Tired of Google Double Standards

[LittleX]

If you search for Google Adsense alternatives you will find exactly the same article on dozens of websites which is obviously totally okay for Google. You can also run one of 500 clones of exactly same 'news' website with 30+ ads where the only difference is a slightly different header of the same theme, but if I want to write about interesting facts about animals, people, nature, places, etc (original texts - plagiarism checked), with bounce rate only around 18%, that's not good enough.

I asked why is google rejecting me on their support forum and I was told that can't write about interesting facts because nobody can't create facts, so I had to take those facts from somewhere...

I probably can't share the URL here, but I was told by several people they like the concept, website design, etc, but I will probably have to kill it because what's the point if I am not able to monetize it.

Any suggestions on what to do? Any decent Google Alternatives?

Thanks.

[ember]

Welcome, LittleX. So Adsense is not accepting your site? Did they give you a reason or say the same thing as the forum people?

Google likes original content, so if you are just regurgitating existing facts, even re-written, then, no, Adsense probably won't accept the site. You can't change facts, so it is hard to come up with new content. Ideas and concepts, on the other hand, can be original. And old ideas and concepts can be expanded, re-interpreted, critiqued, etc., so it is easier to create new, original content.

I use media.net as a supplement to Adsense.

[LittleX]

Thank you ember,

The reason is 'content scraping', but how I said... I am trying to find interesting and unusual facts about things from multiple sources and write about it, but I am not copying or rewording texts, I am trying to simplify facts and make a joke here and there. So if somebody wrote an article about bananas, nobody else is allowed to talk about bananas?

Ironically, when you google 'interesting facts' google will scrap a random fact from a random website and display it between search results, that's not content scrapping?

I was approved by media.net but I don't really see any good ads on my website for some reason, its basically just the same type of banner showing me 5 text links and when I use a Mozilla (without AdBlock) I don't see that banner at all, not really sure if I am missing something or not. Is this normal?

[matbennett]

It's not so much double standards, as bad enforcement. Google review new sites, but don't re-review old ones unless they see particular reason to. In the past they only actually reviewed the first site added to each account so it was even easier to slip something poor through.

They have definitely got more strict (Advertiser pressure around inventory quality has been a key driver). This is a good thing, but can seem unfair as it doesn't also come with a mass review of old inventory.

[JorgeV]

Hello,

How many visitors do you have?

Do you have an authority, legitimity in the domains you are writing about? Like for example, if you are writing about the benefits of eating bananas, are you a nutritionist , or dietician? Since a couple of years, this is something that Google/Adsense are taking in consideration.

> what's the point if I am not able to monetize it.

Adsense is not the only way to monetize content. As long as you get traffic, there are plenty of ways to earn money. including, but not limited to affiliations, direct ad selings, promoting your own products, etc etc... I am sure that some will come and tell how they are earning a lot more , since they dropped Adsense.

Before thinking of earning money, you need to build traffic. That's the key. Get 10.000 human visitors / day, then you can think about how to monetize this traffic.

edit: I don't know what your site looks like, but, a kind which is systematically rejected from Adsense (now), are sites which content is made of enumeration of things. You know, the infamous sites which are saying "10 ways to get rich", "50 foods you should eat", "20 flowers which looks like aliens", etc etc... Without even looking at the content, this kind of sites will be rejected, because, they are millions of those, they don't bring any added value, and they are necessarily made of content taken here and there, and remixed.

[ember]

LittleX, you can write about bananas, but you said you have a facts site, so it sounds like you are writing about banana facts. They are yellow, grow on trees, contain potassium, etc. You can't add much that's new or unique. It's the same information that is on probably on a lot of other sites.

[LittleX]

@JorgeV

Well, if I would have 10 000 visitors a day I probably wouldn't complain about Google Adsense, I think 300 000 visitors per month would place between top 25,000 websites and it would be easier to find a better Google Adsense alternative. I thought Google Adsense is suitable even for small websites and unless you invest a significant amount of money, it's very unlikely you will archive it.

My idea was to write about some interesting, unusual and weird facts about animals people usually don't have an idea about, I guess I was wrong about that and I just wasted my money and an incredible amount of time.

[ember]

Power to you for a site about animals :)

[LittleX]

thanks, but nobody cares about efforts, only results.

I don't know if I can share the URL (no)... I don't know if I should keep it alive or kill it. What do you think?

