AdSense? I Call It Nonsense!

I'm madder than a Filipino immigrant at a cancelled Far East Movement concert. Get this: Google disabled my AdSense account. Take a look at my site, you may notice a cleaner, more streamlined look. (The writing remains clunky) What's missing? The blipping, blinking flash-driven messages, trying to separate you from your hard-earned dollars. In their place is a big 'ol piece of negative space.

On Wednesday afternoon I received an email from Google AdSense. They claim my blog "poses a risk of generating invalid activity". So I guess running advertisements on my site was a roller coaster ride that lasted all of about a week. I'd like to say it was fun while it lasted, but dammit, I never so much as got a payout!

Now in their rules and regulations, they strictly forbid users from clicking on their own advertisements. Not a problem. Never did that. But they also say you can't hype your site and encourage your viewers to click. Uh oh.

But wait….who's to say what's a valid click or not? Wasn't Kat thinking about booking a flight or four on Icelandic Air? Perhaps Bunny forgot he already had a Netflix membership and accidentally opened that link 20 or 30 times. Skow is a big stock footage buff. Can you blame him for repeatedly looking at the Pond 5 website? I can't keep track of all my viewer's comings and goings, can I?

WTF happened to the true spirit of advertising? Why would we be putting these ads on our sites if the goal was NOT to have people look at them? "Enjoy my article, but ignore the 800 pound gorilla in the room, AKA that blinking Pizza Hut ad. That's right, do anything but support my sponsors." At this time I would like to thank all my friends/fans for hitting this site so hard over the last week. Although, maybe you hit it a little too hard.

I almost forgot, they give you the option to "appeal" the revocation. You fill out a quick form. After about 3 or 4 minutes I got a reply that amounted to, "Nice try, asshole." Please.

I'm calling horsesh*t on Google AdSense and if they want to shut this blog down, fine by me. I was only interested in posting here again with the promise of easy money. Damn, I had allegedly "made" about $140 in one week's time. Multiply that over a month's worth of posts, not a bad way to make some money on the side. Too good to be true, and you know these guys didn't want to pay me out.

BTW, How did they determine clicks are fraudulent? The fact that this is Google, I wouldn't be surprised if they have their spies all up in in everybody's business. Rooting through email, Facebook, texts and so on. My conspiranoia runs deep…..

"Your outstanding balance and Google's share of the revenue will both be fully refunded back to the affected advertisers." Oh really? You mean you're paying yourself back? That's mighty white of you.

I'll always cherish the memories of checking the "monetize" tab on a daily basis. When I saw those dollar amounts accruing, I was as giddy as the two guys in the movie Middle Men who created billable adult entertainment.

If you are running a site on Blogger, heed my advice: They will revoke your AdSense account just as quickly as they set it up. Don't click on your own ads, don't encourage your readers to click on the ads. There will be no friendly warning, they will just shut you down ASAP. This is a Catch 22: If you don't hype the site, you won't get paid. But if you DO hype the site, you won't get paid.

Netflix Movie Roundup

You know, there was a glut of films that came out in fall and early winter. I realize your time is valuable, so I've taken the trouble of doing some capsulated reviews. Hope this helps with your Netflix queue or trip to the Redbox:

Get Low-More like Get Slow.

Easy A: Easy F if we're handing out grades
It's Kind of a Funny Story-It's kind of a crappy story. Whycome that Zach Galifantheopopoulaslisakis is in like EVERY movie that comes out?

(more importantly, why didn't spellcheck flag "whycome"?)
Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps-Money may never sleep, but I passed out at the 35 minute mark
The Town If I wanted to see a bunch of people shooting machine guns at each other w/o a kill count, I'd watch the A Team
I'm Still Here- "I'm not", said the audience

Unstoppable- Unwatchable

Skyline-How about a plotline? The film's creators deserve a thorough alien probing

True Grit-True shi…ahhh, too easy

Stone-Stupid

Twelve-On a scale of 1 to 10? Zero

Love And Other Drugs-I'd love it if there were a drug that would make me forget I saw this crap

Cyrus-Marisa Tomei does another indy, but this time doesn't get topless. Avoid

Tron: Legacy-This generation's Ben Hur

Morning Glory-Like Network, but with more montages of Rachel McAdam running in high heels

Faster-The Cleveland Cavaliers of action movies

The Tourist-Worse than a New Orleans timeshare

Grown Ups-The actors must have used this as an excuse to go on vacation, no joke

Eat Pray Love-Eat Pray Puke (Review stolen from the NY Post….Zing!)

The Switch-Jennifer Anniston is still doing romantic comedies? Evidence there may be no God

Fair Game-Oh great, they finally made the Valerie Plame thing into a movie, oh and it stars Sean Penn, awesome

That's it for this installment. Take my word as gospel before you hit the "add" button. We'll catch up when they release that next Fast and the Furious movie.