Google Adsense is the current leader in content-sensitive web-based marketing. However, Google is not unlike a “black hole” when it comes to how they determine who can join their program, how their program really works (i.e. pays you for hosting their ads) or why you may get your account suspended. Searching around the Internet, a lot of bloggers and webmasters are beginning to rebel against the Google “Wizard of Oz” strategy and look for alternatives. There are tons of stories of people who just cross a certain dollar amount (usually, $10 or $20 USD) and get their accounts suspended. Unfortunately, I see Google making many of the same philosophical mistakes of Microsoft 15-20 years ago. History repeats itself.
I recently had my Google Adsense account suspended (which is why this site went ad-free for the last 7-8 days), and received the following email:
Hello,
While going through our records recently, we found that your AdSense account has posed a significant risk to our AdWords advertisers. Since keeping your account in our publisher network may financially damage our
advertisers in the future, we’ve decided to disable your account.
Please understand that we consider this a necessary step to protect the interests of both our advertisers and our other AdSense publishers. We realize the inconvenience this may cause you, and we thank you in advance
for your understanding and cooperation.
If you have any questions about your account or the actions we’ve taken, please do not reply to this email. You can find more information by visiting https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?answer=57153.
Sincerely,
The Google AdSense Team
So, in a nutshell, too many visitors clicked on my ads and Google Adsense didn’t want to write a check. BTW, my Adsense account was active for about 30 days and was at about $11.60 or so. I have searched and read up on Google Adsense shutting down accounts as they cross the $10 barrier, as to not pay small site blogs, etc. (like this one). All of this being said, I went on a quest to find an alternative to Google Adsense.
What I found first was a great site at http://www.rosswalker.co.uk/adsense_top10/ that lays out the top 10 alternatives to Google Adsense. There is also a link to top alternatives to Google Adwords too. I ended up researching Adbrite, Clicksor and Bitvertiser and settled on Adbrite.
Adbrite is incredibly easy to use (just as easy as Adsense, maybe easier) and I like the fact that advertisers get to bid on your adspace. When I copied up the 3 ad zone code snippets, it took less than 24 hours for an advertiser to begin advertising on my site. I also like the inline text-based rollover search and plan to integrate that soon as well.
because my blog was on a traffic exchange I couldn’t use AdSense. I decided to use Bidvertiser instead. Sadly, they declined my account after the first $0.26. lol. I just use contextual ads now. I will probably never profit with so small a blog, but whatever.