Google Will “Slap” Your Adsense Cheque Right in the Garbage If You Miss This One.
I hate reading long winded articles. I have no problem writing them, as most of my blog posts go on and on. So toady in the spirit of less reading and more information I am doing kind of a public service announcement to those of you that use Google Adsense to monetize your blog or website.
As I said before, I don’t like to read long articles, I especially dislike reading a website’s “terms of service.” That can become problematic for me, as I use Adsense to monetize my blogs, and Google is very particular about it’s TOS. I usually wait around for someone to point out something I have done that is against the TOS, or I just get lucky and learn a valuable piece of information.
Today I just got lucky.
Alright Chris, short and to the point, that’s what you said, so do it. Right…sorry.
Last week sometime when I was logging into my Adsense account I vaguely remember agreeing to an updated TOS [must have been another case of drunken/red bull blogging, surprise surprise]. Maybe some for you will remember it better than I. Of course how many people actually read it?
Neither did I.
Today I ran across a blog post [I would show some link love to the person that let me know, but I do not remember the blog I was reading] where someone was nice enough to mention the fact that in Google;s new TOS it has become mandatory for any site with Adsense to have a privacy policy that lets it’s viewers understand about cookies, and other such things. Great, just what I wanted to do today, write a privacy policy.
I just hoped that if Google caused the problem then hopefully they could solve it as well, so I typed in the phrase “adsense privacy policy.” I was really trying to confirm whether or nto this blog was accurate about the change in TOS, as I didn’t want to have to deal with the privacy policy junk.
This is where I got lucky again.
I found a blog written by a woman named Jennifer Slegg who is some kind of expert on Adsense. On her site JenSense.com she has so kindly created a cut and paste privacy policy for those of us lazy people to use. It took me less than 10 minutes to add the privacy policy to all of my blogs. I am not sure if Google is going to really enforce this aspect, but I am not going to take any chances.
I worked to hard for those pennies!
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I think i’m going to do that to.
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thanks for this, i’m definitely putting up that privacy policy thing on my sites now.
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Thanks for the heads up. I am going to update Inspirit ASAP!
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Great Post. Believe it or not, I always read the TOS for Google but this one slipped by me. I’ve noticed that most top tier internet advertisers require some sort of Privacy Policy and I have been lazy and remiss for not getting to it sooner. Thanks for the heads up.
I don’t know why, but AdSense just keeps dropping on my personal ratings list. They are getting too annoying now and there are some good offers on the side going on. Maybe I’ll drop it, who knows?
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I didn’t even bother to read the updated TOS the first time around. I guess I am going to have to put up a privacy policy on my sites now…
@Paddy Wallbouncer: Congrats on being able to have the patience to read the TOS. I try to read it but my mind starts to turn to mush and then I usually fall asleep.
@Ren B: It keeps dropping for me as well. Sometimes I feel like a “trailer trash beaten wife.” Google keeps controlling me and telling me what to do with my site. And of course like the white trash wife I can’t get out because: “I love him.”
Perhaps I am dealing with some self-esteem issues.
I knew I forgot something! There was a whole bunch of stuff I was supposed to add to all my sites, among them a privacy policy, as well as a disclosure notice, and DMCA complaint info page.
All 3 are pretty much necessary on any kind of website these days…and not just because of Adsense.
There are some online generators to help you out with some of this stuff and with the privacy policy you are better off using the generator at the-dma.org to ensure you comply with certain legal requirements and not just adsense rules.
That copy & paste one you linked to isn’t adequate enough to cover your butt without your crack showing.
To protect your integrity, because you can’t buy goodwill & trust, a disclosure notice is also important, especially if you are involved in any kind of pay-per-post. DisclosurePolicy.org has a generator for that.(they also have disclosure options to include your use of 3rd-party auto-generated advertising, like adsense)
It really is a good idea to inform your readers if there could be a possible conflict of interest. People appreciate honesty, so don’t try to hide things from them that they should know about. If you are honest with them from the start they won’t ever get the feeling that you lied to them, if they suddenly discover that the post they trusted you for was only made because you needed the cash.
People know the 20 year old model on TV with the 10 pounds of makeup and special lighting effects doesn’t look great because she is using that anti-aging cream she is advertising…they expect her to be a liar, but they don’t know that you really don’t use that product you were paid to endorse, and if you try to hide the fact that some of your posts are paid endorsements and your visitors find out later, you could lose a lot of your visitors and destroy your reputation as an honest blogger.
As far as DMCA, it’s a good idea to include a page on your site about how to make a complaint and what is required in a properly constructed takedown notice, and where to send it. This is especially important for sites & blogs that accept content from other people, or team blogs, or if you are lazy and posting what you believe are public domain articles, rather than writing your own material. (or in my case, if you run a book link directory & review site, and may accidentally link to a pirated copy of some book you might think is legally freely available.) Best I can suggest for that is to do some Google-fu and find a few well written DMCA info pages from a few sites and base yours on theirs, without copying & pasting the whole thing, word for word.
Without a DMCA complaint info page of your own, anyone that wants to file a complaint will have no choice but to go to your hosting company, domain name registrar, or even Google to have access to your content cut off. You are better off directing them straight to yourself instead, and quickly removing whatever they complain about. That way it doesn’t put your entire site at risk, affect your page rank, or land you in a courtroom. (even if you are innocent, it costs money to defend yourself and cleaning up any kind of mess can be costly if you didn’t prepare yourself for it, in advance)
Chris, with some of the images you use in your posts, it is especially important for you to have that DMCA info page because even though they could be considered parody, some might not consider it that and might actually consider what you do with the celebrity pics as a form of copyright infringement. You wouldn’t want your entire blog or wallet to suffer from a single pic in a post. (don’t misunderstand me, I like your parody pics and I am behind your use of them 100%)
I actually had 2 of the above 3 created in Live Writer and ready to post to my sites, but unfortunately, I am going to have to do it all over again from scratch, as my good pc died recently and I am stuck on an old, really slow PC from 1997…a 233mhz, 64mb RAM, 33.6k dialup, WinME…and it can’t run Live Writer.
(I guess you know what I will be doing with MY adsense checks and Cody Coins)
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