Banned From Making Money, These YouTubers Share Their Stories
1–10 of 58 posts
Re: Banned From Making Money, These YouTubers Share Their Stories
#2I'm glad the word is getting out about this. Google's abuse of content creators on AdSense has been going on since before they acquired YouTube. As usual, the only way to make any headway with them is to get some media attention.
For anyone considering anything resembling a professional relationship with Google (i.e. you are relying on them for income), make absolutely sure that you have real alternatives that you can move to if/when they screw you. You might think "I'm totally above board here, and have no intention of violating their TOS, so I won't ever have a problem", and you would be wrong. It isn't under your control, so you need to make sure you have a backup plan.
In fact, ideally you need to already have non-Google sources of revenue, so that if Google drops you, you aren't left high and dry until you can switch to something else.
Re: Banned From Making Money, These YouTubers Share Their Stories
#3These stories are getting tired. Google is too big to investigate every single exception to their machine rules. We know. We get it. When you have 100 accounts, you can devote time to every exception. When you have 100,000,000 accounts you can't. You have to automate it and with 100,000,000 accounts there are going to be a lot of exceptions to the rules. Even a failure rate of 0.0001% would be enough to fill that cheap blog poach, I mean post, with examples of failures -- some of which were actually successes.
Even at that rate, youtube/google implemented an automated success rate of 99.9999%. Let's get some articles about how they accomplished that. That'd be more interesting than this sensationalist drivel.
Re: Banned From Making Money, These YouTubers Share Their Stories
#4These stories are getting tired. Google is too big to investigate every single exception to their machine rules. We know. We get it. When you have 100 accounts, you can devote time to every exception. When you have 100,000,000 accounts you can't. You have to automate it and with 100,000,000 accounts there are going to be a lot of exceptions to the rules. Even a failure rate of 0.0001% would be enough to fill that che…
Are they too big to provide some basic customer support and an escalation path? Interestingly enough, if they did this, we wouldn't be seeing their .0001% failures either.
Re: Banned From Making Money, These YouTubers Share Their Stories
#5These stories are getting tired. Google is too big to investigate every single exception to their machine rules. We know. We get it. When you have 100 accounts, you can devote time to every exception. When you have 100,000,000 accounts you can't. You have to automate it and with 100,000,000 accounts there are going to be a lot of exceptions to the rules. Even a failure rate of 0.0001% would be enough to fill that che…
The real problem is that there are little if any ways to get your account reinstated. Sure, they have to rely on automation... but if people are banned automagically then people need to be able to appeal it and have an actual human being look into it.
Re: Banned From Making Money, These YouTubers Share Their Stories
#6These stories are getting tired. Google is too big to investigate every single exception to their machine rules. We know. We get it. When you have 100 accounts, you can devote time to every exception. When you have 100,000,000 accounts you can't. You have to automate it and with 100,000,000 accounts there are going to be a lot of exceptions to the rules. Even a failure rate of 0.0001% would be enough to fill that che…
Are they too big to provide some basic customer support and an escalation path? Interestingly enough, if they did this, we wouldn't be seeing their .0001% failures either.
They do provide that. That's why accounts were suddenly re-enabled.
The advertisers are the customers and customers want to know they are paying for clicks from valid opportunities. Google is handling the customer appropriately by banning those that are committing fraud. If you're my sales guy and you defraud my customers I'm going to fire you too.
Re: Banned From Making Money, These YouTubers Share Their Stories
#7These stories are getting tired. Google is too big to investigate every single exception to their machine rules. We know. We get it. When you have 100 accounts, you can devote time to every exception. When you have 100,000,000 accounts you can't. You have to automate it and with 100,000,000 accounts there are going to be a lot of exceptions to the rules. Even a failure rate of 0.0001% would be enough to fill that che…
But it is seriously damaging to their company and there are other things they could do:
If they notice apparent click-fraud, they should suspend payments and notify the account holders. If the fraud continues (either this one issue or if it repeats regularly)[1], shut them down.
Like it or not, Google (and others like eBay) have put themselves in the position of supplying people's livelihood. There needs to be more respect for that fact. They've shown that they believe their algorithms can be wrong by reinstating people's accounts when stupid crap like this hits, but I contend that is not good enough. Crap like this should just not be hitting.
They can have automated systems and reasonable algorithms at the same time.
1. Some will probably say this gives fraudsters more chances to learn Google's algorithms. How hard is it to create a new account?
Re: Banned From Making Money, These YouTubers Share Their Stories
#8These stories are getting tired. Google is too big to investigate every single exception to their machine rules. We know. We get it. When you have 100 accounts, you can devote time to every exception. When you have 100,000,000 accounts you can't. You have to automate it and with 100,000,000 accounts there are going to be a lot of exceptions to the rules. Even a failure rate of 0.0001% would be enough to fill that che…
They disable ad serving in absolutely legitimate AdSense accounts bringing over $10,000 per month just as easily (this has happened to us); without any real possibility for a recourse. These posts are important for any founder or webmaster so they realize the grave inherent risks to their business if they plan to monetize only via AdSense.
Re: Banned From Making Money, These YouTubers Share Their Stories
#9I'm glad the word is getting out about this. Google's abuse of content creators on AdSense has been going on since before they acquired YouTube. As usual, the only way to make any headway with them is to get some media attention. For anyone considering anything resembling a professional relationship with Google (i.e. you are relying on them for income), make absolutely sure that you have real alternatives that you ca…
This applies to more than just Google. Your income should not solely depend on one party, unless you're in an employment relationship with them, which carries with it various sorts of legal and social obligations that are a lot harder to simply end on a whim.
Does your revenue depend entirely on being in Apple's good graces, and being dropped from the App Store would end it? Does it depend solely on Google's advertising money? Or even if not solely, if 75% of your revenue comes from one source, it will be game changing if you lose that.
This is why monopolies are a bad idea, and duopolies aren't much better. A healthy market will have at least three viable players, with none controlling over 50% of the market, allowing you to diversify and be save from any one of them deciding not to play.
Re: Banned From Making Money, These YouTubers Share Their Stories
#10This seems like a great way to seriously injure a competitor's ability to conduct business. In a sense, it could be used for a denial of service attack.