My Google Adsense Mistake - Don't let it happen to you!

byWandavdH

255 followers

8 years ago

Newbies: PLEASE listen to the veterans, and don't jump ahead in the training OR do your own thing? I have, and now it has cost me dearly. Not the training, but me doing my own thing without thinking.

I got this idea in my head that the sooner I applied for adsense the better, because at least it will be ready when I needed it. So I did just that.

When it came to choosing a Location on Adsense, I chose the USA because I was under the impression that the ads that will be displaying the website will then be targeted to the USA. I didn't realize that this formed part of the payment address as well.

Anyway, the ads went live and I had it on my site for a few days, but they started to annoy me and I figured that if they annoy me, they may annoy the readers as well.... SO AGAIN, I foolishly went ahead and removed them from my site without consulting any resources or people here at Wealthy Affiliate.

By chance, my upsign happened to ask me if my site had been indexed yet. I was proud to reply that it was and decided to mention the fact that I even got accepted for adsense but then decided to take it off for the reason listed above.

He immediately proceded to tell me to put them back on as it was a necessary means to earn income and also explained that people are mostly used to ads so I don't have to be worried about annoying readers. I'm not explaining it correctly, but what was said made sense to me, so I went back to my Adsense account to get the HTML code again. Lo and behold, when I logged in I almost fell off my chair as I saw that I actually made $11 in just the short few days that it was running on my website. There was also a red message at the top stating that I needed to verify my address in order for payments to be processed (once , I think, $100 is reached? Not sure?) But anyway, I excitedly clicked on the link that will take me to the page to verify my address.

Then my heart sank.

Google sent me a pin in the POST that I need to verify my address with. The address is perfectly correct, except the area and country... they think I stay in Bellville, Michigan, USA instead of Bellville, Cape Town, South Africa :/

You can change your address, but there is no way to change your country once the account has been created. Google engineered it like this to prevent fraudulent activities and I understand that.

I decided to create a new account using the correct country, but then realized that I first had to cancel the first one before I could create a new one.

Problem is, I also can't CANCEL the account without that pin! They insist on a verified address to do even that.

According to answers on their forum, the only way I will now be able to get adsense for my website again is to not use Adsense for TWO YEARS. Google will then automatically delete the account, after which I will be able to apply again for a new account.... That's a very long time :'(

I take full responsibility for my actions, though. I hope that with this post I can warn future members to not make the same mistake... Luckily, there are hopefully other ventures besides Adsense in the meanwhile :)

Just don't overthink things too much and give only the information you are asked for, literally.