I’ve switched all ads on most of my websites to AdBrite, which is similar to Google AdSense but does not ban people so easily. I received a $5.73 check for my AdBrite earnings from July 2010, but switched back to AdSense to make more money. Now that I’m banned from AdSense, there’s really no reason not to use AdBrite. I hope this program becomes as good as Google AdSense, but I am expecting a huge decline in income.

This is definitely a wake-up call for me. It’s never good to invest yourself too heavily in one company. It’s like I’ve lost my job. I was making over $400 a month from Google’s program as an independent contractor. Now, Larry Page and Sergey Brin have basically said “YOU’RE FIRED,” and they don’t even want to pay my back wages!

UPDATED 2010-11-22 05:45 GMT: I have been restored to the Google AdSense program, but I can no longer display ads on other peoples websites. This will reduce my income by 75%, but AdSense still generates more revenue than any other program, so I’ve stopped using AdBrite, which only generated about $1.00 per day.

30 minutes ago, I received this email from Google AdSense:

Hello,

We continually review all publishers according to our Terms and Conditions and program policies, and we reserve the right to disable publishers or sites that are not in compliance with our policies.

Our specialists have found that your account is not in compliance with these program policies. As a result, we have disabled your account.

Google has certain policies in place that we believe will help ensure the effectiveness of Google ads for our publishers as well as our advertisers. We believe strongly in freedom of expression and therefore
offer broad access to content across the web without censoring results. At the same time, we reserve the right to exercise editorial discretion when it comes to the ads we display in our AdWords program and the sites on which we choose to display them in our AdSense program, as noted in our respective Terms and Conditions.

Thank you for your understanding.

Sincerely,

The Google AdSense Team

I immediately filled out an appeal, but I don’t even know why I was banned. The email doesn’t say. Is Google trying to cheat me out of the $570 they owe me? I earned $430 last month and $140 this month I have not yet received, and my AdSense account says they are not going to pay me until “issues” with my account are resolved. WHAT DOES THIS MEAN???

If you use my Tweet This plugin, DO NOT enable “Insert Google AdSense ads to support Tweet This” anymore. Unless my account is restored, Google will just keep the money. It won’t help me at all.

UPDATED 2010-11-11 20:45 GMT: Here are some details of my AdSense usage I posted on this forum:

I’ve been doing the same thing for the past 8 months and receiving Google checks every month, so it’s really surprising that

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I was reading this article about Google’s favicon revisions. I don’t like the new lowercase “g”; the old capital one was better and more distinctive. But Google doesn’t like the new icon either, and is accepting submissions, which ends on the 2008-06-20. I always liked the Google logo with the colored balls, but I don’t see any trace of it in their current ideas. so I made and submitted my own:

Marissa and Micheal complain that Google has no specific logo, so only their name or a derivative of it will do. Why can’t this be their logo? It’s already on Google Earth (at the bottom-left). Seems like a good favicon idea to me. The speckled green and red bars frame the balls, representing the Google spirit of courage and innovation.

If it wins, here’s what my Firefox address bar will be looking like in a few weeks:

And this will be the new Google browsing experience:

Beautiful, no? I like it a lot better than what we have now:

The problem with the small g, is that it doesn’t look like the home page’s logo, the color doesn’t match, it’s indistinct, it’s too formal, it’s no fun, it isn’t memorable, it’s confusing, and it isn’t Google. I’m hoping my icon is Google. If only they’ll listen.

Logging on to my iGoogle page today, I see this:

Everything looks fine, right? But wait. Zoom in on the weather.

I didn’t notice it was 89 degrees below freezing here! My goodness, my digits should be falling off. And in Central Florida, in the middle of summer. Very bizarre. Must be the effects of global warming.

This iGoogle “gadget” comes right from the horse’s mouth, and claims to have 12,203,943 users. I wonder for how many of them, the temperature drops 145 degrees at once. But for now, I’m back to sunny Florida’s 88°F.

I decided to switch my email over from Gmail to Google Apps Email. I have the same email address (richardxthripp@thripp.com), but Google uses my domain now, so when I send out emails it won’t say “on behalf of richardxthripp@gmail.com.” And instead of just forwarding all thripp.com email to my old Gmail account, I can set up separate accounts with different credentials under thripp.com, while using a catch-all for everything else. There’s some good info and discussions about this here: What Does Google Apps for Your Domain Actually Do?.

If you want a thripp.com email account, leave a message with the name you want (the part before @thripp.com), and I’ll email your password to your old address (add it in the email field on the comment form, or if you’re logged into your thripp.com account, I’ll get it from your profile). Then you can sign on at mail.thripp.com.