Saturday 26 March 2011

No More Google Ad Sense for Frugaldom!

Bang Goes Another Supposedly Great Idea!

I joined Google Ad Sense programme several years ago and have never, ever been able to work out how anyone could earn the thousands of pounds or dollars that others purport to be earning. So, when I started my frugal entrepreneur's challenge, I decided to ramp up the efforts to generate some extra income by increasing traffic to my website, monetising my blog, encouraging new members to the frugaldom forums and, sooner or later, getting to grips with social media and online networking. That way, the chances of anyone clicking on a sponsored link and generating a few penies for the site are greatly increased - that's how I understand it - and I get a bunch of people who are iterested in frugal living. But we're the wrong types of people - advertisers seem to hate us because we simply don't spend enough!

Since 22nd February, I have been monitoring my Google Ad Sense account closely, ensuring I had made the most of every available opportunity, checking I had the links added properly, even adding search facilities to the new pages. The day to day 'estimated earnings' had leapt from an average 16p per day (while doing nothing with the pages) to £3 - £4. (On one particular day, it reached £12, but I reckon that's the day that got me 'deactivated'.) It's still not startling, but great to see there was the opportunity to earn, once I learned a bit more and took the time to produce the articles for the pages. All of this, I was discussing with others (who are also doing the 'earn a little extra' challenge) in the frugaldom forums. Well, apparently that is the very worst thing to do! Having people check out your pages and links either by invite, suggestion or even indirect hint is against terms and conditions.

Late last night, I did a final check of my email and discovered that my Ad Sense account has been deactivated! According to the email, "...your AdSense account poses a risk of generating invalid activity." So that's that! There is absolutely no point in appealing their decision, as I don't know how else to promote webpages other than by telling people what's on them and asking them to bookmark/use my search!

After spending hours and hours on pages, creating content, finding the right ad types, generating links, testing everything and doing my best to put together a website that can actually pay for itself, I fell into the old trap of trusting a third party! I trusted Google Ad Sense and was felled in my first month of really trying to make it work. Worse still, I am yet to discover the slightest idea about how people earn fortunes from their websites using nothing more than Google Ad Sense. I, for one, will be opting out of using that particular company as my prefered search engine. I will also need to transfer this blog, as I'm still relying entirely on Google to provide this 'free' service, too. What an idiot I have been!

Join us in the free forums (also, stupidly, entrusted to a third party) to discuss this and other issues/topics/subjects that are of interest to normal, everyday, trying-to-make-ends-meet people.

3 comments:

  1. such a shame , seems the service is only available to rampant consumers happy to expoloit their readership

    ReplyDelete
  2. That's just rotten, after all the efforts you have made. Never mind x

    ReplyDelete

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