BellaOnline Forums Computers Blogs & Social Networking Problem with Adsense

Apparently adsense payments has been having serious problems lately. I looked at my account this morning and my finalized payment expected for Oct was only a very tiny fraction of my estimated payment.

I got on the help forum and the adsense team had addressed a glitch with Sept payments but so far no info about Oct. I posted a question in hopes of some sort of answer. There is no real way to directly email the adsense people.

Did anybody else have a problem with earnings there? Since I got hit with the Panda update last month, I'm really not happy with Google right now!!

Did you read this "A discrepancy might be due to invalid clicks or impressions in your account. Significant levels of invalid activity are typically caused by issues with traffic sources or ad implementation. We recommend that you review the beginner�s guide and tips for preventing invalid activity for more information."

I would say that a huge drop in traffic would invalidate a lot of impressions that they were estimating your blog would get.

I checked this myself because I saw a $2.00 discrepancy but it was the first time I had noticed this. Turns out minor ones like that are fairly normal. I just had never noticed until I switched to the new interface.

How scary that you can just get dumped by google like that. All this Panda stuff is the reason why I'm now busting my butt to acquire tons of traffic from additional sources and Panda proofing my site too.

Panda boosted my traffic by about 1000 visitors a day but I would rather be safe and work on more traffic from other sources than have to deal with what you're experiencing. Hope things get better for you soon : )

I did read about the discrepancy issue and have seen a dollar or two difference in the past but my finalized earnings were about 15% of the estimated. I can't imagine such a huge difference is due to a traffic drop.

One thing that makes me suspicious is that the Sept payments due in Oct had a great big glitch in it and many people didn't get paid at all, according to the forums.

My earnings had been much higher before the Panda update but that only affected the latter half of the month. Besides, I have two blogs that I earn adsense from which were not affected by Panda at all and those earnings have vanished as well.

I wish there were some alternative to adsence personally. I use Amazon, which is ok for my blogs but my main earnings were from adsense. I've tried other affiliates like Linkshare and commission junction and never made more than a dollar or two. Ditto for individual affiliates. I might get a sale now and then from individual ones but never enough to actually collect a check so I was doing work for them and they were keeping the money.

Woah, that is freaky. I wonder if Panda is also a way for google to reduce their affiliate payments.

There are many alternatives to adsense including Chitika, Kontera, Text Link Ads, Ad Brite, Viral Ad Network, and many more.

Developing a monetization plan that goes beyond just ad clicks is also a good idea. Smaller sites/blogs can not survive with just ad income. Only if you're site/blog is HUGE do you have the luxury of selling ad space to buyers but this also has a downside.

I've been approached by ad buyers 3 times now but I like my current monetization mix because it doesn't put all my eggs in one basket.

Have you tried clickbank? This is an amazing source of revenue. If you're good at pre-selling, many clickbank products with high gravity ratings have a conversion rate of 50%! That is way higher than amazon, cj, and other programs I use.

Here is an example of two articles that convert at 50% for me. The really interesting thing is this is not my main audience but if it was I would be raking in some serious income with this product alone.

300 workout

Spartacus Workout

That adsense never worked for my website. I am paying to advertise via adsense myself also but it does not bring me any profits as people driven from the ads just stay for few seconds comparing to those who find me on the search engines and have a genuine interest. Once the credit is used, I won't use it myself anymore either.

Yes, I do use clickbank but don't make a lot from it. I've made maybe $300 in about 18 months. Not what I'd consider huge.

I'm going to try Chitika on my two of my blogs and see how that goes.

Monica listed some good alternatives Chitika, Kontera etc. I'm a bit hesitant on AdBrite, I've heard good and bad about them...but enough bad about them that I'm not certain if I'd use them on a site or advertise with them.

Chitika is nice because I think they show ads relevant to the search term that brought the user to your site, not the text related terms found in the content itself. So if your article is a miss for the individual, you might have a more relevant ad showing up for them.

Google is getting too comfortable with folks and now making it harder for you to earn some serious cash. I know from the brief time I had it on my website before I got banned, there were a lot of rules about placement and not talking about your earnings. Talking about my earnings is what got me banned. At first I was upset and was going to take the option they give you when you get the famous "banned" email, but decided to leave it alone. Now I am glad. It seemed like it took FOREVER to get to $50 and back then (last year) you had to get to at least $100 to get your first payment. I think as more folks pull out from AdSense, Google will be FORCED to return things to normal where you can make a decent income. If not, as stated above, there are alternatives. I have yet to put another income generating source on my website and may never. Time will tell

I checked out the information Google puts out to get a higher ranking on its search engine. It recommend giving your readers pages of unique useful information such as product reviews and product comparisons. I had not thought about writing product comparisons.

Google did get the problem fixed a couple days ago but there were some REALLY nasty comments on the adsense forums about how Google treats its publishers though.

It doesn't seem right that one company should have so much power. I got hit in the Panda update and then my earning for October were only a tiny fraction of estimated. They did fix the second problem but I'm just disgusted with google right now.