[edited by: not2easy at 5:21 pm (utc) on Aug 18, 2020]
[edit reason] Please see ToS [webmasterworld.com] [/edit]

[not2easy]

Hi LittleX and welcome to WebmasterWorld [webmasterworld.com]

Websites existed before Google and before AdSense. If your site is something that you really care about, no reason to kill the site because of a rejection. Make it worth visiting so that others will share your site with their friends. Then you have a better chance of being approved.

If, on the other hand, the sole purpose of investing in a domain and putting time into it was to earn money you might want to look around in the AdSense threads here. It has not really been a cash cow for over a decade now. It is a little at a time that adds up, but many have a hard time paying for hosting with only AdSense as income. Higher skills + more visitors = improved chances.

Another option is to learn about affiliate marketing. Find things to promote that are related to your site. The same people who want to read about fun animal facts might have pets that need supplies. There is no 'get rich quick online' since a very long time.

[NickMNS]

I thought Google Adsense is suitable even for small websites

You need a lot of traffic even for Adsense. A good rule of thumb is 2$ RPM, this is more or less an average that one can expect without any additional data/information. Some niches will pay a lot more, and some less. So now the question is what is expectation or requirement in terms of earnings per month? Say $1000, so 1000 / 2 = 500. That means you need 500,000 impressions per month to reach your goal of $1000.

Impressions come mainly from ranking in Google SERPs, other organic traffic can help, but other search engines bring in a fraction of the traffic of Google, and social media tends to do very poorly in terms of AdSense (there are always exceptions). So you now need to determine how much traffic can you reasonably get from Google, and you also need to estimate how long it will take you gain that traffic.


In an ideal world this calculus would have been done before you started work on your project, to determine if it was feasible or not.

But now the work is already done, the costs, in terms of money, time and resources, spent on development are gone, not coming back. In business lingo, these are "sunk costs". Pour yourself a drink (maybe two) and make peace with that loss. The good news is from that point forward you can ignore those costs.

THEN, use the above to calculate how much revenue you can expect earn from the project, how much you need to invest to keep it alive, to add/improve content, to promote it, to grow it, and then make an educated and calculated decision on whether or not go forward.

The fact that you have Media.net ads running on the website, can provide some valuable information. You can use the RPM from media.net as good gauge set an expectation for what Adsense would pay. Adsense may pay a little more, but don't expect double.

In terms of gaining Adsense approval, I would take not getting approved as a sign that your content quality needs improvement, because AdSense sets a relatively low bar as compared to level of quality required to achieve a good ranking in Google's search results. Phrased differently, even if you were approved today, Google wouldn't send you enough traffic that it would help your situation.

One final remark, making money from ads in this day and age (the age of Google dominance), is not impossible, but it is certainly not easy. You are not alone in your struggles see this thread from a few weeks ago that discuss some of these issues in more detail:
[webmasterworld.com...]

[LittleX]

Thanks @not2easy.

That's true that websites existed before Google Adsense, but the main benefit of Google Adsense is that they are harvesting everything about you, so Google Adsense ads are highly targeted and it's more likely somebody will click on them. On the other hand, google Adsense alternatives don't have access to more advanced data about you, so they are targeting audience like they would have blindfolds on, so it's hard to earn something unless you have 10 000+ visits per day.

The only problem is that I wasted $250 on Upwork because I hired a few people to help me publish a few articles faster because I wanted more content, to get more traffic, etc... I run this website on AWS, so I guess I will have to switch it to a cheaper plan until I figure it out something...

[JorgeV]

Hello-again

I think 300 000 visitors per month would place between top 25,000 websites

I don't think you will ever be in the top 200 000 .

Some years ago, with 75.000 "human" visitors per day (roughly 150 000 page views), I was around the 80.000th position, according to Alexa & Quantcast. Then I stopped paying for being audited, so I have no idea what it would be today.

Social networks, hijacked a lot of traffic, but this mostly impacted small and medium sites, there are still lot of sites with high volumne of traffic.

Nick explained it well,
That being said, I believe there are two categories of web publishers beginners.

Those who have a "legitimate" big ambition, of creating something new, or greatly improving something existing. This the startup, with a business plan, and business angels.

And secondly, I believe that lot of us started by doing sites, as a hobby, or because of a person interest. Then, with the time, some of these sites succeeded go gain traffic, and find their audience, and this is a this point, that the question of monetizing them was coming.

As for monetizing perspective, Nick explained everything greatly, as usual. Count $2 RPM, and target $1000 /mo . Now, keep in mind, that, these numbers are based on "human" visitors, most of traffic is from bots, scrapers, etc... also, this is for North American audience, or eventually European one. Other continents have lower expected rates. And it remains an estimation. It's greatly relies on the quality of your traffic, the profile of your visitors.

