I was banned yesterday for 1 picture, a publisher that does 6 figures

[thomor25]

well it looks like I was banned, One of the sites I own is a photo host. Someone uploaded a porn picture. I'm going to be honest here, I made alot of money from them, in the #*$!,xxx range monthly. I have over 15 sites to which I have ads on. I tried comprimising with them and even told them that I would remove their ads from that site completely and they said no. They said it was a business decision, what kind of business turns down making 6 figures a month by doing nothing at all? They say they are willing to work with publishers and they are excited and this and that aobut this new program. They don't care about us. They don't even care about the big publishers. I made them enough this year to pay for 3 or 4 people ssalary's at yahoo. To have your whole life, what you built up with your hands, what you planned the rest of your life on, come crashing down cause a guy behind a desk pushed a button and turned off your account. For me this was my sole source of income, I left my job to do this fulltime. I'm depressed, I don't know what to do, I don't know where to go. Its unjust and unfair what they did to me, because of 1 picture, no comprimise, no calling me, nothing just an email to say goodbye sorry for the #*$!ty life you will have to go back to now. Truthfully I expected more from a company such as yahoo. I guess I was wrong, about a lot of things.

[bcolflesh]

It doesn't help you now - but start thinking about diversifing your income sources - all eggs in one basket eventually equals your current situation...

[sirkei]

If i were you, i will go to adsense. If you made 6 figures a month, you will at least make 5 figures there in adsense. Or worse, 4 figures a month. But 4 figures a month is good enough for an AVERAGE person to live on. Good luck though.

[LifeinAsia]

There was a very good article in today's Business section of the L.A. Times discussing the major reasons new companies go bankrupt. One of the top ones was building a business around 1 or 2 key clients (you could also substitute "suppliers" for "clients").

If you lose one of those clients either through your fault or no fault (the client goes bankrupt, the owner dies, etc.), then your business is in serious jeapordy.

By the very nature of having a photo host, you knowingly exposed yourself to the huge risk of someone uploading porn, copyrighted material, or other material that is against the ToS of Yahoo or Google or some other customer/supplier/partner. So you should probably be thankful for the money that you did get before your luck finally ran out.

One option is to join Google (this time DO NOT put any ads on the photo host site). Chances are that you should be making pretty good money again almost right away, if not more.

[ember]

Diversify. Diversify. Diversify. Never have all your eggs in one basket.

[thomor25]

I have 6k a month in expenses. Yes I understand the thing about eggs in one basket but it was hard not to with all the money I was making from them. I just hope adsense will be able to cover it. As far as what I have made I have just sat on it. Haven't gone too wild but its enough to last me if I pinch pennies. Hopefully the thing will cover its expenses and then some. I just can't believe they wouldn't even listen, to be on cloud 9 for this long and have it all come crashing down in 2 email with a general response i dunno it makes it seems like they don't care about us at all. I mean what are we really to them? I would have hope something more then how I was delt with, I mean was I just an account number, did he not look at the numbers in my account, was he having a bad day, what? I dunno I appreciate you guys talking to me it does help to hear from your webmaster peers.

[freeflight2]

sorry to hear that... will they send you the outstanding revenue?
did you filter the traffic to be 100% US?

[thomor25]

I didn't get suspended cause of international traffic I was suspended for 1 picture. Yes they said they would send me my remaining balance. I was geotargetting though.

[asp4bunnies]

For a site pulling six figures per month, surely they have they assigned you an account manager? You seem to have been banned out of the blue and surely an account manager should have warned you first?

How many months have you been in their program? How many paychecks have you already received? Any previous warning letters from them at all?

[thomor25]

Never got an account manager, I've been in since nov, and I've gotten 4 checks so far.

[thomor25]

oh I should of said WAS in since nov. nope never got a warnign or anything just straight out of the blue. I've gotten emails about their bot not being able to spider parts of one of my sites but that was because it was a free forum host and some admin make their forums private.

