To be honest I understand the frustration. I’ve experienced it so many times on my sites. Too many people I’ve spoken with had suffered the same thing commonly known as “the google penalty”. What is the big story behind this common problem? Is there a way to battle it? Is it true that a small error could lead to it? I’ll try to present you some of my views and experiences about this matter.

I have been asked to post about this topic by my friends who operate a small MMO / SEO website which experienced such a penalty recently. How do they know it’s a penalty? Well it’s easy. Weekly they got around 100 Google hits daily (according to Google Analytics) and the next day (two days ago) their Google clicks simply decreased to 5-10 hits daily. They didn’t purchase any links, they didn’t exchange any links, they didn’t change anything on their site, the only thing they can recall that they did the day before is that they pasted a table they found on other site to their own. Now how confused are they. They were happy about each single Google visitor they received only to witness this kind of penalty. They don’t even rank on first page for their  domain name. And I hated to tell them that “Yes, I also believe you have a google penalty”. And yo ucan imagine how sorry they were. And I felt sorry for them too.

Now someone might say “Heh - what did they expect? They copied content from other site”. Now this sucks. Big time. One table from other site could cause a penalty?? If that is the case my friends, It’s time for me - a strong Google supporter (and shareholder if you like) to review some of my standing points with Google and it’s Algorithm’s. Did I mention that their site is not in English? I will not go any further into discussing the problems of duplicate content and how there are many legit cases when content could and should be duplicated, but thrust me I know a thousands of good and legitimate reasons for this. Thousands of times I’ve seen specific articles going down and I felt sorry for not preserving them on my site. Copying someone’s content followed with link to original shouldn’t be wrong folks! I am a strong believer in this and I challenge everyone to discuss this topic with me. I am definitely sure that shouldn’t EVER lead to a penalty like these folks experienced.

“It isn’t a penalty”. Ok then. They lost a huge part of their daily traffic. They don’t even rank #1 for their domain name which is not competitive keyword at all. They have other sites on same IP that still rank well so it’s not a server issue. Come on. IT IS A PENALTY. How do I know? Well the problem is that I DON’T. I AM PARANOIC. Why? Well Google made me. Because there is no single word explaining any penalties on Google webmaster help. Try searching for “Penalty” here. Nothing. Nada.

So guys lost their highly valuable traffic which left them guessing and wandering. While their competition is advancing. They have read the Google webmaster guidelines tens of times and they went step by step making sure they didn’t break any “Golden Google Rules”. And again, they found nothing.

Why do I care folks? Well coz I’ve been there. We all were. And I feel sorry for these guys. With so much market presence Google should definitely care more about people whose websites were affected with these irrational switches in Google behavior. I remember getting mails telling me that I should read guidelines and that they have many requests and that they can’t cope with them all. That’s coz they are so big. And who made them so big? Well we did. People like me who worked their ass off online for the last 10 years. Now the least they should do is pay some more respect and at least guide us to mistakes that lead to these stupid penalties. Will it be an online tool or their support - I don’t care, as long as it’s fast and informative.

I want to compete. That is ok. I want to invest. But don’t leave it all in mist Google, coz you might end there as well. Let my words be remembered.

Popularity: 46%

Since you visited my site and since you are reading this specific post I guess that you are also trying to making money from blog like we all do. Well this article is not going to digg into specifics of money making with your blog, instead it is intended to give you some ideas on how could you also make money with your blog. Here are some of the most common ways, however I am sure that there are plenty other ways to do it - it all depends on your imagination and your skills.

1. Join And Promote Affiliate Programs. This is generally the most common way of making money blogging. People join various niche and general affiliate programs and either sell products or services of various advertisers. For instance people often join Amazon.com affiliate program and show/sell Amazon products on their blog.
2. Take Part In PPC Programs. Adsense and other programs like we do on this blog and show ads on your blog. When someone clicks on those ads you get paid.
3. Sell Paid Reviews On Your Blog. This has become a very popular practice recently with some blogs asking $500, $1000 or even more to review products/services on their blog. If you are a beginner you should probably not expect much since it greatly depends on you audience and website traffic. One of the popular sites that can help you make money writing reviews is PayPerPost.com
4. Sell Ad Space On Your Blog. Again, very popular method that will help you make money from your blog. Create ad zones and sell banners on a monthly base. You can always use a product like Max Banner Ads Wordpress Plugin to make your life easier by managing your site ads for you.
5. Ask For Visitor Contribution. You’ve seen it many times. If you do not want to have too commercial blog you can always put that famous link “Please Donate To My Blog” and link it to your PayPal page.
6. Market Your Own Products. If you have some of your products (E Books maybe?) that you sell online you can always use your blog as your marketing portal and offer your products to your site visitors instead of paying others for advertising your products.

