I’m taking a bit of a gamble here with this post, I’m not sure how relevant it is writing about what not to do, now that even Build My Rank has been sandboxed by Google thus making it clear that it’s still a bad idea trying to pull a fast one on Google.
You can all over the web read about what you should do if you want to make money online, but it’s not that often that you can read about what not to do.
So heres a post on what not to do.
You might think that you have found the holy grail to make money online, but the idea is old and has been abused beyond recognition. Which means that Google know about it and sandboxes sites and blogs that uses them, so in plain English DON’T.!
Such idea are click circles, traffic circle, link circles / link wheel, traffic exchange sites, just to name a few of the schemes that are out there.
Do you know them, then drop a comment on your opinion, if not keep reading.
Adsense
Click circles are without any doubt the fastest way to stop making money, because you are robbing all the businesses of their money.
It’s very simple you find xx number of blogs and websites owners, that all has ads on their site. Within this circle you all are bound to visit the other members websites and click on their ads. In other words you are making click fraud.
Publishers may not ask others to click their ads or use deceptive implementation methods to obtain clicks. This includes, but is not limited to, offering compensation to users for viewing ads or performing searches, promising to raise money for third parties for such behavior or placing images next to individual ads.
Google sees these scams the same way as if you click them yourself, it will have only one consequence and that is your account will be banned and the domain black listed by Google. This means that neither you or someone else that on a later date will be able to get advertising / Adsense on it again, in very blatant cases no one on your address may have an Adsense account.
Another think I’ve been seeing is stuffing more then allowed 3 ads on any giving page on a website, by using frames, but I’ve also seen a lot of them getting caught doing that thereby getting them self banned.
So don’t you will get caught, just ask the thousands that has been banned.!!
Traffic
Traffic circle works on the same basis as click circle, but here you get traffic instead of clicks. Thus creating false traffic to you site, that is a part of what Google uses to give your website a certain spot on the search results.
Doing this actually get you hammered twice.
This false traffic will get your websites sandboxed, meaning that you will be removed from the search results or “just” dropped to page 100.
This in itself is a big punishment because all the real traffic and clicks you had are now gone.
You can with a lot of work, get back up, but the second punishment is that your Adsense account also will get banned in other words killing your website.!
Use third-party services that generate clicks or impressions such as paid-to-click, paid-to-surf, autosurf and click-exchange programs.
The same goes for traffic exchange sites.!
The next couple of things is not directly linked to your adsense account, because they are still schemes with the purpose of getting you higher on Google. They are linking schemes such as link circle / wheel, and they have been used by private sites as well as media companies and sold to customers. there are in fact both media companies and private blog owners that still try to use them today but it’s a waste of time.!
What you did was got free blogs where ever you could get them, posted articles on them that you got from article databases with links to your website. basically you spammed the web with new sites that had no value what so ever, beside linking to your website. Thus conflicting with the rules about double content.
When the sites was indexed on Google you just kept adding a new article once every one or two weeks, the idea was it gave you more time to do the real link building in the mean while.
So before you try anything funny, check up one the rules Adsense set by Google
Have you used any of these schemes.!!
I got the idea for the post by reading Zac’s post on BMR got sandboxed
About Jimmy Sigenstrøm
Twitter: BrianHumek
says:
Again, you’re right on the mark Jimmy.
It show how honest I am by not even knowing about the scams you blogged about. I understand their basic premise, understand how they work. But I had not heard of people doing these things. To me, it definitely isn’t worth even trying because in the end, we get caught when we do something against the rules, even if it’s just Google’s rules.
It may take a while to do things like obtaining back links or clicks on adsense ads when they’re done the right way but always worth it.
Brian recently posted..21st Century Business and Church Practices
Good list. I would also recommend not overdoing affiliate marketing.
Nikki Elizabeth recently posted..Three Ways to Reduce Tax Time Stress
The problem with traffic and click circles is that you can get burned by competition also.
