Is This the End of Cheerfulnuts?

If you still didn’t know, I’ve just been banned from Google Adsense. To find out the whole story, you can read my hub about how Google dumped me. To summarize, I had received an email one uneventful afternoon of September 10, 2011 from Google Adsense. It said that my account “poses a risk of generating invalid activity.” I was pretty shocked because I didn’t violate any Google policy and I consider myself as a responsible webmaster. What’s worse is they didn’t give me any proof in their claim (Their explanation is not sufficient). I feel like a girl being dumped by her boyfriend without him giving any reason. Didn’t I deserve to at least know why I was being banned? It feels surreal. Since that day, I have been keeping an eye on my email just in case Google sends me another one.

Despite my shock and misery, I did my homework. I gathered as much information as I can. I had been seeing suspicious-looking sites containing links to my sites. These sites are suspicious because 1.) I’ve never visited them, 2.) I have no idea how my links got there, and 3.) According to an app called Web of Trust or WOT, these sites have poor reputation. As much as I would want to see what these sites are, I refrained myself from clicking these sites for fear of infecting my computer with virus, malware, and spyware. After a couple of gloomy days of data gathering, I finally submitted the appeal form to Google. The next day, I received a reply from Google telling me that they’ll investigate the matter but they do not promise to reinstate my account.

A few weeks later, I still got no response from Google. I tried to get my mind off Google by creating more articles for my site (HubPages). However, that didn’t stop me from thinking what I did wrong. It was driving me crazy! I started to formulate a back-up plan: If I didn’t get my account back, I would be using my sister’s Adsense account for my site.I tried to be patient and didn’t use her account right away. I was afraid that using her account would get her banned as well. Maybe I was being illogical, but the ban was too shocking that I get paranoid at every little thing.

On September 27, 2011, my sister also got the dreaded email from Google. She has been banned, too. My sister wasn’t that shocked though since she was already half expecting it. She is an active member of WebAnswers, a revenue sharing site where you earn through posting questions and answers. She has been seeing alarming number of WebAnswers members being banned from Google Adsense. These people are clearly not spammers or bots. In my short stay in the site, I had seen these people giving quality answers to people. They are some of the great contributors of WebAnswers. Their statistics reveal that some of them had already posted hundreds of questions and answers on the site. I don’t see any reason why they are getting banned, except that all of them came from fraudulent countries. There are “rumors” saying that people from certain countries – whether or not they violate Google Adsense’s TOS – are being banned from Google. It caused some panic among WebAnswers users. If such claim is true, then it is so unfair. I’ve been seeing people saying, “I’ll be next”, and to my surprise, I’d find out a couple of days later that they, too, had received the same letter from Google. Unbelievable.

Here are some discussions on WebAnswers about Google banning people from “high-risk” countries:

http://www.webanswers.com/webanswers-support/whats-up-with-the-prohibited-countries-are-half-of-us-going-to-get-our-webanswers-account-deleted-6a435b

http://www.webanswers.com/technology-computers/internet/google/is-adsense-definitely-banning-high-risk-countries-or-just-high-risk-webanswers-countries-0dd417

What I’ve learned from this experience is not to put all your eggs in one basket. I have a Blogger and a HubPages acount. I thought these are enough, but I didn’t realize that I had been putting all my eggs in one basket. Both use Google Adsense. My mission now is to look for other ways to earn online that don’t use Adsense.

The sad thing is, after people have found out about my disabled Adsense account, they were telling me how sorry they were. I can feel their sadness, and it makes me even sadder. I’ve been writing online for six months now. To me, six months is quite a long time. I know that I can remove my articles from my sites and put them elsewhere (where I can earn using other programs), but doing so removes all the comments that I have already received. I don’t want to lose them; they mean so much to me. I like my readers, I like the people I follow, and I don’t want to leave everything behind. It seems like moving on is so hard. Will this be the end of cheerfulnuts? I hope not.

March 14, 2012

Hello! It’s been months since I’ve been banned by Adsense. I’ve also been a Hubber for one year! Hurray! Happy anniversary cheerfulnuts!(Now where is that cute little 1 year accolade?) Anyway, you may wonder how I’m doing now after the Google ban. Well, my skin-and-bones body is gaining quite a bit of weight now (I think it shows life can still be good even WITHOUT Adsense). I joined Squidoo and had moved some of my hubs there. I’m also spending more time on my personal blog. Plus, I have created a new review blog on Asian dramas and movies.

Unfortunately, my sites aren’t as successful as my HP site. For the past several months, I’ve only earned a few pennies with the other ad programs that I’ve utilized. It’s all because of the little traffic that I’m getting. I miss being here and seeing my traffic grows. The good old days… Sigh…

Don’t worry. I have no plans to give up. If I learned new ways to earn with other ad networks, I will surely share it with you. See you around!