The Golden age for small publishers is over, today, making a living from the internet (ads) is a lot more difficult than it was 10 or 20 years ago. You can read a lot of success stories, but most of them are from guys who started back to that time.

Good luck.

[nomis5]

thanks, but nobody cares about efforts, only results.

Too true, it's a hard learned lesson in life.

Putting loads of effort into a an enterprise which fails is a waste of time.

You define what "results" are, no one else.

[LittleX]

@NickMNS If I can be honest for a while, it was my emergency back up plan, because I moved to the north of nowhere to study.
I was extremely struggling to find a job (and I was always able to find a job in any country I lived in without big hassle) and when I finally found something after months, I lost it because of the coronavirus and I can't get a maintenance loan if I don't have a job, so I wanted to help myself as self-employed because that would be accepted by SFW, if I would earn a decent amount of money. I had a Google Adsense account before (I had to reactivate it when I deleted my old domains and that was a big mistake).

I run two adult websites and I earn something, but it's not enough for SFW. You need way more adult traffic to earn the same amount of money with mainstream traffic, plus it's way less enjoyable than you may think.

So I wasn't expecting to become a millionaire or make tons of money without effort, I just wanted to make something... (the amount of money I was earning before with AdSense would be enough and it wasn't that hard to archive it).

[edited by: LittleX at 6:40 pm (utc) on Aug 18, 2020]

[nomis5]

Ember

They are yellow, grow on trees, contain potassium, etc. You can't add much that's new or unique. It's the same information that is on probably on a lot of other sites.

How wrong is it possible to be, Amazing, truly amazing.

What areas of the world can support banana growth, what are the best weather conditions, how much sun / heat / water do they need to grow well, which banana varieties are the tastiest, how long do they last in a fridge, which ones have the best appearance, can you freeze them, et al et al et al?

There are a thousand things to be written about bananas which people want to know about. And many areas have not been investigated / written about at all.

Believing that a subject area has been covered at all online, and if so extensively and in depth, is a huge mistake.

[LittleX]

I also have one older domain (I didn't do the website yet, though), but I have a Facebook page for it with 2,500 followers, it's also closely related to animals... well, it's a vegan page.... so what if I will do vegan news blog... would that work, or I am not worthy?

What do you think?

[NickMNS]

Putting loads of effort into a an enterprise which fails is a waste of time.

I disagree. If that were true then nobody would ever try anything new, as the consequence of failure would be too high given the minute probability of success.

The key to not wasting your time is, use your failures as an opportunity to learn. There is real value in knowing what you did wrong and not repeating the same mistakes. Some things can be learned from others (the obvious stuff) but there are some things you just can't learn unless you try. Hardly any entrepreneurial successes were achieved on the first try. Many successes came by accident as the failure of other projects. My favorite example of this is Slack, it came about after a gaming company created the app to allow its developers to communicate together. The game the company had developed failed, but the owners then realized they had a good product in their messaging system, they pivoted and today you have great success story.

[ember]

nomis5, of course you can write about how long bananas last, which varieties are tastiest, etc., but I would bet most of that has already been said. To get into Adsense these days you need unique content. You need to bring value. You need to say something new. Repeating what others have said doesn't cut it. If it did, LittleX would have been approved.

[LittleX]

@NickMNS ... yeap... failure, that's a story of my life :)

@ember: Well, the point of that site was not to take some things about animals for granted and debunk some myths, like cows are producing milk because they eat grass or ruminant animals have four stomachs and also point out some issues... For example, in facts about coconuts, I wrote about monkeys picking up coconuts way before it was a 'scandal' in the UK, but apparently still not enough.

[tangor]

@LittleX... Happy to have you join Webmasterworld.

There's a lot of options because there's a lot of players here. :)

Finding a niche one can leverage for INCOME is very difficult, mostly because others have already done that and got the t-shirt, too.

HOWEVER, there's a secondary in which you can be BETTER than the copycats and adsense nickle and dime leeches ... and it you can address that with honest, sincere, and AUTHORITATIVE content you could possibly pull off a living wage.

G, of course, is the current "easy method" for nickles and dimes. The days of "fabulous wealth and mansions and fancy cars and such, of my! disappeared a decade or more back as g refined their payouts v platforming. One MIGHT say they played a bait and switch to create the CONCEPT of on line advertising, or one can just say they refined what they earned as middle man and let it go at that. :)

Given the current PHYSICAL costs (most countries) for putting up/hosting, and coding your own product, it's still viable in keeping your SITE funded, though you might have to put a little personal time off the pay clock to keep it going.