I’ll explain : a friend of mine got burned last year with his blog. He never did link building on it, just posted his thoughts on SEO techniques and other marketing strategies. He used to make quite the money out of adsense and started to take on paid banner ads from SEO “firms” (we all know 90% of the “SEO companies” are not really legal companies, just a 1-2 man websites). He made more money with that until one day when his traffic went from 200+ unique and organic visitors to 5-10 and over 800 visits from dodgy websites or link and click circles. He emailed Google and the decision was final, his website was penalized, AdSense banned and everything removed from search.
He later found out that his competitors were a bit jealous of his achievements. Google looked further into the matter and unbanned his AdSense and allowed their crawler to start indexing the website again. But the thing is that his website had to start all over again on indexing and lost it’s place in first searches.
The website never went again on the first page in searches and he had to abandon it and start a new one.
Basically these “do and don’t techniques” apply to something called reverse SEO where people will try to make your website lose search weight and ultimately mess everything up so they can gain a higher spot in search with their website.
Getting back to the topic, yes, these are definitely “don’t's” when it comes to making money with blogs, forums etc.
I too had no knowledge link and traffic circles but I’m wondering about reverse SEO. Is there any way to detect that its happening before its too late? If there is, is there any way to stop it?
Dave recently posted..Web Design for Lehigh Valley Businesses
Twitter: TechieSaves
says:
Unfortunately that’s not the first disappointing story I read about. You can’t rely very much on Adsense for making money online anymore. That are many reasons why your site may one day disappear from searches so it’s better to limit yourself to promoting your blog by guest posting then risk getting banned.
Marty recently posted..Security Awareness Training for Companies
I am personally a victim of this way back. I maintained my own blog and I avidly keep my posts frequent but Google banned me for illegal click activity when I did nothing. I did not even advertise my blog to my friends just to gain more clicks to the ads. I contended but to no avail, I failed.
-Vera Mae
Vera Mae recently posted..how to seduce a woman
Twitter: w3blogdk
says:
Google can be at time single-minded, which causes ppl to get banned when they haven’t done anything wrong
Twitter: complearnhow
says:
Great post Jimmy. I read a similar post about people who had tried to trick google and got completely banned. Earn it right or dont bother I say
Craig recently posted..Top 10 most interesting websites to visit when bored
Twitter: showappeal
says:
Many websites taking part in traffic exchange programs such as wahoha, 2leep or mgrid have adsense. These traffic exchange programs must leave a huge footprint so most of these websites could be easily banned by adsense. Are you sure its againts their TOS?
Chris recently posted..Guest Post: Should Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac Get Out of the Mortgage Business?
Twitter: w3blogdk
says:
Hi
If your read the AdSense program policies, it stats the following
http://support.google.com/adsense/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1348752
And on the adsense help group, there a lot of threads on accounts getting banned due invalid traffic.
The main problem with the traffic exchange programs, is as I see it that some of the traffic also generates clicks.
Which also Google write her:
http://support.google.com/adsense/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1348752
Twitter: com_howtoguide
says:
Hmm.. Interesting article Jimmy. When you mentioned traffic exchange programs, is Entrecard.com in the “not to do list” too? I know a lot of traffic exchange programs work by collecting some small payment from you and they’ll send you traffics without you needing to do anything else. But Entrecard.com is different, it’s free. All you need to do is to visit blogs on our own, hence the blog owners on the other side will have to visit ours as well. So do you think this is a “not to do” as well? If you need to have a look on it, the link is here about Entrecard.com : http://entrecard.com/
Appreciate some advice. Thanks.
Peter Lee recently posted..Why an External Hard Drive is Important to You
Twitter: w3blogdk
says:
I wouldn’t use them because if any of them click on your ads, then it’s against the Adsense TOS.
http://support.google.com/adsense/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1348752
So I would say yes it’s on the “not to do list”, it would might work for some time but at some point it would get account closed.
Twitter: greentradecnd
says:
People will always look for easy ways to make money but the truth is there’s nothing easy out there, you have to work hard and do things the right way. I agree with what people said in the comments about Google banning people unjustly. This happened to a friend of mine, he appealed and wrote them emails but nothing was resolved in the end. I’m just saying that even if you do things the right way you can still be banned.
Twitter: w3blogdk
says:
Google at times ban accounts for no reason besides they get a large increase in traffic or clicks, without the webmasters has anything to do with it. And I do agree that they should take more time checking into to the appeals, but unfortunately for us they don’t.
