I recently had quite an upsetting experience with Adsense over the New Year period. 3 days before Christmas I received an email from Google informing me that they had disabled my Adsense account for illegal clicks. I was completely shocked. Illegal clicks? Where? How? When? Was it me? I just couldn’t understand it.
So as they suggested, if I thought that they had made a mistake, I could appeal their decision and they would look into the case. If they found that their decision was the correct one, that the decision was then final and I would never be allowed into the Adsense program again. Firstly I was pretty sure if they just had a look at my sites, that they would find nothing wrong and they would reinstate my account immediately. My second thought was - “what if…“. and this is where I learnt 1 very important lesson.
Diversify your income
The old saying goes - “Never put all your eggs into one basket.“. This is so true, but how many people actually follow through on this age-old business model? It is becoming ever more important to diversify your earnings model. Relying heavily on Adsense and Google traffic, might work for months, even years, but when you become complacent about it, thats when all of a sudden your sites drop from the SERPs and your Adsense account runs dry. I might not of been making tons of money with Adsense when my mini-crisis happened, but it still made me sit-up and start thinking about multiple revenue streams.
John Chow is an excellent example of how to use multiple revenue streams. He is currently making money from Adsense, Vibrant IntelliTXT, Text Link Ads, FeedBurner Ads, ReviewMe, Direct Ad Sales, Affiliate Sales and even by receiving Free Stuff. Some make more money than others, but the principal is still the same. If he had to lose 1 or even 2 of these revenue streams, he would STILL be making money.
Where do I start diversifying?
I wrote a post earlier regarding making money from blogging and I outlined 4 different revenue streams that are possible for South Africans (as well as the rest of the world) to make money from. Concentrate on 1 or 2 different streams to start with and once you have mastered them move on and learn about others. This way you will always stay ahead of the game and never have to worry when 1 of those rivers run dry.
BTW, after a couple of days, Google did reinstate my account and all my earnings along with it. 
5 responses so far ↓
Andy Beard // Jan 11, 2007 at 7:51 am
Congratulations on being one of the rare few who get their account reinstated.
If you are running adsense on a site, make sure you are also running a comprehensive adsense tracking program.
Kian Ann // Jan 11, 2007 at 10:14 pm
Actually that’s what many say about Adsense - that it is risky. Even though you may be doing the right things, you can’t guarantee that they will not take away your account.
Anyway, great that you got it back.
JBagley // Jan 12, 2007 at 7:42 am
By the looks of it I am pretty lucky to have my account back!
Andy, any suggestions on what to use for tracking my Adsense?
Andy Beard // Jan 12, 2007 at 12:15 pm
What Makes A Good Blog? - Tyler Reed // Mar 2, 2007 at 5:04 pm
[…] Clever Advertising and No Feed Errors Blogging can become a good source of income over a period of time, however too much advertising or advertising in the wrong places can be damaging to a sites reputation and readership. Diversifying your income can be a good thing if you do it the right way. (note: I will be writing an article on smart advertising within the next week, so look out for that). Keeping your feeds error free is crucial. There is nothing worse than a feed that delivers duplicate content, missing content or no content at times. […]
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