Our Journey with AdSense Ends!

Update: July 3, 2013

Our reader Rajat informed that the ban was lifted. AdSense team also confirmed the same with following reply:

Adserving has been enabled for your site. Please allow up to 48 hours for ads to start showing again. The site was taken down because the Policy team was undertaking an exercise to try & prevent old blacklisted sites from re-entering the network via new pubs who take over the sites.

Not sure, how to decrypt their message? Can you decrypt it?

This is first time I am writing a post this year (2013) on Devils’ Workshop. And I have some bad news!

It looks like our domain devilsworkshop.org is banned by Google AdSense. We did not get any email or any confirmation from Google AdSense as yet. But AdSense dashboard is showing zero earning for me and few guest bloggers since yesterday (June 25).

I thought it is better that I tell you about this myself, no matter how bad it may sound.

Banned (or not banned)

I talked with few blogger friends, and they are all very sure that Google AdSense team sends email when they ban domains/accounts.

Since we did not hear from Google AdSense about this we are clueless. We did not get any email or any warnings in our AdSense account about this. But I used Amit Agarwal’s AdSense Sanbox tool and also another tool bannedcheck.com. Both tools say AdSense ban is there!

So for now, we are assuming DW is banned!

What we don’t know is – if this ban is temporary or permanent.

How it might have happened?

It looks like a guest blogger on DW abused AdSense terms. May be he/she clicked on own ads on own article displayed on devilsworkshop.org.

It might be possible that Google AdSense contacted him/her about incident but the person did not reply hence AdSense team might have banned entire domain.

Google AdSense Fault

I believe before banning a domain, Google AdSense should contact domain owner. A single domain can have ads from multiple accounts. Its wrong thing to punish everybody for mistake of one miscreant.

I already wrote to Google AdSense but its highly unlikely that they will reply to a relatively small site like DW!

Possible Workaround

While working at rtCamp, I have encountered many cases, where blog owners changed their domain name because old one was blocked by AdSense. So a certain workaround is to change domain name for this site.

But this solution is not acceptable to us. Changing domain is a kind of decision which must come from inside and backed by some sane reasoning. This domain is part of our identity. We cannot change it for few bucks!

Also, what if Google AdSense bans new domain as well? We refuse to let Google detect how we run our affairs.

So we have decided to live with the ban rather than changing our domain just for the sake of Google AdSense.

How will this affect us?

This is the first question Aditya asked me. Well answer is bit long so let me divide it in sections.

About financial loss

As you may be aware, DW is run by rtCamp. In terms of revenue, DW’s contribution to rtCamp’s revenue is around 1%. So financially, rtCamp can afford to run DW without AdSense or even without ads.

In fact, sometime back we even thought about going ad-free. That is why we removed BuySellAds, Technorati, Kontera, etc. But AdSense stuck here as it was used by many guest bloggers under revenue-sharing program.

So financially it will not affect DW or its team – editors and pay-per-post authors. It might affect guest bloggers though.

About Revenue-Sharing Program

Back in 2008, when guest authors started contributing to DW regularly, we started “Your Posts. Your AdSense Ads.” program. In that program, guest bloggers were given opportunity to run their Google AdSense ads on their blog posts published on DW.

Before starting it, I discussed about risk-involved with Amit Agarwal through his forum, other users at AdSense forum and bloggers friends about possible risk. Getting banned was the number one risk we were considering back then.

As Google AdSense is no more here, “Your Posts. Your AdSense Ads.” program closes automatically. Of course, if Google AdSense rectifies their mistake, then our revenue-sharing program will be back.

To Old Guest Bloggers

First, I want to thank you for all contributions you have made to DW in last 6-years. Its a long time fellas! 🙂

Next, I personally apologise to everyone whose AdSense ads were running on DW. It is beyond my control to reach AdSense team and get this issue rectified.

As your AdSense ads were showing directly on DW, I have no idea about how much monetary loss this will result on your side.

But, in case you have a feeling that DW let you down, we have thought about few ways to compensate your loss as listed below. Feel free to suggest your ideas using comment form below. I did not get enough time to think about this aspect in details.

Moving your posts to your blog

If you wish to move your articles to your own blog or any other blog of your choice, please let us know.

1. We will generate WXR file of your posts & comments which you can import on other blog.
2. After that, just send us list of old-DW URL’s and URL’s on new site.
3. We will setup 301 redirection on our server. We will maintain these re-directions till DW exists.

One-time Compensation

If you are tracking AdSense revenue from DW Channel, then you already have idea how much you are earning from DW. If you do not have your own blog or do not want to go with above option, then we can compensate you in the form of rtCamp store coupons.

We are planning to offer $10 credit for every published post.

rtCamp Store is small as of now but within 6 months you will see nice premium WordPress themes & plugins. Good thing about coupons we will provide is:

1. They will have NO expiry date.
2. You can share them with anyone. In fact resell them at lower price to convert them for real bucks!
3. You can use a coupon till its balance/credit lasts across multiple purchases.
4. If your coupon value is high, you can request multiple coupons of smaller values.

Sticking Around…

I don’t know about copyright laws much, but whatever you have contributed should be owned by you. So your posts on DW will be yours.

There is no rush to make a choice. You can decide any-time.

Those who like to stick to DW, without AdSense, are more than welcome to do so. 🙂

To AdSense

Its a bitter feeling to be honest. The part where you did not care to inform domain owner.

But I thank you for allowing us to run AdSense revenue-sharing program for almost 6 years. Had we got banned back in 2008, my life could have been made a lot more difficult.

So dear AdSense, I will always remember your critical role in shaping my life. Thank you for that! No hard feelings here.