Yes, and the bigger problem seems to be the rules keep changing. Even if you do things the right way, like you said, you could unjustly be penalized.
Amy recently posted..Don’t Frustrate Your Website Visitors
Twitter: n00balert
says:
I’ve never used any of these schemes, but it makes sense to not do them…I think Google has been smarter than me for a VERY long time hahaha.
matt recently posted..Ghost Recon Future Soldier Multiplayer Trailer
Black hat methods may benefit the short term, but rarely will benefit the long term. Everyone will sooner or later get caught. This is why I advocate white hat methods.
Steve recently posted..Does Lean Muscle X Work?
Twitter: TechInitio
says:
Adsense is a tool to help us, so we better not abuse it. I am happy they are hunting click circles because it against everyone.
Thanks for sharing this information.
Rashmi Sinha recently posted..Facebook and Dropbox Accounts, Vulnerable on iOS Devices
Twitter: w3blogdk
says:
It also lowers the price the companies are willing to play for a click.
Twitter: TechInitio
says:
Well yes that is true because companies are more cautious than before – and i do not blame them either.
Rashmi Sinha recently posted..Sony Play Station Vita
Really great advice, Jimmy! I’ve not used any of these schemes either, but it sure seems like it isn’t a very good idea to use any of these from what you’re saying!
Thank you very much for the info, I’m still learning this myself, you learn new things every day!
Sharon Koenig recently posted..Quaker parrots colors | Parrot color
Twitter: whatswithjeff
says:
I totally agree with you. These are absolutely a no no when you have adsense. It’s best to do things the right way. post quality content and place your ads in a non intrusive way and just let the visitors click it.
Jeff recently posted..Naruto Chapter 583 Spoiler: Itachi has no secret plan?!
Twitter: 10awesome
says:
Great post you got here!
I personally haven’t tried any of these techniques, but I am going to relate to SEO (which can indirectly get you a lot of money) a bit. Beside buying link building packages for getting links from directories and crappy sites (this happened when everyone was doing it, with another site I had), I have only done white hat SEO.
Honestly, I really think you have a lot to earn if you go for white hat, no matter what we’re talking about. And unless I instantly earn $1 million from doing black hat things, I am avoiding them.
Scott
Scott recently posted..10 Awesome Graffiti Canvas Art
Great post, well, this is also quite disturbing. I have an experience before wherein my blog site just suddenly get banned by google. I’m not using anything or any programs in the internet to generate traffic on my blogsite, but it was banned. It was a very very depressing moment for me, specially when I have put a lot of effort on making my site.
Never try to cheat google and to get Traffic and monetize our blog. where We are stop thinking Google Start from there
ashvin recently posted..APCPDCL Junior Assistant Recruitment 2012
Hi Jimmy,
I had no idea link wheels are black hat! I personally don’t do them (Nor do I know how) but I’ve seen such things offered by SEO companies claiming to do only white SEO.
Karen recently posted..The Slendertone System Abs Belt
Twitter: w3blogdk
says:
Link wheels are not as such black hat, they just don’t have any value anymore. But if Google find out that you use them, then I believe that they will keep a sharper eye on you and your sites.
And then they might not be willing to give you the benefit of the doubt, if at some point something changes with your traffic / clicks on ads.
Twitter: happyupdates
says:
really good advice dude, for false traffic google penalized sites and they banned in google search engines so i thought white hat seo is good for sites it’s slow but beneficial.
Gautam recently posted..Offline Marketing Methods for Beginners
Twitter: MissAsma
says:
Nice idea Jimmy i totally agree with you . Money making is’nt difficult but there are some rules and regulations which should be follow.Really nice tips.
Asma Khan recently posted..Hardware Keylogger
Twitter: ForteProperties
says:
I’ve tried using Adsense on my site, but something about having a visitor click away just doesn’t make sense especially when I need people to stay on my site in order for me to gain a client = make money. Are there websites out there that are specifically targeted to have people click the ads?
