This will be a short article about monetizing the site’s content with AdSense. Google, in its infinite wisdom, has decided to cancel my account and will, presumably, keep any funds not yet paid.
The reason they did this was for invalid traffic.
In short, that means people were clicking the ads without actually being interested in the ads. They were clicking them fairly often lately and I noticed the uptick in my earnings. That was nice.
I didn’t know that it’s a person (or several) who has been clicking ads to help the site along. For Google to have done this, it has to have been fairly drastic and frequent.
I’ll look for some tech to resolve this and examine other options. We’ll see how that goes and I’ll let folks know what choices I make.
The reality is, that I can afford to keep the site going without ads. However, being rewarded for my effort and having some funds to offset my costs was pretty nice.
People don’t donate often. That’s okay. The total donations have been less than $50 since day one. I can’t count on that to offset the costs and that does nothing for my time – and, man, have I invested my time.
The site isn’t going anywhere. The ads didn’t pay that much. There are other forms of advertising. I may start accepting sponsored posts with some subjects AdSense wouldn’t allow but are (in my opinion) otherwise harmless.
The reality is that I don’t know what I’ll do, but I will make changes. The site gets plenty of traffic, so it’s eligible for some ad programs. I’ll do some research and see where we are at the end of the day.
It has never been about the money. If it was, that was a losing proposition. It’s just nice to have some ad revenue to offset expenses. If you’re looking to place ads, there’s a sponsorship link above. We’ll see what I accept for posts going forward.
When it is resolved, I do ask that you not click ads just to help me out. The sentiment is nice, but ads are for advertisers and they only want to pay for clicks that come from people legitimately interested in their product. Keep that in mind and only click on ads that interest you. Thanks!
