$20,000+/month website policy violation, makes no sense

Our website, http://www.imeetzu.com, had been running adsense ads for 3 years. We have been earning over $20,000/month over the last 6 months, obviously it took quite a while to get up to that point. At any rate, on Tuesday we received what may amount to be a death sentence for our business:
***Begin email***

Hello,

During a recent review of your account we found that you are currently
displaying Google ads in a manner that is not compliant with our program
policies
(https://www.google.com/support/adsense/bin/answer.py?answer=48182&stc=aspe-1pp-en).

--------------------------------------------------
EXAMPLE PAGE: http://www.imeetzu.com/chat

Please note that this URL is an example and that the same violations may
exist on other pages of this website or other sites in your network.

VIOLATION(S) FOUND:

ADS IN NEWSLETTERS/EMAIL/CHAT PROGRAMS: As stated in our program policies,
AdSense publishers may not place ad code, search boxes or search results
in emails or email programs sent to third parties. This includes but is
not limited to newsletters, instant messaging (IMs), and chat sites. Due
to privacy regulations, potential legal risk and targeting concerns, we
cannot permit publishers to serve ads against message content or on pages
that contain dynamic content.

ACTION TAKEN: We have disabled ad serving to your site.

ACCOUNT STATUS: ACTIVE
Your AdSense account remains active. However, please note that our team
reserves the right to disable your account at any time. As such, we
encourage you to become familiar with our program policies and monitor
your network accordingly.

***End Email***


Now, I'd also like to note that this isn't the first time we've had a policy violation. The last time we had one it was because user-uploaded profile images weren't moderated strictly enough, so we went through all our 50k-100k users (can't remember exactly, but now we're up to 324k+) and re-reviewed all the profile images with much stricter guidelines, and after sending in an appeal, we were re-instated. We went on to do all sorts of programming work on our site to ensure no violations would ever occur again. This happened about 11 months ago, just as we were sort of breaking out in terms of popularity. Now, at that time, there was no mention made of us being a "chat site", despite the fact that the big chat buttons were plastered right there at the top of the homepage, similarly to how they are there now.

If you look at the Adsense policies as listed on the site, the only reference to "chat sites" isn't actually "chat sites", it's "chat programs", which is a rather big difference. A "chat program" would entail running advertisements within a downloadable application, within an actual chat window, attached to a chat toolbar, or something of this nature. We, of course, do none of that. The same goes for a MUCH more popular site that has nearly the same thing as us (besides the social network). This site, which you probably have heard of, is http://www.omegle.com . This site is by definition much more of a "chat site" than we are. We have an ENTIRE SOCIAL NETWORK, they only have chatting. Yet, they are allowed to continue to serve Adsense advertisements? Does something seem incredibly wrong here?

To summarize:
1: 3 years, reached a $250,000/yr and growing business with adsense as sole revenue source
2: past violation was fixed, no mention of us being a "chat site", appeal granted, serving resumed
3: 11 months after last violation, 2nd violation for being a "chat site" with "dynamic" content.
4. Other major and BIGGER site, that is much more of a "chat site" http://www.omegle.com allowed to continue serving ads.
5. Google's policies on their website only say "chat program", "chat site" is never mentioned until a policy violation is received that essentially hands my business a death sentence, and the description of "chat site" is still extremely vague.

Why? Why would they do this? Not only was I generating them a lot of money, I was spending at 10-15 thousand of it on Adwords to continue building up the website. This makes no sense whatsoever.

I went ahead and mentioned omegle.com in my first appeal, and I was denied.

If anyone has any suggestions or any ideas as to how we could be reinstated, it would be very much appreciated. My hope is this was done by a lone employee who simply made a mistake, and that the appeal was only briefly glanced at, but I know the odds now don't seem to be in my favor.

 

Ya, you're right. They are the boss and re-instating your account solely on their hands. But it is wondering to hear Google banned the site which is giving them the lot of revenue as $20K/ month is quiet huge. Its really sad but however I can say this is not the end as you can always go for other ad networks. Cheers!!

 

Wow you obviously took a lot of time to build your site up to making this amount of money and was making them a lot of money as well. This is an example of how they can choose to do what they want... I'm just a little confused why they would do this because they were making good money off of your efforts...Keep your head up and try another ad network is all I can say...

 

Looks like it's going to be very hard to get back up to that level of revenue with other networks, guess I'm going to have to use a lot of CPA offers for every country and do a lot of testing, ughhhh

 

You're lucky, they actually told you the reason and they didnt fully ban your account.

There are alternatives, like chickita, I know it doesn't pay as much but should get you 10k at least compared to adsense.

Also plenty of alternatives CPA, sell ad space, PPC and loads more mate..

 

Yeah. You might as well accept though. Sites making larger income than that have lost out on Google too. Look into alternative ad companies for ad income or start charging premium service. There's not much you can do when Google makes up it's mind.

 

They're losing 20K a month. That's why. We have no idea if they are in the green or red in this ad deal.

 

Actually, they took a 32% cut, so they were making 10k/month off us (advertisers were paying 30k/month), and then they were making another 10-15k off us from adwords, meaning they are now losing 20-25k/month - pretty stupid business decision if you ask me.

 

10k from chickita? We put one of their ads up and it was doing absolutely horribly...like $10/day if that, and the ads showing up made no sense? Are you thinking banners only or other forms of adverts? We don't want to turn off our users.

 

I don't know why I'm telling you this since the same thing happened to me but I'm folded and you are going to be fine if you implement this in, but oh well.

You have no choice but to turn your adsense ads into adultsense.com ads. They pay just as good and you are in the appropriate niche for that.

 

If your site is really in demand, you could use adbrite, with max zones. Set the areas where people are most likely to click on cpc ads from them, and cpm on areas where people are not clicking. And run 1 full page ad per ip per 24 hours.

 

So sad to hear about your situation. However, Google at anytime can disable anyone's account. This is why one should find a way to develop multiple streams of income. When one income revenue goes down, you still have income coming in from other places. If this happened to you 11 months ago already, you should have implemented some other forms of income. Yes, I get adsense income as well and I am following what they want. However, they can still come in and shut me down(I don't know what for since I am following all of their guidelines.) But it can still happen to me and if is does, one day, I have other income that I can fall back on. Take this into consideration and I am wishing you all of the best.....

Also when I did go over to your site, you have in big words Start Text Chat and Start Video Chat. It seems like now that Google does not want to be associated it with anything and or page that has the word chat on their site....This is where you should think about making changes.... Good luck to you.

 

They didnt disable his account they banned him from using his ad's on a specific website.

 

This message is to wiz241 - My bad and sorry about the mix up. I am still wishing you all the best and there are so many more avenues you can use to make a ton of money..... Great success to you always

 

Thanks for the suggestion, I was actually already aware of adultsense but I'm trying to avoid adult ads - I'll apply anyway since I do see that they have a clean ads option, maybe they won't be too bad.

 

HI,
it is great renuvie.

 

When I said in demand, I meant that if your users like your website so much,and have to use it. Then you can do a full page ad per 24 hours and it would not affect your traffic much.

 

These types Of Add 20000$ Per day r just the fake dont get trap in this cobweb

 

$20,000 a month is not an unreasonable amount of money,considering that DP makes $10,000/month according to some news sites and is geared towards Internet Marketers who are way less likely to click on an ad.

 

That is really huge revenue. This also proves that if you violate the rules, there is no excuse. My opinion is you should verify the rules again.