Chris recently posted..What To Look For In Austin Real Estate
Twitter: w3blogdk
says:
If you want to gain new clients or sell a product, then adsense is a bad idea.
But if you have a site like this blog or this pagerank checker, then adsense can be a way for you to earn the money to pay the server and domain costs.
Or if you have a really high number of hits daily, then even make money on it.
The best link building strategy for new sites is to stick to blogs and directories… kinda like I am doing now lol
But really, the new Google update will probably cleanse a big part of the tubes. SEO winter is coming indeed and only the strong will survive.
Silvestru | Cigarette shop reviews recently posted..Best place to buy cigarettes online
Twitter: w3blogdk
says:
Blogs are absolutely the best way to go if you want to make backlinks, both commenting and guest posting. ;)
Then article databases and link directories.
This is a good information. It’s great to know that there are such good people like you who wants his/her people to be aware of such ideas like this. Thank you so much for sharing. You don’t know how much persons you inspire and help with your every post.
Born27 recently posted..Internet Phone Service
Twitter: charlso1
says:
there is no easy way to make money online. Yes, if you want to make money, you need to work smart. only the smart webmasters make money. You know, setting up a webpage is one thing and getting traffic is another. I have tried traffic exchange for 2 years but i got little result. The best method i use is link build from article directories, forum posting and social media networks. Thanks for the post.
charles recently posted..How to Make a Website From Scratch For Free
Just do all your way legally. Don’t cheat Google or else all your hardwork will be disappear.
jack recently posted..How to Get Dramatic SURGES of Pinterest Followers and Re-pins (Part II)
Twitter: DavidBennett
says:
Whether these techniques work or not, the real gold seems to be in getting good backlinks – and that revolves around having content that is both of high quality and is about what people want to read about.
Thus, sites that tell people how to do things, generally rise to the top like cream. That’s what I have observed.
David Bennett recently posted..Wild Asses At Play
Hi. Thanks for this! I am just starting my blog and I’m happy I was able to read this. I already have adsense but I am not too familiar with it yet. Do you think it is necessary that I exchange comments with those of the topics as my blog?
Thanks for this.
-Lorie
Lorie recently posted..how to seduce a woman
Twitter: ForteProperties
says:
*prays to the spam gods to have mercy on my comment*… I think the key to anything in Google’s eyes is to do it with integrity and you’ll eventually come out on top. People who are trying to cut corners or “trick” the system will for sure get slapped eventually. It’s pretty simple and it requires hard work.
Chris recently posted..Austin Real Estate Agents: Find One You Can Trust
Twitter: MajorMoneyTips
says:
Great post! This just goes to show how important it is for bloggers and internet marketers to diversify their traffic strategies and not rely only on Google to bring the goods.
Justin recently posted..Struggling to Come Up With New Content Ideas? – Check Out the Online Magazine Rack.
Thanks for sharing this information. I agree that regarding adsense we need to be very careful. I don’t know why but my blog was banned.
Ariana Lemarr recently posted..Acheter lunette de tir
Twitter: MissAsma
says:
Looking forward for a new post from your site.
Asma Khan recently posted..Crohns Blog
Thanks for the great post. Methods that you describe are in fact black hat and sooner or later will be caught. I remember about a year and a bit ago online world was booming with affiliated doing negative billing schemes. This is where a user pays only $4.95 for a free trial of a product, but terms and conditions in very small font say something like “You will be billed $79 in 2 weeks time if you don’t cancel”. Google banned many of those companies and these guys are facing all kind of lawsuits. Don’t play on the dark side. Just don’t do it
Stan recently posted..Physical Therapy Specialties
Twitter: w3blogdk
says:
Unfortunately are they still alive and kicking on affiliate ads, here in Denmark are there a lot of Internet users that gets scammed by these hostlers.
But they are slowly dying, although it’s to slow. :/
I know one way that will help keep your account safe, though not full proof, there is a plugin called WSA for wordpress and you can set it up to only show ads to users from search engines, which is better for the advertisers, and better for your CTR
Terrance recently posted..Inexpensive Date Ideas
Twitter: w3blogdk
says:
I didn’t know about that plugin, but it’s differently something I’ll have a look at Thx.!