That said, if the current results are that disappointing then by all means rethink and make the decision that works best for you.

IN THE MEANTIME, take a breath! Step back! Let it continue to run as you consider the way forward. After all, you've probably covered expenses for at least the next 6 months ... and perhaps things will change, or you come up with a different approach.

Hang in there!

[JorgeV]

Hello,

Since you know how to develop and design web sites, I think that, you'll have more "luck" by making sites for others, especially, since you need money "now". If I was you, I would check the local businesses, in the street, district, and town. See which do not have a web site. You can then offer your services to create their site and internet presence. If they have a social network presence , you can propose them to be their community manager, to feed their sn accounts with information, and handle messages from people..

This is just some random thoughts, hope it can help.

[Pixby8]

In today's climate it can be difficult to get a brand new website approved for adsense. You need a track record, and to exist for a while. Unfortunately, I highly doubt Google is only looking at your content. They're contrasting your content with for what length of time your site has existed, and its place within the entire Google index framework. If your site is brand new, there's no way it will have much interaction from Google search, link backs, etc. So, what I would suggest is that you keep building out the site, increase traffic, and 6 months from now, reapply. Once Google sees that your site is here to stay and has some sort of a track record, they will be more inclined to approve it. Because, what Google ultimately wants adsense to run on are sites that weren't built specifically to monetize via adsense. Google is looking at your site and going, "Huh, there are a billion sites like this, do we really need another in the network?"

Another option is to provide more on your website than only articles about facts. Give your users worksheets, or print outs, or games that are associated with the facts. Content doesn't just mean written articles. In the end, you want your site to not appear so cookie cutter, and have a good amount of organic traffic.

[JorgeV]

Hello

Give your users worksheets, or print outs, or games that are associated with the facts.

Quiz would be a nice Idea.

[graeme_p]

They turned down my site which had adsense on it for many years (I removed it for an year or two).

Not a big deal for me, I am looking at other ways of profiting from it.

[futureautomation]

Is a wordpress blog a must for this type of ad approval? Is publisher from Microsoft office okay to use?

[tangor]

@futureautomation ... Welcome to Webmasterworld!

WP is not a requirement, only an iteration of a common CMS. As for MS Office as content creator, that's okay, too.

G has many strange and perplexing gate points, and has had same for years and years. But their ad stuff remains pretty opaque irregardless of platform, which is why we all keep asking the same questions. :)

Code bold, have good content, and be fresh and unique!

[futureautomation]

Hello tangor+,

I have seen in the past few months a number of clips that always mention a blog. There is a free wordpress blog, there are some ad companies that allow the use of a wordpress free blog? I think there is one that must have at least 10,000 views a month to get accepted.

Overall, a domain and a webspace is required for google or Media.net

As well, static sites with content don't do well, it could be content is added further into the future, but for the most part. As well, an article is required to be 1,000 words or so, so three our four pages with smaller article snippets which add up to 1,000 isn't a qualification? Or the a site that is only weeks old.

I've read many pages on what is and what isn't likely to be accepted.

I had tried a lostinspace site it was two months old, but google didn't accept it, and it was static, I couldn't add anymore to it, it was five pages. So that was the end of that.

[tangor]

@futureautomation...

Websites and blogs are different things. Content v cut and paste are different things. How each appears in the serps are different results for different content. Just means that the variables are many and the hoops g puts in place for ad $$$ keeps changing.

I have STATIC websites 20 years old that still produce good income. I've had (client requested) "blogs" that failed in 30 seconds (no content, or duplicated content). True blogs, on the other hand, run into issues with UGC (user generated content, ie. replies) and g treats those more harshly than regular websites.

Find your niche, your passion, your knowledge, and go for it. Also use commonsense when applying adsense (not too much, nor too little!) and read the adsense threads here at WW to find out what others have tried, what seems to work, and the things that definitely DO NOT WORK.

Good luck!

[futureautomation]

Hmm, I can't state I have any real interest or passions that could be a success. I tried lost in space, due to the fact that I had a book on the film, and the response was from google Valuable Inventory: No content. In fact any of the few LIs sites out there don't have ads. It could be a poor subject.

I thought politics, or a particular society subject, I notice law sites can have ads, yes I don't have any knowledge of law.

Space flight, hmm, not much there, just a brief read of the subject.

Like others have stated, requires time, whether a site or a blog, and it isn't like it was in the past, where the acceptance was more open. As well, the earnings may not be much, if there aren't enough actual people browsing.