Stevo_UK - 11:41 pm on Jun 30, 2004 (gmt 0)

I've been using Google AdSense for about five months now and to say that it has done nothing short of changing my whole financial situation and life in general would be an understatement and a half.

I run a high volume web site that has been up and going for about a year and a half now. Until the start of this year I was relying on donations and my own bank balance to keep the site going. This became harder as time went on and the site became more popular - until the day I discovered AdSense.

Not only has it covered the cost of running my site, it has also given me a lot more spending money to play with. It is actually so successful that I'm earning more from running the site than I am from my full time job. What started as a hobby has now become a source of income that might allow me to make some life changing decisions.

About two months ago I was on the verge of packing the full time job in, starting up a couple of more sites, and living the flexible and exciting life I've always wanted to lead. That was until I came across the large number of posts here and on other webmaster related web sites about “The Dreaded Email”.

Now, I've been around long enough to know that not every post about getting kicked off AdSense for fraudulent clicks is totally genuine but the sheer number of them that I've seen leads me to believe that there are more than a few that have got kicked off the program through no fault of their own. I even remember a post here that paraphrased an email from G saying that yes, they knew the webmaster didn't click their own ads, but they still had to remove them.

Of course G has to protect the integrity of their system and of the advertiser at the other end forking out their hard earned cash. However, there must be a method that is both fair to the advertiser and the publisher. For example, automatically ignoring any duplicate clicks from the same IP address on the same advert over a 24hr period. I haven't been around online advertising long enough to know if this isn't feasible but it seems like a damn good solution to me.

The one very negative signal that Google is sending out is that income from Google AdSense can not be relied upon. In other words, it's just not feasible to setup and run a business that relies on it. If a person can be removed from the system on the whim of someone who is either trying to "help" or a competitor, or any of the other possible scenarios that are out of the control of the webmaster, then it's just not a system that people can bet their house on. Is this the type of message that G wants to get across?

To anyone that is planning to reply about chilling out and not worrying about it - I don't lose any sleep or hair over the thought of getting kicked off the program but having a life changing opportunity within reach will of course lead me to question the stability of the income that would finance it.

I'd be interested in hearing anyone's opinions on the above. I’m pretty sure I’m not alone. Has anyone here actually taken the plunge and bet it all on AdSense?