Twitter: meltingposts
says:
Great list Jimmy, to be honest I didn’t know about most of the scams you mentioned, I’m probably too honest to even think about something like that. Scams may work for a while but if you want to build long term success, then laying a false foundation will only result in failure.
Aliosha Kasin recently posted..How To Be An Expert In Social Media Infographics
Yeah, also don’t buy any kind of SEO service that costs around $5 to $20 and offers you some kind of links in the hundreds or thousands. For example: 100 edu links for $6, 3000 directory submissions for $15, 2000 forum profiles for $8, 500 social network links for $13. And all kinds of similar to these. I can even tell you that these work and WILL increase your ranking! BUT still you do not want them, because not only that they will affect your link profile, which will hurt you in the long run, but also there is a good chance that you will get a message from Google for unnatural links that need to be removed. I want to see you then remove 3000 forum profile links :). And believe me you will start removing them one by one when you receive the message.
Regards.
Nikolay Nikolov recently posted..How to Reset a Lost Skype Password
Twitter: bestplugins_wp
says:
Hi Jimmy,
You’re on the money with this one, actually until now I hadn’t heard about click circles, a few years ago I’d have found it surprising that people would try something like this .. but nothing surprises me any more where the internet is concerned.
I’m sure a few people have done this and ended up going on forums whinging about their adsense account being banned … and if they honestly did something like that then I’d welcome it being banned.
I have seen a lot of cases lately where people have had their accounts banned by Google when there has been nothing untoward going on.
So while it seems that the scammers and wrong ‘uns are getting banned, Google seems to be catching some innocent people in the crossfire.
Adam James recently posted..Looking For Forum Or Community Plugins For WordPress? Try One Of These
As google declares its teeth on its algorithm certainly online stuff occurs changes. For one good reason traffic building especially over doing it (let’s say the off page optimization or link building) would possibly cause penalty.
Hi Jimmy,
We should be honest while blogging and serving ads of any advertisement platform. These advertising platforms are doing business with us so always give them value for their dollars.
Adam recently posted..Top 5 Free Social Sharing Bars/ Plugins for Websites
Great writeup! Adsense is indeed a sensitive money making program but you really depend on genuine traffic and should never put all eggs in one basket. Therefore i have multiple revenues of income. Still picked up some good tips here, quality is always king!
Carl recently posted..Bantningskur som fungerar
Twitter: theapptimes
says:
Thanks for an informative post Jimmy. It’s quite horrific to hear people getting banned even though they haven’t used black hat services. Google is certainly rattling the internet world right now and everyone says don’t do this and don’t do that, it starts to get very confusing.
Adeline recently posted..Download these Fresh New Windows 7 Themes for your Desktop
Hi Jimmy,
great post as always. But regarding the linkbuilding i think not only BMR or ALN will be punished. In germany there are two article networks deindexed and a lot more to come, i fear.
Frank recently posted..iPhone User
Twitter: w3blogdk
says:
I think your right, we have only seen the beginning. Google are playing with a lot of things these days, for example one of my other sites that normally has about 300 hits got over 5000 Monday and 2400 yesterday.
And as far as I can read on forums these spikes are popping up all over the web, I just hope that they don’t change it back again. ;)
I’m surprised to read about traffic circles, I didn’t realize those things were still around! I remember seeing them waay back when (ok, and even wasting some time on them), but I had no clue that there are people who still use them as tools to try and game the system!
Alice recently posted..Edmonton Senior Housing Options – Retirement Communities and Retirement at Home
The BH techniques of today are often the gray and white hat procedures of tomorrow. It’s an essential truth; innovations often transpire inside the Blackhat community of SEOs. These methods are studied, adapted, and lastly received into white hat SEO.
Ulrih recently posted..Affordable Dental Services in Lawrenceville, GA
Twitter: zulampard
says:
I am personally a victim of this way aft. I maintained my own journal and I avidly stronghold my posts frequent but Google banned me for outlaw utter process when I did nothing. I did not regularise publicize my journal to my friends retributive to obtain writer clicks to the ads. I contended but to no service, I unsuccessful.
