Google Adsense

[Gibson]

A few minutes ago, I read an email from Google Adsense telling me that Pictures of You was being denied an account to advertise with them. They even told me why.

We're unable to approve your AdSense application at this time
because we feel that your site does not comply with the Google webmaster
quality guidelines. More specifically, we believe that your site does not
add value or provide unique content.

What?

I feel like I'm insane. Doesn't add value? To what? The people who took the time and spent the money to turn their site into a functioning Pac-Man game for one day is telling me a story that brings tears to people's eyes and leads them to make life-changing decisions about their future doesn't add value? Doesn't provide unique content? Google ads are smacked up and down the internet on every identical Wordpress webcomic about the ever-so-riveting array of wacky characters with the same damn haircut and look, ooh, a psychotic animal character that speaks English! and somehow intellectually and emotionally compelling story with rich characterization doesn't provide unique content? Seriously, what the hell?!

I've dug a little deeper into their guidelines and, near as I can tell, the reason for the rejection is that my links are images rather than text. While it is finally a reason that has truth to it, it still seems weak. The program they use instead of having a human take two seconds to look at a site didn't find the narrow parameters that told it one ill-defined style of website didn't exist here, so the end user better hurry up and look like everyone else. Homogeny Now! I can't even find a link to communicate with a human about the issue, so I am forced to conclude the only rational outcome, that Google is SkyNet.

As soon as I finish posting this, I will be giving Google the finger and looking for an alternative to it and PW. If anyone has suggestions, I'd love to hear them.

[Rob]

I hear Palace in the Sky does some kind of advertising. As for AdSense... I'm not sure what their reason for rejecting you might be (I doubt the stated reason is anything more that an excuse spit out by the excuse-o-matic) but I do know that Google does not do nudity... even tasteful nudity. So had a human taken a look they probably would have rejected you because of that. Or, perhaps they did reject you for the nudity and they just don't want to dive into that kettle of fish.

There is also Indieclick.

Do you have a specific problem with PW or are you just looking to diversify/spread your money around?

[Dragon Powered]

For what it's worth, I run Google Adsense on my network.  Some sites do well with Google, others not so much.  Google is notorious for paying only what they feel deserves to be paid, and they don't divulge what constitutes that.  So you can have 200,000 pageviews and still only make a penny, and click-throughs will never ever match what your ad manager shows.  So if you're going to go Google, go prepared to feel like you're being done from behind.

As for your rejection, Google visits your site with a bot initially and if they warrant, follows it up with a human visit.  When the bot visits your site it sees no value because all it sees is "Warning: This site contains mature content not suitable for minors.....", which immediately flags it as a site Google doesn't want their name attached to. Google's terms specifically state they won't allow their ads to be run on sites with adult content.  So they don't see your content, or your visitors comments, or any of the actual value.

Seriously Dude, even with all your unending love for SmackJeeves and all they do for you, that little message is a killer.

[Gibson]

The little message is not a killer, it is a mild annoyance for which you have unreasonable hatred. That warning gets clicked through 10,000 times a week and I've heard complaints from maybe five. If the warning was a killer, the comic would be dead. If Google is a puritanical tyrant and they don't want anything to do with me because I'm a smut peddler, that's a reason I can understand, but there's nothing in the comic that sends a different message than the warning does. If they'd ding me for the warning, they'd ding me for the strippers.

Palace in the Sky has been after me to join them for a year or two now, but the place is kind of a racket. They're not really an ad site, either. Essentially, you put their ad space on your site...not an ad for them, but an ad space they've sold, for which they keep the money, and in return they post your banner on a portal in a big list with a bunch of others. Even advertising through them is expensive, near as I can tell. The great irony is that they do their advertising through Project Wonderful.

Indieclick I don't know. I'll have to check it out. Cheers.

[Rob]

Thanks for the info on Palace in the Sky. I've looked at their site a couple of times and I was completely baffled as to what the point was.

Link exchange for someone else to profit by much?

Once a dozen or so comics get on there it seems pretty pointless. It's just a smaller The Webcomics List.  :-\

[JGray]

I've been a member of Palace in the Sky. I am not now because, quite honestly, yeah. It feels like a scam. Theoretically, the money raised is used to advertise PitS comics and the collective itself but, yeah, I've come to suspect that its used to profit the people at the top.

Gibson, JD has a point. If a bot visited your site and got the warning, it might not have gotten past it and seen the glory that is your webcomic. I'm not saying the warning sends away readers but, in this case, it may have bitten you.

Or not. You might be better off without google, eh?

[Gibson]

No, I wasn't arguing the validity of the warning being the ding that nixed me, that makes sense, but was commenting more on the obsessive hatemongering bestowed on my poor warning. What'd my warning ever do to you?! Knowing that Google doesn't swing with nudity, the warning didn't do anything that full-frontal penis and splash pages of strippers on a pole wouldn't also have done if someone actually looked at it. I mean, I could take the warning down, I always forget it's there, and apply again, but if the next step is a human looking at it, it's not like the nudity is hard to find...or the pervasive drug and alcohol abuse and excessive vulgarity. Plus, when Project Wonderful's ad bots couldn't read through the warning, the SJ admin rewrote the code to fix it and I'm sure he'd do his best to do it for Google if I asked him, but I won't bother since Google's so afraid of titties.

For PitS, I'm sure they do siphon off some profits, but even if they didn't, not getting a cut of and having no control over ads on my comic is not cool. If someone is getting the illusion that I sponsor their shitty comic, they're going to pay me for it...and what happens when they advertise for Drunk Duck or WalMart or something I don't want touching my site? PitS also sells their ad space with a promise of "14 clicks for a buck" and makes it sound really awesome! But that's over 7 cents a click, which is more than I think I've paid for any space on PW. At least, not space I didn't cancel quickly. I'm curious what your referral traffic was like, because I can't imagine it would be that high with their structure.

[JGray]

The benefit of being a member of PitS came not from the ads but from their "golden link" program. Essentially, every member of the group was supposed to put all the other members on their link page. That wasn't too bad, I got a few refs a day (and still occasionally get a referal from a person who hand codes their link page instead of just using PitS's code). It wasn't worth giving up front page ad space, however.

I've had much more success with being a member of TeenBit, a webcomic banner exchange program. The group is small and contains some relatively big name comics. Being on the front page of Penny and Aggie or the Dreamer one time out of six (it is random which comic banner gets picked for the TeenBit box) is worth the loss of space ten times over. I was very fortunate to be included in that group.

[Miluette]

Back when I was reading about advertisers viable for use on webcomic sites, the general consensus seemed to be "screw Google Adsense." So, yeah. Google Adsense ads are 99% rubbish, anyway.

Back in the day, I tried to apply to PitS for some reason. They never got back to me. Also, their site confused me heavily.