John Battelle is blogging his experience with advertising on his weblog. He's started with Google AdSense (which I also use) but seems to have violated the First Rule of Google AdSense rather quickly.

There's some amusing (or sad, depending on your point of view) stuff in his post as well as some good comments from Cory Doctorow in the comments, like:

anything the scale of Google is way, way too big to be involved in editorial decision

I think John's response(s) to Google are quite appropriate. I'm curious to see how this evolves.

I remember being rejected by the AdSense program in the early days. I mentioned it to a few Google folks at Foo Camp 2003 who encouraged me to re-apply. Obviously that all worked out, but the initial blow off was rather puzzling.

I guess things haven't changed much.

Posted by jzawodn at September 07, 2004 06:08 PM

Reader Comments
# Arcterex said:

So I can't sleep and come out to do some reading and check email and whatnot. I randomly click on a blog link (this one) and read the post and linked posts. Check my gmail. Have letter telling me to remove the language I had on my adsense site(s) ("click here to send me to hawaii!" or something like that).

Google owes me (according to the report) around $200 for two months (came in at $97 for my first month) so I'm really hoping that they will let me change the text (which I did) and then pay me out. I don't have a huge problem if I get a few dollars less than the report shows, or if the %s are all wonky or whatever, if someone is going to pay me to do basically nothing I'm all for it. However, I hope that I get something for selling my soul for online ads. No 'account shut down' or 'fraudulant clicks' messages, though who knows what might be next.

on September 8, 2004 12:50 AM
# Dirk said:

Click fraud is a hot topic for adsense, even if you don't encourage your visitors to click.

I guess the real problem is when you get inadvertently busted for other reasons.

on September 8, 2004 11:40 AM
# justin said:

i got a warning from Adsense when I first put it on my site - i clicked no more than 5 or 6 times on the Ads , just to double-check to see if the companies advertising were reputable and in keeping with our existing customer base. This was in the early days of Adsense, so i really didnt know any better.

Yeah , I know in hindsight - i should have done it from my home network or an internet cafe. So , yeah - Adsense are deadly serious about click fraud. Don't mess with them - and read and read and read the Adsense terms of service document again and again and again. I can't underestimate how important the "rules" are.

on September 8, 2004 12:31 PM
# justin said:

Arcterex -> you just broke the Adsense TOS. It's explicitly stated that you must NOT publish what your CTRs are , how much you earn/are owed or anything else to do with your AdSense stats/money.

Here's hoping Jeremy is a nice enough chap to remove your posting...

on September 8, 2004 12:35 PM
# David Bruce Jr. said:

How do I get google to put more than one ad on my blog?

I put it on my blog, http://www.victimbehavior.com/blogger.html
not so much to earn money from adsense,(although I wouldn't mind) but to get better page rank.

Thanks

on September 10, 2004 05:19 AM
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