“Oh the humanityâ€
Herb Morrison, reporter for WLS Radio in ChicagoUttered as the Hindenburg fell from the sky engulfed in a giant ball of flame…
Following what will become known as the “June First Email†whereby Adsense is disabling the accounts of those engaging in Arbitrage, the forums and blogs are on fire – with wannabes repeating what they heard and dramatizing something they know little about.
Away from the computer when the storm hit, I almost fell for it. Almost…
I’ve now received over 10 emails from readers and subscribers asking me what I think about this situation, so here it is:
Starting a couple of days ago, some publishers engaging in arbitrage have received the dreaded “your business model is unfit and we’re giving you the can†email from Adsense.
There are no numbers available as to how many people are getting this kick in the gonads from everyone’s favorite monopoly. What the postings seem to suggest is that only an incredibly minute, nearly negligible percentage of publishers have had their accounts banned.
At this time, it seems like your chance of having been hit by this ban is about the same as that of dying in a car accident over the weekend.
Here’s why this is making waves:
Number one: whenever Google so much as passes gas, scourges of butt-kissers think it should be front page news.
Number two: whenever sissy white hat whiners have even the slightest ground on which to stand and point the finger at Black Hatters to say “haha, serves you right†or “I’m so glad Google is finally taking out the trash†or something of the sort, the public expression spaces overflow with such comments.
It’s the pent up frustration and anger of those that don’t make money and whine about it while calling other people names instead of actually figuring out how to build an income.
Nothing new here.
Number 3: Big name bloggers are starved for content. Whenever something even smells like news, they fight for the honor of bringing it up first while making it as dramatic as possible. When it includes Google in anyway, it’s sure to get them lots of buzz and links and that’s good for their business.
Number 4: It’s all a self-reinforcing circle of people running their mouths to look interesting or positioning themselves on the side of truth and “Rightfulness†(with a capital “Râ€).
Here’s what it looks like:
A couple of dozen people get their Accounts disabled. The influencers get wind of it and seize the opportunity to cash in on their readers, just like the National Enquirer salivates whenever a new photo of Britney Spears in a compromising situation surfaces.
Tens of thousands of people read these posts and repeat what they heard on forums, and just like the game of telephone, they add their own interpretation into the mix.
The echo comes full circle and all of a sudden, what you hear is: Google is banning all arbitrage sites and the SERPs will finally be free of those despicable made for Adsense sites.
Black Hat is dead! You now have to build for the Users Only! Web 2.0! Authority Sites! User Generated Content! Buzz Word, buzz word, Hoopla!
The internet will finally be a better place where the forces of evil have been pushed to the brink of extinction and only the Righteous can walk in the light.
So let’s look at the reverse side of things:
I know at least 4 big Arbitragers and none of them has gotten the letter. None of them is doing straight Adwords to Adsense, which certainly seems to be one of the criteria Google is cracking down on.
I personally know over a dozen black hatters that collectively make as much money as a 4 dozen employee business in full swing. Not a single one has received the “June First Emailâ€.
If you look at syndk8.net or the Pginsider.com forum or other places where black hatters congregate, the general idea is that hardly anyone at all is getting banned over this. And these are the worst Adsense abusers of them all. I can count on a three fingered hand how many have been canned…
I have not gotten this email and I dare say one of my early Adsense Accounts, which I started using before I had even the slightest inkling of the need to protect it, is more polluted than the Hudson River.
Thin content with only Adsense above the fold. Cloaking that redirects to fake search engines jammed to the brim with Adsense, all complete with a script that forces high paying ads…
But let me be plain honest with you right now. My account will probably get banned someday. Someday.
I’ve been thinking that for years and so have tens of thousands of others. It will happen. Someday.
Stuff like this just reminds me of it…
And another thing. Adsense Sucks. There’s no other way of putting it.
Not only does Google act like the fascist parent that scolds and withholds without any justification or warning, speaking the words “do no evil†while breaking their cardinal rule at every turn, no. Adsense sucks because you can do so much better.
If you build based on an intelligent strategy, you can get higher payouts and diversify your income streams so that if one of them dries up, it’s only a minor bump in the road. Plus you get to deal with a respectful company that thanks you for your business rather than giving you the silent treatment or worse.
There are only extremely rare situations where Adsense is your best bet for monetization. I can hardly think of one now.
That’s why I faze them out as much as possible. It makes me more money.
And someday. Someday. When my account (s) get banned, I’ll just say good riddance, thanks for the ride.
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Haha! AdSense does sucks! I call it giving away traffic for cheap.
On the other hand, as an AdWords advertiser myself, I get to buy cheap traffic from AdSense, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t but since it’s cheap, I lose very little.
BlackHat may not really be dead, it’s just being reborn as “Spam2.0″. There are 2 ways to do that, first software, next, cheap labor.
Hey Alex,
So what do you tend to monetize your websites with instead of Adsense? Other PPC, or are you referring to Auction, Affiliate or CPA ads?
I have been using Adsense a lot for arbitrage the last 6 months and gross close to $8,000/month now……1/2 is profit.
No dreaded Google email yet. But I have been spending most of the day redoing my arbi pages and making sure they have other monetization options on there and better navigation. Probably even get a newsletter going for some of my niches.
Hey Guys,
Samuel: yup, adsense is the cheap and easy exit for your visitors.
Dave: Other PPC can do as well if not better than Adsense depending on the niche.
Affiliates should be used wherever appropriate (read where you can find a decent program with a decent payout, and that should be possible almost everywhere, or else there would be no Adsense Advertisers).
Again you have the right idea with fixing up your navigation and adding other monetization to the page. You may soon find that they out-perform adsense by a wide margin.