Tshirt Printing
Hi Jimmy! providing us this useful information is really a big. And i know a lot of people will benefit from this. I will surely follow the advice that you’ve shred with us here to avoid this kind of problem someday. Thank you so much for sharing this and i’m looking forward to read more from you.
Heidi19 recently posted..Arowana – a prized investment catch or …
Always great to get a reminder than Google is all, and they will find out what you are doing one day.
Lilibeth recently posted..What is good in a relationship- the love languages
Twitter: imstash
says:
Earning money from Google is both easy and hard at the same time. Easy because their publishers products such as Adsense can be implemented quickly even for newbies. Hard because we can get banned anytime – without warning – because we are careless to break any rules knowingly and unknowingly. One thing for sure, never try to check Google or any networks…it’s only a matter of time people get caught, and the price to pay is high always.
Lincoln Lim recently posted..Using nRelate and Loving it – More Money & Page Views
A simple yet truthful explanation. I certainly agree with these thoughts. Its just like Google can be one’s best friend or enemy that will kicked immediately as it find a mistake.
Twitter: Power_Global
says:
The things these people come up with these days. It all started back in the day with fake “gamblers” and their 3 card Monte. Now evolving with the technology are this internet thieves. The sad part is they are stealing from small business just trying to gain profit. I derive this assumption based on the fact a lot of the companies paying for these ads do so because they are hurting or at least in need of more business. In other words, these crooks are causing an adverse affect on all these companies. Its sad to see but reality is there will always be someone trying to steal from an honest mans living
Twitter: abdi_furqon
says:
That’s good advice. Unfortunately, I once had 2 accounts of Adsense and both of them had been banned by google. I don’t know why, but one account I never place in my sites.
Abdi recently posted..The Green – Golf Etiquette Continued
Twitter: esoftload
says:
Getting Adsense account is toughest task and banning from it is easiest one! Before applying for adsense one should read the policy and after geeting should strictly follow them.
Isha Singh recently posted..Top 10 Best Applications for Android
Good post, over the years with google I’m still amazed today about how many people never go and read their TOS!! And not only that they go and jump on any bandwaggon that promise great success. Mark my words you will do more damage to your site in the long run if you play around with stuff you don’t know anything about. It might sound good and safe but it might someday come around and bite you.
JD recently posted..♫ Tommy Emmanuel – Guitar Boogie – Chet Atkins Vintage Trophy 1930 Martin Acoustic Guitar ♫
Twitter: SparkyHub
says:
As my opinion, make some money through pay per click, reffering friends to the sites etc…BuySellAds also a good way to make money easily through ads..I’m i correct?
akhil recently posted..All About USB 2.0 vs USB 3.0
Twitter: matthewkinsella
says:
This comes down to people wanting to get instant results, if they put their efforts into just building a genuine site with real traffic then they will eventually see results, it just takes time. It can be a lot of effort to try and get round the safeguards in place or starting new sites because the last one was banned, that time and energy could be better spent on something worthwhile that lasts and brings genuine income.
Matt Kinsella recently posted..Emergency Dentist For The Oxford Area
Don’t use Traffic Exchanges, why people use them, some sites get only traffic from TE-s, and probably they don’t know anything about online marketing. But sometimes it’s the only way to get any traffic at all, if it’s impossible to get your site to Search engine results because the web is just that huge, or just keep trying until you get to SE-s.
Writing blog posts ever day is one way to go, but online marketing industry is just too huge to get anything for yourself. Keep trying and you may reach something or not. ‘
Google can’t know traffic sources for all websites, without the Google ap inside the page.
Thomas recently posted..Web Directory INT Facebook Campaign
Hey Jimmy,
Great piece of advice. It’s wise to focus efforts on building links and increasing traffic to your blog the right way rather than trying to trick Google. Although I knew about BMR and other paid link networks, but nothing about click circles and traffic circles until I read your post. Now I understand this whole thing.
I’ve recently seen a case of Google penalty due to negative SEO with my friend’s website. His site ranked pretty well in a competitive niche and unfortunately some rival put links to his website on some ALN blogs, owing to which Google penalized the site. This is a sad reality of living in a fiercely competitive world where people are trying to pull you down all the time.
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