Here’s a horror story that features Google as the monster.
Spencer Haws is (was) a very successful niche website publisher who was averaging around $10,000 a month in Adsense income.
Not any more – his Adsense income is now $0, and he did not receive the previous month’s income as this was returned to the advertisers.
What happened?
Google sends a standard message which says in part:
we’ve determined that your AdSense account poses a risk of generating invalid activity
There are no other specifics given.
That is scary to me. This guy’s account was banned because it posed a RISK, rather than because of any actual invalid activity. Surely ANY website has the potential to generate invalid activity?
You can ask Google to reconsider the ban but in most cases their decision remains final. Some more details:
- Spencer had been using Adsense since 2005
- He apparently had 200+ sites spread over 3 Adsense accounts (separate business entities – all were shut down)
- There are numerous other “high profile” Adsense earners who have had their accounts shut down as well
It looks like Google is cracking down on mass production of sites. If you have alot of sites and/or are earning alot of Adsense then it is highly likely Google will devote some attention to you.
Putting all your eggs in the one Google/Adsense basket is obviously a risky strategy. Diversifying income sources by incorporating other advertising or collecting email addresses to build a list is recommended.
Here’s a quote from Google’s own [Inside Adsense] newsletter:
We encourage you to create high quality sites rather than a large quantity of sites. Focusing on one site and making it richer in information and authentic in content not only benefits users, but also helps you win more of them.
It looks like less sites is better in 2012.
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