These are the most common ways to make some serious blog money. If you know other ways you are always welcome to post your comments.

Popularity: 72%

Many people had problems with their Google Adsense accounts being disabled and many of them has been asking me if it is their end with Google Adsense? I tried to do some research and see what is the position of a person whose Google Adsense account is disabled - is it the end? Here’s what I found out.

First, let’s mention why most of the account are instantly disabled. One of the most common reasons for Adsense folks to disable your account is because of “invalid click activity” or as some say - “generating of invalid clicks”. What does that mean? Well it means that your adsense ads activity for some reasons became suspicious and caught by their filters and basically that is exactly what triggered the ban. This will also result in a loss of your earnings that were caused with those invalid clicks.

How do those notifications about disabled Adsense accounts look like?

There are two mails that we saw that are most often. Here they are:

Hello ……………………….,

It has come to our attention that invalid clicks have been generated on
the Google ads on your site(s). We have therefore disabled your Google
AdSense account. Please understand that this step was taken in an
effort to protect the interest of the AdWords advertisers.

A publisher’s site may not have invalid clicks on any ad(s), including
but not limited to clicks generated by:

- a publisher on his own web pages
- a publisher encouraging others to click on his ads
- automated clicking programs or any other deceptive software
- a publisher altering any portion of the ad code or changing the
layout, behavior, targeting, or delivery of ads for any reason

Practices such as these are in violation of the Google AdSense Terms
and Conditions and program polices, which can be viewed at:

https://www.google.com/adsense/localized-terms?hl=en_US
https://www.google.com/adsense/policies?hl=en_US

Publishers disabled for invalid click activity are not allowed further
participation in AdSense and do not receive any further payment. The
earnings on your account will be properly returned to the affected
advertisers.

Sincerely,

The Google AdSense Team

another mail looks like this:

Hello ……………………….,

While going through our records recently, we found that your AdSense
account has posed a significant risk to our AdWords advertisers. Since
keeping your account in our publisher network may financially damage
our advertisers in the future, we’ve decided to disable your account.

Please understand that we consider this a necessary step to protect the
interests of both our advertisers and our other AdSense publishers. We
realize the inconvenience this may cause you, and we thank you in
advance for your understanding and cooperation.

If you have any questions about your account or the actions we’ve
taken, please do not reply to this email. You can find more information
by visiting
https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?answer=57153&hl=en_US.

They both are more less telling you the same thing - that you Adsense account is disabled.

Is there any way to re-enable your disabled Adsense account?

Although many people with disabled adsense account problem had tried to write Google Adsense about it, not many had much success in reactivating their accounts. I can’t be very optimistic here folks. From what I found out, it seems that neither one disabled adsense account was reactivated. At least I didn’t heard about it. It seems to be a highest ranked adsense penalty and everyone should try to always comply with Google Adsense Terms And Conditions (localized adsense terms can be found here and policies here) to avoid this kind of ban.

Although the future doesn’t look bright for you at this moment, here’s what you can do. First thing you should know about is Adsense ivalid clicks appeal form, and here’s what Google says about it:

Publishers disabled for invalid click activity are not allowed further participation in Google AdSense. However, if you can maintain in good faith that the invalid clicks we detected on your ads were not due to your actions or negligence, or the actions or negligence of others working for you, you may appeal the closing of your account.

also:

Google reserves sole discretion in considering whether to take any action on an appeal.

You should also check this article on SeoPedia that would help you with writing your Adsense appeal and also provide some additional info about this form and your approach to Adsense team.

What could you do to prevent your Adsense Account from being disabled?

Many people claimed that they managed to stop Adsense from disabling their account by mailing Adsense when they noticed some spam clicks. They also claim that resulted in removing funds that resulted from fraud from your earnings but the account were left active.

What is a solution for disabled Adsense account?

Although some people have been recommending that you should try to apply for New Google Adsense account with new domain and new username/adress, I would really not recommend it. That could look like you are trying to trick Google and if they find out it could also result in a ban / loosing all funds on that second account. I would really recommend trying to resolve it with them, and in case of negative reply from google  you should try to check some other PPC programs.

I wish you good luck with re-enabling your disabled Adsense account.

Popularity: 98%

There are not many online tools that really impress me with their effectiveness and usefulness. More less each of those tools has it’s flaws and are not offering anything revolutionary. However the tool that I found recently left me really impressed and I think that their approach might very soon be accepted by many domain brokers as it is indeed a better way to look up free domains. The tool (site) is called Instant Domain Search, and although this might look like a paid review, I am in no way affiliated with this site. I really think that they are great.

