I was recently notified by Google that my AdSense account was temporarily disabled for invalid activity on my website.

Hello,

With our advertising programs, we strive to create an online ecosystem that benefits publishers, advertisers and users. For this reason, we sometimes have to take action against accounts that demonstrate behavior toward users or advertisers that may negatively impact how the ecosystem is perceived. In your case, we have detected invalid activity on your site and your account has been disabled.

We’re limited in the amount of information we can provide about your specific violation. We understand this can be frustrating for you, but we’ve taken these precautionary measures because intentional violators can use this information to circumvent our detection systems.

In some cases, publishers can make significant changes to correct the violation and are willing to comply with the AdSense program policies (google.com/adsense/policies). For this reason, we offer an appeals process as an opportunity to work with you to resolve the issue. To help you with the process, we’ve created a list of the top reasons for account closure for you to review before submission at http://support.google.com/adsense/bin/answer.py?answer=2660562. Please be sure to provide a thorough analysis in your appeal, which you can submit at [link removed] and we will follow up accordingly.

Thanks for your understanding,

The Google AdSense Team

I did file an appeal, as suggested in the email, because I obviously have no idea what this invalid activity is, and I have never before artificially created activity on my website that would be considered dishonest through the Google AdSense terms of service. After filing my appeal, I got this automated response:

Hello,

This message confirms that we’ve received your appeal submission.

We’ll get to your appeal as soon as we can, though due to the high volume of emails we receive, it may take us up to a week or more to process it. If you’ve previously submitted an appeal for this account, you might not receive a response to this or future appeals.

Also, please be aware that appealing the disabling of your AdSense account does not guarantee that it will be reinstated.

If you have any questions or concerns about accounts disabled for invalid activity, please visit https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?answer=57153.

Thanks for your patience and understanding.

Sincerely,

The Google AdSense Team

And now I’m waiting for a response back from the Google AdSense team.

I’m sharing this with the readers of my website because this has immediate consequences to my website, and if the appeal is denied, it will have drastic consequences to how I produce content on the Internet overall.

First of all, I have a temporary contract with another advertising company so I can keep serving advertisements while Google is reviewing my appeal, which will supposedly take about a week. Fortunately, the minimum payout for this company is $5 (and not $100 like Google), so if my account were to be reinstated, I could easily cash out from this temporary advertising company and go back to Google AdSense.

If my AdSense account were not to be reinstated, I would take a temporary break from content production as I start making more personal contracts with companies and other people to ensure that I can continue earning as much as I did before, but through different means. I can pretty much guarantee that nothing on my actual website will change, because I am confident that I can strike some deals to continue earning a good amount from my website.

Unfortunately, that is not going to be the case for my videos. As of right now, the only website I know of that provides reliable advertising for videos with good payout is YouTube. Once your AdSense account is disabled, there is no way to make money off your YouTube videos. As a result, my primary motivation for making YouTube videos will essentially be completely eliminated, as I will get absolutely no compensation for the time invested in filming and producing videos. Thus, the amount of videos released on my YouTube channel will shrink to near-zero. This does not mean, however, that I am going to completely stop video production all together – I will still take roles as contributing producers in various other people’s videos like I have been in the past.

So, the result of this temporary account disable are still up in the air. I’ll post another update on my website when I get a response from Google.