[asp4bunnies]

Well this is certainly terrible for you and I'm equally concerned for all of us here.

Hopefully this information will help you analyze the situation, rather then irritate you, as information is always the best tool for correcting a situation:

Your site (which I found via your post in a different forum) wasn't terminated because of a single porn picture (even if that's the official reason they give you). You are correct in pointing out how ridiculous that would be, especially since Yahoo has sent warnings to others in the past when content is against ToS.

It's probably because it's an unmoderated forum and that presents 2 problems: (a) unmoderated + (b) forum:

a) it's unmoderated by you, the owner. (Where there's one porn picture, there are surely other legal problems from Yahoo's perspective, including copyright, warez discussions, etc...). In truth, this issue isn't such a big one. I think this porn picture incident was really just a legal scapegoat they found to dismiss your site for other reasons that were kind of grey in their ToS.

Here's the other reason and probably the real reason they let you go:

b) Your site is a giant network of forums. Forum sites are notoriously poor at sending good traffic leads that convert to sales for their advertisers. So while Yahoo is giving up a six figure income by losing you, odds are they were losing lots of advertisers who abandoned their entire inventory in YPN after having their advertisements convert poorly on your sites.

If you understand it from their big picture perpective, they were only gaining short term revenue from people who placed ads on your site, burning through their budgets and not renewing. Gaining $100,000 per month over 1 month and then terminating vs. $50,000 per month for 12 months without terminating is the big picture here.

They want quality traffic leads. Volume isn't enough.

If your letter was from "Ron M" then your issue most probably was a quality traffic analysis at heart.

That's my best guess anyway. Best of luck to you in any case, seriously.

And best of luck to all of us. Your account is not the first and it won't be the last.

EDIT: If you want any advice as to how to get reinstated, the best idea would be to analyze which pages convert poorly, cull them and only focus on pages that convert well... A prime example would be culling anyone who makes their forum private from displaying ads. Make that a paid subscribers feature instead. Another example would be culling ads from displaying on posts that have little content (i.e. set a character minimum on threads before displaying ads alongside them)... I think we can all come up with ideas to improve targetting and matching up with good content.

[ember]

I didn't mean for my "eggs in one basket" comment to be flippant. It is very hard not to concentrate on one area of your business when it is pulling in so much money. We could be making more income if we, too, sunk everything into Yahoo! Instead, we choose to diversify and have several other revenue streams so that if any one (or two) gets the rug pulled out from under it, we are still able to float. Takes more work but lets me sleep at night. I expect everyday that some arbitrary email will change our lives, not because we're doing anyhting wrong, but because by EXPECTING it to happen, it probably won't. And if it does, we're covered.

[thomor25]

my email was from

<Snip - A person withing Yahoo>

not a ron m

My site I signed up with, the forum host, was the site that yahoo reviewed and is not my biggest site in forms of traffic.

as far as my other sites I own a couple myspace resource sites as well that get far more traffic then the forum host.

[edited by: Woz at 12:02 am (utc) on April 27, 2006]
[edit reason] No Specifics please. [/edit]

[Rodney]

Have you tried giving them a call to discuss the issue?

[freeflight2]

asp4b:great analysis!
do you have any proof that Y! is analyzing # of leads of YPN partners?

[asp4bunnies]

Yes, I know of 3 different high-volume publishers terminated today, all receiving letters from Relevance Analysts.

In the letter they discuss Geographic location and quality of traffic leads as *separately* analyzed.

So if you're traffic is 100% US, but doesn't buy a thing, your account is still in jeapardy.

[Crickey]

In the letter they discuss Geographic location and quality of traffic leads as *separately* analyzed.

Wauw - blame the publishers for poor quality trafic...tssk tssk.

