Welcome to the new AdSense-free Playground Confidential. Isn’t it so nice and … white? I wish I could write that I have decided to blog for the sheer joy of it and that I am no longer seeking advertising revenue to support my hobby. But that is not the case.
Google AdSense has decided that my blog “has posed a significant risk to our AdWords advertisers.” They’ve shut me down, in other words, for violating their Terms and Agreements. I was pretty taken aback — to say the least — when I first received the email. I mean, this is a one-woman show here. I actually write my own content and rely on a growing base of loyal readers for my traffic. There’s nothing but make-money-off-Google-ads schemes every which way you look. There are scads of sites that are filled with RSS feeds and stolen or cobbled together content designed to maximize search engine optimization and confuse readers into clicking on ads. And they cut me off. Me!