So what is that they did differently? They implemented AJAX technology is domain search thus allowing you to see free domains as you type. The site response is fast (unlike many other AJAX based scripts) and it returns domain status for .com .net and .org domains almost instantly. It already helped me with some searches and I plan to use it from now on. It is a great tool in my opinion and I would be surprised not to see other domain brokers start using something similar soon.

Popularity: 67%

I am sure you’ve all heard about Cuil.com that created a huge net buzz after it was launched on July 28, 2008. The new search engine Cuil claims to have a bigger index than Google for instance. Cuil was down for couple of times since it’s launch due to the high traffic, and created a numerous pro-con discussions on many boards. However, today I learned that another search engine went live called Yuil, and after a bit of research I found out the following:

Yuil was launched couple days ago by Sam Pullara, who is actually a Yahoo VP of Platforms. It was supposed to be a combination of Yahoo search results (using their BOSS platform). However, although Yuil made a big buzz online in the last couple of days (it was originally located on Sam Pullara’s site), it died faster than it took a breath. It was more a hack than a real search engine, and it seems that we’ll not be hearing about it again.

So long Yuil, it was nice meeting you

Popularity: 66%

I was checking Google Trends today and while browsing many interesting keywords and graphs on trends site, I found out this interesting graph that represents the searches for “make money online” term since 2004. As you can see on the graph, the MMO (Make Money Online) market is on the rise since then and more people want to get in this profitable and growing market. Check out the graph (click on the image to view full size graph).

It is not simply a reflection of more people that use internet, it is the actual trend. Compared to make money online market, a term like “buy DVD” is declining last few years in a row. Here is the graph:

Google Trends has some very interesting and useful graphs. You might want to do your research there.

Popularity: 71%

Although I already wrote about how to embed video on your wordpress blog, I wanted to add another great video tutorial that I’ve found today on Youtube. Here it is embedded on my blog. Watch it and learn how to embed video on your blog too.

I am sure that embedding video in Wordpress will be easy after watching this great tutorial.

Popularity: 70%

You all know that I am in love with PHP and all it’s nice little functions and useful scripts. That is why I decided to start a new PHP Scripts category where I plan to post all those little code samples that I use and that can be useful for you too. Today I wanted to launch a new affiliate campaign on my site and I needed to put a simple PHP redirect that would make my life easier. I plan to create a dir /go on my site and in it I will place a small php files for each affiliate program that I use. That is a technique that many sites use, and basically instead of linking directly to affiliate you link to a php file on your site that does the forward to affiliate site. Why? Well there are many reasons but I will try to cover those in one of my upcoming articles, and now you need to see the code. It is very simple:

<?php
header("Location: http://somedomain.com/youraffiliatecode");
?>

You can copy paste this code into text editor like notepad and save it on your computer. You can name it whatever you like but a good practice is to name it after your sponsor. Then upload it to your site (subfolder or root, whatever you prefer) and when you hit it in your browser it will take you to the site that you put after Location: part. That’s it, hope it helps your marketing efforts!

Popularity: 67%

This time I want to draw your attention to these interesting articles:

1. First one is a series of 3 articles on Problogger about positioning your adsense ads. Here is Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3 of this great series from Darren Rowse.
2. Old Steve Pavlina’s post on how to earn $10.000 in one hour is here and you should read it.
3. 7 strategies on how to make money blogging can be found on DoshDosh.com and it is another great article for you to read.

Enjoy reading these timeless posts and leave your comments!

Popularity: 84%

I have to admit it. I simply love great Free Wordpress plugins. They can not only help you with your daily tasks, but also can highly increase your blog’s exposure and visibility. One of the best plugins that I found recently that does a great job in increasing your blog’s RSS readers is called What Would Seth Godin Do?

This is definitely one of the best plugins to increase your RSS feed subscribers. It does it by posting a simple message of your choice to your site visitors. You can configure this plugin with ease. The default setting will allow you to show your message to new visitors only the first three times they visit your page. You can always change the settings to 0 and your message will be shown every time someone visits your site.

Installation is very simple and easy and configuration is very simple too. By default, new visitors to your blog will see a small box above each post containing the words “If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!”. You can customize this message, its lifespan, and its location. New features also allow you to customize a message for return visitors to your blog.

This great plugin require cookies. Users without cookies will always see your message. You can visit a plugin page here: What Would Seth Godin Do?

Popularity: 92%