I wanted to tell you a cautionary tale today, and it all started way back when I discovered that with Photoshop Elements you could do so much more with your digital photographs.  Finding photo editing software was such a revelation to me I wanted to tell the whole world about it, I could not believe the effects you could achieve on your photos and the way you could take them from boring snapshots to interesting creations really inspired me to get started. 

Setting up a blog to tell of the things I had learned was my intention and sharing a hobby I had grown to enjoy (if you'd told me a few years back that I would enjoy scrapbooking I would have laughed in your face!)was my goal.  I did not have a clue on how to set up a website or blog so I searched around on the Internet for an easy free option and that's when I stumbled upon Weebly. 

Using Weebly has been and still continues to be a great joy, everything is done for you and all that you need to do is drag and drop elements onto your pages, allowing you the freedom to focus on your sites content,  not constantly fighting with setting up all the behind the scenes stuff necessary for a website or blog.  As a total non techie it was the perfect solution for me, so eventually I decided I would like to try and make a little money from my blog and started putting adsense onto it, with the help again from Weebly who did all this for me and we entered into a partnership where Weebly set everything up and choose the adds etc and we would share the revenue (if there was any:)

Last year I discovered a training program called the Thirty Day Challenge which basically shows you in a step by step approach how to set up a business online, or off for that matter, all the things I struggled with were covered with this course. I started doing the challenge last year but never completed it getting up to day 16 I think it was, but never really committing to it fully, I doubted I was doing the right thing and was constantly overwhelmed by all the new stuff I was trying to learn.  Luckily everyone involved in putting the challenge together were very patient and helpful people always ready,willing and able to answer my questions and combining this with a wonderful community (who were all trying to achieve the same things) on hand with helpful suggestions, advice and tips, I knew that I was in the right place to learn. 

I decided to try the 2009 30 Day Challenge again and was determined to give it my absolute all, following the teachings to the letter as best as I could and as the challenge continues after the 30 days I was not too concerned that I would be starting in the middle of August instead of at the beginning.

Now here is where my Cautionary Tale Begins... 

I was having another great day and had just finished up on a call with a great friend of mine who I had met through the Challenge, who was helping me out with a few of my Market Samurai questions (as she is a whiz with this great software) when I opened up my email and the bomb shell dropped.

Me the most careful, will not do anything dodgy (just ask my family) person in the world had received a letter from google saying:

Letter from Google Adsense   

On Sep 16, 2009, at 4:35 PM, Google AdSense Policy Enforcement wrote:

Hello,

We continually review all publishers according to our program policies (
http://www.google.com/adsense/policies ) and Terms and Conditions (
http://www.google.com/adsense/terms ). During a recent review of your
account, our specialists found that it was not in compliance with our
policies.

It is important for a site displaying AdSense to offer significant value
to the user by providing unique and relevant content, and not to place ads
on pages with little to no original content. Additionally, Google ads may
not be placed on non-content-based pages.

Your site should also provide a good user experience through clear
navigation and organization. Users should be able to easily click through
your pages and find the information they are seeking.

Please review Google's Webmaster Quality Guidelines (
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35769#quality
) for more information.

As a result, your AdSense account has been disabled.

You will receive payment for outstanding earnings, but we're no longer
able to partner with you or your network of sites.

Thank you for your understanding.

Sincerely,

The Google AdSense Team

As you can imagine I was absolutely horrified and responded with the following:

My Letter To Google Adsense

The Google Adsense Team,

I am so shocked that my adsense account has been disabled, I have never been asked to leave anything in my entire life, so feel mortified that I have done something wrong.

I am truly sorry if I have broken any rules, could you possibly tell me which rules I have broken so that I can correct them on my sites, I had no idea that I had done anything wrong and can promise if I have broken any rules it was certainly not my intention.

I fully understand if you must keep my sites disabled but I would like to learn from my mistakes, if it is any issue with my sites I would appreciate the feedback.

Again I am extremely sorry for any wrong doing I can only assure you it was an accident.

Kind Regards
Susan Hodgson


Last night of course I could not sleep and was tossing and turning trying to work out just what I could have possibly done wrong to have caused this, and it hit me at 3.45 this morning like a brick to the head.  In a blinding flash I knew exactly what I had done, another stupid rookie mistake I could kick myself, why oh why did I not just ask the question on the 30DC Forums :(

So here's what I did and let this be a cautionary tale to you all...

This year I decided to set up a site about Collage Picture Frames and include ideas and examples of collage pictures I had created, of course I use the same software that I use for my digital scrapbooking, so the sites are sort of related, yes?   Collage Pictures are a great way to show off your photographs that you have improved with your editing software in my opinion and are very similar to the digital scrapbook pages that I create. 

So here's the thing....

I had my new site all set up, had an add on there for a collage picture photo tray which I felt was a great and unusual (I like anything a bit out of the ordinary)way of showing off your photos or picture collages that you had created.  I suddenly thought that people who came to my site may not want the unusual and may want information on traditional types of frames so I decided to add some adsense adds to see if other types of frames would be more relevant to my site, bingo, eureka, the penny drops there in lies my problem.

Maybe and I am just guessing here, when I put these adds on my site, perhaps they were classed as not being relevant to digital scrapbooking or you are not supposed to use adsense on a different site than the one you registered with?  So if these are the reasons and I have broken the rules I can do nothing but apologize and ensure that it was only a rookie mistake for which I am truly very sorry.  What's that saying "Done the Crime Do the Time" or something like that, anyway I would love to hear if you have had any similar experiences or if you think that these are the reasons I have had google adsense removed from my sites.

As always...

Create It, DigiScrap It, It's All Good Fun

Cheers
Groobers

P.S Maybe I should add...
Make Mistakes, Learn From Them, Take Action And Move Forward