How I Got Done Over By Golf Oscar Oscar Golf Lima Echo

Hi All,

I have to be  bit careful what I say in this post. "Why?" Because I was mugged by yours truly. "Yours truly?" Yes you know... the boss. "The boss?" Yeh, you know... the Internet god. "OMG not?" Yes exactly!

Got it? Okay here's the story but I'll be careful not to mention any names for fear of further reprisals..

About two weeks ago I was innocently working away on one of my ideas to create a new income stream from affiliate marketing. I had already built several small websites for this and filled them with banners from my CPA affilaite programs. The income comes from the companies who want me to get them leads, and so every time someone clicks on one of these banners and submits their email, they get a lead and I get a dollar or two.

So I had four of these sites up and running and I was promoting them using videos, well what else?

Two of the sites were doing quite well. One was promoting several oline surveys and the other was promoting video games and free games downloads. Now when I say they were doing quite well, what I really mean is they were making a few dollars each every day. So then I thought of a great idea. I thought... Why don't I put some Adsense links on each site and then drive tons of traffic to them using a CPV program?

For those of you unfamiliar with CPV (Cost Per View), this is a paid program where you can get your site to pop up in front of people who are searching for something similar. Take a look at DirectCPV.com to get an idea. Using this program I can get a view of any of my sites for just 1.5 cents. So for $100 that's over 6,600 views.

Now needless to say with all this traffic hitting my affiliate sites, clicking on the banners and clicking on the Adsense links I was getting a little excited. I could see my Adsense income increasing daily. Not by thousands of dollars but certainly by hundreds. Then... Wham!

I get this email from Golf Oscar Oscar Golf Lima Echo telling me that my Adsense account has been disabled. Here's the gist of the email I received...

"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 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."

So, naturally I file an appeal. In my appeal I explain exactly what I had been doing, which in essense was just getting more traffic to my sites. As far as I could see I wasn't committing any crime and I wasn't even breaking any rules. Well, they weren't having any of it.

They replied within a few hours and basically said their decision would be upheld and my account was going to be closed. I had over £250 in my Adsense account and they took it all. Some of it had been earned before I used the CPV program, but it was all gone.

I used to have Adsense ads on this blogtoo. You can see the big empty space on the right hand side. My ads had been there for years. It now feels like I've lost a close friend, and I didn't even have time to say goodbye :(

I had been robbed, mugged, violated and humiliated by the Internet God. They just took my money, shut me down and there's nothing I can do about it. And all I did was what every Internet marketer wants to do... get more traffic!

Well, they make the rules or should that be laws? Whatever, there's certainly an element of 'Big Brother' about the whole thing. And is there a moral to this story? Beats me!

Go carefully my friends!

All for now.

Bill

www.busyvids.com