I'm starting a web news-magazine for older women. The category options are: lifestyle, health, career, parenting and dating/relationships. I want the articles to be informative, yet entertaining. However, I am a little concerned about a dating column that I'm interested in writing, sort of like "Sex and the City" style, or something that is similar to what Cosmopolitan Magazine would write about. Most of the time, the articles would talk about dating adventures. And mostly about sex. The language would be toned down, but the subject matter would be the same. Sex. I've read through this forum and it's pretty clear that "adult or mature content" is forbidden by Google. My first mind was to not do the column and keep everything vanilla to satisfy my advertisers. However, I was motivated to start this website because I am a writer and I need to write as a creative outlet. I'm not sure if I would be motivated to continue with the site if I couldn't release my creative energy. However, I would like to make some money to re-coup my expenses. I'm trying to think of a scenario where I can satisfy myself and my advertisers. So I thought, what if I created a sub-domain, made it password protected, but with a link to it from the main site? Or maybe people can sign up for a newsletter that goes directly to their email? I'd like your feedback on what I can do. I would also like to get Commission Junction as well. Or, if you could recommend an advertiser that is flexible with my situation. By the way, I ran a website years ago and had both Adsense and Commission Junction, but it was an education site, so completely different. I sold it!
It not really that "adult or mature content" is forbidden by Adsense, the guideline is more is the content "family friendly"?
The question you have to ask yourself when it comes to the content is would all advertisers including Muslim advertisers be happy seeing their ad next to your content, and by that I mean any advertiser as you don't know who's ads going to show up next on your site.
Thanks for your response. Let me be clear. The dating section content is for adults. How do I solve this problem? As I mentioned before, would I create a password protected section of the site or create a newsletter that goes to email in-boxes? What solution can I come up with? Thank you for your feedback for a solution to my problem.
Unfortunately adsense rules are also very clear. Unless the adult content is locked off and not accessible to minors then you will get turned down, or get banned at a later date. Your problem is that they view the content of the site as a whole, the fact that you won't be running adsense on those pages won't cut any ice with them at all, it's the content that they have issues with and this could mean that even though you have the content locked off that they could still turn you down as you will by default have highlighted you've adult content on the site. Note I don't make the rules, adsense does, so don't shoot the messenger as you're getting a lot of good advice for free. I've seen sites be turned down for just one cleavage (non-nude, non-porn) shot. If you are going to lock the adult content off then you have a bigger issue, the only way to verify age is via a bank/credit card. Otherwise anyone can claim to be 18. Personally I wouldn't run anything adult on the site at all - just crazy with adsense. If you find away around their rules they tend to just ban you