[thomor25]

Yes I called them yesterday at 2 pm when all my ads went blank. I was working on one of my sites when it happened so thats how I knew and then at 7pm i got the email to confirm it and why. I had called 4 times, 2 yesterday and 2 today, talking to the same lady who is very nice and understoood my situation but said they would not budge on their decision because it was a nude photograph, so because of 1 picture they kicked a huge publisher out. Not a sound business decision no matter how you look at it. I would have made over half a million dollars this year from them and lord knows how much they would have made from me.

[sirkei]

==>So if you're traffic is 100% US, but doesn't buy a thing, your account is still in jeapardy.

This one really makes me in depression. :( So i guess this is not easy money at all now.

[Rodney]

so because of 1 picture they kicked a huge publisher out. Not a sound business decision no matter how you look at it

Actually, it sounds like it probably wasn't just "1 picture" that got you kicked out even though that may have been the reason they gave you.

It sounds like it may have been a sound business decision if you were actually going to make Yahoo *lose* money in the long term.

With that high volume of traffic, it seems like maybe CPM ads might be a better fit (although not many CPM networks allow forum sites because of the poor quality of traffic they generate for their advertisers).

[thomor25]

no it WAS the only reason. my forum host isn't the only website i have people. I own many many more sites that was just a site that i signed up under.

[asp4bunnies]

You can think whatever you like, but logic dictates they wouldn't have treated you like that if the problem really was only a single image.

They are using it as a scapegoat and the sooner you address the real issue (by discovering it yourself - asking them will get you nowhere), the sooner you can address it and get reinstated.

Use this space to identify potential problems. We'll help you. Maybe the problem was related to your hosting different sites under one account? What kind of sites were they?

[trungngo]

That's suck! Can't believe things like this happened in the corporate world. I would think that Yahoo handle matter like this more professionally. They should have their employees or (manager) call you instead of let someone just send a goodbye email. What are they thinking when treating a client with 6 figures like that?
They just don't care who 'we are' (the one who make them rich)

Don't expect google! Adsense be nice to you. I was with them from the day they launched Adsense and made them alot of money but they boost me out just like you.

ONE CLICK AND ALL MY LIFE, PLAN ARE DONE!

What is the word 'fair' meaning anything to Yahoo & Google?

[Rodney]

no it WAS the only reason.

You say that, but you really have now way of knowing it as a *certainty*.

[TammyJo]

My thought when I read it was they weren't just thinking of the one picture they found, but how many they didn't find and the chance that more of those types of photo's could be added ....without your knowledge. The first one wasn't removed, how can they be sure the others will be.

They also need to show us that they will abide by their TOS, so it doesn't get abused when it's out of beta.

There is probably more to it than this though.

[thomor25]

I told them I would not put that site on my account at all as in there won't be a problem anymore of what if it happens again. I told them I would just completely remove all ypn ads from it.

As far as being certain, nothing in life is and I know that now.

[walkman]

I think this was an excuse, if that's what they told you. Once upon a time I had a site and someone left a well-meaning comment asking visitors to click on the ads to "help me," yet Google waited for me till I removed the comment. When they found another one days later, they asked me again. No removal, no threat or anything similar (I offered to remove adwords till I found all similar comments though.) Oh, and I was making barely a few hundred a month from Google...

you must've done something else, whether you know or admit it.

[thomor25]

why is everyone thinking its something else. Is it the fact people think I'm lying or think ypn is lying to me? I haven't done anything wrong on any of my sites, the photo thing could only be the possible thing. I don't violate anything else in this tos. But on the other had that might be the case, now all the theories are going to come out on what if it was the "lone picture" theory or something else. The fact is I'm banned now or suspended they say not banned, but if it is for that very reason they stated watch out people, if it isn't for that very reason and they are trying to hide something watch out even more.

[moTi]

yet Google waited for me till I removed the comment. When they found another one days later, they asked me again.

walkman, how does that come? certainly you don't mean, that google inspects all of its publisher sites manually on a frequent regular basis? did rather someone report you because of the post in question and after that they investigated?