And newsletter? Now that’s what I’m talking about. When you do that, you set out on a path that takes you to somewhere big one year down the road instead of still shaking in your pants everyday wondering if Google will chop off your purse…
Thanks for your comments.
Hey Alex,
You are totally right, as Shoemoney said here: http://www.shoemoney.com/2007/05/19/adsense-arbitrage-just-the-facts/ they are just booting the Adwords to Adsense arbitragers for now. I am doing a lot of BH adsense related stuff and still have my account as well as the hundreds of members we have at PGInsider.com. BTW, it would be appreciated if there was a link to PGinsider.com as you did with Syndk8…
Also, I was really surprised to see that you guys are from Montreal… I am too and would be willing to attend some sort of Montreal BH meeting if there is such a thing… I could bring in a lot as I am a close friend of Adam at PGInsider.com and the person that has coded our new up and coming Magic Builder, a totally automated tool to create the whm account, install the blog, create the portal pages and promote them in an automated way for as many domains as you want…
Nice to see some other BH in Montreal!
Mike
Hey Mike,
Link added. I’ve heard alot about your re-opening and it looks like your amazing resource is only getting better. I will surely post about it shortly.
There are lots of black hatters in Montreal. Perhaps we should have a get together. I’m out of town right now, but when I get back, beer’s on me
DAMN YOU ALEX! (just kidding)
I was going to write about this VERY topic today.
The new Magic Builder looks good. A cloaked version that does all of this already exists atsimplifiedSEC.com. (note from Alex: site down temporarily)
As far as fake SE’s, I have ONE that generates $200 with Adsense. I should be watching more videos like http://www.beyondadsense.com ROFL.
Woody
Hey Woody,
Hot topic
I’m going to remove the link to simplified SEC because the site is down…
Those Beyond Adsense videos are good stuff. That is definitely the way to go. I’ll have to get in touch with Keith for an interview or something…
Busted! I was one of the people to sent you some links asking questions about this Google thing. I new so I needed to get some more info. How about those links about SEC and the Plan. I wanted to STILL find out about some other venues to having a white hat site. Thus, I was asking about SEC, Ads88ense S88ite Bu88ilder, etc.
I was, again, under the wonderment of the playing field. Love you stuff and learning more.
Jamie
Damn Alex, you are sounding more like me every day. I have made these very same rants in a number of places over the last couple of years.
As more and more people believe the drivel being spewed in these forums and leave the market, I will be spititng out domains by the thousands. I have just find tuned my nuclear toolset yet again to include video, blogs, news, photos, articles, etc.
Vito
Hey guys,
Jamie: Thanks for emailing, you were the first to bring this to my attention.
Vito: Your tool set sounds impressive. Images with alt text I’ve done but video not yet. Good stuff. Keep those domains coming
Hey Alex,
You are right. Diversification is the way to go always but is glad to know what you guys think about this issue. BTW,are you refering to adsblacklist to display the highest paying ads?
Cheers
Hi Nick,
That’s an interesting little tool but the trick is actually quite a bit more evil. When redirecting the traffic, you have it pass keyword data to the search engine so that it performs a real search on the keyword you want. That displays the Adsense ads you know will be sourced for that keyword. That way you get high paying ads everytime…
Hi Alex
So arbitrage is dead…LOL
Well..if it is..someone need to tell Arbitrage to stop working as it is…otherwise it may be called a ZUMBI….LOL
At least for me…and I’m sure for us…it’s more alive than ever…
Traffic price is decreasing (if you know where and how to buy it), margin % is increasing (if you know for whom and how to sell it)….so….not bad for a “dead”
thing…LOL
Take care Alex
Hey Luiz,
Hard to argue with that. We’ll have to share the wealth sometime soon I think (let people in on how to do arbitrage the “safe” way)
I posted about this at warrior forum. Prior to that i had seen only 2-3 posts about it and wanted some feedback from the warriors.
Then i found shoemonies vid. If they were really sending out these emails wouldnt there be thousands of posts and threads.
I’m just planning to begin arbitrage so it had me worried for a little.
I think you guys should watch this…:-)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHFczv9oA2w
Take care,
Luiz
Hey Guys,
Gareth: I can understand the worry, I was too initially. However, after speaking to people and evaluating the situation objectively, the ban has been far more contrained than it initially seemed.
Out of the over 1000 people that have read this post thus far, not one has mentioned any trouble with their account, quite the contrary…
Luiz: Good video, someone had already posted it above, but I guess some folks just can’t get enough shoemoney
I personaly know of 6 accounts that were banned last month and one yesterday……
All were doing a TON of adwords traffic….all were grossing about 2 to 3K a day…….back in December/January they were doing 8 to 10K a day….
Everyone I know has been banned…….you guys sure this isn’t more widespread…….
Andrew
Hi Andrew,
I’m not suggesting no accounts were banned, in fact there were several…
They almost all fit into the category you described which is:making tons of cash buying huge Adwords traffic and sending it to Adsense pages.
Not, MFA sites, not arbitrage sites, just the very large Adwords to Adsense guys.
Far from the apocalypse, this represents and infinitely small percentage of publishers and has little or nothing to do with Black Hat SEO.
I was raping google arbitrage for a few month, from Oct 06 to Mar 07, then on morning I opened my account and google not only banned me, but kept a $28,000 check that was coming to me. They stated unqualified traffic or something lame like that. I tried to appeal of course, but they told me to f off. They even canceled my family memebers accounts. My brother had his own AdSense account, and b/c he lives with me and his sites were hosted on my server, they closed down his account to, and he wasn’t doing anything shady.
Hey Johnny,
That hurts. Where you using other feeds as well or only Google’s?
Just google. I’ve applied to YPN several times, but they never give me an account.