Opinion

When I started blogging, making money was never my goal. It wasn’t even on my horizon. I was only 13 and I thought blogging would be a cool way to review books I loved and share my love of reading with other people. I knew nothing about websites. But as I got older, I started to realize you could make money. Now, this isn’t story about how I make a lot of money. Because I earn $0 from this website. The only compensation I ever get is a free book to review. Book bloggers don’t generally make any money. Maybe a small bit here and there if you utilize Amazon well, but other than that, unless you were lucky to be massive and do YouTube videos, you won’t make much.

However, I didn’t know this back in the day. I started to research how to make money. There’s sites all over the place that claim to give you money, affiliate links from every company possible, but you don’t earn much. But Google AdSense kept coming up. Google is a reputable and big company, right? If I joined them, I’d have protection and make money from legitimate ads. That’s true in some sense. 

My website was established. I had a decent viewing for a book blog and for my age in those days. I joined Google AdSense and learnt how to implement their ads. I went to a self-hosted website. I did the whole shabang. I was super excited!

My first few pennies started to drip in. Like one visitor may click a link and I’d make a cent a week. It was incredibly exciting. It was not much, but it was something. A rewarding process.

I made $40 legitimately. But AdSense’s threshold is $100 before you get a payment. 

Now, I didn’t know about all the little minutiae in the policies for Google. I knew not to ask friends to click links. However, my friends read my blog, and sometimes were interested in ads or wanted to help me. I can’t control what they click. I was in university at this time so it clearly showed up that I used the same wifi as these links. Google assumed that I was asking friends to click.

At this time, I had $60 on my account.

I got an email.

“Your account has been closed.” 

My heart dropped. I was so confused and conflicted. I was angry and didn’t know what to do. I googled what it could be and turned out that google would have assumed I told my friends to click my link. They just saw the shared geographical location. Amazon does this too. A friend on another coast used an affiliate link to get something, not asked by me, but because Amazon saw she had sent me a gift before, I got $0 and a warning. I argued it but it was the traditional “This decision is final.” 

Anger and frustration was the understatement of the century.

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I appealed Google and was rejected. They pretty much were generic saying it was reviewed and I did not meet the standards. I, by definition, broke their rules. However I had no control. I wrote a full appeal with information, links and information. I put time and effort in. In 72 hours I got a tiny email. That’s it.

I googled what to do and fixed it. I’m a small site so I grew as I could. I told my friends to leave my site alone and that was that. 2 years later, I re-appealed. 

I was excited, I thought I made changes. NOPE! Rejected again.

Then I got this piece of mail for a class action lawsuit which I was being invited to. AdSensePublisherSettlement.com has the full information. Essentially it was getting at the point that peoples accounts were closed down for whatever reason and were never paid for what they were actually owed. I organically earned $40 and never got that. So I jumped on the chance to get money.

About half a year later I got a check for $30. The lawsuit one and Google had to pay up. Great! I got some of my money. Google was clearly in the wrong. 

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So a few days ago I decided to reapply to Google AdSense again. I figured nearly 4 years has gone on (I completely moved on from Google) so though I’d reapply. Refilled out the form. 24 hours later, rejection. AGAIN!

What am I doing wrong? What happened? WHY IS THIS HAPPENING???

Then it hit me. 

I’m a tiny website. I get less than 100 views a day and don’t post every single day. I get it, I’m small. But honestly my motivation sometimes to write awesome posts is lacking because I get nothing in return from the website. And with life, it’s hard.

But, Google has no reason to want me. If I pulled in multiple-thousands of views a day and would actually bring in some revenue for Google, they’re much more likely to let me back, because I’m going to help them. But because I’m small, Google won’t care about me.

My legitimate mess up from when I was young, has never been forgiven because I’m small. I’m not important in their eyes. They want money. Even though they claim they want what is best for various groups. I call total, and utter, BS!

Google doesn’t care about small businesses. They will steal your money. This is clear in the lawsuit. They LOST! That says a lot of them. 

Am I annoyed? Yeah, a little. But this isn’t going to stop my from working on websites and finding my own way when I have time. But, this is my PSA to other bloggers out there not to think that the biggest is the best. Find smaller sites that provide ads, do affiliate through smaller companies and direct sources instead of the massive ones. Yes, I get Google and Amazon are the most useful and convenient. But are they the best? Unless you are in a particular niche that is popular, you most likely won’t earn much. And to hit their crazy thresholds for payment, you will be waiting a longggggggg time.