
In a Google adsense T&C, ” In the event the Agreement is terminated, Google shall pay Your earned balance to You within approximately ninety (90) days after the end of the calendar month in which the Agreement is terminated by You (following Google’s receipt of Your written request, including by email, to terminate the Agreement) or by Google.”
But google mentioned on my adsense account that $1.4K(Next payment) is valid amount after a validation check.
You won’t receive any more payments from google. Both are gone.
Adsense= Route of all evil! Monopoly at it’s finest!
Oh, man. I’ve been using AdSense for a little over a month now, as it’s linked to my YouTube channel. I earned about $300 this month, but after reading horrifying stories on people being “shut down” for “invalid clicks”, I disabled ALL ads on ALL of my YouTUbe videos. I’m scared. I don’t wanna be banned! Someone help!
James – I would leave your adsense account on. I mean, yes there is always the risk of getting shut down (I’m all too aware), but if you might as well earn the money while you can. If you get shut down, guess what? All the options for alternatives will still be there. Adsense is a good option for youtube and many other types of sites – I would keep the money rolling in the door.
Spencer Haws — Yeah, but, why would I leave it on? That puts me at the risk of having clicks on my account.. That’s gives Google an explanation to shut me down. If I turned them OFF, then if they said I was recieving “invalid clicks”, then I’d REALLY know that they are lying, because there IS NOTHING to click. Am I right?
No, you’re not right. For one, they could be talking about invalid clicks that happened before you turned them off.
Two, there don’t have to be invalid clicks at all, they just have to believe you might get them. Spencer didn’t lose his account because it had invalid clicks, they said they closed it because they thought he might get invalid clicks, which is pretty stupid. Every Adsense site is at risk of getting invalid clicks.
Third and last…what’s the point of having an adsense account if you aren’t going to use it? You don’t want them to ban your account, so to keep them from banning it, you’re not going to use it, lol? How much sense does that make? You’re essentially banning yourself.
If you have an adsense account, do everything you can to follow the rules. If your account gets banned 10 months from now, at least you earned some money for those 10 months.That is the object, right? I’d rather make some money and lose my account than never make any money but keep the account forever.
Exactly Kevin. Not sure why James would “ban himself” – like the way you put it.
Sorry to hear that “banned” news from Google AdSense.. 🙁
Google is a major player both on search engine and advertising. They play nice on search engine,
but suck on advertising.
They pulled the same crap with me, owing over $40,000. I’m seriously considering filing a class action suit against them. If anyone is interested in joining me in collecting what Google OWES you, please let me know at [email protected].
Thanks
Ok. That’s me out.
Google just banned my adsense account as well. Not following the quality guidlelines. About 30 sites with adsense. Some good, some getting worked on. Not sure which ones set it off. I’ll spend the weekend dropping the google codes off the sites. Might give the top 5 earners to the girlfriend and trash the rest.
Hi,
I was banned too, funny … I have just one blog, it’s not a niche, just health related articles, still new a few months older and Google sent me a pretty “nice” message, anyway I didn’t earned money with adsense but was nice to have it in my blog, I hoped someday to make a few bucks too, now it’s over. I’ve tried infolinks but I simple didn’t like so many links in so many words, like all my blog was full of links, so I deleted the code. If anyone knows other alternatives please share.
Thank you!
Just got banned tonight. However, I live in NY and google has a large presence there. I am starting an action against them in small claims court tomorrow. Let’s see how vigorously they fight me.
Best of luck.
Godspeed KL
It hapends to me TWICE, and they’re all suffer from Click Bomb. I notice this 2 day before i got banned since my click has raised 200% in a day, allthough i have suspended all GA ads on my sites, it hapends to me anyway in the next 2 days.
Frangkly i have a silly mind that this things (click bomb) was either initiate by their own accomplice.
However i make another approach to gain my income back with GA, i found that someone has made somesort of script that can protect from click bomb, it call CLICK DODGER. I’m currently testing the script at the momment, wish it works and make a valuable share to all of us.
Spencer, Thank you for sharing!
I am posting a link that may shed some light on some of the bans. Not saying this is the root cause of yours but perhaps others have fallen by becoming a victim of click bombing. See here:
http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/adsense/kvjIbFb1L_s
I would advise that all adsense users use the “Allowed Sites” function and not have it open to “any” site. Leaving the site open to any site allows anyone to post your adsense code/script on any site (located on your “view source” page) where they can bomb it. They bomb their site with your adsense code/script and after the bomb delete the site. Monitor your sites for clicks rising too fast. Find out immediately where they are coming from and report to G right away. You may be lucky and catch it. This is not the only way to bomb a site. There are many other ways to do this. If your site is checked as “Allowed Sites” only, you would be protected better than those who are not but you are still at risk. Just harder to bring down.
I hope they reconsider and re-open your account.
I feel your pain…frustration…uncertainty…and strength. You will fly! Keep us informed will you?
Hi
according to what I understand, Google said that your websites are risky, based on that, Google should have stopped the adsense activity on these websites, instead they banned you. So it means that You are the risky man but it is not what they said, it does not seem really legal.
all the best.
The exact same thing happened to me back in April. I have tried some of the alternatives and have found that Chitika has the most relevent ads. Relevent ads are extremely important with these targeted Niche sites. It can make the difference between a CTR of 20% vs 3%. The downside is that the payouts are lower and they only offer text ads. I also don’t like the big highlighted yellow boxes at the top of each ad that says “related results”, which don’t blend into the site well.
Adsense Victims – UNITE! Google’s actions in closing accounts and grabbing the money are fraudulent at the least and quite possibly monopolistic. Let’s quit complaining and TAKE SOME ACTION: Visit http://AdsenseVictims.org to get started.
The irony of this is that if Google did not index your micro niche sites highly then they would probably receive little to no traffic and therefore no clicks. But Google did rank them well (which should signal the content on the sites is good) but then bans your Adsense for having thin sites.
Would an end user rather find a site with 5 pages that provide great information or a site that has 500 pages of so/so information.
I just don’t understand Google anymore. This is too bad!
What a bummer and not great business tactics for Google. I do not mind them shutting accounts but they could at least give the courtesy of a reason WHY!
This is exactly why I have been preparing myself for at least the last two years, using other monetization methods.
I still have Adsense but only a portion now.
You will be amazed at what money you can make by putting your own advertising on your pages.
I removed Adsense off some of my best pages (with the highest Adsense income) and tested products to sell. Ended up with more income from those pages anyway.
When you are getting those high paying clicks on a page that means something is selling..Find the product and sell it for yourself. It is out there…
All this has done is open doors for you!
I must admit it will be a lot of work though, and this is why I have not fully got rid of Adsense. It is an easy way out.
I just got banned from google also without knowing why. I have never received an email from them.
Spencer, sorry that you lost 10K a month in revenue.
But the bottom line is you are a spammer. “Micro Niche Sites” basically means you created 100s of spam websites. You did a little research (probably on Google – so you just reiterated what was already out there) or paid someone to generate content. Yes, you got traffic, I’m willing to bet none of the content it was worth looking at. You are not a subject matter expert on 90% of websites you created, and therefore had no business creating them. You were gaming the system, and you got burned.
How did you (or PotPieGirl or any of a long list) ever convince yourselves you weren’t spammers? Doing 8 hours reasearch on a topic because you discovered a good keyword does not make a quality website.
Stick with one thing you know. Clearly you know web marketing. Keep nichepursuits.com and devote your time to it. You are a subject matter expert here.
i don’t know where you get the idea having hundreds of micro niche sites is spamming
if they all